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School and city officials discussed the closure of City of Franklin Microsociety Magnet School, parking tickets at Willard Middle School and the value of city-school symposiums at their monthly “2 x 2” meeting Thursday. 

The Board of Education, which needs to trim about $6 million to balance next year’s budget, has indicated it will likely close Franklin next year, saving the district an estimated $326,000. 

City Councilmember Linda Maio said residents in her district with children enrolled at Franklin have called her with concerns about where they will enroll their kids next year, and asked that the issue be placed on the agenda for a formal, joint City Council-Board of Education meeting scheduled for March 20. 

The two bodies meet in official joint session twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. 

Franklin teachers have asked the board to provide displaced students with first choice in schools next year, and board members have indicated that they would like to give students preference, as long as space and racial balance issues at other schools are addressed. 

Superintendent Michele Lawrence, speaking at the board’s meeting, suggested that if the Franklin closure goes through, the district might move an overcrowded Jefferson School into the larger Franklin building, and move district headquarters into Jefferson. 

Currently, the district is renting the Old City Hall on Martin Luther King, Jr. Way from the city for its central office. The lease will run out in a few years, and city manager Weldon Rucker said the city would like to take over the building, seismically retrofit it, and possibly expand it. 

He said city officials and citizen commissions would likely make use of the office space in the historic building. 

Timiza Wagner, project manager at Willard Middle School, said Principal Michele Patterson and other teachers and administrators have had trouble getting parking permits from the city and have accumulated a number of parking tickets. 

“She would like very much to have something done about these tickets,” Wagner said, making reference to Patterson. “She is a servant of the Berkeley Unified School District and the community.” 

Rucker said he would look into the issue and take care of it. 

Joaquin Rivera, vice president of the school board, raised concerns about the value of “2 x 2” meetings and the two joint City Council-Board of Education meetings. 

“They just don’t seem to be useful,” Rivera said, calling for better organization of the “2 x 2” meetings, and more time for serious discussion at the joint sessions. 

Currently, he said, the two bodies meet for only an hour, with a half-hour reserved for public comment at each session. With nine city Councilmembers and five school board members, he said, there is little time for in-depth conversation.