NORTH PROVIDENCE — A 55-page report outlining numerous code violations in the town’s public schools has some members of the School Committee expressing outrage that they were not told of the violations earlier.

Vito Martinelli said that in his last 2½ years on the committee he had never seen a report outlining building and fire safety code violations in the schools. He said he wishes members had been advised of the situation before other members, including the committee chairman, made public pronouncements that all the school buildings were up to shape.

Now, he said, members know better.

The report, actually a compilation of reports by the town’s fire marshal, Lt. Gregory Unsworth, and the building official, Leo Bernardino, lists 67 building violations in the six elementary and two middle schools, including 39 violations in four elementary schools alone. There were 48 violations at the high school.

The fire marshal’s report listed a number of items that were common to all the schools:

•Fire alarm systems, while linked to the Fire Department, were not up to code in terms of providing coverage for certain out-of-the-way spots such as classrooms, bathrooms and crawl spaces.

•Draperies and shades in most of the schools are not sufficiently fire-resistant.

•In many of the classrooms in all the buildings there was more paper artwork on the walls than is allowed under the fire code.

Among the other serious violations that caught the attention of committee members:

•At Stephen Olney School, there was a 28- to 35-inch gap between the fire escape railing and the stairs, creating what fire officials call an unacceptable risk to children who might fall between them during an evacuation.

•At the James L. McGuire School, all the exit doors, except those at the main entrance and the gymnasium, were found to be padlocked; and the emergency exits for classrooms on the second floor lead to the roof, with no access to the ground.

•The girls’ bathroom at the Greystone School is missing a sink, and a sink in the boys’ bathroom lacked a hot water handle.

•At Centredale School, emergency exits were padlocked, and many of the exterior doors had panic hardware in need of maintenance.

•At the Dr. Joseph Whelan School it did not appear to the building inspector that the glass on the interior classroom doors was tempered.

•At the Dr. Edward A. Ricci Middle School, the boys’ bathroom had a broken urinal, and the school had an emergency door that was shut by a sliding bolt.

•The rear entrance of the Birchwood School had a broken guide rail, and an air-conditioning unit was plugged into the computer room by means of an extension cord.

•At the Marieville School, there was illegal splicing in an electrical junction box, some broken and missing plugs, excessive use of extension cords and emergency lights that did not work.

Helen Reall, who heads the School Committee’s building subcommittee, said she understood that the inspections were carried out during the summer, and that many, if not most, of the minor deficiencies have already been corrected.

But she acknowledged that some of the bigger items have not and may be very expensive to correct.

“Many classrooms, when they were constructed, had only two outlets. Now that we are in the computer age, we’ve been using extension cords, but we’re going to need an entirely new electrical system in all of the schools,” she said. “We have fire escapes in three of our buildings, which according to the new code, have to be enclosed.”

Reall said she had no idea how much it will cost to bring everything into compliance other than to say it will be in the “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

School Committeeman Stephen Palmieri said there is no question that some of the things are going to cost “a ton of money.”

“I personally would like to meet with the fire marshal to see if all these things are necessary,” he said. “If they are necessary, we need to do something to correct it as soon as possible.”

Though the topic is slated for discussion at tomorrow night’s School Committee meeting, at 6:30 in the high school library, Martinelli said he would favor putting all the School Department’s resources into seeing that all the violations are corrected.

“If we’re supposed to have four sinks in a school bathroom, let’s have four sinks. If the urinals are broken, let’s fix them. Let’s have all the urinals working correctly before we have any other expenditures.”

“I’m outraged that it’s gotten this far,” Martinelli said. “How will we pay for it? We have to go back into our budget and look for savings. Or we can ask the Town Council to float a bond issue for us that we could pay back in two or three years.

“I know this. Had I known what the situation is, I would not have voted to spend $43,000 for a new vestibule for the high school when some of the kids in the elementary school are missing a sink.”

Mayor Charles Lombardi said he is being kept abreast of the situation, and understands that “quite a few of the violations have already been addressed.”

As for the possibility of the School Department seeking more money, he said, it seems to him the school officials always seem “to find the funds to do the projects that they deem necessary.”

rdujardi@projo.com