Features

WORK TO RULE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing to concur with the BUSD student director . Our son is being affected academically by the union’s work to rule. The teachers are now in the very unenviable position of being restricted from assisting the ve ry students they are intent on educating. Fortunately we can afford to send our son to a private tutor, many I fear can not. Surely there must be a better bargaining chip then putting the students at risk. I especially feel for the kids who will be taking the SAT II and AP tests this spring. 

Although I am unhappy with the size of our son’s classes, the district and the community have taken measures to reduce class sizes starting in 2005-06. 

BUSD Board President Nancy Riddle’s March 7 letter to the commu nity stated that Berkeley teachers receive an above average salary and benefits package. Further, teachers with the district since 2002 have received average increases in their take home pay of 2.5 percent annually due to step and column raises. Is this c orrect? 

Margie Gurdziel 

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DERBY STREET FIELD 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

I had to go deep into my flat files to find my Site Master Plan for the area of Carleton, Martin Luther King Jr. (Grove Street), Ward and Milvia streets. The purpose of the Master Plan was to unify the development of the new Adult Education Center and the Early Learning Center for the BUSD. I proposed the closure of Derby which is shown on my plan dated March 31, 1972. Closing Derby Street is not a new idea, the baseball field on the s ite is new. 

Too, it is my experience (37 years) that when weak design plans are proposed, approvals are difficult. (As you know I am prepared to sue for proper field orientation relating to baseball field design.) 

Richard Splenda 

Richard Splenda & Associates 

Landscape Architects,  

Park Planners 

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A VIBRANT TOWN 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Regarding Jerry Landis’ March 15 letter, as someone who lived at Gilman and Sixth for 10 years, I can safely say that I received no subsidy from Berkeley property owners for my rent. I can also safely say that my landlord did not receive a subsidy from Berkeley property owners for my rent, although he would’ve loved to get one! 

My ability to live cheaply thanks to the shack-like nature of our house meant that I could con tribute to Berkeley’s cultural and social life, which is one major reason why we all live here and love it. For instance, I could work at Uprisings Bakery, a collective which provided delicious and nutritious organic bread to the Bay Area for more than 20 years, as well as work as a paratransit driver for grassroots disability-friendly companies like Vantastic Wheelchair Transportation and as a personal attendant for Easy Does It Disability Assistance (this was years before I ended up running the latter non-profit). Culturally, I was able to dedicate more volunteer hours to KALX, UC Berkeley’s nationally known free-form radio station and to 924 Gilman, Berkeley’s internationally known alternative music landmark. This latter non-profit launched such local success stories as Green Day and Rancid, as well as record label Lookout Records. All three of these entities are still wholly or in part based in Berkeley, which means their sales taxes, business taxes, and property taxes are giving back to the city even now. 

Should artists move somewhere else cheaper? Only if we want to live in a husk of a town, with nothing but imported culture to sustain us. I don’t want to live in a shopping center, I want to live in a vibrant, diverse community. 

Jesse Townley 

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HUM AN RIGHTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was concerned about a comment made by Jane Litman, a commissioner on the Peace and Justice City Commission Monday night, March 7. Ann Fagan Ginger had compiled a book regarding human rights violations and sought endorse ment from Peace and Justice to go to City Council for an endorsement. Jane Litman’s comment was that rape was not a violation of the human rights of a woman. She admitted that it was a crime but did not consider it a human rights violation. Perhaps she ha s never been raped and hasn’t experienced someone close to her being raped or she might see the matter differently. I am surprised that she, a rabbi from Temple Beth-El, would express publicly so callous a regard for women around the world who have been raped and are threatened by rape as a matter of war and dismissal of their human dignity and rights not to be violated as women. Consider the wholesale rape of Muslim women in the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Were their human rights not violated? Where was Jane’s solidarity with other women less privileged than herself on the eve of International Women’s Day? I wonder.  

Nancy Delaney 

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PUBLIC LIBRARY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Congratulations to the Berkeley Public Library staff members who had the courage to speak out to the Board of Library Trustees at their March meeting. Their statements about the low morale and lack of responsiveness of top management confirm what several have told me privately. I wasn’t surprised to hear that Director Jackie Griffin is hard to communicate with. I have written her two letters in the past three or four months. It took her two months to respond to the first and that came only after I publicly complained about her responsiveness at the January trustee meeting. I waited for three weeks for some comment on a second letter until I finally phoned her office. Her secretary promised me a return call once she returned from a meeting. Of course, she never called. A day later I received a two-sentence response in the mail to my thre e page letter. It is apparently a pattern she follows as staff members have told me that other patrons have written her about their concerns and have received no responses from her. Her claim to your reporter of “open e-mail dialogue” is doubtful. She may be willing to receive comments but obviously feels no obligation to respond. Apparently Griffin does not see herself as a public servant. 

I have also written two letters to the Chair of the Board of Trustees about Griffin’s behavior and again have recei ved no response. 

What is the nature of the Library Board of Trustees? We know they are not elected by popular vote. They are appointees of the City Council. Is it their belief that they are only responsible to those who appointed them and the public be d amned? Seeing they are apparently in charge of the library’s budget and have hiring responsibilities, at least for top management, it might do them well to remember that ultimately the citizens and taxpayers of Berkeley are their bosses. I suggested in my letters that it would be wise to visit the libraries that are their charge and talk to staff members. If they had done so, it would not have come as a surprise that morale was so low. Their behavior, on the other hand, seems to indicate that they take their marching orders from Jackie Griffin, rather than vice-versa. If this is the case, how does the public go about impeaching them? 

The unwillingness of Jackie Griffin and the board to address the major points regarding RFID made in the article by Peter Warfield and Lee Tien (issue of March 4-7) indicates either ignorance or arrogance. Perhaps the issues raised by Warfield and Tien are too complex for Griffin and the Board to understand. Clearly Griffin is obsessed with RFID. It’s up to the Board to exam ine the program objectively and that means listening to all sides. The unwillingness of the Board to allow union representatives scheduled time at meetings, forcing them to make their points in the two minutes allowed during public comments, further erode s public confidence in their fairness and ability to manage this institution during a time of crisis. Listening only to Griffin’s cronies gives them only one side of the argument. Their attitude is much like listening only to Bush appointees opinions on Bush’s so-called Social Security reforms. When will the Berkeley Board of Library Trustees get out from under Griffin’s thumb? 

Don McKay 

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GOVERNATOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Does the Governator get a lunch break? 

Also, I wonder if he and his family have a good health plan and well-funded schools for their kids. 

Ruth Bird  

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BUSD LAWSUIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A thorough reading of the article “BUSD Settles Discrimination Lawsuit” (March 18-21) begs the question, “Were these students ever expelled in th e first place, or was an informal agreement made by the students and families to attend an alternative school?” The latter is hardly unusual, especially for BHS students. The irony in this alleged discrimination case, is that we are likely to see more formal expulsion processes with less flexible outcomes and communication with the families involved. 

I was one of these young adults who attended an informal conference some 30 years ago because of chronic truancy. Sure, this system failed me in many ways, but the informality and personalized approach was less upsetting and we developed a reasonable way for me to obtain a diploma. I attended the morning continuation program, worked in the afternoons, received credits from evening adult school, and graduated early. These choices moved me closer to functioning adulthood rather then staying connected with teen culture with all its excesses and excuses. 

For many years BUSD has been an unaccountable system and out of compliance with standard practices in student services. However, the current administration and school board has done more in the past two years to institute the necessary reforms and should be supported and encouraged to complete the task. I fear this current settlement only lined some attorneys’ pocket, fueled misplaced perceptions about discriminatory practices, did little to improve compliance with due process or address the lack of alternative placement needed for students with behavior problems. 

Laura Menard 

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W. GOES TO SESAME STREET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was invited to a friend’s house for dinner the other day and over dessert, I started talking with a woman who taught kindergarten. “The teachers at our school are now required to teach a unit entitled ‘Patriotism’ to their 5-year-old students,” she told me bitterly, “and the book we are required to use has nothing to do with patriotism. It is nothing more than a shamelessly blatant commercial for George W. Bush.” 

Since when did our George become so afraid of his ratings in the polls that he has to stoop to propagandizing kindergarteners? Is the Bush cartel that desperate? What will they do next? Start brainwashing toddlers? 

I can see it all now—George Bush guest stars on Sesame Street! “Which character do you think he would pla y?” asked my friend Jan. 

“Bush wouldn’t play any of the characters,” I replied. “He would just boss everybody around, steal Ernie’s rubber ducky, kick Oscar the Grouch out of his garbage can, take away PBS’s educational funding, teach Maria how to torture prisoners, deport Luis and Zoe, introduce Gordon to the wonders of election fraud, expose the Cookie Monster to mercury poisoning, take away Susan’s voting rights, send Burt off to Iraq without body armor, jail the Snuffaluffagus for being a threat to national security, take Big Bird off the endangered species list, try to hook Kermit the Frog up with Jeff Gannon and napalm Elmo.”  

Jane Stillwater 

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BIODIESEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As the new owner of an old MZB (1977!) with a diesel engine, I am lo oking to convert MY biodiesel usage to pure veggie oil use. EYE (lookin’ at ya Berkeley) would never, ever consider going back to petroleum. And do you know why? Yes, you guessed it: because the occurring toxins resulting from such usage is harmful to the health of the living body, including mine—and I ride around town every single day on a bicycle. I can’t roll my windows up and pretend it’s okay to be spewing because I can’t smell the fumes. I do not only smell them but cough them out of me, involuntari ly. 

Besides which, the conversion is not difficult or expensive and used oil can be acquired and filtered at an even lower cost than buying the oil new. Rudolph Diesel invented the diesel engine to use vegetable oil. The diesel engine is not meant to use petroleum (as if anything really is). Maybe that’s why burning diesel petroleum smells so bad. 

Iris Crider 

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CRIME REPORT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Richard Brenneman is more of a problem that just a Police Blotter contaminator. 

What’s with this guy anyhow? I take the Chronicle’s and Daily Cal’s versions of the Rose Garden slashing as actuality. Brenneman says both attackers slashed the victim’s throat and that the police said they were “treating as [sic] a homicide,” although he notes that the woman was then alive in the hospital. It appears that Richard is not just a mucker-up of police blotters but can’t even handle a simple crime story. 

Ray Chamberlin 

EDITOR’S NOTE: The quote should have read “...we are treating this as an attempted homicide.” 

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WHA T THE UNIVERSITY GIVETH...IT TOOKETH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Steven Finacom (“University Contributes Much to Public Life,” March 18-21) argues that UC gave land to Berkeley to widen Bancroft Way west of Barrow Lane (behind Sproul Hall). Ignoring that it w ould, of course, be in UC’s interests to have a sufficiently wide street fronting its most popular entrance, Steve forgot to tell you that UC took all of that land beginning in the 1920s. There was once a bustling community of shops and houses between Bancroft and Allston Way west of Barrow Lane—yes, that path that winds west from Sather Gate following the south bank of Strawberry Creek was Allston Way! Barrow Lane was named by Henry and Jennie Barrow who owned the Alta Vista Apartments that stood on the northeast corner of Bancroft and Telegraph, when Telegraph ran up to Sather Gate. My father (UC ’38) was appalled that the business strip between Bancroft and Sather Gate was gone by 1962 when I entered UC—the soda shop and everything! But he didn’t know the worst—how UC bought the Alta Vista in condemnation proceedings, got the city inspector to declare the building unfit and evicted everyone in December 1944. Happy Holidays and welcome Sproul Hall! Steve was reminded of this in a recent meeting, but cho se not to share it in his attempt to bolster UC’s image. 

Jerry Sulliger 

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WHERE’S THE SACRIFICE? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The lead story in the March 18-21 Daily Planet (“Council to Decide Cuts to Programs, Positions”) states: “City employees will also be asked to sacrifice. The city is budgeting zero raises for its unionized employees for two years after their current contracts expire.” 

As context for the foregoing statements, consider the opening lines of the Sept. 24, 2002 Planet article, “City, union s reach deal”: “After months of negotiations, Berkeley has reached a tentative six-year contract with its four municipal labor unions representing 60 percent of the city’s work force, city and union leaders said Monday. When final, the 1,119 union members who range from secretaries to engineers will get 28.5 percent raises over six years—nearly as high as the 31.5 percent increase awarded to police officers last year.” 

In light of these terms, will somebody explain how “budgeting zero raises for…unionize d employees for two years after their current contracts expire” is asking City of Berkeley staff “to sacrifice”? 

Zelda Bronstein 

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TEACHERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a recent article in your paper, Michele Lawrence does admit that California teachers ar e the highest paid in the United States but then finds a way to lower them to number 32 with adjusted cost of living index. All of us living in the Bay Area are subject to these same economic conditions. But there are some conditions which are exclusive t o teachers. Let’s put a teachers salary in perspective.  

A teacher is contracted to work seven hours a day. A normal work day is eight hours. A teacher gets one “free” period and a lunch period included within that seven-hour day. Most workers get no “fr ee” period and do not get paid for lunch. A teacher works for a “school” year of approximately 180 days. A normal worker works a standard year of approximately 240 days. The normal worker works a least 600 more hours per year than a teacher. You can think of that as 75 eight-hour days or 15 weeks or nearly four months. 

If a teacher worked a standard year instead of the radically reduced school year and received the California teachers average daily salary, the $56,000 becomes $80,000 per year. Even a fir st year teacher with no experience would make $50,000 per year. Add to this salary the very generous health and retirement benefits (which threaten to bankrupt many school districts) and you begin to wonder why teachers are considered overworked and under paid. 

In 1960 there were 35 million students and 1.35 million teachers. Today there are 47 million students and the number of teachers has doubled to 2.7 million. There has also been an explosion of administrators so little more than half the staff are t eachers. America is number two in the world in the cost of education per student, but is not first in teacher salaries. The teachers are correct, there is plenty of money for education but it is being spent poorly. 

Michael Larrick 

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TERRIE SCHIAVO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Republicans ram through another one at the midnight hour, on Palm Sunday no less. The Republican controlled Congress trumped state’s rights and family issues in voting to overturn Florida Courts in the Terrie Schiavo case.  

Ideology , religion and politics is driving the Terrie Schiavo debate. Republicans are trampling on the Constitution and Congress has descended to playing judge, jury, doctor and God in this case. Conflict of interest, hypocrisy and diversion sum up the latest GOP i nvasion into family matters. 

Republicans at the hearing kept saying they would be judged on how they treat the least of us. The bill was for ‘one lone soul’. Where was Republican compassion as the took away food support from 660,000 children and pregnant women in the latest budget?  

President Bush rushed back from his Crawford ranch to sign the Schiavo bill. Would he do the same to help out the millions of poor, elderly and vulnerable who are affected by draconian cuts in his latest budget? 

Ron Lowe 

Nev ada City 

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READ-IN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We in Berkeley think we have library problems, but down in Salinas in Monterey County the City Council has voted to CLOSE all three public libraries, including the John Steinbeck and the Cesar Chavez, in April f or budget reasons. 

Several organizations are planning an emergency 24-hour Read-In to call Californians’ attention to this deplorable situation in a community so desperately needing books and libraries.  

The Read-In at the Cesar Chavez Library will start at 1 p.m. on Saturday, April 2 and continue until 1 p.m. Sunday, April 3. Then we will join the Cesar Chavez Holiday Celebration in town. 

Celebrate your love of books by coming to Salinas to read from a favorite book. Bring a sleeping bag. Several celebrity authors will be joining us. We are calling on the governor to bring his family and read from his wife’s children’s book. We hope he will be able to implement a solution to the closings. 

Car caravans are planned from all over the state. E-mail sam@bayareacodepink.com or call 524-2776, and check out a website: www.codepinkalert.org or www.savesalinas libraries.org.  

Sponsors: United Farm Workers of America, AFL/CIO; Salinas Action League; Code Pink:Women for Peace; La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE); Global Exchange, Vote! The Citizenship Project. 

Corrine Goldstick 

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SIDESHOWS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor misses one critical point about sideshows. Allen-Taylor claims that the sideshows began at Pak ‘n’ Save and Eastmont mall. These may have been the first sideshows, but it does not follow that the current incarnation has anything to do with the previous one. There is an obvious difference between burning rubber in a parking lot, and doing donuts in the middle of an intersect ion and I doubt that the people who found both fun and pride in doing the former are currently engaged in the latter. All movements are a product of the fragile environment that created them. In the beginning, this environment helps weed out those who are not serious enough to respect whatever’s going on, and instead endanger its existence with reckless behavior. You can see this with punks or hip-hop--once vibrant movements limited to in-circles and word of mouth, now both a bottom-feeders paradise prone to become vehicles for violence and lowest common denominator thinking. Once sideshows were forced out of the parking lots, they became something altogether different, and in my opinion, something that embodies everything wrong with our culture--reckless disregard for the welfare of others, crass materialism and a lemming-mentality. The mistake comes in even calling these free-for-alls sideshows in the first place. Let sideshows rest in peace and the memory of their heyday be their eulogy; like many, that moment in history is over. 

Omar Silva 

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BERKELEY EDUCATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve been a volunteer teacher of Basic English at the Berkeley Adult School for three and a half years. Previously I taught at two leading colleges in the Northeast. 

I’m able to recognize high-quality teaching technique when I encounter it. Among the teachers I’ve observed here, it is high. For the community’s sake it ought to stay high and not be threatened. 

I’ve come to know my pupils, too. Most of them are sharply aware that they need education and most try hard to get it. Research keeps proving that teacher quality is the major determining factor in their learning success. Or failure. 

Berkeley teachers have now been struggling for nearly two full years for a fair C.O.L. adjustment, health benefits, and class size shifts—without a contract. 

They’ve worked far beyond the times for which they are paid, to make sure they continue to maintain their high-quality teaching. 

Now at last, more funds are coming to the Board of Education. The bad news: none of the money is reaching the teachers. 

Outraged? Who wouldn’t be? 

A teachers’ strike is a public horror. Especially with the world’s finest public university right up the street, we’re much to civilized a community to endure such a disaster. 

To keep Berkeley education Berkeley education, let’s give our teachers the gentle little lift they deserve. 

John Griffin 

UNIVERSITY AVENUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As along time homeowner on Berkeley Way, I am very interested in the recent developments on University Avenue. I have tried to keep myself informed regarding the Strategic Plan and zoning regulations, as well as individual projects, which is a bit daunting. 

The recent City Council approval of the Satellite Homes project revealed one of my many confusions surrounding the intent of the council and the Planning Department. I know the concept of “nodes,” which I understand to be intersections located on a major transit corridor, within the boundaries of which large buildings are permitted. I believe the nodes on University Avenue are the intersections of Chestnut, Acton and California Streets and the area near the West Branch Library. However, Satellite Homes is on University and Sacramento, not a node. The Tune Up Masters project is on McGee, not a node. I’ve heard of a planned project on the northwest corner of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, not a node. All three of these projects are large buildings, taller than allowed by current zoning. What is the purpose of designating nodes if other intersections also have large buildings? 

Is it because these three buildings are to be the only tall ones on their intersections, with the other three corners left within the zoning provisions? 

Is it expected that nodes will have large buildings on all four corners? What happens to existing buildings? Will Andronico’s market at Acton Street disappear to be replaced by a tall building? What are the parameters of a node? Can a replacement building go all the way through to Addison Street, as Andronico’s does? If Ledger’s is replaced by a large building, can it also incorporate the current vacant lot behind Ledger’s, going all the way though to Berkeley Way? How about the lot across the street, on the northeast corner of Acton and University? The property from University to Berkeley Way is also owned by the same family; can they utilize the entire property for one large building that goes corner to corner? 

If two or three large buildings join the existing Acton Courtyard at that intersection will they also be built with reduced parking facilities? I’ve heard that the rationale of placing large buildings on the University Avenue transit corridor is to discourage the ownership of cars and increase the use of public transit. Will nearby neighborhoods be inundated by the vehicles of building residents who don’t have on-site parking? 

What about Chestnut Street? It dead-ends into University Avenue at the former site of the Berkeley Adult School, so there are two corners. Does that make the school property eligible for large development projects? Just the part within a specified distance from Chestnut Street or the entire block, through to Addison Street? What if the owner of the auto repair shop at Chestnut Street wants to continue with his business rather than replacing it with a large apartment complex? I recall discussion during the close down of the Tune Up Masters business indicating that the council would like to eliminate all auto-related businesses on University Avenue, but what will it do to accomplish this goal? I have gone to my auto repair shop for many years and I imagine that there are many loyal patrons of the Chestnut Street shop who would not want to have to find another reliable place to take their cars. 

Do policies on these issues exist, or will decisions be made on a case-by-case basis by the Planning Commission, Zoning Adjustment Board and City Council as each project is proposed? How much neighborhood notification will be involved for each decision? 

I imagine I am not alone in being concerned about the possibilities of developments along University Avenue. I wish I felt more confident that decisions will be fair to current residents of the area. 

Honor Thompson 

o