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Dublin school board members approved how to disperse $27.6 million in bond funds in a contentious conversation earlier this month.
In a series of votes on Oct. 10, Dublin Unified School District trustees opted to support staff recommendations of facility upgrades across the district and defeated a motion to construct a new parking garage on the Emerald High School campus — after which Trustee Dan Cherrier left mid-meeting for the second time in a month.
Staff recommended utilizing the funds to complete renovations of Dublin Elementary ($14.7 million) and Murray Elementary ($6.8 million), and provide HVAC systems to gymnasiums at Fallon Middle, Wells Middle and Dublin High schools ($6.1 million). Other projects under consideration that were not approved for the unused funds was a multi-level parking garage for Emerald High and Dougherty Elementary multipurpose room modernization.
Prior to the main discussions or vote taking, members of the Dublin community shared their thoughts during the meeting’s public comment section.
“I urge you to distinguish between wants and needs,” parent Matt Townley said when addressing the board. “Imagine for a moment that all of the school names were stripped from the plan list. If you had to vote based purely on the facts and were unaware of which school was which, would your vote change?”
Townley brought attention to the more fundamental aspects of school site projects, such as the HVAC system installations in school gyms, in contrast to a less immediate need for an Emerald parking facility.
“I have a hard time believing that anyone here would objectively prioritize the convenience of a multi-level parking garage of a school that won’t reach full capacity for at least three years before addressing the basic health and safety concerns of thousands of kids today,” Townley added.
The board reviewed a presentation on possible fund allocations given by Thomas Moore, assistant superintendent of facility planning and construction.
Remaining funds up for discussion were left over from a Facilities Master Plan, previously approved by the board in February 2022. The board approved immediate improvements and structural upgrades to many school sites. The master plan also featured a 600-fixed-seat theater for Emerald High.
After the funding of the theater project, the district was left with an estimated $27.6 million in remaining funds to be used on various projects in the district, according to the staff report that night.
Board Vice President Kristin Pelham voiced her disapproval of allocating funds toward a parking garage at the new high school being built in two phases in East Dublin.
“This is district money. We did not do a bond just for the Emerald area, or just for the west side area,” Pelham said. “Every kid across Dublin deserves a clean, safe school. I will not support pushing this off and I will not support a parking garage.”
Trustee William Kuo also disapproved of the parking building, saying, “I’m not comfortable approving a parking garage to take from this general fund just for EHS.”
Student representative and Dublin High senior Anika Yu shared her thoughts on the item.
“There are also climate considerations … EHS doesn’t really require a parking garage and building it would take an extra toll on the climate,” Yu said. “As a district I think we need to make decisions that support more renewable transportation methods like walking, biking and bussing.”
“I did ask everyone on the student advisory council what they thought about all the possible projects that we could pursue. Every single one of the students were in favor of the staff recommendation,” she added.
Board President Gabi Blackman spoke in favor of approving funds for the parking structure.
“I do believe it needs to be considered,” Blackman said, emphasizing the lack of existing parking in the area. “The city undercounted the number of garage parking spaces for the residents with all that dense housing, as a result almost every single person has to park one vehicle on the street. There is no street parking.”
“The other thing to understand is who will be coming to the site,” Blackman added. “We are going to have games here, quite large games here, our gym is designed to accommodate large events.”
In a motion to build the parking garage, the board voted 3-2 against building the parking garage, with Blackman and Cherrier in favor of the project but losing out to the other three trustees.
Next, the board voted on HVAC implementation at Wells, Fallon and Dublin High which was approved unanimously. The board then voted 4-1 against approving the MPR project at Dougherty, with Blackman the single member in favor of it.
The board voted 3-2 to approve the staff recommendations for remainder funds, minus the HVAC projects because these had been singled out and approved in a previous motion.
Following the votes, a five-minute break occurred during which Cherrier left the meeting and did not return. “Following ITEM G2, Trustee Cherrier departed this evening’s Board meeting,” DUSD officials stated in a social media post on X, formerly Twitter.
No explanation was given for Cherrier’s early departure after the defeat of the Emerald parking garage, for which he had advocated in multiple meetings. Attempts to contact Cherrier for comment were unsuccessful.
One month earlier, Cherrier walked out of the board’s Sept. 12 meeting after being on the losing side of a 3-2 vote to hire an investigator to probe whether district administration and staff were fully adhering to the board majority’s prior directive to halt work toward standards-based grading.
