Seven of the 23 most seismically vulnerable school buildings in California – including five of six permanent classroom buildings – are on the campus of San Juan School, where the results of state-mandated seismic trenching could either force the school to be condemned and relocated or require a multimillion-dollar retrofit.
But first, the school has to find a way to pay the estimated $250,000 it will cost to dig a 10-foot-deep, 450-foot-long trench at the school so a state geologist can map potential faultlines.
Aromas-San Juan Unified School District representatives have been working for more than a year with California’s Office of Public School Construction to get the state to fund all of the costs of a seismic upgrade of the campus, located 170 feet east of the San Andreas Fault near the eastern entrance to town.
In a report to the district’s school board, Superintendent Willard McCabe said that if the geologic study finds “spiders” – or cracks from the fault – within 50 feet of school buildings, “the site potentially would have to be condemned.”
“Without the geological study we do not know whether or not there are spiders, and moving forward into a full construction phase with blueprints seems to be wasteful because it may not be a $4 million project but a $40 million project,” he said in the report.
Recognizing that getting the state to fund all of the seismic work may not be realistic, district officials recently appealed to the State Allocation Board for funding.
“We wanted the state to fund the geologic fault trenching portion of the evaluation,” said Jeanne Howland, the Aromas-San Juan district’s interim business manager. “We didn’t get a total agreement of what we asked for, but it was a good discussion.”
Geologists need to check for the so-called spider faults, which Howland said are “smaller faults off the San Andreas moving toward buildings.”
“The San Andreas runs parallel to the school, and typically faults don’t break off and go perpendicular, but the state requires this trenching and mapping to be done to be sure,” she said. “Until that’s done, we won’t know if we’re just repairing the buildings or we have to condemn the school site.”
District officials are still unclear of how specific results from trenching will impact the future of the campus, for which building plans were approved in 1961.
“We’re finding as we move through this seismic process with the state that when you get in the field, state folks don’t always have specific answers,” Howland said. “The guidelines and criteria seem to be developing, so that’s one reason we didn’t want to spend more money until we know specifically what we’re doing – whether it’s rehabbing to make the buildings current with seismic standards or are we going to have to abandon the site, which I don’t think will happen.”
Officials pointed out that the campus has endured countless small and a handful of larger quakes over the decades, “but it doesn’t appear that there’s any immediate danger to students or staff by being in the buildings.”
Assembly Bill 300, passed in 2000, required a statewide inventory to identify school buildings potentially vulnerable to a seismic event. Prop. 1D in 2006 authorized up to $199.5 million for the seismic mitigation of school facilities that pose an unacceptable risk of injury to occupants during a seismic event. The Aromas-San Juan District then received notice in 2008 that most of its permanent classrooms were in the “most vulnerable” category.
The state in 2010 funded an initial study of San Juan School buildings and the district since April 2011 has spent $70,000 on engineers, architects and consultants in advance of the expected seismic rehabilitation project.
The vulnerable buildings on the southeastern corner of campus, which was closed this week for Spring Break, include four classroom buildings – one of which includes the school library – as well as a portion of the building used for kindergarten classes, the principal’s office, and the cafeteria/multi-purpose room.
The ASJ school board is expected to discuss the school’s seismic issues at its April 18 meeting, which is a week before district representatives will attend another hearing with the state regarding potential funding for geologic trenching work.
“We are hopeful that the state will find money to fund the trenching,” Howland said. “Once that’s done and we know whether we’re rehabbing buildings or we have to go to a more comprehensive plan, the district will decide how they’re going to handle it. The district can fund the repair of the buildings by selling bonds, but if the whole site is condemned – which is the extreme – we’d need more help.”
