Some Monterey County schools wait, and wait, on court-ordered funds for repairs.

The adobe tile roof at Roosevelt Elementary dates back to 1923, and while it may be pretty to look at, things get less pretty when the clouds roll in.

“At one point, you couldn’t even walk down the halls in the rain,” says Salinas City Elementary School District Assistant Superintendent Jerry Stratton. “There were too many puddles.”

But with the budget Gov. Jerry Brown signed last month, that’s set to change: $188 million was earmarked for emergency school repairs throughout the state, and some county school districts are set to reap millions. At the top of the local list is Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, which hopes to receive $7.1 million of the state’s total payout.

“We just got notice from the state, and they said they’re going to allocate at the end of August,” says MPUSD Associate Superintendent Dan Albert. “We have three projects that look like they’re going to be funded.”

The repair funds from the state have been a long time coming, and stem from a 2000 class action lawsuit – Williams v. California – that contended thousands of California students attended schools in “slum conditions.” The lawsuit was fought by then-governor Gray Davis, but when Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced him in 2003, he agreed to pay $800 million to schools in need of repair.

The state began accepting applications from schools hoping to tap into those funds. Several in the county have already been paid out, including every one of the Alisal Union School District’s projects, which totaled more than $5 million. But the funds have been distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Many districts have been waiting for funding to come; as of this year’s budget, $180 million owed to schools will remain on the books.

“There is not enough money to get down to where we are on the the list,” says King City Unified School District Assistant Superintendent Rory Livingston, whose district’s approved projects total $4.5 million. “It’s not even going to make it halfway to us.”

Some districts – including Monterey Peninsula and Salinas City Elementary – were able to find money elsewhere, and have already completed many of their repairs. For them, the payments will come as a reimbursement.

That’s not the case for the roof at Roosevelt Elementary. While spot repairs over the years have addressed the worst leaks, the district hasn’t had the million-plus dollars it needs to pull the tiles and replace the wood underneath.

“These schools are living things that continue to wear as we run kids through,” Stratton says. “The repairs are neverending.