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Two letters sent yesterday by groups connected with the Berkeley Unified School District to Berkeley's Zoning Adjustments Board urge the ZAB to postpone any vote to approve the project's permits unless and until the district's concerns about the project have been dealt with. 

From the district's law firm, the five-page letter from attorney Clarissa R. Canady begins: 

"We are writing on behalf of the Berkeley Unified School District (~~BUSD") to express concerns regarding the proposed 2211 Harold Way Project (°Project"). Specifically, after careful review of the Draft Conditions of Approval for the Project (°Draft COA's"), we believe the Project as proposed will have potentially significant impacts on the health, welfare and safety of BUSD students, teachers and facilities. For the reasons detailed below, we respectfully ask that the Zoning Adjustments Board (°ZAB") take the following actions at its Special Meeting tomorrow evening:

1. postpone approval of the Draft COA's;
2. direct Planning staff to engage the BUSD Facilities Department and Berkeley High School Safety Committee to craft conditions of approval that adequately mitigate the impacts of the Project; and
3. adopt revised COA's as part of the Project approval that reflect adequate mitigation of school-related impacts."

Berkeley High School Safety Committee Co-Chair Enid Camps also issued a statement opposing approval of the conditions as drafted. It begins: 

"As a Berkeley High School (BHS) parent and Co-Chair of the BHS Safety Committee I urge the ZAB to reject the Conditions of Approval for 2211 Harold Way related to BHS and Washington Elementary School. The City’s COAs for the 2211 Harold Way Project not only are insufficient to protect student health, safety, and welfare, they arguably permit the City to evade State standards designed to ensure a productive learning environment for students. 

For example, as more fully set forth below, the COA ignores compliance with the 45 dBA daily threshold for interior noise at schools, and instead sets the noise threshold at 65 dBA, but only on specific school-wide test days, and only for exterior noise. 

Although the City has produced a COA document after meeting with BUSD representatives, that document was not timely prepared, and in any event, did not satisfactorily resolve or even address the majority of issues the BUSD and the BHS Safety Committee raised in numerous written communications to the ZAB about the 2211 Harold Way Project impacts. 

I also request that the ZAB require the City to meet promptly with BUSD and the BHS Safety Committee to craft enforceable Project mitigations that clearly and on their face ensure that: 

1. Students can hear one another and the teacher in their classrooms on a daily basis both during and after the construction of 2211 Harold Way;
2. Students, including those with asthma, can breathe without difficulty or ill health effects in their classrooms both during and after the construction of 2211 Harold Way;
3. Students can safely and reliably get to school on time and access the schools’ main entrances, whether they walk, bike, bus, scooter, or drive to school both during and after construction;
4. Students can use the school bathrooms and the athletic fields reliably without a regular shutdown caused by sewage overflow on lines that already are at maximum capacity but stand to be further burdened by the Project’s 302 units; and that
5. BHS is provided with no-cost options for teacher and staff parking nearby (whether in the form of street permit parking, or spaces in other soon-to-be-built city parking structures, etc.) recognizing that teacher retention will be a major problem if low-salaried teachers need to compete with hundreds of new Harold Way residents and their visitors for already scarce parking near BHS.

Unfortunately, the City’s present COAs fail at every level to reasonably mitigate Project impacts on Berkeley High students, teachers, and facilities. The COAs should be replaced with specific and enforceable mitigation measures for the reasons that follow."