Expedite seismic solution

The absence of adequate seismic safeguards at five local schools is considered a public safety emergency by the Charleston County School District and its engineering consultants. The school board agrees. Sort of.

The board wants to fix the seismic problems, but not on the expedited schedule envisioned by district staff. By a 6-3 vote Monday, the board agreed to let students transfer out of the at-risk schools while the district makes plans for their eventual repair or rebuilding.

Those fixes could be included as part of a sales tax proposal that will be offered to voters in November. If the voters don't like that idea, the seismic upgrades would be financed with existing bonding capacity bolstered by other sources.

Clearly, the district's building officials and consultants view the seismic inadequacy of the four downtown schools plus Sullivan's Island Elementary School as a real danger, having concluded that the buildings would suffer major damage in a moderate earthquake.

Optimists make the point that Charleston hasn't experienced an earthquake since the big one in 1886. A letter writer to this page recently noted that even if there were an earthquake, odds are that students wouldn't be in school when it occurred. That estimation was based on the fact that schools aren't in session on weekends, summers and even for much of the day during the school year.

We'll see how many parents are willing to take those odds when transfers are made.

The staff's recommendation was to move the more than 1,300 students who attend those schools to other schools while the repairs were being made. Some of those interim school sites met with widespread opposition from parents that the board's action seeks to allay.

Superintendent Nancy McGinley has said that the public safety issues cited in the engineering study should pre-empt any other building plans for the district. Monday's board vote shouldn't change that priority.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency stated in a 2003 guide to seismic retrofitting that much can be accomplished in a comparatively short time -- even during the summer months. Retrofitting would provide safety at substantially less cost, though it would leave the aging schools otherwise the same.

Nevertheless, it would provide a quicker response. And while it wouldn't leave the peninsula with the kind of new and improved schools the district wants, it could address the public safety problem on a more rapid timetable.

The idea of using mobile classrooms near Mitchell Elementary, suggested by Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, also has merit, but would allow seismic improvements at only one school at the time. At that rate, it would take 10 years for all downtown at-risk schools to be upgraded.

That's a fairly slow response to what is viewed by the district as a public safety hazard requiring an urgent solution. The district should figure out a way to keep the timetable for repairs to a minimum.