Features

Berkeley schools will apparently see the effects of the passage of Measure B sooner than expected. 

When voters passed the school supplementary fund measure last November, it was anticipated that the class size reduction portion of the money would be spent in the 2005-06 and 2006-07 school years. 

“It would be extremely disruptive to children to reduce class sizes mid-year and transfer them to other teachers,” BUSD Superintendent Michele Lawrence wrote this week in a message to the BUSD Board of Directors in announcing why teaching personnel additions were not anticipated this winter and spring. “Further, recruitment of teachers in such a short time was not practical.” 

On Wednesday night, however, Lawrence told boardmembers that an immediate partial implementation of the Measure B monies was possible in the district’s library program. 

The board agreed, approving at its regular meeting an increase in the hours of elementary school library media technicians. The increased hours will begin in February, and are scheduled to run through the end of the 2006-07 school year. 

School Board Vice President Terry Doran said that it was “exciting to see things increasing in the district, rather than decreasing.” 

In other action at Wednesday’s meeting, the board informally announced support for a resolution of the student participation dispute between Berkeley High School and Berkeley Alternative High School. 

On Monday night, after a heated meeting with BAHS staff, parents, and students about concerns that BAHS students were being excluded from BHS extracurricular activities, Lawrence said that she would mediate a meeting between representatives of the two schools. 

Doran, who—along with fellow Board Director Shirley Issel—attended the Monday meeting, said at Wednesday’s Board meeting that “the intensity of feeling demonstrated by participants at that meeting emphasizes that we need to analyze the relationship between the two schools.” 

Director John Selawsky said that the two schools “need to work out the shared protocols of events and proms.” Meanwhile, though Lawrence said that the participation dispute needs immediate attention and resolution, she is also preparing for a longer-range discussion with the board as to “the role the alternative high school plays.” 

Lawrence said that she was currently reviewing documents on the evolution of BAHS “to see if their relationship with Berkeley High was board-approved over the years, or if it is something that just evolved.” 

The board also voted, on the recommendation of district staff, to hold off on the addition of lights to the east parking lot at Franklin Adult School. The $150,000 proposal was part of a modification to the district’s facilities plan, but BUSD Director of Facilities Lew Jones said that the utilization of the two parking lots at the school should be studied over the next year before the board decides whether or not to proceed with the lights. 

Director Doran told Board members that the lights had the support of the Adult School’s site committee, but his motion to include the lights in the budget failed for lack of a second.