Report Probes Seismic Safety of Mill Valley Schools

How would our local schools hold up in the event of an earthquake?

According to officials, it’s impossible to say so definitively given the range of potential quake severity. They said they are confident in the seismic safety of all buildings in the district and are in the midst of a vast school modernization plan on the back of a $58.9 million bond passed in 2009 .

But two of our schools, and , do not meet the most stringent of the state’s seismic safety standards and are potentially at risk, according to a 19-month statewide California Watch investigation that uncovered holes in the state's enforcement of seismic safety regulations for public schools.

Edna Maguire and Mill Valley Middle are on a list of some 7,500 school buildings with possible seismic risks because they were build before strict seismic standards went into effect under the 1976 Uniform Building Code and haven’t yet been retrofitted, according to records with the Division of the State Architect.

The list was initially created as part of Assembly Bill 300 in 1999, requiring the state to compile a seismic safety inventory of California’s K-12 school buildings. If the state deems schools might possibly be unsafe in the event of an earthquake, it sends an AB 300 letter to the school district. The DSA sent letters to districts with AB 300 schools this week to notify them of the California Watch report.

California Watch reports that only two of those AB 300 schools in the state have been able to access a $200 million fund for upgrades.

The original AB 300 list included some inaccuracies, citing the district for properties it sold years ago (the since rebuilt ) or for buildings well outside its boundaries. But following California Watch’s analysis, four buildings at Edna Maguire remain categorized as the less safe Category 2. The buildings total approximately 34,000 square feet. Three of them were built in 1955 and the fourth was built in 1961.

There are six Category 2 buildings at Mill Valley Middle, all built in 1969. The buildings comprise nearly 120,000 square feet.

All 10 of the buildings have been upgraded in one form or another over the years – the middle school last summer, for instance – but they have not been subject to a detailed seismic evaluation. They do, however, meet the requirements of the Field Act, the 1933 state law that set seismic standards for public schools after a devastating earthquake destroyed more than 70 schools in the Long Beach area.

Tim Ryan, the district’s director of maintenance and operations, said he was “confident about the safety of the existing structures as they are today. People trust us to take care of their children, and we take that trust very seriously.”

Raoul Wertz, the president of the district’s board of trustees, backed Ryan’s confidence in the current buildings.

“The district wants to comply with the safety and seismic requirements and provide safe buildings,” Wertz said. “The Field Act was enacted for good reason. We don’t want districts being negligent.”

Throughout Marin, 38 schools have been the subject of AB 300 letters. The most serious warning from the Division of the State Architect is a so-called Letter 4, presumably due to the most dangerous cases of noncompliance. According to California Watch, the DSA has a list of nearly 20,000 school projects that are uncertified – and about 1,000 of the schools on that list were at some point given Letter 4 warnings.

In Marin, just one project – at Glenwood Elementary in San Rafael – has received a Letter 4, according to California Watch.

For Marin schools, the California Watch report largely echoes the findings of a report from the Marin Civil Grand Jury in March 2009. That report found that at least 75 concrete, brick and steel school buildings in Marin did not meet the most stringent state guidelines for seismic safety, and that no notices of retrofit modification had been filed with the State Architect since then.

But the report also said not meeting those requirements did not mean that a school building was likely to fail in the event of a major earthquake and that “parents shouldn’t be unduly alarmed.” None of Marin's school buildings has experienced structural cracks or damage during the last 50 years of earthquake activity, according to the grand jury report.

According to the state report, the schools of greatest concern are those within 1.2 miles of a major fault. No Marin schools meet that criteria; most of the county's schools are at least three miles from either the San Andreas or Hayward faults.

Despite the district’s confidence in its existing structures, it is in the midst of a massive overhaul of its school buildings. In June 2009, it wrapped up a facilities master plan – its first since 1998 - and passed a bond in November 2009 to raise $58.9 million to do the first phase of upgrades it deemed necessary, though not just from a seismic standpoint.

The district is in the midst of doing just that and the school board approved construction documents for upgrades at Old Mill and Tamalpais Valley elementary schools earlier this week. Those upgrades are set to begin this summer, with upgrades at Strawberry Point and a set to begin next summer.

District officials say the complete reconstruction of the middle school is a top priority for the next phase of capital projects, though the current economic climate might make it harder to pass a bond than two years ago, Wertz said.

“All of the projects weren’t rolled out as one campaign measure because of the price tag for doing it all at once,” he said. “We needed to be mindful of our bonding capacity. We were lucky to get that bond passed when we did. We can’t live beyond our means.”

Ryan said he intends to recommend an update to the master plan when starts in July.

Kira Keane, who has one child each at Edna Maguire and Mill Valley Middle, said she was confident in both the safety of the existing buildings – the single-story Edna Maguire has withstood a lot in its 50-plus years, she said — and the district’s actions to upgrade its facilities.

“The district is obviously taking our safety and our facilities very seriously,” she said. “Personally, I’m not worried, and I think the district is doing everything it can as quickly as it can.”

This story was produced using data provided to Patch by California Watch, the state's largest investigative reporting team and part of the Center for Investigative Reporting. Read more about Patch's collaboration with California Watch.