The foul odor had invaded almost every classroom. It was late March 2017, and Burnt Ranch Elementary was in disrepair. The heating and ventilation systems were so unreliable that educators and staff members in the small Trinity County school had been warming up frigid classrooms with portable heaters. Water leaked through the light fixtures, spilling onto the floor.

Kathleen Graham, the superintendent and principal, knew something had to be done, but raising the money through local bonds — California’s main source of school facilities funding — was next to impossible for the single-campus, 100-student district. The alternative wasn’t much better: Competing with larger, better-financed and more amply staffed districts for a piece of a state bond passed in 2016, a process that involved navigating California’s byzantine School Facilities Program.

But as winter became spring in rural Northern California, Graham recalled, the need became only more pressing. “Our buildings,” she said, “just went off the charts with mold.”

Health and safety cases like Burnt Ranch are grabbing the attention of California voters weighing a new statewide bond measure that would generate $15 billion for schools, community colleges and universities. Proposition 13 on the March ballot would not only raise much-needed money for maintenance and construction, but also end the first-in, first-out application system for state bond money that puts small, poorer and rural schools at a disadvantage.

The current system has been criticized by schools, advocates and financial experts as overly favorable to large, richer districts. Larger districts, they say, have the resources not only to put local bond measures on the ballot and pass them, but also to hire the staff needed to understand and complete the cumbersome state paperwork required to compete for state matching funds.

The state’s system is “not a fair playing field,” said Tim Taylor, executive director for the Small School Districts Association.

“You’re asking a little district like Tulelake ... to compete with Long Beach or Elk Grove, who have full facilities departments with experts.”

The bond proposal — the result of 11th-hour negotiations between Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, state legislators and advocates — would generate much-needed money for campus construction and renovation, costing $740 million per year over the next 35 years to repay with interest, according to a legislative analysis.

It also overhauls several regulations in an effort to make the state’s school bond program more equitable.

Prop. 13 would introduce a new points-based system in which critical health and safety projects, such as mold and asbestos, move to the front of the line for state facilities assistance. Next in line would be districts (such as Burnt Ranch) that qualify for financial hardship funding, followed by projects to remove lead from drinking water.

The state bond, which had less than 50% support in a recent poll, also would earmark $5.2 billion — the largest share of the $9 billion for K-12 schools — for school modernization projects.

Schools affected by natural disasters, such as wildfire, would be eligible for immediate assistance under Prop. 13, and schools for the first time would be allowed to spend state bond dollars on preschool facilities.

Prop. 13 would also raise local bonding capacity for California districts, meaning they would be able to place larger school bonds on ballots. And 10% of the state bond’s $9 billion for K-12 schools would be reserved for small school districts — those with 2,500 students or less. The “smalls,” as rural educators refer to themselves, would receive extra technical assistance under the measure.

For all the bells and whistles included in a dense bond measure whose bill text is nearly 30,000 words, state leaders and advocates point to the bond’s renewed focus on equity as having the most potential impact on schools.

Newsom, who said he will campaign for Prop. 13, called the changes to how the state would prioritize school districts’ applications an “incredibly important reform.”

“You can’t look in the eyes of these kids and make an argument that the facilities that so many of them are being educated in are appropriate,” Newsom said at a recent bill signing ceremony.

Eventually, the state awarded the Burnt Ranch district $14 million to rebuild its school, half of which came under the category of “financial hardship” funding. This bucket of money is reserved for California’s poorest districts with critical facilities issues that present “an imminent threat to the health and safety of pupils,” such as mold, asbestos, dilapidated water systems and internal flooding.

Though crises like Burnt Ranch’s are rare across California’s 1,000 public school districts, a database of emergency school closures published this year by CalMatters shows that they have grown far more common in recent years.

CalMatters found at least 38 incidents in 29 schools where mold or asbestos was cited by local school officials as the reason for temporarily closing down campuses. Of those 38 closures, which affected more than 11,000 kids, all but five had occurred since 2014.

For Burnt Ranch, passing a local bond is a nonstarter, because the district’s tax base is so small. “We don’t have enough people here to support a bond,” Graham said. That, in turn, has meant little funding to adequately update a campus where the main structure was built in 1961.

After the mold crisis forced it to close the school for three weeks, Burnt Ranch leaders had to search for temporary classrooms. Every school building had toxic mold and water damage, according to testing results.

Relocating to another school wasn’t an option. Tucked inside Trinity County’s dense forests, Burnt Ranch is more than 60 miles from the closest city. So Graham, the superintendent and principal, and the Burnt Ranch school board decided to spend the savings they planned to use to get matching state bond funds to pay for seven portable buildings and a restroom on the edge of one of the school fields.

It took more than a year for Burnt Ranch to get the entirety of its state assistance. The process involved testing, paperwork, four-hour trips to Sacramento and legislative intervention, Graham said.

Finally, on a recent autumn Friday, students at Burnt Ranch Elementary School walked into newly built classrooms with smart boards. And in the rebuilt gymnasium, a technician from the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre in nearby Blue Lake was setting up lights for a holiday play.

After nearly three years, Burnt Ranch had its school back. But problems remain. The school’s small well system has grown older and less reliable. Burnt Ranch needs a generator — a rural must for power outages caused by inclement weather. State records show that, since 2017, the school has lost 11 instructional days because of bad weather and blackouts.

This school year alone, Burnt Ranch was forced to close for three days because of the widespread utility power outages implemented to prevent catastrophic wildfires.“We’re going to have to get some assistance for that,” Graham said. “We don’t really have any money left now that we built this building.”

Ricardo Cano is the K-12 education reporter for CalMatters.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.