The radios could warn school officials of severe weather, a terrorist threat or a local emergency. But not at schools such as Chula Vista High, where the radio sits in a storage locker in the parking lot.

Officials at that campus and many others tried unsuccessfully to set up the radios, sent by the Department of Homeland Security a few years ago. Other schools had no idea what to do with them.

“I remember getting it and trying to figure out, 'Why do we have it? And what is it for?' ” said Lois Booth, assistant principal at Washington Middle School in Vista. “My guess is, we don't have one anymore. I would have no clue where it is.”

Officials at some schools didn't see much worth in the radios, or they thought that existing warning systems, such as the one used by the San Diego Unified School District, made the radios superfluous.

Some local National Weather Service officials say the federal government wasted time, money and a potentially valuable tool by inadequately promoting and coordinating the program.

“It could have been used during the fires,” said Ed Clark, warning coordination meteorologist for the Weather Service's Rancho Bernardo office. “But it's not just that. It's whatever other emergency might crop up.

WEATHER RADIOS BY THE NUMBERS 97,000 Radios sent to public schools in 2005 and 2006. More will go to private schools later this year. $5 million Allocated for distribution of radios to schools $30 Cost for each radio SOURCE: Federal Emergency Management Agency

“They are a quick, efficient way to let schools know what's going on. From my perspective, it's kind of sad it wasn't handled better.”

Officials at the National Weather Service headquarters, near Washington, D.C., defend the program.

“There are some positive examples of the radios that were provided having saved lives,” said Mark Paese, director of the weather service's operations division in Silver Spring, Md. “But like any program, there are some lessons learned.”

Some schools in San Diego County set up the radios easily. At Oak Hill Elementary in Escondido, Knob Hill Elementary in San Marcos and Wagenheim Middle School in San Diego, the radios are operating properly. But that was not the case at most of the 15 randomly selected schools contacted by The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Department of Homeland Security, working with the federal Department of Education and the National Weather Service, sent the radios to 97,000 public schools in 2005 and 2006. They cost about $30 each but were provided free to the schools.

Paese said Homeland Security plans to send radios to all private schools in the coming months.

A congressional earmark provided $5 million for the program, said Marlene Phillips, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The radios notify users of hazards with an audible alert and an indicator light, even if other means of communication are disabled. They also carry verbal warnings from the weather service. They can be programmed to provide information about child abductions, law enforcement emergencies and chemical or radiological hazards.

In 2005, schools in Mississippi and Endicott, N.Y., received tornado alerts via the radios, and students were moved from buildings that were later destroyed by tornados.

The radios were shipped directly to the schools with letters that detailed their purpose and brochures that told how to program them and where to go online for more instructions.

San Diego Unified administrators sent schools a letter explaining the radios before they were shipped, said district spokesman Jack Brandais.

But in many schools, including some in San Diego Unified, the radios came as a surprise. Secretaries and receiving clerks who did not get the word had to decide how important the radios were and how much time to devote to them.

“It just came, and we never used it,” said Diane Long, secretary at Ulysses S. Grant School, a combination elementary and middle school in San Diego. “I just put it on the shelf.

“There's just so much going on all the time. We're becoming short-handed.”

After the radio sat unused for more than a year, Long gave it to Ginger Tyson, the science lab teacher. Tyson set up the radio in her lab last spring, but she wasn't sure it was working properly.

At Chula Vista High, the radio went to Judi Heitz, an Advanced Placement biology teacher and then the school's safety officer.

“I plugged it in and read the one-page instructions that came with it that said you just plugged it in and it would find the stations in your region,” she said. “All I got was static. I moved it to several locations, pushed all the buttons, and even tried to look up information online without much luck.”

The radio now sits in a storage locker.

Schools in Los Angeles and Ventura counties had similar problems, said Eric Boldt, the warning coordination meteorologist for the weather service's regional office in Oxnard.

Jeff Geyer, the maintenance manager for the Vista Unified School District who is in charge of district disaster preparedness, said he learned of the radios' existence at a meeting last summer at which Clark outlined the program for school officials from around the county.

“A lot of people in the room from other school districts had bewildered looks on their faces,” Geyer said.

Volunteers from the Citizen Corps, which works with FEMA, were supposed to be available to help set up the radios. Stasia Place, the San Diego corps' coordinator, said she “wasn't really in the loop on all of this.” Marta Bourtner, spokeswoman for CaliforniaVolunteers, the oversight agency for the California Citizen Corps, said the agency was never given a list of schools that got the radios and no one asked for help.

Unlike school officials in the Midwest, many in California didn't recognize the value of the radios, said Bruce Thomas, a spokesman for Midland Radio in Kansas City, Mo., which supplied most of the radios. The radios can be valuable when fires, earthquakes or tsunamis threaten, he said.

The radios should be located where they can be monitored throughout the day by someone familiar with the schools' emergency procedures, according to information sent with the radios.

Mary Estill, the principal at Florence Elementary School in San Diego, said the radio was easy to set up, but she thought it had little value because of the rarity of local weather emergencies. Unaware that the radio can relay other emergency information, she gave it to the maintenance supervisor. Many other local schools gave the radios to science teachers.

San Diego Unified spokesman Brandais said the radios are somewhat redundant in the district because it has its own police and internal radio system. But most districts don't have their own emergency radio systems, and redundancy is a plus, said Clark of the weather service.

“You don't want to put all your marbles in one basket,” he said. “Invariably, one system can fail in an emergency. This is just another way to put out the information.”

Robert Krier: (619) 293-2241; rob.krier@uniontrib.com