One of the first inspections took place at Jedediah Smith Elementary School. Superintendent David Gordon says review teams will be visiting schools over the next two and a half months. "Our teams are going to make sure there are sufficient number of textbooks. We’ll also be looking at the facilities. We’ll be looking for significant safety issues."

The inspection program is mandated by Governor Schwarzenegger’s settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU attorney Brooks Allen says their suit alleged that the state wasn’t doing enough to make sure all students had decent schools. "It seems common sense, all of us would say ‘absolutely, a student deserves and a teacher deserves a clean, safe place to work and a clean, safe place to go to school and learn. They deserve to have a book to use in class and they deserve to have a teacher in front of the classroom' but those standards really weren’t in place." 

The settlement provides $800,000,000 dollars for emergency repairs and $139,000,000 for new textbooks. Superintendent Gordon says inspection results will be posted on the Sacramento County Office of Education’s web site.