School Board Notes 1.12.06

School Board Notes
1.12.06
By Nicole Achs Freeling
GreatSchools.net Correspondent

• Board puts off closure decisions
• City may supply additional funds
• Citizens raise issues over safety, inclusion

Board puts off closure decisions

After hearing five hours of public testimony, Board members voted to postpone making any decisions on school closings for one week. The Board is now scheduled to reconvene Thursday, January 19 at 6 p.m. at Everett Middle School to take up the issue of school closings.

Earlier in the evening, some members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who urged the Board not to close any schools, pledged to cover the district's $5 million budget shortfall while it developed a long-range consolidation plan.

Board members said they wanted to see what kind of funding the city could provide them with, and also to have more time to process the information they had received during the lengthy public testimony. Board Member Eddie Chin, who made the motion for postponement, said he was concerned about conducting public business at 12:15 in the morning. "A large amount of audience has left for the evening and I think that creates a problem of transparency," he said.

"I came in ready to vote on the closings," Board Member Dan Kelly said. "But now that I've been here for six hours and heard all of the testimony, I'm not ready. I've seen many cases where schools that were struggling and under-enrolled made a huge turnaround and now they're very popular and strong. I see that happening with some of the schools on this list."

Board Member Mark Sanchez pointed out that an average of 15 percent of the students at the schools closed last year did not return to the district. "We would lose hundreds of students just doing this alone and we'd be put in a position next year of having to close even more schools."

While board members were united in their desire to delay a final vote on all schools to be closed, Dan Kelly and Jill Wynns called for a discussion about schools which their might be agreement to spare. "I think we could take a few of the schools of this list in the next 10 or 15 minutes," Kelly said. Chin, however, repeated his concern that any discussion conducted at that hour was not taking place in a fully open forum. Speaking after the meeting, Board President Norman Yee said he understood the desire not to prolong parents' agony, but that he wanted to be able to "look at the whole package, to make as fair a decision as possible."

Next week's meeting will be treated as a continuation of the meeting that began January 12. Board members agreed to take up to an hour of further public testimony, limited only to comments about the consolidation process in general.

City may supply additional funds

Urging the board to forgo closing schools until it could come up with a long-range plan shaped by extensive community input, Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi of District 5 and Sophie Maxwell of District 10 said they believed they could deliver a $5 million loan to the district to cover its shortfall. The loan has the clear support of five members of the Board of Supervisors, according to Maxwell. It would need six votes to pass.

Board members were emphatic, however, that a loan would not be sufficient to forestall school closings. "Supporting us is not giving us a loan that next year we have to make the same cuts to pay back," Yee said. Just the day before the meeting, Supervisors and city officials had been discussing the possibility of providing the district with the funds outright. Several board members confided they were surprised and disappointed to hear Mirkarimi and Maxwell speaking tonight of a loan proposal. "We need a gift, not a loan," Lipson said.

Citizens raise issues over safety, inclusion

Large, spirited contingents from almost every affected school appeared at the meeting waving signs, chanting and cheering, and urging the district to save their school. Speakers expressed concern that some of the proposals created unsafe conditions. The proposal to merge ISA with Enola Maxwell, for example, would create a school of grades 6 – 12. Numerous speakers spoke out about the potential problems in putting 11-year-olds and 18-year-olds together in a school. Speakers also voiced concern for merging community programs at Daniel Webster on Potrero Hill. Such a plan would put members of rival gangs together at one school in a neighborhood that, with a large housing project, already has problems with gang activity. Locating Downtown High School on Potrero Hill would put three high schools with potential gang issues within an extremely short distance of each other, some speakers said.

Representatives of Edison Charter School expressed outrage that they had not been made more aware of the move to relocate their school. Edison has not been listed as an effected school in any of the district's proposals, and letters were not sent to families at the school. The current proposal before the district would move Newcomer, currently in Pacific Heights, to the spot now occupied by Edison. Such a move would force the charter to find an alternate location. A member of Edison's legal counsel said the district did not have the legal authority to require the charter to move, since its charter is with the State Board of Education and not the district. The district stands to gain $4.7 million in lease revenues from City College if it moves Newcomer and Downtown High School to alternate locations.

Families involved in special education programs and community education centers worried about the fate of their programs should their school be closed or merged.

Speakers criticized what many said was a lack of community involvement in the process. Although community meetings were held in late December and early January at sights in effected neighborhoods, many people expressed doubt that the opinions collected at the meetings, just days before the scheduled vote on school closure, would actually have any effect. Many chastised the district for not having a long-range plan and phasing out schools over a multi-year process.

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