Town Hall/Break Out – ALBA/North Park Community Partnership: Be heard, get involved
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm – Wednesday August 26th - at the former North Park Elementary site - Details to follow
ALBA/North Park Community Partnership: Update
The process of working with the San Diego Unified School District, Councilman Gloria’s office, ALBA Leadership, City Parks staff, and our members continues. As noted, a Town Hall/Break-Out is scheduled for August 26th, 2009. Much more detail will follow, but the point of this meeting is to generate real possible solutions to requirements in and around the ALBA school site.
All of the groups involved have goals and limitations, and this is an opportunity to help shape what our community will look like moving forward. Below is the first in a series of pieces we will run in the own words of the key partners in this process. This is an article written entirely by School Board Trustee Richard Barrera.
A Community Pulling Together to Give Our Kids a Second Chance
by Richard Barrera
Coming on to the Board of the San Diego Unified School District this year - and facing what most veteran educators describe as the worst financial crisis anyone can remember - has definitely been a trial by fire. I ran for the School Board because I wanted to help turn around a situation in which nearly a third of our kids are dropping out of high school. Our public school system should be the great equalizer in our society, giving every young person a real shot at a decent life, and allowing every generation to make our world a better place. But too often this year, I and my colleagues on the School Board have needed to set aside our larger ideals and simply focus on making painful choices that will allow our schools to survive the State’s budget cuts.
That’s why I was anything but excited a few months ago when School District staff approached me with yet another difficult decision. Bill Kowba, the person in charge of our District’s facilities, presented me the stark reality that North Park Elementary School - a little jewel of a school at the corner of Oregon and Lincoln and adjacent to the North Park Community Park - had less than one hundred students from the neighborhood enrolled. The general rule of thumb is that when a school’s enrollment drops below 400, it risks becoming a drain on the District’s resources because of the relatively high administrative overhead necessary to keep the school open. I’m a strong supporter of small schools, and fought back the push to close several schools this year, because of the great sense of community that small schools create. But with Jefferson and Garfield Elementary Schools in walking distance of North Park, and in the midst of our budget crisis, I could not in good conscience justify keeping a school open with such low enrollment.
I told Bill - a person whom I have come to greatly respect because of his candor and integrity - that I would support closing North Park for the 2009-10 school year, provided that we as a District sit down with the parents, teachers and staff at the school to lay out the numbers, and to offer them alternatives that would work for their kids. North Park Principal Leslie Barnes showed great leadership in pulling the North Park School community together, and working closely with Bill to make sure that students were enrolled in the school that their parents chose - most often Garfield or Jefferson.
But closing North Park was only the first part of this difficult process. Bill also pointed out to me that the District’s Alternative Learning and Behavior Academy - the program designed to offer middle and high school students who had committed serious offenses an alternative to expulsion - was housed in run down, out of the way sets of bungalows in City Heights and Clairemont. While the staff at ALBA works tirelessly and effectively to get these students back on track, the message we send to them with these facilities is that we have given up on them. The North Park School facility would send the opposite message - that we care about these students and that we believe if they work hard, respect themselves and others, that they can create a positive future for themselves. Additionally, the North Park campus would allow the ALBA middle and high schools to be consolidated on a single site, helping the principal and staff focus their time.
While it became clear to me that moving ALBA to the North Park School was the right thing to do, I worried about the message that we as a District would be sending to the greater North Park community. In particular, I was very aware that the North Park Community Park, adjacent to the school, had become a general nuisance and a source of crime for residents and businesses surrounding the park. My 10 year old son’s Little League team practices at the park, and we struggle some times at practices to keep the park’s problems away from our kids. My question was simple - would these same residents and businesses view the North Park school campus as a positive opportunity for the ALBA students, or would they see the ALBA students as a threat that would add to the problems at the park?
I am confident that the answer to that question depends on the degree to which the School District is willing to act as a good neighbor in North Park. Over the past couple of months, I have had the opportunity to meet leaders from the North Park Community Association, the North Park Planning Committee, North Park Main Street, and other active community leaders, and I have been so impressed by their willingness to turn a potential problem into a win-win solution.
A few weeks ago, Third District City Council member Todd Gloria and I convened a conversation with many of these community leaders, and we discussed how the District and the community can work together to both support ALBA and to improve safety at the park. Community leaders discussed ideas to generate volunteers to work with the students at ALBA. Incoming ALBA Principal Vernon Moore discussed how he might deploy ALBA security guards to patrol the park as well as school grounds, and to report to City Police violations as they occur. Vernon and Bill Kowba have begun a conversation about deploying a full-time School District Police Officer to the ALBA site, who could work with City Police to increase safety at the park. And we all agreed that the North Park Community Association and the District will work together on a community forum to develop ideas for the use of millions of dollars of capital improvement projects that the District will invest in the school and joint use field from the Proposition S school bond.
And last Saturday on July 25th, a team of volunteers from the District and from the North Park Community Association went door to door in the neighborhood, as we introduced ALBA to residents and encouraged neighbors to get involved with the Community Association to make a difference at the park and in the community generally. I teamed up with Community Association President Omar Passons and ALBA Principal Vernon Moore, as we knocked on doors and talked with neighbors who welcomed the chance to get involved and make a positive difference for their neighborhood and for the ALBA students.
This has been a tough year, but this weekend reminded me that when we all pull together and focus on solutions, we have the ability to turn crises into opportunities. We can turn the park around and make it a place for families again. And we can do our part to support ALBA students as they turn their lives around and create a better future. Thank you so much to Omar and to the North Park Community Association for stepping up for our kids.
