2023-122 Custodial Staffing and Cleanliness Standards
Significant Maintenance Deficiencies at Some Schools May Place Students’ Safety and Learning at Risk
Published: November 19, 2024
Audit Recommendations Disclosure
When an audit is completed and a report is issued, auditees must provide the State Auditor with information regarding their progress in implementing recommendations from our reports at three intervals from the release of the report: 60 days, six months, and one year. Additionally, Senate Bill 1452 (Chapter 452, Statutes of 2006), requires auditees who have not implemented recommendations after one year, to report to us and to the Legislature why they have not implemented them or to state when they intend to implement them. Below is a listing of each recommendation the State Auditor made in the report referenced and a link to the most recent response from the auditee addressing their progress in implementing the recommendation and the State Auditor’s assessment of auditee’s response based on our review of the supporting documentation.
Recommendations to the Legislature
Recommendation 1
To improve the maintenance and safety of California’s schools to meet NCES best practices, the Legislature should consider augmenting and, if appropriate, earmarking additional funding to school districts for facilities maintenance. This funding should be appropriated and distributed outside the LCFF—which is based on the characteristics of students—and instead should be commensurate with need. For example, a formula could include the age of facilities and the need as expressed in facilities’ master plans, or it could depend on independent needs assessments, such as the one we describe from Fresno Unified on page 28.
Status:
pending
Recommendation 2
To better ensure that those who conduct FIT inspections lack incentives to overstate the cleanliness and safety of school facilities, the Legislature should consider modifying existing law. State law could require that the use of state funds for maintenance be contingent upon periodic review and validation of FIT inspection reports by a party who did not perform the FIT inspection, such as a schoolsite council, that could include parents, guardians, and students.
Status:
pending
Recommendation 3
To better ensure the safety of K-12 students, the Legislature should require CDE to make available to school districts model training that the districts could provide to teachers, custodians, and site administrators about FIT requirements related to hazardous materials. This training should address the information the FIT guidebook provides related to identifying and securing hazardous materials that the FIT tool reports. The model training should include a focus on the materials that schools must provide—such as cleaning agents, propane, and pesticides—differentiating the materials that are hazardous from those that are not, identifying the materials that are appropriate for classroom use, and specifying how such materials should be stored if they are to be kept in classrooms.
Status:
pending
Recommendations to Department of General Services
Recommendation 4
To increase the accuracy of FIT reporting, DGS should engage in its stakeholder process by October 2025 to update the FIT, with a target completion date of October 2026, to include a broader range of deficiency ratings that specifically differentiates cosmetic deficiencies, minor deficiencies, moderate deficiencies, and extreme deficiencies. Further, DGS should adjust the weighting of the various deficiency ratings to provide a more accurate assessment of each school’s compliance with Good Repair Standards. DGS should also provide multiple examples for each section and deficiency level. These examples could include detailed descriptions or photographs that exhibit the differences of severity in common deficiencies. For example, photographs could show a small hole in a carpet, which could be considered cosmetic, and a larger rip, which could pose a trip hazard and therefore warrant a more severe deficiency rating.
Status:
pending
Recommendation 5
To increase the accuracy of FIT reporting, DGS should engage in its stakeholder process by October 2025 to update the FIT, with a target completion date of October 2026, to include guidance about scoring individual locations that contain multiple deficiencies in the same section.
Status:
pending
Recommendation 6
To increase the accuracy of FIT reporting, DGS should engage in its stakeholder process by October 2025 to update the FIT, with a target completion date of October 2026, to include an update of the scoring system that removes the aggregation of FIT sections into category-level reporting and clarifies how such changes will affect overall scores. For example, the Systems category currently includes HVAC, sewer, and gas. A good score on two of those subcategories could hide problems in a third that scores poor because the overall Systems category score would likely average out to good or fair.
Status:
pending
Recommendation 7
To increase the accuracy of FIT reporting, DGS should engage in its stakeholder process by October 2025 to update the FIT, with a target completion date of October 2026, to include the inclusion of guidance in the FIT on the assessment of specialized learning environments. This guidance should include but not be limited to woodshops, welding shops, and agricultural areas.
Status:
pending
