High School at Emeryville Center of 'Community' Life Behind Schedule Again
Not Opening in January as Promised
The Superintendent of Emeryville Schools has conceded that Emery High School at the Center of 'Community' Life, will not be ready for students at the start of the new semester in January as had been promised earlier, leaving students without a certain school location as of now, the Tattler has learned.
The new delay, apparently a problem with the elevators at the two-story school, is the second one for the beleaguered project, coming on the heels of an earlier construction delay that pushed back the opening of the school to January 2016 from the original August 2015 proposal.
Emery's Superintendent, John Rubio, refused to comment on the latest delay.
Superintendent Rubio told the Emery School Board at their September retreat that Turner Construction, the lead construction company contracted to build the Center of 'Community' Life, would finish construction in March 2016 and that students could move into the new facilities at that time, in mid semester. Mr Rubio indicated he was in negotiation with the Oakland Unified School District seeking to secure a new agreement to continue Emery's current arrangement to lease Oakland's Santa Fe School.
Emery has been using the Santa Fe Elementary School as its temporary site for Emery High School as the new school is being built at the San Pablo Avenue site of the Center of 'Community' Life. The lease with Oakland was earlier re-negotiated to cover the first construction delay, adding an additional $1.5 million dollar cost for Emery, but Oakland at the time cautioned there would be no more lease extensions because they intend to remodel the school to get it prepared for the start of the 2016/17 school year for their own students. Presumably Oakland agreed to the latest re-negotiation with Emery because they determined it would not interfere with their remodeling plans for Santa Fe School.
In addition to twice missing the finish date, the Center of 'Community' Life is also over budget and the School Board is exploring issuing another school bond to pay for the cost overruns. Among others, the swimming pool has come in at least 200% over budget and has caused much consternation among City Council members since City Hall is on the hook for the extra costs.
Superintendent Rubio noted he intends on issuing a statement regarding the newest construction delay soon.
Oakland may now be breathing down Emery's neck. Oakland's Santa Fe Elementary School, along Emeryville's border on Adeline Street, is being considered for re-opening as an Oakland elementary school after Emery High School leaves the site, bound for its new home in Emeryville in December 2015. Emery has been renting the former Oakland elementary school to temporarily house its high school since 2013. The shuttering of Santa Fe was part of a program of school closures orchestrated by former Oakland Schools Superintendent Tony Smith years ago. Mr Smith also was Superintendent at Emery before Oakland. Oakland Unified renegotiated its original three year lease with Emery, charging Emery an extra $250,000 for the fall 2015 semester after Emery indicated it would not make it's July 2015 deadline to complete the new high school at the Center of 'Community' Life (ECCL) on San Pablo Avenue. The original July 2015 deadline will not be met because Emery was almost a year late in starting it's ECCL project. From 'Oakland North':
Neighborhood group fights to re-open Oakland’s Santa Fe Elementary
Emery Secondary School, at 915 54th Street, is located at what used to be Santa Fe Elementary School.
Megan Low paced up Adeline Street in North Oakland with a stack of yellow flyers in hand.
This was not her first time flyering in the Santa Fe neighborhood, and by now she has the routine down cold: House by house, she climbs stairs to front doors and slips a flyer under the door or between the metal bars. Sometimes she rings the doorbell. Sometimes she does not. Sometimes people answer. Sometimes they do not.
“I graduated from Santa Fe,” one man said to Low during this neighborhood run, on a Wednesday afternoon, through the door of an apartment on 55th Street. “I wish you a lot of luck.”
Low, whose own 3-year-old son will be kindergarten-aged in two years, thanked him and walked away, carrying the stack of remaining yellow flyers with the words “Help Bring Back Our School” plastered at the top of the page.
Underneath those words, each flyer displayed a headshot of new Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) Superintendent Antwan Wilson. Members of the Santa Fe Community Association & Neighbors (Santa Fe CAN) Education Committee, an organization of about three dozen people, are meeting with Wilson Thursday to present their case to re-open Santa Fe Elementary School.
The group wants the school re-opened, say advocates like Low, so neighborhood kids do not have to cross busy streets to attend nearby elementary schools, to have a place for community meetings and to not have to face long wait lists for charter schools or pay private school tuition.
“Yeah, it’s going to take some trust and faith and an investment,” Low said in a recent interview at Earthly Coffee in North Oakland. “But we believe that it’s an investment that will pay off to make it a financially solvent school with full enrollment.”
The OUSD Board of Education voted to close Santa Fe Elementary in October 2011, citing low attendance by neighborhood families. Since then, OUSD has leased the property—at 915 54th Street, right at the Oakland-Emeryville border—to the Emery Unified School District (EUSD). Emery Secondary School, which enrolls about 200 students and covers grades 9 through 12, has moved in while its own location is under construction. Last month, the OUSD Board of Education voted to extend the lease to the Emeryville district through the end of 2015; and to increase the rent for the total three-year lease time from $1.5 million to $1.75 million.
Jody London, OUSD board director for the district that includes the Santa Fe site, said that since the school’s closure and consolidation with nearby OUSD schools, such as Sankofa, Peralta, Emerson and others, these schools have seen their finances stabilize because they are now receiving more funding based on a larger student population.
“I actually wanted to keep a school in the San Pablo corridor,” London said. “But it was very hard to justify keeping Santa Fe when so few families were choosing it for their children.”
When Santa Fe was considered an option for closure in 2011, London said that of the 400 K-5 aged kids in its attendance area, only 125 were attending Santa Fe. But Low counters that the district is considering numbers not reflective of the growth in the neighborhood, especially the potential growth before December 2015 when the current lease expires.
When London and former acting superintendent Gary Yee met with the Santa Fe CAN Education Committee earlier this year, London told the group that if it were to re-open Santa Fe, the district would have to be sure that this did not destabilize Emerson’s and Sankofa’s finances. There would also need to be 400 kids committed to attending Santa Fe, London wrote in an email.
“Do I re-open Santa Fe at the expense of Emerson or Sankofa?” London said.
Since Santa Fe has been closed, the number of K-5 aged children in the neighborhood has risen, said Low, a member of the Santa Fe CAN Education Committee. That number could continue to rise until the lease with EUSD expires, creating the opportunity to re-open Santa Fe Elementary.
Emery Secondary School’s former site, located at 1100 47th Street, is under construction. The site was demolished and is being rebuilt to house two schools in the EUSD: Emery Secondary School and Anna Yates Elementary School. There are no plans for Emery Secondary to stay at its leased Oakland location after construction at the old site is complete, according to Lisa Taymuree, the superintendent’s assistant for EUSD. After Emery Secondary School moves out, there is a possibility that an OUSD charter school, magnet school or language immersion school could move in, London said, though the decision has not been made.
With the closing of Santa Fe, the 94608 ZIP code does not contain a single public elementary school, said Low, who has lived in the neighborhood for five years and hopes to enroll her son at Santa Fe if it is re-opened as an Oakland school. There are a handful of charter schools in the area, and a few private schools, but often these institutions have a long wait list or require a deposit on tuition. Low said that re-opening the Santa Fe site as an Oakland charter school would be “better than nothing,” as long as the neighborhood has access to the site, in terms of facilities and enrollment of neighborhood children.
The closest public elementary schools to the old Santa Fe site are Sankofa Academy, Peralta Elementary and Emerson Elementary. But sending kids to these schools creates a safety issue, Low said, since Santa Fe neighborhood children have to cross busy arterial streets such as Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Shattuck Avenue or Telegraph Avenue to get to those schools.
The group heard London’s argument from outgoing Oakland Mayor Jean Quan when about twenty members met with her in the library of the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI) one Sunday afternoon last month. Quan suggested the group come up with the “magic number” of about 300 potential students to support the parents’ case.
London said the district is under a lot of pressure from charter schools to provide them with facilities. Under the terms of the voter-approved Proposition 39, known as the School Facilities Local Vote Act of 2000, all California school districts are obligated to provide approved charters with facilities. London said the Charter School Association has sent letters to OUSD threatening to sue if approved charters are not provided with facilities.
“They’re definitely looking at the Santa Fe site,” London said.
Families with children in the Santa Fe area are opting out of the next closest schools, like Sankofa, because of their distance from the Santa Fe neighborhood. Low said that if parents were going to drive their kids to school, they would likely enroll them in a better school in Berkeley or Emeryville. To do this, parents must file for an Inter-District Transfer permit, which does not guarantee the student will be accepted into the other district.
Although a decision will not be made during Thursday’s meeting with Wilson, the CAN members are still excited, Low said as she walked down Adeline Street toward Lois the Pie Queen, a smaller stack of flyers now in her hands. The members have been collecting signatures since the neighborhood’s National Night Out party on August 5. Now they have 170 letters signed and addressed to Wilson, and will hand-deliver them to him at the meeting.
“We’re really hoping it’s the start of an ongoing discussion with the Superintendent for him to take this in a really serious direction and talk to us about ways we can collaborate,” Low said.
Former Emery School District Superintendent Tony Smith has been implicated in a witness tampering cover-up incident involving an Oakland School District Police shooting in 2011 according to an involved police officer. The story, relayed by San Francisco Bayview News and corroborated by NBC Bay Area News is re-posted below. The complainant officer, Jonathan Bellusa, alleges Mr Smith, Oakland's School District Superintendent attempted to coach him on particulars of a shooting that had happened moments before. Mr Smith allegedly tried to get Officer Bellusa's recollections to match those of the shooter, Officer Bhatt, Officer Bellusa's partner. The story alleges Mr Smith quickly worked on getting the two officer's stories to match before regular Oakland Police officers arrived on the scene. The victim who died in the hail of police bullets was a twenty year old man in a parked car near a school dance. The story broke right after Mr Smith mysteriously and suddenly announced his resignation from his job as Oakland's schools chief in April. Tony Smith, as Emery's Superintendent, was an early proponent of the Center of Community Life and was instrumental in it's early planning. He cast a large shadow at Emery and his influence is still felt in the incipient Center of Community Life and the District itself. Here's the San Francisco Bayview News story and the accompanying NBC Bay Area News video:
Perhaps you’ve heard or read the name Raheim Brown Jr. He’s the 20-year-old Black man who was beaten then shot and killed by Oakland School Police Department Sgt. Bhatt.
In the Oscar Grant Memorial March and Rally on the third anniversary of Oscar’s murder on New Year’s Day 2009 by BART police, supporters of Raheim Brown and all victims of law enforcement demanded justice. – Photo: Bradley Stuart, Indybay
In January 2011 Brown and a female companion were parked in a vehicle in the Oakland Hills when they were approached by officers Barhin Bhatt and Jonathan Bellusa, who were working as hired security guards for an Oakland School District dance being held at Skyline High School.
The officers reported that they first approached the vehicle, which was not parked at the school or on campus, because the hazard lights were flashing. Brown and his friend didn’t need help. As a justification for questioning them, the officers claimed they smelled marijuana coming from the vehicle after approaching it. Other reports have claimed the officers thought the car was stolen. The officers also reported Brown threatened to stab Barhin with a screwdriver that he had in the car.
As Brown and his companion sat, buckled-up, in the car, the officers began beating them both.
What exactly happened next, no one is certain because the requests for the full reports of the shooting by Lori Davis, mother of Raheim Brown, and her attorney, John Burris, have yet to be fulfilled by the Oakland Unified School District.
What is known is that Bellusa, who was outside the car on the passenger side where Brown was sitting, ordered a first round of shots. The shots were fired by Bhatt, who was outside the car on the driver side near the female driver. Bhatt fired at Brown across the driver multiple times, but Brown remained living at this time. Bhatt’s gun jammed. He cleared it, then a second round of shots was fired, killing Brown.
Davis filed a wrongful death suit against OUSD, which operates and employs the district police officers who shot and killed Brown.
Breaking ‘Code Blue’
This case is highly suspicious for many reasons: 1) A complete report containing all the details has yet to be made available to the public, Ms. Davis or her attorney; 2) there was definite mismanagement on the part of OUSD Superintendent Tony Smith directly following the shooting, as well as by OSPD Chief Williams; 3) an Oakland School Police Department officer is calling foul against his own department.
Raheim Brown
What has come as a “whistle-blowing” effort by Bellusa has also rocked the community and the department’s claims.
Bellusa filed a federal complaint against the OSPD claiming retaliation for his refusal to lie about the second round of shots that killed Brown. In his complaint, Bellusa claims that the second round of shots weren’t necessary because Brown was no longer a threat, after being shot with the first round.
According to Davis, who cited testimony by former Sgt. Bellusa of OSPD, Superintendent Tony Smith was accompanied by some Oakland School Board members at the crime scene – directly following the shooting.
“Based on Bellusa’s testimony in his deposition,” said Davis, “Tony Smith came down there and tried to get him to do witness tampering. He tried to get their (Bhatt and Bellusa’s) stories together.”
Bellusa, who is now on paid administrative leave is accusing the OSPD of a pattern of corruption.
For the Davis wrongful-death case, the Bellusa complaint and the federal investigation underway bring light to the issue of a cover-up by the OSPD.
“You don’t get one officer to lie for the other one,” said Davis.
Problems with guns
Incidents like the Raheim Brown killing highlight a huge debate going on in America right now about the necessity of armed district staff in schools. This comes after the terrible December 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children, six teachers, the shooter and his mother were shot and killed.
For people of color, the issue may be more of a concern regarding security officers being armed when working at schools with large numbers of students of color. Communities of color are extremely reluctant to put guns in the hands of those who terrorize Black children and youth the most: the police. To whites, police officers are there to protect civilians.
Raheim Brown’s mother, Lori Davis, was one of the parents of young Black men killed by police who spoke out in passionate protest at a press conference held two days after San Francisco police murdered Kenneth Harding on the spot, at Third and Oakdale, where Kenny died on July 16, 2011, a few months after Raheim’s death. – Photo: Malaika Kambon
When asked whether OUSD needs a police department, Davis said; “They don’t need police – just regular security.”
The rate of officer involved shootings seems to be increasing.
“Invasive policing is only one aspect of the U.S. states’ comprehensive containment strategies to exploit Black people and to smother resistance … The U.S. state maintains and reinforces these economic injustices with the militarized occupation of Black communities by the police and a web of racist legislation like the ‘war on drugs,’ discriminatory policies like ‘three strikes’ and ‘mandatory minimum’ sentencing. The result is a social system that mandates the prison warehousing of millions of Black people and extrajudicial killings where the killers act with impunity and more often than not are rewarded and promoted for murder.”
These views are backed by data tracking police killings, or “extrajudicial killings,” over many months. The latest data collected by MXGM shows that a Black person in the U.S. is killed every 28 hours by law enforcement.
The nearby Oakland Police Department is so plagued that it has been appointed a court monitor, former Baltimore commissioner Thomas Frazier, by U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson to oversee mandated changes to the department.
What post-racial America?
What does this mean? It means that as the Black community and its organizers and leaders have justly claimed and proven, a post-racial society DOES NOT exist in America.
Barhin Bhatt, the Oakland School Police officer who killed Raheim Brown, keeps protesters out of Fremont High School on March 4, 2011, three months after the murder. In August of the same year, the appointment of Bhatt as chief of the Oakland School Police sparked outrage that led to his removal about two weeks later. Forty angry speakers testified to the Oakland School Board, including civil rights attorney Anne Butterfield Weills, who said that to “appoint the shooter of Raheim Brown Jr. to be the acting chief of OUSD ... what a role model for our young people, particularly for our Black and Brown young males and women who are in our schools.” – Photo: KALW
Blacks are still falling victim to racist law enforcement organizations intent on sending them to prison if not to the graveyard. Why is it that our Black youth must endure officers at their presumed “educational safe havens” or when they are merely enjoying some leisure?
What real justification can there be for officers – who were hired to secure a school dance on a school campus – to venture from their assigned duty posts and beat, shoot and kill innocent youth? Furthermore, what justification does Tony Smith have for not releasing the details of the incident as reported by his staff?
When Smith started as superintendent he was quoted in an Oakland North article as saying, “For me, you have to examine the effects of institutional racism, institutional classism, institutional bias, language bias and say, ‘At this point, the system that we have – even if we do it really, really well – isn’t going to close and transform that gap.’”
Apparently that was only talk and didn’t extend to his school police department. Not only has Smith championed school closures, he hasn’t brought in valuable resources such as librarians, music programs etc. In the same interview he said:
“I’m incredibly committed to thinking about new kinds of relationships with local communities. We have to become beacons and be able to infuse into those neighborhoods expectations and ways of being. That takes partnership and leadership and expectations and being honest about how hard it is.”
It is safe to say that the beacon light is out when it comes to Tony Smith and the Oakland Unified School District. His failure to demonstrate unwavering, transparent leadership has continued to damage Oakland schools and district departments – as evidenced with the OSPD.
Smith has only been in Oakland four years and he conveniently is moving to Chicago, just as a wrongful death suit surfaces and a federal investigation is taking place, with him as lead culprit.
In his letter to the Oakland School Board, he cited family illness as the reason for the move. That very well may be true.
What is also true is that, on Smith’s watch in Oakland, we have lost another young Black life.
Laura Savage is a graduating senior in journalism at San Francisco State University and is interning with the SF Bay View this semester. She can be reached atlsavage26@gmail.com.
The following posting from Oakland North and dated today, reveals a depth of depravity embodied by the Oakland Unified School District that is enough for the Tattler to forgive its 'Emeryville only' news policy. It should be noted that Oakland's School Board, under the thrall of its Superintendent Tony Smith, formerly Emeryville's superintendent, is philosophically aligned with Emeryville's School Board. This alignment is under-girded by the rubric of educational entrepreneurism with its laying off of teachers, cutting educational programs, wiping out public schools while setting up charter schools, and a top down metric with a reliance on private contractors spouting the need for this kind of radical rethinking. This story of the Oakland Unified School District, a Galactic Empire with its Supreme Commander crushing parental dissenters, is a harbinger of how such a protest would likely play out here in Emeryville.
The absurd irony of peaceful protesters being warned about 'interfering with the good order' of a school the District has recently closed down is probably lost on the Oakland Unified School District. If Oakland history is to be a guide, next will come the truncheons, pepper spray and concussion grenades as they drag anyone left off to jail.
The following is what happens to parents and citizens who dissent in Oakland:
Lakeview Elementary School encampment protesters given warning notice
A photo of the notice posted by the Oakland Police Department Monday morning. Photo courtesy of the protest group.
Lakeview Elementary School encampment protesters given warning notice
Protesters at an encampment that has Protesters at an encampment that has been growing for the last four days at Lakeview Elementary School, just off Grande Avenue, have been served with notices from the Oakland Unified School District to leave the school immediately and not return for 30 days. The notices were distributed Monday morning by Oakland Police Department officers who posted them over the outside gate of the school, the outer grounds and the school building.
The notice reads: “Safety, healthy and supportive schools require good order and peaceful conduct. Willful interference with the good order of a school is a misdemeanor. You are interfering with the good order and peaceful conduct of this school. You are directed to leave this school immediately and you may not return for 30 days. WARNING: if you return during the period you have been directed to stay away or if you violate this Notice, you are guilty of a crime under California Penal Code Sections 626.8, and you will be arrested.”
Parents, teachers and community activists have relied on the help of Occupy Oakland protesters to build their tent city and supply food for the crowd of approximately 30 peoplewho have been camping there since the protest began on Friday, June 15. The encampment is an effort to keep open five elementary schools—Lakeview, Lazear, Marshall, Maxwell and Sante Fe—that OUSD board members voted to close at the end of this school year. By Sunday, there were approximately nine tents set up by protesters on the school’s grounds. The group held a rally on Saturday that drew over 100 people. Read more about the weekend’s events here.
Teachers are holding garden activities with kids at Lakeview Elementary despite being served a notice to leave the grounds. Photo courtesy of the protest group.
So far the Lakeview protesters have not heeded the warning notice. According to an Alima Catellacci, an afterschool teacher at Lazear Elementary, teachers have opened the school’s doors and are holding classes inside the building with a curriculum that focuses on social justice issues. There are plans for children’s activities throughout the day that includes arts, sports and gardening.
As 12:15 p.m. no police enforcement was present on the campus, according to Catellacci. The protesters plans on having another rally in front of the school Monday at 4 p.m.
