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The Board of Education is poised to formally decide on Aug. 20 whether to move the Berkeley Adult School from its present West Campus location on University Avenue to the School District’s Franklin site on Virginia Street.  

Citizens should also be aware that the Franklin proposal is part of a much broader scheme that could potentially include major land use changes at sites in several other neighborhoods.  

The Big Picture 

For understanding the relevant big picture, one source is the “Facilities Study” that was done for the District in 2002 by California Financial Services, and was described in December by Superintendent Michele Lawrence as “a base document that can support and accompany the District’s traditional Facilities Plan.” The consultants’ report stressed “asset management”—defined as “the utilization of District property for commercial, retail, or residential developments, which may provide the District with revenue to assist in providing educational programs or support the Capital Facilities Program.” It accordingly recommended “aggressively pursu[ing]...the development potential” of the District’s Oregon/Russell Street, Derby Street (East Campus), and Hillside properties--and of the Franklin site. However, it recommended fully retaining the West Campus, to accommodate not only District administrative uses (relocated from elsewhere) but also the Adult School. 

Another pertinent document is the District’s latest official Facilities Construction Plan, which was adopted by the Board in March. While this Plan is coy about the future of some sites, it seems generally compatible with the consultants’ report. It notably departs from that report, though, by positing use of the Franklin site for the Adult School.  

Piecemealing 

On July 29 City Manager Weldon Rucker wrote to comment on the proposed MND (Mitigated Negative Declaration) for the Franklin project. In his strongly worded letter, he characterized the Franklin project as just one part of a much bigger overall project that includes consolidation of the District’s administrative functions at the West Campus as well as reuse of sites elsewhere that those functions would vacate. He concluded that the District appears to be avoiding full analysis by chopping the overall project into smaller pieces--a practice prohibited under CEQA. He therefore urged the District to withdraw the proposed MND, and circulate a revised environmental document disclosing and analyzing “the full scope” of the overall project.  

The Mitigated Negative Declaration’s Inadequate Traffic Analysis 

The traffic analysis in the MND looks almost exclusively at the “level of service” functioning of seven intersections along San Pablo Avenue and Sacramento Street. It pays little attention to impact on minor streets like Kains Avenue and Francisco: quiet residential streets on which increases in traffic volume that might seem insignificant to a traffic engineer could in fact substantially affect neighborhood character and quality of life.  

Arguments Against Moving the Adult School 

Many cogent arguments have been or can be made against moving the Adult School to Franklin.  

For the Adult School and its clientele, the Franklin site would be quite inferior to the present location. It would be less central, less convenient to reach by bus, and much less prominently located. Instead of being right on well-lit, heavily traveled University Avenue--Berkeley’s great east-west spine--the Adult School’s main pedestrian entry would be on a residential side street, hundreds of feet away from San Pablo Avenue. This could pose safety concerns, particularly in the evening for female students.  

And moving the Adult School to Franklin would conflict with the city’s official General Plan. The Plan’s University Avenue component treats the Adult School as an important anchor of the University corridor--and calls for it to stay at the West Campus.  

The area around the Franklin site would suffer in terms of traffic and open space. The District’s proposal would replace large play areas—existing or potential recreation space for people--with parking spaces for cars. That’s hardly a green thing to do. And it seems inconsistent with the General Plan’s Open Space and Recreation Element, which calls for zealously protecting existing open spaces. 

Even the District’s own consultants concluded that the Adult School can and should stay at the West Campus. The consultants’ Facilities Study said that: 

“The site and buildings currently housing the Adult School appears to provide the most favorable location for relocating District Administration and all other support functions, other than transportation, into a single complex. The size of the site and square footage of the buildings is sufficient to accommodate administration, maintenance and operations, food service and other support functions with little or no new construction required...With proper design, the Adult School functions could remain housed on the site with other consolidated District administrative uses. The site is well located and...its highest and best use would be for the above stated purpose.” 

In surprisingly marked contrast, the staff report that was before the Board on Jan. 15 said, “However, staff does not think that the Adult School and administration can fit together if all the functions currently at 1720 Oregon, 1707 Russell and auxiliary space located at the old East Campus are included in administrative needs.”  

But even assuming that that staff contention is valid, why must literally all those alluded-to functions be located together? (For example, couldn’t the Oregon/Russell site’s maintenance-yard function be grouped, instead, with future Transportation Department uses at the District’s property on Sixth Street?) Having them all in one place may indeed be more convenient for administrators, but what about convenience for Adult School pupils? Maybe I’m naive, but shouldn’t student needs come first? 

A possibly revealing passage on page B-46 of the Facilities Construction Plan says that moving the Adult School to Franklin would make the West Campus available for other uses like a central administration building—and then remarks that the West Campus is “more than large enough” to house those functions. Could it be that an unstated reason for kicking out the Adult School is to make it easier to sell off part of the West Campus for private development? Could the West Campus’s ballfield get replaced by one of Patrick Kennedy’s growing chain of big buildings along the avenue? 

Zoning Complications 

The District seems to have overlooked major complications posed by the city’s Zoning Ordinance. Although under the California Government Code a school board may exempt a project from local zoning, it can do so only by a two-thirds vote. Even more to the point, the Code clearly indicates that the exemption procedure can’t be used at all for “nonclassroom” facilities like administrative buildings. The Berkeley Zoning Ordinance evidently classifies such administrative buildings as offices rather than schools. And most of the West Campus is presently zoned in residential districts that don’t permit office buildings. So one implication is that if the District moves the Adult School to Franklin, it could then be nastily surprised to find that a large part of the vacated West Campus space couldn’t be used for offices.  

The present zoning of most of the Franklin site similarly complicates the potential alternative of instead locating the District’s offices there.  

Conceivably the city might amend its zoning so as to facilitate office relocation, if it were convinced that doing so would serve the broad public interest. But that would need to involve much fuller intergovernmental consultation than the District has recently done.  

Referral to the Planning Commission 

Another example of the School District’s failure to consult is that it has never referred the Franklin proposal to the City’s Planning Commission. 

Section 65402(c) of the California Government Code says that agencies such as school districts shall not undertake certain kinds of projects “until the [project’s] location, purpose and extent...have been submitted to and reported upon by the planning agency [of the city or county having a relevant adopted general plan]...as to conformity with said adopted general plan or part thereof....” It’s very arguable that this requirement applies to the proposed relocation of the Adult School. Even if the School District were not legally required to refer the Franklin proposal to the Planning Commission, such referral would still be called for in the interest of good planning, openness, and simple courtesy. 

This Week’s Procedure 

At its Aug. 20 meeting the Board of Education is slated to decide whether to adopt a final MND on the Franklin project and whether to approve the project itself. The District reportedly has arranged for the meeting to include an actual, supposedly hour-long public hearing specifically about the MND and the project itself. I’ve been told that for this purpose, the Board will convene unusually early, at 6:30 PM.  

The Board probably will get quite an earful. 

John English is a planner by profession and has lived in Berkeley most of his life.