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The school board chugged through a busy agenda Thursday, at its last regular meeting until Aug. 15. It reviewed summer construction plans, discussed new policies proposed for next year and approved plans for independent audits in key areas of district operations.  

At the behest of concerned parents, the school board agreed Thursday to add nearly $1 million to modernization plans for Jefferson and Franklin Elementary schools – enough money to give the schools seismic upgrades. 

It also agreed to replace two 50-year-old “bungalows,” still used at classrooms at Jefferson until this year, and overhaul a third. 

Unlike most Berkeley schools, Jefferson and Franklin have not received seismic upgrades since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, according to Interim Superintendent Stephen Goldstone.  

As school board President Terry Doran put it Thursday: “Both are schools that are old and did not get the kind of construction support that other (schools) in our city received.” 

Under the modernization plans The City of Franklin magnet school, which will expand to become the district’s only k-6 school next fall (on its way to becoming a k-8 school), will receive more than $5 million worth of code upgrades and mechanical and electrical system upgrades. Floors, ceilings and lights will be replaced, and a new “flex” room will be added to the cafetorium. 

In thanking the board for approving the work Thursday, Franklin Principal Barbara Penny-James commented, “Poorly maintained buildings and grounds does have an effect of the ability of a school to recruit students.”  

Jefferson’s modernization plans are nearly identical to those of Franklin, although the total cost at this smaller site is expected to come in somewhere under $3 million. Most of the work at both schools will be covered by money from last year’s $116.5 million bond Measure AA. 

Board supports truancy policy 

At a first reading of a new truancy policy proposed for Berkeley High next year, school board members gave their support to the plan Thursday. 

Under the new policy, increasingly aggressive interventions would be triggered when students miss three, five and seven full days of classes.  

In response to students’ urgings, the plan comes at the problem of truancy largely from the angle of providing additional support services to students who miss class, however. Only when students fail to respond to repeated appeals for them to change their behavior would they be subject to automatic failing grades or possibly removal from the school. 

It is through friendly outreach, rather than draconian punishments, that students who are not engaging in school can be brought back into the academic community, student members of Berkeley High’s Youth Together group argued before the school board Thursday. 

Berkeley High senior-to-be Immanuel Foster, one of four students to present to the board, said afterwards that truancy happens when students are placed in classes that bore them, either because of poor teaching or an inappropriate curriculum. He described the difference between his American Literature class, where the students are predominantly white, and a literature class taught next door, with mostly African-American students.  

While his class churns out numerous essays and engages in focused discussions of texts, in the class next door students are permitted to spend class socializing and otherwise playing around, Foster said. 

Foster and the other students emphasized the importance of a Peer Advocacy component included in the proposed truancy policy. As envisioned, 25 Peer Advocates – junior and seniors at Berkeley High – would help spread the word to students that a new truancy policy is taking effect. They would then be called upon to work closely with those students who run afoul of the policy.  

Through a series of casual meetings that, it is hoped, would be less intimidating than meetings with adult authority figures at the school, Peer Advocates would demonstrate their sympathy for the truant students’ plight. They would also remind students of the consequences of missing class, both short term and long term.  

Finally, they would share their own Berkeley High survival strategies, gleaned from years of experience at the school. They would offer to help students resolve conflicts with specific teachers. And they would refer students to appropriate tutoring, counseling and other support services at the school. 

The Youth Together students proposed Thursday that the district set aside $30,000 to pay Peer Advocates for their work. Board President Doran said if Peer Advocates are successful in cutting down on truancy, they might eventually pay for themselves, since the school district’s allotment of state education funds is based on the number of students that attend its schools each day. 

For his part, Foster said he would work with or without pay.  

“Overworked counselors (Berkeley High has roughly one on staff for every 500 students) don’t have enough time to give needed attention to underachieving students,” Foster said. “Myself, I would do (peer advocacy) without pay, simply because I think it’s something that’s been lacking at the school for a long time, and I think it’s ridiculous that it’s not already there.” 

Furthermore, said Foster, the proposed new policy represents a “drastic” change that could affect a lot of students. 

“People who are already used to not going to class probably will keep not going to class,” he said.  

Berkeley High Principal Frank Lynch agreed. 

“We need to have something, whatever it looks like, because there is still a feeling at Berkeley High that attendance is optional,” he told the board Thursday. 

Energy audit could save money 

Also at Thursday’s meeting, the board authorized staff to proceed with an “energy audit” that, it is hoped, could save the district more than $200,000 a year by showing where and how it can cut its energy consumption. 

With the audit, the board has “turned the energy crisis into an opportunity to do something that might not necessarily have been considered,” Doran said. 

The board also approved an independent audit of it special education services, aimed at determining if the district is meeting the needs of its more than 900 special education students as required by law.  

The Berkeley Special Education Parents Group has contended that the district is not only out of compliance, but downright stingy when it comes to meeting these students’ needs (see full story in Tuesday’s edition of the Daily Planet). 

“It’s a good idea for us to really have an objective look at our programs and how the money is being spent so once and for all we can say, ‘Okay, these are the facts,’ and then proceed from their,” board Director Joaquin Rivera said in an interview Friday.