A top Pentagon official has acknowledged that the Defense Department is more than $1 billion short of what’s needed to repair decrepit public schools on military bases that were the subject of a recent iWatch News investigation.

The official, Jo Ann Rooney, principal deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in an interview with iWatch News that the Pentagon will be able to start renovating or replacing only about a dozen of the public schools on bases with the $250 million that Congress appropriated this year for the upgrades. A recent Pentagon report, however, found that about 62 of the 160 civilian-run schools are in “poor” or “failing” condition.

“There is a lot of work that needs to be done. Two hundred and fifty million dollars will not cover it,” Rooney said. “Depending on whether there is additional money coming forward, I can’t predict when those next group of schools would actually be addressed.”

An investigation by iWatchNews in June found that many of the schools attended by children of military personnel are in poor shape. Where military children go to school depends on circumstances often beyond families’ control. More than 500,000 children, the largest proportion, live off base, attending local schools in urban or suburban communities that often have significantly more resources.

But families who live on military installations — either for economic, career or security reasons — send their children to one of 194 base schools operated by the Pentagon around the world, or 160 base schools in the U.S. operated by local school districts.

The Defense Department formally released its report card today on the condition of public schools on military bases—and, as iWatch News reported—found that nearly 40 percent of the schools are in “poor" or "failing" condition.Here's the report card, DOD’s explanation of its rankings, and our latest story about the report card.

Children of the nation’s military personnel aren’t the only students who have reason to worry about decrepit, sometimes hazardous conditions at their schools. Hundreds of Native American children attend schools that haven’t properly disposed of hazardous waste, haven’t contained asbestos in heating systems, and whose water systems exceed the maximum allowable level for arsenic in tap water – conditions barred under federal environmental laws.

As part of a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior has agreed to pay a $234,844 civil penalty after inspectors found a raft of alleged violations of federal waste, water, air, toxics and community right-to-know laws involving 72 schools and 27 water systems on or near the lands of 60 different tribes around the country. The settlement affects 160 schools in almost every part of the country (the full list is on page 84 of this consent agreement).

The EPA discovered the violations between 2008 and 2010 while conducting inspections at 100 schools overseen by the Interior Department’s Office of Indian Affairs. Under the settlement, Interior will be required to undergo audits to check for environmental compliance at the schools, and the settlement money must be used in part to correct violations of the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act.

Tight timelines set by the U.S. stimulus spending law may have muted the impact of a $3 billion  windfall for some of the nation’s poorest performing schools.

The stimulus money was poured into the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, which had a congressional appropriation of $546 million for the 2010-11 school year. The total $3.5 billion in spending for the year represented at 30-fold increase from SIG’s first year of operations in fiscal 2007.

A broad review of SIG by the Government Accountability Office suggests that the amount of reform made possible by the unprecedented funding boost was hampered by rushed execution. “Short time frames affected schools’ ability to implement SIG interventions in many of the states we visited,” said the GAO’s first broad annual review of SIG.

Although the Education Department moved back the application deadline for the program to give states and school districts more time to plan how to use the funds, “as of June 24, 2011, six states, including the District of Columbia, were still awaiting approval of their SIG applications,” the GAO said.

As iWatch News reported in May, similar difficulties have occurred with more than $4 billion spent on education reform by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, computer magnate Michael Dell, investor Eli Broad, and the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame.  A computer analysis of graduation rates and test scores in 10 city school districts by iWatch News found most still substantially trailed their state’s overall rates.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is asking the Pentagon’s senior leadership to examine “every report” of substandard school buildings attended by the children of US military personnel, and to develop blueprints for correcting whatever problems are confirmed.

“Where there are problems,” Panetta said in a statement, “I want a plan in place to correct them.”

An investigation posted June 27 by iWatchNews revealed an array of substandard conditions at many of the 353 schools for military children worldwide. Three in four Defense Department-run schools on military installations are either beyond repair or would require extensive renovation to meet minimum standards for safety, quality, accessibility and design, the iWatchNews probe found. Schools run by public-school systems on Army posts don’t fare much better: 39 percent fail to meet even the military’s own standards, according to a 2010 Army report. 

The Defense Department, Panetta said, “is strongly committed to ensuring that the children of military families receive an excellent education,” and “high quality facilities and instruction are essential … to providing the kind of education they deserve.” He added that the Pentagon “must be and will be fully committed to the troops, their families, and their children.”

There’s been a flurry of response from politicians to an iWatchNews investigation of often-deplorable conditions at schools on military installations. The probe revealed that many of the 353 base schools around the globe are falling apart from age and neglect, and fail to meet even the military’s minimum standards.

Two former Virginia governors locked in a heated Senate race — Democrat Timothy Kaine and Republican George Allen — issued a rare joint statement Wednesday regarding the problems identified by iWatch News. Their statement asked, "Don't we as a country have a responsibility to these brave men and women — and their families — to ensure their children are provided for as their parents fight for our country?" The pair went on to say that "The simple answer is 'Yes,' and neither of us sees this as a partisan issue — or will allow it to become one."  

There's been action on Capitol Hill as well. On July 12, Congressman Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) requested that the Government Accountability Office  launch an inquiry into the state of base schools, calling school conditions “a very serious issue which demands immediate attention.” Six days later, on July 18, a dozen senators from both parties urged Leon Panetta, the newly appointed defense secretary, to make the repair and replacement of substandard base schools a priority.