John Knox White has an interesting post on his site about the Mayor dropping hints at a previous Chamber of Commerce meeting that she would like to change Interim City Manager Ann Marie Gallant from interim to permanent.

JKW brings up some good points about why we should slow down the meteoric rise from Interim Finance Director to Interim City Manager to Permanent City Manager, which include:

1. Not hired through a formal search process
2. Upcoming change in composition of City Council with election in November 2010
3. Our contract with the Interim City Manager has plenty of time left, we’re six months into a two year contract

Given those reasons, there really is no justification if the Mayor decides to hurry along the process to just appoint her and be done with it.  Particularly because not four years ago when Jim Flint announced his resignation from his post, the City undertook a comprehensive search for the next City Manager which resulted in Debra Kurita’s appointment and the eventual resignation.

They hired a search firm (The Mills Group) to go through a lengthy process to find the right person for the job.  In fact, they even put out an RFP to find the search firm to help them issue an RFP for the City Manager search.   Included in the RFP for the search firm search, it included this profile of the for the “Ideal” City Manager (I’m not sure why the City chose to place “ideal” in quote, I’m pretty sure they did not mean to make the “ideal” ironic)  But the first ideal City Manager qualification is:

A seasoned City Manager in a medium-sized community similar to the cultural and economic diversity of the City of Alameda, California. This seasoning would be demonstrated by 15 to 20 years of local government experience, including 10 years as a City Manager and Assistant City Manager. The preferred community size is 50,000 to 100,000 residents.

While California local government experience is a plus, City Managers from similar communities in other states would be acceptable. County Administrators or Department heads from larger organizations also would be considered.

Experiences working in communities with military base re-use, redevelopment programs, publicly owned utilities and housing authorities also would be plusses.

Right off the bat, it would appear that our current Interim City Manager might not have made it past the first round of based on her previous experience and the size of the communities in which she has worked.   According to Michele Ellson’s post about our Interim City Manager, she has held City Manager posts in three cities since 2004: Gustine, King City, and Desert Hot Springs.  All which are tiny cities which if you added the populations of all three cities wouldn’t equal Alameda’s population.

But, she does have experience with Redevelopment programs, having been a deputy administrator for a largish one in Los Angeles according to this article posted on JKW’s blog, you’ll have to search for the reference, it’s buried near the middle end of the article.

Although here is the amusing part of the RFP, ideal candidate narrative, I assume this was back during the days of the Alameda Point Community Partners who were selling the City the idea of building a gondola, because one of the last requirements is the ability for the City Manager to lead staff into:

Building a bridge, tunnel, BART station or gondola.

Also, from what I understand from folks who were actively involved in the City Manager search and as outlined in the RFP for the search firm itself, there was a multi-faceted process for hiring the City Manager back then and included:

1. Develop brochure to “sell” the position of Alameda City Manager to prospective candidates
2. Screen resumes
3. Send out additional questions to screened candidates
4. Personal interviews
5. Screen candidates for semi-finalist group
6. Screen candidates for finalist group
7. Candidate interviews
8. Reference checks
9. Compensation negotiations.

And, according to folks involved in this process, there was a list developed of 14 Alamedans from various backgrounds that were asked to be part of an interview group of the two finalists that were selected.   Which I thought, when told about it, was a great idea.   That group gave their recommendation about the candidates and submitted those opinions to the City Council.

So basically, I spent all these words to say, if we are going to appoint someone as the City Manager, the process needs to be as rigorous as it has been in the past.   For the Mayor to unilaterally (or even with the votes of two other Councilmembers) decide that she wants to remove one word from the Interim City Manager’s title is unacceptable.

Perhaps, much like the eventual appointment of Ardella Dailey as Superintendent a few years ago when she moved from being Interim Superintendent to Permanent Superintendent, we’ll have expended a bunch of money and time and come up with the same result, but isn’t it worth it to being transparency to the process?   After all, this is, arguably, the most important position in the City and should not be taken lightly.

The Planning Board will be considering expanding the time that trucks can make deliveries to Alameda Towne Centre.  Trader Joes, Big 5, Petco, Safeway, Walgreens, and Panera all want to be able to have trucks drop off deliveries to their store beginning as early at 6:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m.   In comparison, currently they are restricted to 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Kohl’s is also asking for the Planning Board to approve expanded hours so they can have those early bird and late night special sales where they practically throw their wares at you at super duper low low prices that you absolutely cannot resist!   Essentially what they want is to be able to open until midnight for 36 days per year during the holidays (Nov. 1 to Jan 1) and 1 day after Jan 1 for a “sales tax holiday.” And they want to be able to open early for those after Thanksgiving and Christmas sales rushes.

Of course, in comparison, Safeway and Walgreens already open until 12 and, if I’m not mistaken, isn’t the Walgreens open 24 hours?   I remember driving out to Walgreens at three in the morning to buy a nine volt battery because my fire alarm was low and beeping and driving me batty.   But I digress.

So, of course, as with all things Alameda, there are people that object.   Which I don’t really blame them because I’m not sure that hearing the beep beep beep of a truck backing up at 11:00 p.m. is my ideal sound to lull me to sleep at night.

Off topic, I am still stumped at how Kohl’s makes any money at all.   Between the $10 off coupons they are now giving away at Safeway if you buy $50 worth of groceries and the frequent $10 off cards (no minimum charge) they have attached to their circulars.  Seriously, you can literally buy $11 worth of stuff and only pay the addition $1.  It is a wonder that they are still in business.

In other news, the St Joe’s application is back up for consideration as well.

I know I don’t generally post on the weekends, but here’s a good one for folks that do check in on the weekends and have a hankering for some good showtunes…Denise Shelton the box office manager for the Alameda Civic Light Opera sent in this reminder that ACLO is has a great show, Broadway’s Greatest Moments at Kofman tonight at 8:00 p.m. and tomorrow at 2:00 p.m.:

As you know, this has been a tough year financially for many organizations. ACLO is no exception. This year we produced three critically acclaimed productions: “Ragtime”, “Annie”, and “Hair”; raised the funds to distribute 1000 tickets to “Annie” to needy families, and had our 13th successful internship program teaching valuable job skills to high school and college age students. The rent we pay to AUSD is a significant income for the school district. Ticket sales and donations, both private and corporate, however, have been seriously reduced by the current economy. This weekend we have two performances of “Broadway’s Greatest Moments” at Kofman Theater: tonight at 8 pm and tomorrow at 2 pm.

Ticket prices are $30 for seniors 65 and older and kids 17 and under, and $34.00 for adults.    And, if you mention “Blogging Bayport”, they’ll waive $3 at the door ticket fee.   Neat eh?

But if you can’t make it, if you can spare a few for this great organization that brings a bit of Broadway to the Island every season, you can make contributions  online at www.aclo.com or by sending a check to “ACLO, 875-A Island Drive, #292, Alameda, CA  94502.

So, I had anticipated that the CIC meeting would have been up on the old video streaming on the City website yesterday to talk about what is going on at Alameda Landing, but for some strange reason the video is not up.   Instead the City re-posted an old Planning Board meeting and labelled it as November 4, 2009, when I’m pretty sure there was not a Planning Board meeting scheduled on Wednesday night.

AND…the regularly scheduled closed door ARRA meeting with SunCal was cancelled as well.

Weirdness.

However, I walked the length of the new Stargell extension yesterday, which is coming along nicely.   According to the last update I received, while the complete extension is not due to be complete until April of next year, Stargell itself should be reopened by mid-December.  Even though the signs say November.   It is slightly confusing right now without road signs or lights, but I imagine once that is all straightened out it should be fine.    The curbs are down and the base street is poured waiting for a layer of slurry to finish it off.  No sidewalks yet on the Stargell portion and of course, no landscaping.

Here’s the thing that kills me about the Alameda Landing project.  Catellus has talked this puppy to death but still nothing.  Nada.   Even the City had to put up the cold hard cash to actually move forward with the Stargell Extension construction, which eventually Catellus is supposed to repay.   Eventually.   But according to Catellus, they are in open negotiations with Target to build a store at Alameda Landing.   I imagine that they are waiting for the Stargell project to be fully complete before moving forward with the Target construction.

But, at this point, as with anything dealing with the Alameda Landing project, I’m not going to hold my breath after the whole losing ClifBar debacle.

Okay, after watching Tuesday night’s meeting, I am convinced that the City and Council majority (Beverly Johnson, Frank Mataresse, and Doug deHaan) have screwed the pooch on this one.   The City Clerk and City Attorney were fixated on the two particular (or three actually) pieces of election code and convinced that the February date is the only option for the City to move forward with the Alameda Point Revitalization Initiative.

The problem last night was that the two Councilpeople who eventually voted against scheduling the election for the February date didn’t focus enough on the key issues here.  Everything was made so confusing and overly complex with trying to figure out if the Initiative was an ordinance or a charter measure that the reading of the ordinance election code law was deficient.

For arguments sake, let’s go with the City Attorney’s reading of the Initiative that it is an ordinance as opposed to a charter initiative.   I’m willing to say, yes, the Initiative is more ordinance than charter initiative since the City Attorney was insistent on pulling out from the Initiative Election Code 9217, which IS in the Initiative as to what happens if the Initiative is successful.

Now, let’s look at the code that the City Clerk and Attorney used to base their opinion, they were using Election Code 9214 which says:

If the initiative petition is signed by not less than 15 percent of the voters of the city according to the last report of registration by the county elections official to the Secretary of State pursuant to Section 2187, effective at the time the notice specified in Section 9202 was published, or, in a city with 1,000 or less registered voters, by 25 percent of the voters or 100 voters of the city, whichever is the lesser number, and contains a request that the ordinance be submitted immediately to a vote of the people at a special election, the legislative body shall do one of the following:

(a) Adopt the ordinance, without alteration, at the regular meeting at which the certification of the petition is presented, or within 10 days after it is presented.
(b) Immediately order a special election, to be held pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 1405, at which the ordinance, without alteration, shall be submitted to a vote of the voters of the city.
(c) Order a report pursuant to Section 9212 at the regular meeting at which the certification of the petition is presented. When the report is presented to the legislative body, the legislative body shall either adopt the ordinance within 10 days or order an election pursuant to subdivision (b).

So here is where is gets fuzzy, because the language is not clear and so if we were actually doing a highly conservative reading of the law, we would go for the most restrictive reading and not the more lax reading.   So there are two ways to interpret the first paragraph.

The first interpretation is the more lax reading which is how the City interpreted it, meaning that as long as the number of voters is greater than 15%, a special election must be called.

The second interpretation would be a more conservative reading of the code which is what Lena Tam and Marie Gilmore were hinting at but never really hit the mark on which was that the 15% threshold AND an explicit request for the special election must both be present in order to call for a special election.  And since both the City Attorney and City Clerk both agreed that SunCal did not place an explicit request asking for a special election, there should be more flexibility in scheduling an election.  As an alternative, election code 9215 says:

If the initiative petition is signed by not less than 10 percent of the voters of the city, according to the last report of registration by the county elections official to the Secretary of State pursuant to Section 2187, effective at the time the notice specified in Section 9202 was published, or, in a city with 1,000 or less registered voters, by 25 percent of the voters or 100 voters of the city, whichever is the lesser number, the legislative body shall do one of the following:
(a) Adopt the ordinance, without alteration, at the regular meeting at which the certification of the petition is presented, or within 10 days after it is presented.
(b) Submit the ordinance, without alteration, to the voters pursuant to subdivision (b) of Section 1405, unless the ordinance petitioned for is required to be, or for some reason is, submitted to the voters at a special election pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 1405.
(c) Order a report pursuant to Section 9212 at the regular meeting at which the certification of the petition is presented. When the report is presented to the legislative body, the legislative body shall either adopt the ordinance within 10 days or order an election pursuant to subdivision (b).

Let me pull out the relevant portions though:

If the initiative petition is signed by not less than 10 percent of the voters of the city, according to the last report of registration by the county elections official… the legislative body shall do one of the following:…
(b) Submit the ordinance, without alteration, to the voters pursuant to subdivision (b) of Section 1405, unless the ordinance petitioned for is required to be, or for some reason is, submitted to the voters at a special election pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 1405.

Since the petition was signed by more than 15% (aka “not less than 10 percent of the voters”)  of registered voters and did not contain a request for the special election, subdivision (b) of Section 1405 would have allowed for the city to schedule the election later:

(b) The election for a county initiative that qualifies pursuant to Section 9118 shall be held at the next statewide election occurring not less than 88 days after the date of the order of election. The election for a municipal or district initiative that qualifies pursuant to Section 9215 or 9311 shall be held at the jurisdiction’s next regular election occurring not less than 88 days after the date of the order of election.

Which means that the City Council could have voted to place it on the next regular election, which would have been June.

Given that there is confusion and that the cost to the City is so high depending on when the election is scheduled, $325K for the February election, $50-75K for the June election, the Council should have taken the conservative route and gone with the reading that would have required greater scrutiny if the expense was more than six times the amount of scheduling it during a regular election.   I wonder which department’s budget that $325K will come out of because even though the question about SunCal paying for the election came up last night, that would be an awkward precedent to set and would bring up issues literally buying an election.

Personally, if I were the Firefighters I would be pissed about the money being expended for this election, when their initiative was shunted off into the recesses of November 2011.

Clearly I have not yet watched the City Council meeting yet.  I generally save that for the day after when I turn it on in the background while doing some work that allows for multitasking of that sort.   So instead, first a few feel good type notices.

First up!  CASA Alameda will be hosting a Town Hall tomorrow, 6:30 p.m. at Independence Plaza with the purpose to:

CELEBRATE the progress Alameda has made in the last year

CHALLENGE Alamedans to build on those successes and engage more of the community, and

CHAMPION some great Alamedans who have shown leadership locally and globally

Also, at the meeting will be Caitlin Grey, a Senior at Alameda High School, who was selected as one of only 16 U.S. students to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference this December in Copenhagen, Denmark.   She will be attending as the youth delegate for the Sierra Student Coalition.    However, she needs some help to offset the cost to attend the event and need to raise $2500 by December.   If you would like to help Caitlin, you can send checks made out to “Caitlin Grey” and mail them to 1422 Gibbons Drive, Alameda, CA 94501.   But she will be speaking at the Town Hall, great time to send a few ducats to help out an awesome Alameda youth.

And at the exact same time Alternatives in Action will be hosting its fall open house, in case you are interested in seeing what the program is all about.  They are located at the former Woodstock Elementary site.

And speaking of school type stuff, if you have not been checking out Susan Davis’s contributions to In Alameda, you really should.  She is doing a phenomenal job.  Her latest post about inter-district students (aka kids that don’t live in Alameda) is not to be missed.    She points out that the latest offering from the crack news team over at Action Alameda —  which asserts that the East End parents should be allowing more  inter-district students of color into their schools in order to prove to people that they aren’t racists — failed to provide the tidbit that inter-district students generally only fill seats where there is capacity to add additional kids.     And in the fairly recent past, given the skirmishes over lottery vs first-come-first-serve systems, the East End has not really had the capacity to accept additional inter-district students in order to, in the words of Action Alameda, “put their children where their mouth is.”

In addition to being a rather strange choice of words and an extremely discomforting visual, Action Alameda had this to say about East End (and Franklin and Bay Farm) parents as well:

Sadly, some of our most vocal local proponents of “diversity” in Alameda schools are also moms who send their kids to Franklin, Otis, Edison or one of the Bay Farm schools where they’ve evidently been able to shut-out the non-white inter-district transfer students from Oakland. They refuse to put their children where their mouth is.

Alameda’s west-end census tracts, have traditionally been predominantly African-American or otherwise non-white, such as census tract 4276. (See graphic below.) Judging by the refusals to consider elementary school consolidation, and cries for parcel taxes which reinforce the status quo, it seems there are a number of WASP parents and Jewess moms – and other non-white parents too; racial discrimination against African-Americans or other races is not the exclusive purview of Caucasians – in town, who aim to keep it that way.

First of all, I don’t think it is just the East End (and Franklin and Bay Farm) parents are are against school consolidation.   And elementary school consolidation on the East End would be a tricky task since neither Edison nor Otis has the capacity to engulf the other school into its population, and there aren’t too many large developable spaces in the East End to build a mega elementary school.   Second, the suggestion that Edison, or Otis, or Bay Farm, or Franklin bump kids that live in that attendance zone in other to, um, accept a “fair share” as though the inter-district students are some detriment to that school is absurd and would be a logistical nightmare.   Third, “jewess”?   Really?  Seriously, I think the last time I have read the term “jewess” in print was possibly in Ivanhoe.   Oh, and that Saturday Night Live skit, but if Action Alameda is trying to pass themselves off as anywhere near as funny as Gilda Radner they are failing miserably.   When I looked up “jewess” in the online dictionary, according to the Random House dictionary:

Jew⋅ess  [joo-is]
–noun Usually Offensive.
a Jewish girl or woman.
Origin:
1350–1400; ME jewesse.

And the American Heritage Dictionary had this to say:

Jew·ess (jōō’ĭs)
n. Offensive
A Jewish woman or girl.
Usage Note: Like many other English nouns in which the suffix -ess is added to a gender-neutral word to indicate femaleness, the terms Jewess and Negress are now widely regarded as offensive. It is interesting to note that the objection to words formed with the -ess suffix does not apply to words such as Latina and Chicana, whose contrasting forms Latino and Chicano are not gender-neutral but rather refer even in English primarily to males. See Usage Notes at -ess, Latina

Only Easton’s 1897 Bible dictionary gives a benign definition for the term:

Jewess

a woman of Hebrew birth, as Eunice, the mother of Timothy (Acts 16:1; 2 Tim. 1:5), and Drusilla (Acts 24:24), wife of Felix, and daughter of Herod Agrippa I.

But I don’t get the feeling that it was being used in a strictly biblical sense.   It’s seems a strange tact to take when one is talking about being open to diversity.

In the continuing farce that is Alameda Point, after Councilmember Frank Matarrese’s announcement that he is now not in support of the Alameda Point Initiative even though he used to be in support of it, but now realizes that even though there really has been no new information released since the other day and when the Initiative first came out, he is now against it.

So, either Frank Matarrese and Beverly Johnson didn’t read the damn thing before they endorsed it, possible, but would be pretty embarrassing to admit or there is something a little more complex afoot.   Perhaps it has something to do with this mysterious other option that folks have been hinting at.

Here’s the thing about Frank Matarrese’s sudden come to Jesus about his feelings on the Alameda Point Initiative.   He should have waited.  He should have waited until after City staff came back with the information requested by the Council at the last meeting, and did their song and dance presentation about the reports.   At least then people could point to that as a defining moment and an infusion of information that would better inform his opinion.   Taken like this with no new information, the perception is that he is just following the Mayor’s lead.   And for someone who will probably be running for Mayor next year, the last thing that shows leadership is, you know, following someone else’s lead.

So the question is, because honestly the same criticisms could be lobbed at the Mayor and the Chamber of Commerce as well, what information was so compelling in these past few weeks that was not compelling the months and months ago that the (1) Initiative language was released and (2) that the two election reports were released.   Because all these things that have miraculously become issues that are too big to be ignored were discussed in the first Election report issued in May.     But rather than a slow trickle of one after the other seeing the light, it comes en masse.  Almost like a coordinated effort.

And from the sound of recent communications from City leaders, it’s sounding more and more likely than something may not be that kosher.

According to folks who attended a recent Chamber of Commerce breakfast, Interim City Manager, Ann Marie Gallant mentioned that the City has a secret contingency plan for Alameda Point.   And according to some other folks who attended Frank Matarrese’s last Town Hall meeting he discussed the option of the City developing the land itself.

I really hope that City of Alameda Development Incorporated is not the “secret contingency plan” that our leaders have in their back pockets to whip out at the 11th hour to save the day.   Apparently, we can’t run a golf course successfully and have to contract out operations, but we are now going to get into the business of land development.   We can’t afford to pump the needed capital into the golf course to fix up the greens and bring them up to par, but we are going find millions and millions of dollars to front for predevelopment and other construction related costs.   (Remember the projected cost for an EIR alone is $2 million) Personally, after the &T debacle, the City is going to have a hard time convincing Alamedans that the City getting into another risky enterprise is a good idea.

I hope everyone had a nice Halloween.   We had lots of trick o’ treaters, a lot of little witches and transformers.   Given the renewed popularity I was surprised some of the bigger kids who generally come out at the tail end of the trick or treating time weren’t dressed like vampires.   But all in all, a lot of fun.   A bit of bad news over the weekend given the huge oil spill, but I’m going to leave the talk about that to folks like Michele Ellson (and here) and Susan Davis who have been doing a wonderful job covering it so far.   Not because I don’t care, because I do, but talking about dead birds is depressing.

Also, according to news reports it looks like the Bay Bridge is still closed, which means — for me, at least — another long slog through the City after a ferry ride to the City.   At least the Ferry itself is a rather pleasant ride.

So the big news  is that the City Council will be voting on when to schedule the Alameda Point Revitalization Initiative.    The City Clerk has suggested that a special election be called in February to the tune of $235-325K.   According to the City Clerk, there has not been an indication that SunCal will pay for the special election and honestly, why should they?   It would seem a bit odd for a company to sponsor an election, if the City does not want to bear the cost of the special election then they need to schedule it during a general election.   I can’t imagine that the City will be deducting the cost of the Firefighters Initiative from the Fire Department budget whenever they eventually schedule that Initiative for an election, right?

And then, there is the communication from the Oakland City Attorney, thanks to William Smith and Don Roberts, that implies that Oakland would prefer to see an EIR be completed prior to putting the initiative to ballot.   While William S. seemed to view the letter from the Oakland City Attorney as a backdoor condemnation of the the initiative, I didn’t really see it that way.

It is an interesting position that the Oakland City Attorney is taking and one that will be difficult for opponents of the Initiative to spin in their favor.   Essentially, the Oakland City Attorney is saying that because the the City has an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with SunCal that they have sponsored the initiative.   The more interesting argument is that because the Plan is part of the Initiative and that the Plan has been vetted through the various City Boards and Commissions AND that staff has offered comments and input to the plan which was incorporated into Plan that is part of the Initiative that the City has essentially taken sponsorship of that Plan.  So while some opponents are calling for — if the initiative fails or if the City Council refuses to place the initiative on the ballot (more on that later) — a more open and transparent process to developing the initiative/plan, the argument that the Oakland City Attorney will be making is because the process of developing the plan has already been so open and has involved the City on so many levels that the City has taken sponsorship of this plan/initiative and therefore must abide by the settlement agreement.

Like I said, that was definitely the more interesting of the arguments presented as to how the City has lent its sponsorship to the Alameda Point Initiative.

Moving on, I’m not sure if the City Council can decide not to schedule the Initiative for some future election.   I am sure there will be folks parading to the podium to tell the City Council that they shouldn’t schedule the election for this and the other reason, but legally I don’t believe the City Council would be able to dump the Initiative at that point.   At this point, given the way the political winds are blowing with a curiously conveniently appearing coordinated effort by the Chamber of Commerce, the Mayor, and now Councilmember Frank Matarrese to say “I like the Plan, just not the Initiative” if the Mayor and Frank Matarrese along with Doug deHaan (who was always against the Plan except for when he was for notCatellus aka SunCal when he initially voted for them) could vote to not schedule it, I’m sure they would.

So at this point, it’s not a question of if, but rather, when.   February 2010 would be costly and expensive.  June 2010 at least would be a primary for the governor’s race so it wouldn’t be as expensive as a special election.   November 2010 is what Oakland is aiming for, if the EIR can be completed before then.   I’ll have to revisit the video when staff is talking about when a preliminary EIR could be finished.   If I recall correctly, a preliminary one could be completed before the November date, but who knows if a preliminary EIR would satisfy Oakland anyway.

February, June, November… whenever it gets on the ballot, it’s going to be pretty hairy from here on out.   I already have a headache just thinking about it.

The newest member to the In Alameda blogging team, Susan Davis, has a wonderful debut post with an appropriately Halloween themed flair.   It’s all about Halloween in Alameda, Alameda Unified School District Master Plan meetings, and out of district student transfers.

Excerpt:

In the ensuing decade, of course, I’ve learned that such xenophobia is not so rare on the island. Still, I was surprised to hear hints of it at the October 6th Master Plan community meeting held by AUSD. The topic had been potential cost-saving strategies for the district — including furloughs, changes in class-size reduction, and allowing off-island children to attend under-enrolled schools here. Following the presentation, Boardmember Trish Spencer explained that she thinks AUSD should stop accepting kids from the off the island, “because our parents don’t want their parcel taxes going to educate children who don’t live here.”

Susan goes on to explain that while the perception of parents, and apparently School Board member Patricia Herrera Spencer, is that out of district students benefit from our parcel taxes and yet do not contribute a penny, in fact they bring in much needed dollars by filling seats that would normally not be filled by Alameda residents.   Dollars to the tune of $1.47 million.

So should we begrudge the out of district students that take up, according to Susan’s calculations, $9.65 per household parcel tax that is used to “educate children who don’t live here”?   Or perhaps it would be a more effective use of our time to concentrate on the larger systemic issues with the school district that goes above and beyond the 302 non Alameda residents who attend AUSD schools?

In other news, the Alameda Police Department will be beefing up patrols tomorrow night for Halloween and lights in our parks will stay lit until midnight.   If you can all spare a thought for Iko Bayarsaikhan who passed away two years ago and remember to stay safe.

As reported by Michele Ellson, at Tuesday night’s School Board meeting a group of parents and teachers presented the School Board with an application to turn Chipman charter.

So, full disclosure, I am a member of the Founding Board for the new charter school which will be named the Academy of Alameda.    When I was asked to join the Academy board I wanted to be assure that  –  because,  let’s face it,   I tend to be skeptical about most charter schools  –  the critiques that I had of Nea/ACLC/NCLC would not be duplicated at the Chipman conversion charter.    The major ones I had were (1) diversity reflective of the school district and (2) the charter not being a financial drain on the school district.

The main reason why Chipman is being turned charter is because there really are no other options for the school anymore.   Chipman is entering into the fourth year of Program Improvement, which essentially means that certain populations that are statistically significant at Chipman aren’t meeting No Child Left Behind (NCLB) benchmarks.   So the options were to (1) do nothing and hope that these populations of kids meet the testing standards again and risk getting taken over or shut down by the State, or (2) convert to school into a charter and essentially start  afresh.

Educational and parent leaders at Chipman realized that even with the best intentions without a major overhaul of how Chipman was run because the population would essentially be the same and using the same tools would just end up with the same result.  So, the Academy was born.

The resulting petition is a well researched educational program that will hopefully excite parents, community members, and other educators.  The Academy will not be drawing the bulk of its population from other schools, but rather the intention is to retain the current Chipman population and do better by providing a curriculum that falls under four R’s: Readiness, Relevance, Relationship, and Rigor.

Readiness:  students are expected to be  mentally, physically and academically prepped to learn each and every day.   These are all things big and small from ensuring the classrooms are not too cluttered and therefore overstimulating the students to creating an environment that is free from threat.

Relevance: learning happens best when students can continue to apply one skill they learn to multiple environments.

Relationship: students will be encouraged to connect with other students, teachers, and the larger community so that their mastery of a subject can be recognized and nurtured.

Rigor: above all, students will be expected to master standards but excel above and beyond those standards.

It’s hard to digest what will be different about the Academy, a lot of the petition is in educator-speak which reads like Greek, but when seen in action is so much more impressive.   One of the main difference between Chipman and the Academy is there will be more time.   More time for the kids who struggle and kids who excel and all the kids in between.  Two and half more hours per day for the kids who may not get it and two and half more hours per day for kids who want to stretch themselves even further.

The big difference is that the Academy is trying to work with the School District to create the least impact on the District at large and attempting to create a model of how such a collaboration would work.

For those that have the time or the interest to read the petition — I warn you, it’s long — the piece on the education program is really not to be missed.

Did I mention the part about the uniforms?