Parcel Tax Community Meetings – February 7th & 9th

PLEASE COME AND MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

On June 2 Piedmont will be voting to renew and possibly increase the existing parcel tax measures that fund more than 25% of the Piedmont Unified School District’s annual budget.   As part of the process to determine the specifics of the measure that will be put before the voters, an advisory committee to the School Board is gathering public input.   On Saturday February 7^th and Monday February 9^th the committee will be holding two community meetings to explain the current state of local public education funding – including the role of the parcel tax – and to elicit input from citizens on the size and scope of the tax that will be on the June 2 ballot.  (The meetings will cover identical information; the committee is holding two sessions because it recognizes that not all citizens can easily attend a weekend morning or weekday evening event).

The two meetings will be held:

Saturday February 7^th

9:00 am to 11:00 am

Veterans Memorial Hall

401 Highland Avenue

Monday February 9^th

7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Beach School Auditorium

100 Lake Avenue

The parcel tax helps fill the large – and growing – financial gap between what the state provides and what the PUSD spends each year to maintain the extraordinarily high quality of public education in our town.  It supports more than 60 teaching and classroom aide positions throughout the district.  It allows our schools to maintain smaller class sizes, offer advanced elective and AP classes, upgrade technology resources, and provide funding for the library and counseling and foreign language and science and art and music and athletic programs that our students would not otherwise have.   The parcel tax is, in short, critical to one of Piedmont’s defining civic attributes: a deep commitment to excellent public schools.

The current state of California’s budget and recent decisions made in Sacramento have further intensified fiscal pressure on all local school districts, including the PUSD, making the upcoming vote on Piedmont’s parcel tax especially important.   We strongly encourage all city residents to attend the community meetings and make their opinions heard.

For more information about the parcel tax advisory committee or the meetings scheduled for February 7^th and 9^th, please contact Terry London 428-0144  terry@wfl.net or  Sarah Pearson 658-0888  srpear@gmail.com.

BPO Meeting Agenda – Jan 12, 7:00pm

Beach Parent Organization Agenda

Monday, January 12^th

Multipurpose Room, Beach School

Call to Order and Introductions 7:00 pm

Discussion will be limited to no more than 15 minutes per agenda item.

Spring Fling (if present)                                     Valerie/Kirsten/Joe – Art Coordinators

Beach Interim Construction 2010~2012            Connie/Michael/Roy

Secretary’s Report                                           Mark Tellegen

Principal’s Message                                          Julie Valdez

BPO President’s Report                                   Joe Loduca

Annual Campaign Update 51% 1.17m

Take portable site poll

Spring Fling Update

BPO Treasurer’s Report                                               Eddie Ngo

Committee Reports

PUSD Open House Emery School January 17^th 10~12

Others

Adjourn at 9:00PM if we are lucky.

Measure E Interim Housing Issue Update

The next School Board meeting to discuss interim housing (i.e., the portables location) is on 1/14/09.  In advance of that, the BPO has invited Superintendent Connie Hubbard and/or Assistant Superintendent Michael Brady to the next BPO meeting on 1/12/09 at 7:00 pm.  We will also have a slide show to see pictures of the potential Emeryville site and will be polling members on their site  preference.  Please attend the BPO meeting if you are able.

Also, the BPO has submitted a statement to the School Board (also in the past two week’s Piedmont Posts) stating that we 1) support any plan that keeps our school together, 2) will be willing to host portables if a split option becomes necessary, but 3) do not feel it is safe or appropriate to have any of the town’s students on a construction site.

There is more information on the various options below.  Since there has been a lot of negative press on this issue, if you would like to write a supportive, positive and community-oriented letter to the School Board, we strongly encourage you to do so.

Update:  At the last School Board meeting on December 10, the Board approved
money to further gather more information on the following options:  the  Emeryville site, Blair Park, or a Witter/Beach split. You can watch the proceedings at the following link: http://www.ci.piedmont.ca.us/video/

Since then, at the City Council meeting on January 5 (which can also be seen at the link above), it became clear that Blair Park will NOT be ready for housing portables during the 2009/2010 school year.  This is the year that the Havens construction must occur based on the current contract with Webcor.

Thus, the two remaining viable options are a split campus or the Emeryville one. As for a split campus, the option currently on the table includes having portables on the Beach blacktop and tennis courts.  We hope that if this moves forward the School Board can devise a way to avoid Beach students being in portables on the blacktop during its year of construction.

As for the Emeryville options, pictures taken on a recent visit by administrators can be found at http://gallery.me.com/beachschool/100005. There are a few more pictures along with a brief description of the premises on at http://beachparents.org. You can see by these pictures that the site was being used as an elementary school up until the holiday break.

There have been many vocal concerns raised about taking the children out of town.  While the school is located 10-15 minutes away, we think that we can effectively bus the children to this location where they will have a safe place to play and learn.  We believe the benefits to the Emeryville options are the following:

• It is the teachers and administrators first choice:  At the outset of this process the elementary principals stated that keeping theschools together was their top priority. Now, all three elementary schools’ teachers strongly prefer the Emeryville option as it allows them to promote the school community, have the resources available that make a school community thrive and minimize the coordination issues of a split option.
• It allows us to maintain school resources continuity of programming: The Emeryville site has an existing auditorium with a common stage/multi-use area, a playground, hallways for student work display, a welcoming school office, a place for students to eat, etc. Hopefully these resources can be utilized by each school while they are there so that programs like Beach Revue, hot lunch and after-school enrichment can be maintained.
• It allows the students to stay together as one community: This will allow buddy programs to continue, the school culture to remain intact and keeps siblings together.
• It eliminates the potential issue of having children on a construction site:  This solution avoids having any of the town’s elementary students near construction. We have concerns that a construction site would expose these children to air pollution with unknown chemical content from construction, construction workers and noise.
• It is the most equitable option:  Each elementary school will rotate through the Emeryville school for one year vs. Wildwood and/or Beach hosting for 2 years and then rotating through portables in their construction year.
• It is presumably the least expensive option, although no firm cost data has been provided:  We would pay rent and have to hire buses butwould not have to pay for portables, do any site preparation or reparative work.  Early indications are that this is a less expensive route vs. in-town portables.

Summary:  While we believe Beach should be willing and able to take on our share of the burden, we do not think that having children on site during construction is the right solution.  While there are issues that have to be worked out, we believe the Emeryville option not only keeps our students and families together but also keeps our staff together so they can teach most effectively, and it offers the least amount of disruption.  If you have not had the opportunity to visit the Emeryville school site, there will be a couple of tours offered by the Piedmont administrators and school board members from 10:00 ~ noon on both Saturday January 17th and Saturday January 24th. The school is located at  1275 61st St. Emeryville.

If you would like to voice your opinion, no matter what it is, in a
community-oriented, positive way, please let our School Board know so that what they are hearing is not one-sided.

Please do not complain about the Beach split option.

Emails should be sent to:
jmonach@piedmont.k12.ca.us
rgadbois@piedmont.k12.ca.us
rtolles@piedmont.k12.ca.us
mjones@piedmont.k12.ca.us
rraushenbush@piedmont.k12.ca.us

Thank you

Joe Loduca

BPO President