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Is Pleasanton leadership leading our community toward catastrophe?
Pleasanton is under pressure from the state and developers to approve more housing. A recent city meeting included a presentation on how Pleasanton could maximize housing on our current civic center site, despite a city survey showing 75% of our citizens do not support housing in downtown.
There is significantly more housing development in Pleasanton’s future with a lack of infrastructure to support it. We will be burdened with more traffic, demands on our water supply and overcrowding at our schools. Our community should care.
Pleasanton Unified School District has historically been unwilling to use available funding to build schools. In years past, the need for a third high school was identified and approved but never built. The students are here but the land and funding are gone; the high school will never be built.
Our school board is now discussing using taxpayer-approved money, designated for an elementary school, for alternative uses. A new school was used to get voters to approve the $270 million bond; this is a dishonest bait and switch.
The result will be another capital asset lost to our community and additional debt for homeowners. Taxpayers should be angry.
The California Department of Education has a formula for best practices for school size. That best-practices formula was used when PUSD asked the city to identify school enrollment guidelines in our General Plan, which is Pleasanton’s planning constitution.
Pleasanton schools currently exceed those limits at all grade levels. We like to think Pleasanton exceeds the state minimum standard we don’t.
PUSD has in essence abandoned any enrollment limits. All Pleasanton middle and high schools exceed city and district enrollment limits, with no plan to ever build additional 6-12 schools. As PUSD moves to abandon building the one taxpayer-approved elementary school, our city will grow with unlimited enrollment at our current schools.
District employee costs not students, families or the community are the factors driving these decisions (think pension liability). Parents should be concerned.
Planning law makes clear and common sense dictates, comprehensive city planning requires building schools. In the past, there has been better cooperation between the city and school district that has resulted in schools getting built. Pleasanton needs to get back to that level of cooperation again.
Email your elected representatives. Tell our school board to honor their commitments made to the taxpayers, and act in our students’ and community’s best interests. Remind the City Council that housing without infrastructure is bad for Pleasanton; it is their responsibility.
Taxpayers should be angry, parents should be concerned, our community should care.
* Editor’s note: A 30-year Pleasanton community advocate, Julie Testa is a former member of the Pleasanton Human Services Commission and has participated on various budget committees and planning task forces.
With respect to housing, if 75% of residents surveyed don’t want housing downtown, why are they even considering it?
Re: The 75%
The source is the City of Pleasanton (City Hall).
The City has done quite a bit of community outreach related to the Downtown Specific Plan revision/update.
The outreach has been through First Wed & Farmer’s Market to name a few.
The City also conducted an online survey related to the downtown.
It was from the results of the Survey FROM THE CITY, that showed 75% of respondents did NOT want any more housing to be built.
John
Community Survey results 6/20/2017:
http://weblink.cityofpleasantonca.gov/weblink/DocView.aspx?dbid=0&id=270219&page=1&cr=1
Summary page 2, “75 percent did not support more housing downtown”
@ BobB
Are you referring to page 30?
John
Thanks Julie for staying on issue: Schools in Pleasanton. We see growth, even more medical facilities being built, Dublin building schools, more growth in Pleasanton. But school board is still studying the issue! Comments wander off to growth, pages of a study and no call for building more schools on disappearing available land, sitting in ancient modular classrooms, over crowding. Like the current council, no interest in education and new facilities!
No housing downtown, Let’s not forget that the city wants to vacate that property at the end of Main Street and move to the Bernal Property to build themselves a new city offices complex at a cost of 200+million tax payer dollars. If modulars are good enough for our students then they are good enough for our city employees
Stack and pack housing downtown area will best serve the downtown businesses while providing maximum housing units on the limited space downtown has available.
“Stack and pack” housing in our downtown, yep that’s a great idea, if you want to see a parking nightmare on our downtown streets let them slip that idea pass the citizens!! Check out the Safeway parking lot on Bernal and look at who’s parking there now that those stack and packs are occupied! Hopefully the locals never let the city’s royalty build that Taj Majal on the Bernal Property, we need more retail and restaurant storefronts in our downtown not residential units.
Ten story luxury condos would go well in downtown Pleasanton.
I am amiss why developers are not jumping on this opportunity!
Ten story luxury condos, twenty condos each floor at one million
pop per condo.
Patriot,
I am hoping our community sees this is not a “school issue”. That illusion lets our City leadership off the hook for their responsibility of comprehensive planning. This is an issue for families, a taxpayer issue, a quality of life issue for our community whether you have school-age kids or not (traffic impacts and property value), therefore… a City planning issue.
PUSD has not been able to manage growth mitigation left to their own devices. Someone recently said, “given the opportunity to do the right thing PUSD will do the wrong thing every time”. The only way schools have been built in the last three decades was with significant City cooperation. Even that didn’t always work but it got four schools built.
The “Capital Assets” that bond dollars pay for serve our community in perpetuity. Taxpayers need to understand what we lose if this bait and switch is accomplished.
State Department of Ed best practices enrollment guidelines are forgiven for communities that can not afford to honor what is in their student’s best interests. There is no excuse for PUSD when Pleasanton taxpayers have approved the tax burden to build a school.
(1)School Facilities Planning, California Department of Education
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/fa/sf/guideschoolsite.asp#Need
“findings indicate that reducing school size can produce considerable benefits across a range of outcomes”
“None of the research finds large schools superior to small schools.”
“The researchers say the case study analysis reveals that on average, smaller schools can provide a safer and more challenging school environment that creates higher academic achievement and graduation rates, fewer disciplinary problems, and greater satisfaction from families, students, and teachers. “
1/28/2000 PUSD Approves High School
https://www.pleasantonweekly.com/morgue/2000/2000_01_28.school.html
Funding was identified, City offered land, enrollment was expected to peak at 4,600 to 5,100 students in 2015, we are at 5021 but not yet at peak. Meaning we have the students but not the high school.
“Taxpayers should be angry, parents should be concerned, our community should care.”
Yes. I, for one, am and do.
The push for more and more and more housing, with no regard for the consequences, remains baffling.
Posting anonymous serves no one, serves no concern!
Reality is, California liberal government will mandate it!
If you do not like what is on the agenda, stand up, identify yourself
and be heard. Rambling anonymously is simply STUPID!!!
I know that planning law makes clear, and common sense dictates that the City shares the responsibility to ensure schools are built. I know that the only way Pleasanton schools have been built in the last three decades was with significant City cooperation. I know PUSD was trying to sell the land that had been made available for Hart Middle school. I know that the City cooperation is the only reason we have three middle schools in Pleasanton.
I know that PUSD had made such a mess of their capital debt that without a bond there was no way to dig out and mitigate growth. I know that would be bad for Pleasanton. I know that there were pleas that the community trust them and promises of accountability. I know that if this bait and switch happens the community will Never trust them again!
You know my name, we do not know yours.
So Julie, what I’m hearing you say is that you want the City to save the School District? Seems like the School District should right its own ship with its massive influx of Bond $$. The City is a good and conservative steward of the public $$ and the public trust. Why should we let the School District pull the City down into its financial morass? Doesn’t seem right.
Pleasanton’s kids are better for joint cooperation. Our families are better for joint cooperation. Our taxpayers are better for joint cooperation (shared resources/cost savings). Our community is better for joint cooperation (property values/traffic impacts). Pleasanton is better for the joint cooperation. There is no downside to the City taking seriously their responsibility for comprehensive planning, there is a serious downside to not. City/PUSD cooperation has always been good for Pleasanton.
Of course the buck stops with the Mayor! Good leadership would focus on education and new schools.
Using @ BobB’s “formula” if we cancel any new schools to be built, stack and pack our kids in overcrowded portables we would most likely have them all graduating as Rocket Scientists, Engineers, and Brain surgeons at the very minimum, if that’s the case then I say full speed ahead don’t stop at 3&4 story units let’s reach for the sky nothing is too good for our kids, let’s destroy this town if that what it’s going to take for that “formula” to work.
@Kathleen
Do you know what some of the opinions our elementary teachers have on building a new school. They probably can’t speak openly until higher ups and the union take a position but was wondering if they are all for it. I suppose the only reason they wouldn’t be is that the money going to a new construction wouldn’t go to their school.
PS- I hope you run next election cycle:)
Union has no say here, if anything we need to invest this money or return it to taxpayers before they rape the children of it.
@Kathleen
Thanks for the explanation. It appears like the money could be spent in an alternative way to impact more students than tearing down And not adding capacity at Lydiksen.
I know demographers and traffic engineers have many formulas to predict population growth but the Bay Area and tri-valley is a different animal. Multi-generation homes and forced California housing in this area will increase population at rates never recordered. I hope the school board becomes fully aware of this.
@june
Guessing you don’t have children in PUSD at this moment
June misses the point that the school is needed!
Kathleen thank you for all the information. It’s a real shame you weren’t elected to the School board last time around. I hope you will stand again.
The teacher’s union in Dublin and Pleasanton have worked to ensure that no high school has been built in any district since the Amador Valley Joint District was dissolved. The last high school was built in the early 1970s.
Usually during times when new schools are being discussed, the union also attempts to isolate and cut off board members from the community at large by preventing them from speaking to other people. This includes basically placing a gag order on the city council members.
In other words the union works to take away the First Amendment rights for elected officials to talk to stakeholders or other elected officials by having the superintendent and city manager work out among themselves various operating procedures designed to suppress the ability for elected officials from speaking to one another or the community unless they use as the channel the head bureaucrat of each entity, namely the superintendent or city manager. See http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/10/17/dublin-school-officials-seek-communication-protocol-with-city-council/ for example. How absurd can in get?
Every time there is a new elementary school proposed, the unions work to squash the effort by pointing out that teachers need all the funds for their salaries, and that it will cost several hundred thousand in operating costs to run the new school – salary for the principal, the vice principal, 2 custodian, electric and water bill.
When Neal was proposed, the city of Pleasanton even offered to loan PUSD the money to pay the operating costs for Neal. PUSD refused.
The bottom line is that as long as the boards of both districts continue to listen to the unions as they have for the last couple of decades, no new schools will be built. And as long as the school board members act as if they work for the superintendent instead of the superintendent working for them, no schools will be built.
Teachers union = domestic terrorists, holding children’s education hostage for self preservation
The Lydiksen new contruction is a great opportunity for PUSD and City to work together for community benefit.
Hopefully the PUSD will take this opportunity (Which has not been done in a VERY, VERY long time)
John
We voted for the bond measure to make upgrades and improvements to existing schools only, not an additional school with added administrative costs. The fact that a bond measure was needed in the first place and all the early retirements for big pensions does not give us real confidence that even more bond measures wont be asked for approval in the future even though Pleasanton is always top ranked and award winning. With respect to Ms Testa, she might try to look at the glass half filled instead.
So how does one get a ballot measure created to allow pleasanton voters to vote down the bond measure previously approved (or perhaps refund it) as its not being used as advertised (or at least the remaining portion not used for a new school)
I guess we just go to the school board and give our opinions. I dont think the bond money has to be used for a new school if the enrollment projections do not support it and if the existing facilities can be improved to accommodate and serve the students (not the parents or school administrators). I suppose Pleasanton Parent’s question should be asked officially if a bond can be terminated if the money to be collected is not warranted. I will say the additional taxesi is tough for us given college expensesand aging parent care.
I am probably a minority but I dont find some additional apartments or townhouses in downtown offensive. We like seeing young adults patronizing restaurants and shops especially if they can walk there. Perhaps it would add more life at night.
@tamom,
Source on that 75 percent?
@June
I don’t know if you’re in the minority in that opinion. I would like to see more downtown townhouses and apartments too.
Julie Testa provides no source for claim that 75 percent of our residents support no housing downtown.
@John,
Do you have a link to that survey? How old is it? What questions specifically were asked? How representative were the samples?
A graph on this survey shows that greater than about 52% are against more housing.
http://www.cityofpleasantonca.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=29947
@John,
I was referring to the graph on page 12.
@Patriot,
The 75% thing came from Julie.
More housing downtown would be an improvement.
@Julie Testa,
Thank you for the link. It was the phone survey of Pleasanton residents likely to vote in the November 2016 election.
@June, “We voted for the bond measure to make upgrades and improvements to existing schools only, not an additional school with added administrative costs.”
That is incorrect. I have posted it on other threads, so no need to do it again, but the new elementary school was (a) stated in the 75 word ballot language and (b) called out in the supporting resolution passed by the board. The added administrative costs are talked about without mentioning savings. Teachers move from where they are to a new school; leased portables cost us over $200,000 a year, so that would be a savings; larger elementary schools will be reduced in size, meaning vice principals may no longer be necessary, and you would also have close to a 1:1 transfer of utility costs per classroom to the new school. What generally is additional are classified staff: secretary, librarian, custodian (which can be shared).
Most importantly, we have three schools over 700 students, one of which is over 800, and elementary students in portables at many sites. We also have over 100 students who cannot attend their neighborhood schools, with one mother who spoke at a board meeting about driving past Walnut Grove and Alisal to Valley View every day.
It is not acceptable to presume any of this is acceptable for any child or family. The need for a new school is evidenced all around us.
On the whole, I see schools that are more crowded, but crowded with better students as an improvement over schools with stagnant enrollment, lower student density, and lower student outcomes (test scores, college placements, etc.)
I say bring on the housing. It is an improvement.
I completely with with with Bob B on his last comment.
To Kathleen R comment to me, iam saying why I voted for the bond. Mea culpa.
To Julie T, you know the School Board and not the City has the responsibility and authority to make decisions about school facilities, and why fid you support the bond if you dont trust the school board to manage the money?
Growth isn’t a singular problem. The problems come with how we grow and how we plan for supporting that growth. Support obviously includes roads in proper condition, traffic flow, police, fire . . . and schools. Building schools takes 3-5 years even when the land is identified and owned. The pots of money may be different, but working together has already given taxpayers three dual use gymnasiums. We need these entities to work together for the benefit of all our residents.
@Flighops,
I would have no problem building more. What is it exactly that you are worried about? Pleasanton is not quaint. It is right next to a major, growing metropolitan area. That is just reality.
And yes, that is a major force in driving positive outcomes for our schools.
@Bill, I can only tell you what has been said at meetings. Some board members agree we need a school; some agree that putting a new/additional structure at Donlon would address where the overcrowding is occurring (that school has 19 acres, enough for two school structures and play fields, one K-2 and one 3-5). And some are stating there isn’t money for operating costs.
Operating costs aren’t the problem though. When presented to the board, there has been no balance in reporting other costs savings (leasing portables alone has cost us $215,000 per year for many years). Staff continues to get raises which then increase pension contributions at a time when the state is pushing more and more of that expense onto districts–so I see this as a pension problem, not an operating cost problem.
I have never met a teacher who wants to be in a portable, but that is maybe 60 teachers out of about 800 district wide.
I agree with Pleasanton Parent about not incurring $35MM in debt if a new school isn’t built. The 75 word ballot language stated a new school. The resolution that states funds can be used in alternate ways is bait and switch as Julie Testa says. The demographer stated the dip in enrollment is temporary and enrollment will grow with additional building in the community.
That construction growth is here and will continue. So far the district isn’t planning for a new school and is using this first round of $72MM in bond money to tear down Lydiksen for $30MM. That plan does not serve the majority of students, does not provide additional capacity, and current ideas shove the structures to the back of the campus (I don’t think neighbors are aware their views will change dramatically and the grass area will no longer be just across the street). I also heard a teacher from Amador argue in favor of fixing the big gym–a project that would serve 2,500 students. Even that makes more sense to me than tearing down Lydiksen.
More appalling is that a new school at $35MM is eligible for matching dollars from the state, but by spreading the eligibility “points” to cover Lydiksen (which is only eligible for $600K), the district actually loses matching dollars from the state.
Right Kathleen, lets just build a new school because we can get matching monies from the State. So Pleasanton residents pay for a local bond whether we need a new school or not as well as State bond measures and take the matching State monies away from poor and under served inner cities who really need the funds. We are an affluent community and dont need gold plating just because of it.
@June, I don’t mind opposing opinions, but let’s at least start with the facts. A district only qualifies for state funding matches if they have land, plans, and the matching funding. Pleasanton taxpayers will pay for the state bond whether we qualify to receive some of that $9 billion or not. There’s a lot more information, and I have posted it many times.
Kathleen, the qualifying funds for the State match come from our bond measure, correct? And thus in addition to the Pleasanton resident tax, money from the strapped State coffers are used. I realise we will pay for the State bond anyways, but I think it is more equitable and correct to not take State money away from poor and under-performing inner city districts who really need the cash. On the other hand, our schools are always top rated in the State and people want to move here because of many reasons but mostly it is the excellent schools.
Kathleen, can you gve us a break down of construction cost and the amount needed annually to operate and staff a new school (including pension obligations). I would like to think we can improve, modernize and expand existing schools to meet our need and high standards at a lesser cost instead of spending more resident and State monies on operating another school. What is interesting is the success of private schools and after-school tutoring businesses in the area and there are a lot!
Mr. Brasky, I wont dignify your cheap shot disguised as a question by answering.
@June,
# California voters passed a bond for $9 BILLION solely for school facilities, of which about $2 Billion is already spoken for.
# Pleasanton voters passed a bond for $270 Million for school facilities.
# ONLY taxpayers in Pleasanton pay for the $270 MM; ALL California taxpayers pay for the $9 Billion, including Pleasanton taxpayers.
# Neither one of these bonds can pay for anything other than capital expenses (facilities). The state bond can’t be used to help themselves (strapped State coffers), nor can it be used in any district for anything but school facilities.
# Unfortunately, an “under performing inner city district” may not qualify for these matching facilities funds.
So a $35MM new elementary school should qualify for matching funds from the state at 50% (there are qualifiers to that) or $17.5 million, a fraction of what is available from the state bond.
Our schools are top rated for a variety of reasons, but the majority of that benefit comes from well educated families who value education–demographics.
Expanding schools–if one uses state guidelines for play spaces, physical classroom sizes, libraries, etc.–is not possible. We already have one elementary that is only 5 acres. We rely on the city park next to that school to give our children the play areas they need (another great example of city/district collaboration).
As to the cost to operate a new school, the district has stated a cost of $800,000/year. Staff, however, did not show the savings that move from one or more current sites to that new site, such as $215,000/year spent to lease portables (and we have paid that for years). Smaller sites would mean assistant principals may no longer be needed or can be shared between two sites. The same for custodial staff. And turning lights and water off in portables moves that cost to the new elementary classrooms. So $800,000 is likely a good guess, but it is not the complete picture.
As to construction costs, modular construction is cheaper than stick construction, but without dedicated will to maintain either type, we will find ourselves in the same mess we are in now . . . tearing down one school and buildings throughout the district with millions of dollars of neglect. As one seasoned professional told me when I asked if $35MM is enough for a new school: “$35 million is a number; it depends on what you build.”
Most importantly, getting the best return we can in matching funds from the state means that $17.5 MM or $6.9 MM can extend the life of our bond and the funds can be used to upgrade other facilities. The majority of voters chose to support these bonds, and we would be foolish to miss out on being able to build/fix as much as we can.
There are a lot of reasons for the success of private schools and after school tutoring: families who want the highest outcomes for their children for colleges; students whose first language isn’t English; students who want to learn another language; and students who struggle. From Robots: “See a need; fill a need.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFVlyKRVgwg :o)