Construction Delay at Center of 'Community' Life; High School Won't be Ready on Time

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.

Santa Fe Elementary Parents File Lawsuit

Re-Posted from the Oakland Tribune:

Oakland parents file lawsuit to keep their school open

By Katy Murphy
Oakland Tribune

Posted:   04/06/2012 05:57:58 PM PDT

Updated:   04/06/2012 05:57:59 PM PDT

OAKLAND -- Parents and students from Oakland's Santa Fe Elementary School have filed a lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court to prevent the closure of their school.

Santa Fe is one of five Oakland elementary schools which the Oakland school board voted to close at the end of the school year as part of a plan to downsize the district. More than half of the 130-some students currently in grades K-4 were placed at Emerson or Sankofa, elementary schools about a mile away, according to Oakland Unified.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs, from the firm Siegel & Yee, claim that the closure violates the rights of North Oakland African-American students to an equitable education; that the school board is wasting public money by closing the school, which recently underwent improvements; and that the school board failed to consider the cumulative impact of closing five schools in North Oakland during the last eight years.

Last week, the school board approved a plan to lease the Santa Fe building to the Emery Unified School District for $500,000 a year.

, 

8 AM Tuesday: School Board To Vote To Spend $1.5 Million

School Board To Citizens:  

"You Want Transparency?  We Got Your Transparency Right Here!"

Opinion

The Emery School District says they're all about transparency and citizen engagement....and that's what they are.... between the hours of 8 and 8:30 AM during the week when parents and citizens are working.  Are they believers in transparency at times when the citizens are free to participate? Well...not so much.

After the Oakland School District shut their Elementary School, Santa Fe, Emery has made a play for use of it during construction of the new school at the Center of Community Life.  The cash strapped Emery plans on paying Oakland $1.5 million over three years even though Emery has Ralph Hawley Middle School sitting idle; some might call this a controversial use of public money.

The School Board decided in closed session at last week's regularly scheduled Board meeting to lease Santa Fe School.  California law requires the binding vote for this to be public however so that's obviously where the School Board thinks a 8 AM weekday meeting would come in handy.

'Make sure the controversial votes happen when nobody is looking'...that's how far down the Emery School District has sunk: they're now on par with the anti-democratic tactics used by the Oakland School District.

Emery even made use of a Friday Afternoon News Dump to announce the 8 AM meeting, a well worn tactic elites use to sneak something unsavory past a civically disengaged public.

Oakland School District for it's part used this same weekday work hours tactic to disenfranchise parents as they voted to shutter Santa Fe Elementary, a move that brought the ire of the local school advocacy group BAMN (By Any Means Necessary).  Emery's quashing of parental engagement on Tuesday morning at the High School's Emery Theater invites a BAMN action to our District.

We cry foul to this nefarious anti-democratic action by the School Board.  We implore Emery School District to not lower itself to these divisive Oakland tactics.  We say, let the people have a say in this very important decision.

Angry Oakland Residents See Their Local School Go To Emeryville

Re-posted from the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism's Oakland North:

A day after heated meeting, OUSD board votes to lease Santa Fe Elementary to Emeryville

Oakland Tech history teacher Tania Kappner addresses the board on Wednesday morning, with TV cameras behind her.

By: Ryan Phillips | March 29, 2012 – 4:54 pm

The lights went out in the OUSD building at 1:30 pm on Thursday.

The Oakland Unified School District board reconvened Thursday afternoon after Wednesday night’s meeting was adjourned early thanks to chanting protesters who drowned out the board members’ discussion. Nine people were arrested later that night when they refused to leave the chambers as they protested the shutdown of five elementary schools.

To the displeasure of most of the crowd of about 30 people present on Thursday, board voted to lease Santa Fe Elementary School, one of five schools scheduled to close after this school year, to the Emeryville School District for three years at $500,000 a year. The board voted 4-0, with Alice Spearman (District 7) abstaining, and members Jumoke Hinton-Hodge (District ) and Noel Gallo (District ) absent. When the voting concluded, many in the audience booed and someone shouted, “Shame on you.” The board also voted Wednesday to use the facilities for the closed Edward Shands Adult School for Arise High School, a charter school.

Those items were scheduled to be discussed at Wednesday’s meeting before it was interrupted by chanting protesters at 10 pm from a group opposed to the school closures that is calling itself The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary [BAMN].  Board President Jody London called a one-hour recess when the meeting was first interrupted. When board members returned to the meeting at 11:30 pm, the protesters started chanting again and the meeting was adjourned for the night.

A group of about 10 protesters remained in the chambers and about an hour later, at 12:30 am, were asked to leave by police because, according to district spokesperson Troy Flint, “they were no longer entitled to be on the facility. It was after hours and school business was not being conducted.” When some protesters remained, they were arrested under statute 626.7A of the California penal code, or, Flint said, “being on school property when business is not being conducted and been asked to leave.” None of the protesters resisted arrest, Flint said.

At least one of the BAMN protesters arrested Wednesday, Monica Smith, was present at Thursday’s meeting. Smith said in an interview the group had blankets and were “determined to stay here for days” before they were arrested. Smith said she was handcuffed and taken to North County jail where she was released at on Thursday morning.

Smith said the group is gaining support from parents who want to “keep their school open by any means necessary.”

“We’re ready to keep going,” Smith said. “We’re planning on winning.”

The audience for the rescheduled Thursday afternoon meeting was much smaller than on Wednesday, but similarly enraged about school closures. Parents and teachers lined up to criticize the board and Superintendent Tony Smith for the decision to lease the school to Emeryville, with Spearman bringing up that the school was the only elementary school for Oakland kids in the 94608 zip code. “Is this right for children in Oakland to lease this and get $1.5 million?” Spearman asked Smith.

Speakers also criticized the board for its decision to lease the school to Emeryville, for cancelling the meeting last night and then going through the remainder of the agenda in the middle of the next day, when many people are at work.

“The whole dishonesty of this plan, to try to do this behind our backs, and claim it’s about money when it’s really about shutting down the expectations for a better future for the youth of Oakland,” Tania Kappner, an Oakland Tech history teacher and BAMN leader told the board, “and just relegate them to second class treatment and jobs? No.”

The board had also been scheduled to vote on the fate of the Lazear Elementary School building, which would have been turned over to two charter schools—Bay Area Technology School and the Community School for Creative Education—if the board approved. But after the board unexpectedly voted to negotiate a “partnership” charter agreement with officials from Lazear at Wednesday night’s meeting, a decision on what to do with the building was tabled for a later time.

It momentarily appeared the chaos of the previous night had carried over when the power went out in the building about a half hour into the Thursday afternoon meeting, and London chose to proceed with the lights out. Oakland resident Etha Jones was standing at the speakers’ podium, ready to criticize the board for closing schools, when the room went dark. Six police officers moved to line up on the steps near the entrance to the building as the crowd murmured.

“That’s God speaking,” Jones said to the board in the darkness. “God does not like ugly.”

Emery School District Explains $1.5 Million Oakland School Lease

Emery High School Students To Move To Temporary Digs, In Oakland

The Emery Unified School District announced today that they will lease Oakland's Santa Fe Elementary School for three years in order to house High School students while the Center of Community Life is constructed on the site of the High School this fall.  Emery will pay Oakland Unified School District $1.5 million for the use of Santa Fe it was announced.  Emery intends on using available Emeryville taxpayer funded Measure J money to finance the deal.

Santa Fe School, on the east Emeryville border with Oakland, was recently closed by the Oakland School District as a way to save money for that cash strapped School District.

Emery School Superindendant
Dr. Debbra Lindo

Emery School Superintendent Debbra Lindo told the Tattler that even though the Emery School District owns shuttered Ralph Hawley Middle School in north Emeryville, that school is not adequate to house the High School, "We had to find a facility conducive to the High School's programmatic needs.  Ralph Hawley was considered but Santa Fe, being larger was compelling.  We took the opportunity to request it." she said.

Ralph Hawley School was built to house some 200 middle school students and Oakland's Santa Fe School has close to the same number of classrooms but nearly twice the outdoor space, including a baseball field.  Emery High now has approximately 210 students.

Emeryville voter backed Measure J, a $95 million 2010 school bond initiative, provides for interim housing during the construction phase of the Center of Community Life, expected to begin in the fall.

District officials brokered the lease of the Santa Fe School in 'closed session' noting that public real estate deals are generally made without public scrutiny, "Real estate deals are particularly susceptible to being subverted [by would be rouge public malcontents and the like] and the law provides this level of public constraint.  It's standard procedure." said one official.

Its Official: Santa Fe School To Close

Oakland Schools Failure Ripple Effect:

Anna Yates Elementary School 
To Face Crush Of Parents

Oakland's Santa Fe Elementary School, on the Emeryville border, has been axed.  Emery's Anna Yates is sure to be impacted with a surge of inter-district transfers as parents scramble to seek alternatives for their children.
Re-posted from the Oakland Tribune

The verdict is in: Five Oakland elementary  schools will close  By Katy Murphy   Oakland Tribune Posted: 10/27/2011 12:14:46 AM PDT Updated: 10/27/2011 03:21:02 PM PDT Most of the people who had packed the Oakland Technical High School auditorium for the marathon session were long gone by the time the school board made its decision, but a few dozen people remained to hear the verdict. "I can't say that I'm surprised, but I did hold out a little bit of hope,"  said Pam Chinn-Scoffern, who teaches at Lakeview, one of the five schools slated for closure. The district administration has estimated the closures of Lakeview, Lazear, Marshall, Maxwell Park and Santa Fe elementary schools will result in a savings of roughly $2 million a year, or an additional $50 for each student in Oakland Unified. The restructuring plan also includes mergers that are already underway: the small high schools on the Fremont and Castlemont campuses in East Oakland; the conversion of Far West High School in North Oakland into an academy of nearby Oakland Technical High; and the merger of Barack Obama Academy, an alternative middle school in East Oakland, with Community Day School. Superintendent Tony Smith told the crowd that the district simply can't fund or manage the number of schools as it operates -- nearly 100 for 38,000 students. In addition to a declining number of students and reductions in state education funding, he said, the district must repay the state $6 million each year for the $100 million bailout loans extended during the school district's 2003 financial meltdown and state takeover. "Having too many underfunded schools is not a good strategy," Smith said. But many urged the board to reject the plan, arguing that the closure of historic neighborhood schools and the displacement of 1,000 students and staff members was not worth $2 million. Some questioned if the district would even save that much, especially if it uses general fund dollars to help pay for the students' transportation to their new schools. Erica Persons, 8, was asleep just after 11 p.m. when the board made the decision, with board members Alice Spearman and Noel Gallo casting the dissenting votes. She and her friend Donaven Kelley, 9, who attend Marshall Elementary School, said they were saddened by the news. "It's just hard to go away from a school you've been raised in, really," Erica said. Read Katy Murphy's Oakland schools blog atwww.IBAbuzz.com/education. Follow her at Twitter.com/katymurphy.

Santa Fe School Closure: Public Policy Failure

School Crisis On Emeryville Border

Elementary School Teacher Belies Republican "Greedy Teacher" Narrative

The fallout from the recently announced probable closure of Santa Fe Elementary School on Emeryville's border continues, causing one teacher to succinctly warn of the cascading ill effects from Oakland's short sighted public school policy.  Emeryville will feel the effects of this failure of the Oakland School District and there are valuable lessons to learn from this teacher.   

Reprinted from Oakland North, a project of the University of California School of Journalism: 

You Tell Us: Why Santa Fe Elementary School should not be closed

By: Peter von Ehrenkrook | October 10, 2011 – 2:00 pm

My name is Peter von Ehrenkrook and I am currently a 5th grade teacher at Santa Fe Elementary.

I have to acknowledge that I am not worried about the Santa Fe teachers or staff. We will all have jobs in the fall, though some of us may be placed at less than desirable sites due to our public dissent.

In addition, I am not worried about our top performing students. They will be quickly assimilated into the local private and charter schools. Even Anna Yates in the Emeryville school district will turn a blind eye to home address issues if the child is a high performer.

My concern is for those children who are rejected by the local charters and private schools. Either their parents don’t have the savvy to get them in, or once they fail there, the charters and private schools send them back to us. This is often due to issues with low academic performance, erratic attendance, or behavioral problems. We always welcome them back and do the best we can to support them academically and emotionally.

We also do our best with children like the 13-year-old who came to me recently from a local private school knowing only 5 letters. They had passed him on year after year with A’s and B’s.  Or the English Language Learner who was dropped into my class last year the day before the CST. His family kept him out of another local school for over a month in protest over his being bullied, and only re-enrolled him when we opened our doors to him. This is what a real Full Service Community School does.

Nothing I have seen or heard from OUSD eases my deep concern about the future safety and welfare of our children in transition – those who are homeless, live with a grandma, or live with a relative who works nights.

These are real children I teach every day. They wander in around 10 a.m., since they have to get themselves up and walk from the areas near the old Longfellow or old Golden Gate sites. If you ask them to travel to Sankofa, or even worse to Piedmont Avenue, they may just decide it’s not worth the effort. They need a local public school they can walk to safely, and from which they can walk home safely at 6 p.m. after taking part in an after school enrichment program.

Until you can assure me our at risk students will be safe and their needs will be met, I will continue to rally public support against this closure.

Peter von Ehrenkrook is a 5th grade teacher at Santa Fe Elementary School in North Oakland. He has been a public school teacher in Oakland for ten years. He read this letter aloud at the School Closure Community Engagement Meeting at Santa Fe on October 6.

Santa Fe School Closure: Emeryville Will Be Effected

Public School On Oakland/Emeryville Border To Close,

Repercussions For Emeryville

News Analysis
The Oakland School District's dire and unraveling travails threaten to spill over into Emeryville with the recent announcement of the probable closure of its Santa Fe Elementary School.  Oakland's Superintendent of the Schools, former Emeryville Superintendent Tony Smith, is gunning for Santa Fe school, a public elementary school right on Emeryville's border with Oakland.  Such a closure would likely bring more Oakland inter-district transfers to Emeryville's Anna Yates Elementary School, threatening to erode student/teacher ratios here.

Further, a large Oakland exodus to Anna Yates would take pressure off Emeryville leaders to provide more family friendly housing.

The city council and the school board in Emeryville has experienced growing resident pressure to produce more suitable homes for families to support last year's $400 million school bond funded Center of Community Life; a new school and community center slated for San Pablo Avenue.  The proposed new school has been facing a shortage of students owing to our peculiar demographics, brought on by 20 years of primarily building loft-type condominiums.  The housing Emeryville leaders have been delivering has netted an extremely low number of Emeryville children, a problem vexing civic leaders as they now scramble to attract families.

A large influx of new Oakland students from a Santa Fe Elementary School closure would help fill the new school, easing Emeryville's need to supply family housing to support the school regardless of continuing promises made by the decision makers to build more family housing in Emeryville.

Below is a re-print from KGO News:

Oakland parents upset over 

possible school closures

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

TAGS:

school closures, oakland, education, alan wang

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Alan Wang
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OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Tuesday night, hundreds of parents and 

teachers crowded an Oakland School Board meeting to fight a plan 

to close or consolidate 13 campuses at the end of the school year. Superintendant Tony Smith's plan included closing: Lakeview, 

Lazear, Marshall, Maxwell Park, and Santa Fe elementary schools.

Smith says Oakland Unified has 101 schools, but it only needs
about 70. Closing five schools and consolidating eight others
could save millions of dollars.
"What does the district want for or kids? Are they going into 35
kid-classrooms now? Is that what's happening?" asked Karen
Harper, a Maxwell Park Elementary School parent.

Related Content

STORY: List of potential Oakland school closures released

STORY: Oakland school closure list to be released Saturday

STORY: Oakland considers closing 8 schools

Larger classes are 

on the way. Apparently 

the small schools 

philosophy isn't working 

because Smith says 17 

percent of students are 

not passing the high 

school exit exam. Nearly half are African American.
"And that's not OK. So we're stretched way too thin and we got to
figure out how to better use our resources," said Smith.
"There are 35 charter schools in Oakland. That's why our public
schools are under enrolled," said Robin Ogden, a Lakeview
Elementary School parent.
Some parents had concerns about integrating K through 12 into
one school. Others said they don't have cars to travel to the new
schools of their choice and one parent tried to throw another
school under the bus.
"According to documents on the OUSD restructuring website,
Santa Fe is consistently rated higher than Sankofa in school
choice. Santa Fe has a higher number of students who live in
the surrounding area and go to its school," said Peter Von
Ehrenkrook, a Santa Fe Elementary School parent.
"I will either take her out of the district or home-school her
until you guys can find a resolution," said Ingrid McGraw,
a Lake View Elementary School parent.
Oakland Unified does not want to lose students because
school funding is based on average daily attendance.
This is just the beginning of a three-year project that will
see the eventual closure and consolidation of about 30 schools.
This was just the first reading of the recommendation.
There will be two more meetings before a decision is made
to close the schools next fall. It should happen at the end
of October.