Sacramento City Unified School District Maintenance

REASON FOR INVESTIGATION

The 1994-95 Grand Jury found that the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) "has very serious problems and needs to identify those steps necessary to address its failure to provide safe decent school facilities for students." The 1995-96 Grand Jury "...concludes that by cutting back on routine and deferred maintenance the School Board has jeopardized the assets of the District, the safety of our children and created more costly problems for the future." This Grand Jury continued to monitor the situation.

BACKGROUND

The Sacramento City Unified School District is one of the ten largest in California with about 49,000 students. The budget is about $200 million a year. It has been the subject of great attention over the past several years. Two Grand Jury reports have addressed its poor maintenance performance, as has the Report of the Mayor's Commission on Education and the City's Future, and the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assessment Team report.

In its response to the 1994-95 Grand Jury, the School Board stated that "Board members had to anguish over the cuts that had to be made in order to keep those cuts as far away from the classroom as possible. Sacramento City Unified, as in most districts, cut regular and deferred maintenance funding in order to save teachers and other staff who deal directly with children."

PROCEDURES FOLLOWED

Grand Jury members toured schools; interviewed maintenance personnel and school principals; and spoke to other citizens familiar with the schools.

FINDINGS

Efforts have been made and some improvements have been observed in the area of maintenance. Nevertheless, the schools still have many major problems such as leaking roofs, heating, ventilation, air conditioning and electrical systems and thousands of minor ones such as broken windows, peeling paint, dry-rot and missing tiles.

CONCLUSIONS

1. The District cannot solve the major physical plant issues it faces unless it makes major changes in how it manages its physical assets.

2. Bond money will resolve some problems, but unless there is adequate annual spending on preventive maintenance, new structures and equipment will rapidly deteriorate.

3. Even with a large infusion of bond money, the current maintenance problems produced by years of neglect will not be fixed without a long-term commitment.

4. As long as SCUSD diverts resources away from maintaining the district's physical assets there will always be run down, unsafe schools for our children.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The Grand Jury recommends that:

1. SCUSD consider its maintenance and physical plant as having two components: (a) existing plant and structures and (b) all newly built and major upgraded plant and structures.
2. SCUSD make the new and upgraded structures a first priority for preventive maintenance and make sure that funds and staff are available to keep these in good repair into the future.
3. SCUSD fund maintenance of existing facilities to keep them safe and in reasonable working order.
4. SCUSD develop a written long range plan that encompasses maintenance and preventive maintenance for existing facilities, and need projections for new facilities.

RESPONSE REQUIRED

The Penal Code requires responses to he recommendations contained in its report be submitted to the Presiding Judge of the Sacramento Superior Court and Municipal Courts by September 30, 1997, from:

The Board of the Sacramento City Unified School District.