School Safety Initiatives in the U.S.
Marjorie Greene
Earthquake Engineering Research Institute
Oakland, California, USA
This paper will briefly review the status of school safety initiatives in several states in the U.S.
with high seismic hazards, and then focus a bit more on school safety programs in California,
which has a longer history of legislation regulating school safety than other states. The paper
will close with a brief discussion of the federal initiative to promote incremental retrofit of
schools.
Brief review of school safety initiatives
In the U.S., public schools are overseen by school districts--governing bodies at the local,
community level. Education is not mentioned in the Constitution of the United States, and is
not directly regulated by the federal government. Some states have a statewide school system,
while others delegate power to county, city or township-level school boards. This means that
the seismic safety of schools is regulated differently, depending on the district and/or the
state. In California, the state with the most developed seismic safety program, individual
districts regulate curriculum and classroom activities, while the state oversees the
construction of all public schools.
School safety can generally be divided into several categories—the preparedness status of
students and staff through earthquake drills and exercises; the performance of non-structural
components in a school building—light fixtures, furnishings, HVAC systems; and the
performance of the structures themselves. This paper and presentation focus on structural
performance, which, if not assured, can make moot any preparedness and non-structural
improvements.
Several states with high seismic risk, in addition to California, are developing school seismic
safety programs. For example, scientific advances in understanding that a Cascadia
subduction zone earthquake is imminent in geologic time prompted the Oregon Department
of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) and the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy
Advisory Commission (OSSPAC) to develop sound public policies to forward the goal of
mitigation of statewide risks (Wang and Burns 2006). As a consequence, the state has
developed a school safety program that includes a rapid visual screening of public schools
and other public buildings to assess their likelihood of collapse during a very severe
earthquake. Five key parameters were assessed, including the seismic zone, the building
structural type, building irregularities, original construction type and soil type. The reports
made for each building are available online. Of the 2182 K-12 school buildings that were
assessed using the Rapid Visual Screening process (based on FEMA-154), 274 were ranked
as Very High Seismic Risk and 744 were ranked as high risk (Oregon Department of
Education 2011). The state has developed a grant program to retrofit public buildings,
including public schools. Two key elements contributed to the success of this program-Oregon State Senator Peter Courtney, who championed legislation requiring all public
schools and emergency facilities to have life safety standards and the citizens of Oregon,
who voted to change the Oregon Constitution Articles, which now allow state general
obligation (GO) bonds to pay for earthquake rehabilitation of schools and emergency
facilities (Wang and Burns 2006).
In another western state, Utah, a recent rapid visual screening and study by the Utah Seismic
Safety Commission identified that the majority of Utah schools may be potentially unsafe in
the event of an earthquake and do not meet federal seismic safety standards. Utah sits
directly on the Wasatch fault, so the risk can be significant. Using the rapid visual screening
technique, engineers surveyed 128 Utah schools. According to one of the engineers involved
in the project, the rapid visual screening is the first step in categorizing which buildings
might need further study. Of the 128 schools sampled, 77 did not meet the necessary seismic
standards and need to be further evaluated to ensure they are safe (Universe 2011). The Utah
Seismic Safety Commission has proposed a bill for the last five years that would provide
some funding for more detailed evaluations of these buildings.
One other area of North America with a major school safety program is the province of
British Columbia in Canada. The provincial government has made a 15-year, $1.5-billion
commitment to make schools safer in the event of an earthquake. British Columbia is the
first province to undertake a comprehensive school seismic upgrading program. To date, 121
seismic upgrade projects are complete, under construction or proceeding to construction. To
date the province has spent more than $581 million on seismic upgrading of schools in 37
districts. As part of the Province’s School Seismic Mitigation Program, boards of education
assessed schools in 2004 to confirm the seismic risk and scope of required projects in their
districts. Project engineers used retrofit design concepts in the risk assessments that were
developed by the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of BC (BC
Ministry of Education 2011).
Experience in California
The origins of the Field Act
California has the longest history of legislatively regulating the design and construction of
public schools, building on experiences from two damaging earthquakes—1925 in Santa
Barbara and 1933 in Long Beach. As noted by Olson (2003), the M6.3 event in Santa
Barbara was the first earthquake that resulted in significant policy changes in California,
specifically the first earthquake components in building codes, in the cities of Santa Barbara
and Palo Alto; the introduction of new, although optional, earthquake components in the
1927 Uniform Building Code; the endorsement by the state chamber of commerce of the
idea of a statewide building code; and the emergence of professional organizations with a
major interest in earthquake design. While progress in these areas was slow, it did lay the
groundwork for more major changes that resulted after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake,
which also registered M6.3 and caused a significant amount of damage. So the period
between 1925 and 1933 “constituted a kind of transition period when recognition of
California’s earthquake risk was slowly overcoming resistance and often virulent denial”
(Olson 2003: 115).
The Long Beach earthquake occurred in the evening of March 10th, 1933, so thankfully no
schools were in session. It was immediately apparent that the state had dodged a bullet in
terms of potential deaths and injuries to children, as the earthquake destroyed 70 schools,
caused major damage to 120 schools and minor damage to 300 schools (CSSC 2004). The
earthquake marked the beginning of the “modern era” of seismic safety in California for
building codes, state laws, design and engineering practices, research, instrumentation, and
political activism (Olson 2003: 117). While there had been some discussion in state circles of
school building safety, particularly after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (U.S.
Department of the Interior 1917, quoted in Olson 2003), no action had been taken to
improve school construction until after this 1933 event.
A California legislator, Don C. Field, moved quickly after the March 10th event, introducing
Assembly Bill 2342 on March 23rd, as an “act relating to the safety of design and
construction of public school buildings, providing for regulation, inspection and supervision
of the construction, reconstruction or alteration of or addition to public school buildings,
and for the inspection of existing school buildings defining the powers and duties of the
State Division of Architecture. . . .[from The Assembly’s Final History of the 1933 Session, quoted
in Olson 2003: 118]”.
The state legislature enacted the Field Act within one month of the earthquake, setting in
motion a regulatory framework that is guiding much of the progress in seismic safety in
California. Although the Act passed during the Great Depression, there was support for it
because: 1) public schools are funded with public money; 2) schools house the children of
the electorate; and 3) the state constitution requires children to attend schools, the state is
liable and thus responsible for protecting children and staff from injury in public schools
grades K-12 and community colleges, and for protecting the public’s investment in school
buildings during and after earthquakes (CSSC 2004).
The Field Act provides for establishment of a procedure to be followed in the design and
construction or alteration of public school buildings. It has been updated several times, but
the following principal provisions and procedures have not been changed (DGS 2002:4):
 The Division of the State Architect (DSA) has the authority to approve or reject
plans for construction of all new school buildings and for the reconstruction,
alteration, or addition to existing school buildings for the protection of life and
safety and to resist future earthquakes insofar as possible.
 Required plans, specifications, and estimates are to be prepared by a Californialicensed architect or registered structural engineer.
 The application, drawings, specifications, geologic report, and calculations are
submitted to DSA for review. The documents are marked to ensure compliance
with the current building code and returned to the architect. California-registered
structural engineers provide the review of the structural aspects of the design.
 After corrections are made and back-checked by DSA, the documents are stamped
for identification. When DSA receives copies of the stamped documents, the
application is approved and a letter is sent to the school board indicating approval.
No construction contract may be let before the approval of the construction
documents is issued by DSA.
 Competent, adequate, and continuous inspection is required during construction
by a qualified, state-approved inspector to verify that the work has been executed
in accordance with the plans, specifications, addenda, and change orders approved



by DSA. Visits to the construction site are required of the design professionals,
who are required to observe the construction as it progresses. DSA structural
engineers also visit the site to observe the construction and ensure the inspection
is comprehensive.
The architect and registered engineer, the inspector, and the contractor must each
make a duly verified report to DSA indicating that the work has been performed
and the materials have been used and installed, in every important respect in
compliance with the approved plans and specifications.
When all the final verified reports indicating conformance with the approved
documents are received by DSA, a letter of certification of compliance with the
Field Act is issued to the school board.
Any person found to have violated any provision of the Act or to have made any
false statement in any verified report is guilty of a felony.
Seismic Safety Inventory
Over the years, while there is recognition that schools in California are generally the safest in
the country and have performed relatively well in recent earthquakes, there is also the
acknowledgment that it is continually necessary to examine the conditions of schools,
particularly in light of improved understanding of building performance and changes in
building codes. In 1999, legislation was passed in California requiring the Department of
General Services, through its Division of the State Architect (DSA), to conduct an inventory
of public school buildings that are of concrete tilt-up construction and those with non-wood
frame walls that do not meet the minimum requirements of the 1976 Uniform Building
Code (UBC). Substantial improvements in the seismic design of buildings were incorporated
in the 1976 UBC and were adopted for the design and construction of public schools in
1978 (DGS 2002).
The Division of the State Architect developed a seismic safety inventory methodology,
building from FEMA-310’s seismic evaluation procedures. This allowed DSA to evaluate
buildings in a meaningful way without conducting costly field investigations. This screening
process eliminated all but 16,000 school building construction projects, and these projects
were then evaluated using a construction documents review process to identify the lateralforce resisting systems (DGS 2002). Based on this review, 9,659 buildings (92 million square
feet) were identified as non-wood frame and built before July 1, 1978. These buildings were
then classified into one of two seismic vulnerability categories (DGS 2002):
 Category 1: those building types that are likely to perform well and are expected (but
not guaranteed) to achieve life-safety performance in future earthquakes
 Category 2: those building types that are not expected to perform as well in future
earthquakes as Category 1 building types and that require detailed seismic evaluation
to determine if they can be expected to achieve life-safety performance.
Figure 1 below shows the amount of square footage that falls into these two categories,
along with wood frame construction that was not part of this study. Individual school
districts can choose to evaluate and upgrade their buildings; there are continuing discussions
in the legislature about providing funding support for those districts that are otherwise
unable to undertake such work.
Figure 1: Public school buildings in Categories 1 and 2
Private school initiatives
Private schools in California are not required by law to meet Field Act standards, and are
therefore unlikely to be as safe as public schools of similar age. No survey has been done for
private schools. If private school buildings pose a risk to life-safety of their students, it is
difficult to assess because of lack of information about historical regulation and enforcement
during the design and construction of these buildings (CSSC 2004). Unlike Field Act schools,
there are also no regulations covering the anchoring and bracing of the contents of buildings
installed after construction is complete. Table 2 below summarizes some of the
administrative differences between the Field Act and the Uniform Building Code, which is
the code regulating private schools.
Table 1: Summary Differences Between Field Act and UBC
Field Act Title 24, CCR for Public Schools
Administrative Requirements
Design Professionals
An architect or a structural engineer must be in general responsible charge of the
design and construction
Plan Approval Process
Requirements for submitting the site data, geologic hazard reports, calculations, change
orders are provided in detail. The process of reviewing, marking the plans, and
verification of corrections are delineated.
Inspection
Continuous inspection by an inspector approved by DSA is required.
Verified Reports
The inspector is required to provide a verified report under penalty of perjury attesting
that the construction is in compliance with the approved plans and specifications based
on personal knowledge provided by continuous inspection.
The architects, engineers, and contractors are required to provide a verified report under penalty
of perjury attesting that the construction is in compliance with the approved plans and
specifications based on periodic visits to the site and the reporting of others.
Uniform Building Code for Private Schools
In addition to an architect and structural
engineer, a civil engineer is also allowed to
be, in general, responsible charge of the
design and construction.
Detailed requirements are not provided.
Periodic special inspection at construction
milestones (i.e. before concrete placement,
before covering structural framing, gypsum
board inspection).
No similar report is required.
No similar report is required.
Recent Initiative in City of Berkeley
The City of Berkeley is an example of a community that worked together to reduce seismic
hazards in its schools. Prompted by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the community of a
little over 100,000 residents worked together to address the seismic risk in its 16 public
schools. After the 1989 earthquake, a group of concerned parents approached officials with
their concerns about the safety of the schools built in the 1950s and 1960s with concrete.
The parent advocates were appointed to serve as an advisory body to the school district. The
discovered engineering reports issued ten years earlier that confirmed that at least one of the
schools, still in use, was unsafe and was to have been closed. The materials had been
misplaced by school officials and never acted upon (Chakos 2004). The parents convinced
the district to review all the schools again, eventually learning that 7 of the 16 schools posed
serious life safety risks.
Once the school district determined the extent of the risk to so many of its buildings, the
city’s state legislators also took action, sponsoring state legislation that enabled the school
district to tap into state emergency funds. Several years into this process a larger community
advisory group recommended that the school district embark on a comprehensive safety
program, totaling $158 million, to rebuild all the schools. In addition to finding federal and
state funds, the community ultimately approved a total of six special hazard mitigation taxes
over a ten-year period. Since 1992, all the public schools in Berkeley have been rebuilt
(Chakos 2004).
Experience of Calexico, California
In April 2010 a M7.2 earthquake struck Baja California Mexico and Southern California, with
the epicenter located close to the town of Calexico. At a recent school safety workshop, the
school superintendent for the Calexico schools described the experience that her 9300
students and 13 schools went through (Luna 2011). Most of the schools were closed for
between 17 and 23 days because of content damage that included hazardous materials—
broken lights, science lab materials, ceiling tiles, floor tiles, paint, mercury, lead and asbestos.
Debris removal, clean-up and repair also necessitated school closures. In some cases repairs
were completed more than once, because of continuing damage associated with aftershocks.
Windows continued to break and pipes broke, even after the schools were reopened. In
addition, damage associated with the initial earthquake to steel beams was not discovered
until weeks after the event, necessitating closure of some buildings. The experience of this
school district highlights the importance of addressing non-structural components as well as
structural safety
Federal Initiative—Incremental Retrofitting
Recently, the federal government through the Federal Emergency Management Agency has
developed guidance for school districts around the country in seismic regions that
encourages incremental retrofit of school buildings that might not meet high seismic
standards. The incremental approach reduces earthquake vulnerability at the most cost-
effective time in the building life cycle, by combining seismic retrofitting with other related
work that is already being done. FEMA has prepared a document, FEMA-395, that provides
a framework and information for managing school earthquake risks in such a way. The
major goals of making schools more earthquake resistant include:
 To provide safe buildings for children and staff
 To maintain public education
 To provide emergency shelters
 To avoid major disruption to community life (Mahoney 2011).
Advantages to incremental retrofitting are highlighted in Table 2 below:
Single-Stage Retrofitting
All costs are concentrated in a short time period
Construction is disruptive to school operations
Requires temporary space during construction to
house displaced students and staff
All seismic vulnerabilities are mitigated in a single
phase of work
Seismic retrofitting work is generally performed
independent of future maintenance and remodels
Incremental Retrofitting
Costs are distributed over multiple fiscal years
Construction can be phased to occur during
summer breaks to minimize disruption to school
operations
Students and staff are not displaced
Seismic vulnerabilities are mitigated in a phased
approach, beginning with the most severe
vulnerabilities first
Seismic mitigation can be integrated with other
scheduled maintenance and remodel projects
Summary
School seismic safety in the U.S. is recognized to be of increasing importance, although to
date only a handful of states have developed active seismic retrofit programs. California has
the longest and most comprehensive history with school seismic safety, but even in that high
risk state there are many challenging issues with funding and political priorities. FEMA’s
initiative with incremental retrofitting may be one future approach that offers opportunities
to more schools to conduct evaluations and retrofits over time.
References
B.C. Ministry of Education. Seismic Mitigation Program (2011).
http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/capitalplanning/seismic/ Accessed March 10, 2011.
California Seismic Safety Commission (2004). Seismic Safety in California’s Schools
Findings and Recommendations on Seismic Safety Policies and Requirements for Public, Private, and
Charter Schools. December. Sacramento, CA: CSSC.
Chakos, Arrietta (2004). Learning About Seismic Safety of Schools from Community Experience in
Berkeley, California. Keeping Schools Safe in Earthquakes. OECD.
Department of General Services (2002). Seismic Safety Inventory of California Public
Schools (A Report to the Governor of California and the California State Legislature). November 15th,
2002, Department of General Services.
Luna, Christina (2011). April 4, 2010--Laguna Salada/El Mayor-Cucapah 7.2 Magnitude
Earthquake. Earthquake Engineering Research Institute 2011 Annual Meeting. February 12,
2011.
Mahoney, Michael (2011). Seismic Protection of Schools; FEMA’s Perspective. Earthquake
Engineering Research Institute 2011 Annual Meeting. February 12, 2011.
Olson, Robert A. (2003). Legislative Politics and Seismic Safety: California’s Early Years and the
“Field Act,” 1925-1933. Earthquake Spectra, Volume 19, No. 1, February, pages 111-131.
Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.
Oregon Department of Education (2011). Quake Safe Schools. Retrieved from
http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/page/?id=2061. 1998-2011, Oregon Department of
Education.
Seismic Safety Commission (2004). Seismic Safety in California’s Schools. December 2004, Sate
of California Seismic Safety Commission.
Universe (2011). “Utah Seismic Safety Commission: 60 percent of schools fail standards”.
February 2, 2011. www.Universe.byu.edu.
Wang, Yumei and Burns, Bill (2006). Case History on The Oregon Go Bond Task Force: Promoting
Earthquake Safety In Public Schools and Emergency Facilities. Paper presented at 8th National
Earthquake Conference, April 18-21, San Francisco, CA.