Quake Repairs Yet to Begin at Hardest-Hit L.A. Schools : Recovery: District, FEMA bitterly blame each other for delays. Principals say students are being shortchanged.

By BETH SHUSTER

Jan. 20, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Federal grants to hard-hit Los Angeles schools have reached $126 million in the year since the Northridge earthquake, but the massive aid program has failed to reach many of the campuses that were most severely damaged.

Most of the schools where repair costs exceed $500,000 have received less than half of the funding needed from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to a Times analysis of Los Angeles Unified School District records.

While the aid is only slowly reaching the schools where education has been most disrupted by the disaster, overall the district has won approval for enough federal aid to pay for 84% of all earthquake repairs.

The district has received about $90 million in cash, but has spent just $34 million to date.

That uneven performance has pushed back to late 1998 the completion date for all earthquake repairs, and a bitter debate has erupted over why the program has bogged down.

Federal and local education bureaucracies blame each other. District officials say that the federal government is holding up the larger, more expensive projects while FEMA officials say that they are approving funds in a timely manner and that it is up to the district to set priorities.

The dispute has doubly cursed many campuses, parts of which look as if the Northridge earthquake struck yesterday.

Schools where large meeting rooms remain unrepaired have canceled assemblies and holiday programs. Students on campuses without cafeterias and lunch shelters eat under tents, or in their classrooms in inclement weather. Athletes at schools without gyms will not host competitions at home for at least another year.

For their part, principals and teachers at the most severely damaged middle and high schools say that they are frustrated and that their students are being shortchanged.

“You’d think something would be done,” said Joan Elam, principal at Monroe High School in North Hills, which suffered $1.4 million in earthquake damage. “It makes it so difficult when we’re looking at the same scenery a year later.”

The federal government, through FEMA, is paying 90% of the repairs and the state is paying the remaining 10%.

Before the district receives federal money, FEMA inspectors must visit every school site and write damage survey reports, detailing repairs and projected costs. The district and FEMA must review the reports--along with the state--before FEMA authorizes the repair money. On the bigger and more expensive projects, FEMA routinely asks for more detailed architectural and engineering reviews before funding.

Supt. Sid Thompson says that with its multilevel review process, FEMA is acting “like we’re trying to build the Taj Mahal.”

“To say it’s ponderous is the understatement of the year,” Thompson said. “It’s a long, long process.”

Overall, the district sustained earthquake damage to about 5,600 buildings, and repairs will cost an estimated $150 million. Nineteen schools suffered more than $500,000 damage each, and a Times analysis of records pertaining to those schools shows:

* Total repair costs for 554 buildings at the 19 heavily damaged campuses are estimated at $45 million. To date, about $26.3 million--or 58.5%--has been approved. Eighteen of those schools are in the San Fernando Valley; the other, Hamilton High School, is in Los Angeles.

* Complete repairs have been approved for only one school, Van Gogh Street Elementary in Granada Hills, which was the only campus in the school system to be destroyed. That approval came last week, four days before the anniversary of the quake. Reconstruction is now scheduled to be completed in 1996.

* Damage survey reports--one of the first steps in the funding process--have yet to be written by FEMA in 69 cases. Until they are completed, full funding cannot even be considered for 17 of the 19 schools.

* Actual construction began at just nine of the heavily damaged schools in 1994, and the bulk of the projects will not get under way before this spring.

* Two-thirds of the funding for the single most expensive project--Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, which will cost $19.9 million to repair--has been approved by FEMA. But the school district has spent only $4.3 million of that. District officials say that they are waiting for plan approvals before they can do further construction and that funding for the gym and one classroom building still has not been approved.

The $126 million that FEMA has approved would cover 84% of all needed repairs. But only $94 million has been received by the school district and only $34 million has been spent.

School district officials say they are being stymied by a lengthy federal review process. They say FEMA frequently requests detailed architectural and engineering studies on the larger projects, such as gymnasiums and auditoriums, before funding is approved.

FEMA officials acknowledge that major repair projects require more detailed studies. “Obviously, it will take longer,” said James Lee Witt, FEMA director. “It’s important that these buildings are built back to meet life-safety standards.”

FEMA and other government officials take pride in their recovery efforts and point out that even on the most heavily damaged campuses, all students are back in classrooms.

But teachers and principals on those campuses say life is far from normal for their students.

Principals say they are constantly giving tours of their damaged campuses to inspectors and district maintenance workers.

“A lot of activity but not much action,” said Principal Dick Cord, summing up the situation at Portola Middle School in Tarzana, which suffered $1.8 million in damage and received $1 million from FEMA.

“There’s this constant reminder of the earthquake because of the chain-link (fences) and the closed multipurpose room. We were very much aware that we had a bad earthquake the whole semester.”

At Holmes Middle School in Northridge, which had nearly $1 million in damage, the campus is operating without 19 damaged classrooms. Said Ron Twombly, the Holmes principal: “It sidetracked a lot of efforts and a lot of programs.”

At Nobel Middle School, where there was about $585,000 in damage, the multipurpose room still is unusable. “We really, really miss it,” said Rita Davis, the principal. “We’ve had no large assemblies. In fact, our assemblies have not been much at all.”

Reseda High’s auditorium--which today looks exactly as it did on Jan. 17, with huge light fixtures and chunks of the ceiling lying on the chairs below--was also used for community gatherings, such as musical performances and Neighborhood Watch meetings.

“The auditorium is really a community center,” said Bob Kladifko, the principal at Reseda, which also has 10 damaged and unusable classrooms. “We try to be understanding, but it’s difficult for our parents and those of us at the school.”

To help speed the repair process, the school district holds weekly meetings with officials from FEMA and the state Office of Emergency Services, which also reviews repair plans and funding requests.

School district officials say they push specific projects at those meetings to get funding approved more quickly, but they do not pressure officials on every project.

“You can’t push on every school every week,” said Roger Rasmussen, the district’s liaison with the federal and state disaster agencies. “The number of things they can work on is just limited. Obviously when you push certain projects you make a choice and you make a priority.”

FEMA officials say the school district sets the pace for project approvals by making new requests every week. “They’re prioritizing the projects,” said Frank Kishton, FEMA’s federal coordinating officer for earthquake recovery. “There are a lot of projects that are moving. And obviously we need to look at our process to keep it going.”

Thompson, who first pledged to have repairs under way by the one-year anniversary, is now looking to the fall of 1996 for most campuses.

“My feeling is we’ve done well but not nearly enough,” Thompson said. “When they build a nuclear power plant at San Onofre, they go through a lot of steps too. But we need these schools now.”

Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this story.