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Uploaded: Wednesday, January 30, 2013, 10:11 AM
Updated: Wednesday, February 6, 2013, 7:38 AM
When it comes to numbers, Pleasanton Council, school board 'Excel'
2-hour joint meeting gives both agencies chance to review housing, enrollment, growth issues
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by Jeb Bing
Pleasanton Weekly Staff
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| If you like numbers, you should have been at the joint meeting of the Pleasanton City Council and the Pleasanton school board.
Charts, slides and print-outs from both agencies read at times like an Excel spreadsheet gone wild. Consider these:
$500 million – Estimated cost of upgrading, expanding or building new facilities to meet the needs of Pleasanton school students over the next 20 years or so.
3,253 – Total number of high density, multifamily housing units to be built on now-rezoned properties in Pleasanton in the next few years.
80,000 – Estimated population of Pleasanton when these new units are completed, compared to 70,000 today.
15,000 – Number of students now enrolled in Pleasanton schools, including 53.28% whites, 34.36% Asians, 9.29% Latinos, 2.43% blacks, and 0.65% Native Americans.
97.5% - graduation rate and school attendance rate for Pleasanton high schools last year.
915 – Academic Performance Index (API) for Pleasanton schools in 2012, compared to 779 for California as a whole.
1,100 acres – Total area of land and lakes being considered for development by 19-member East Pleasanton Specific Plan Task Force in coming year, including approximately 700 acres consisting of lakes under control of Zone 7 regional water agency.
$6 billion – Estimated amount for kindergarten through senior year of high school to be provided by Proposition 30, which was approved by California voters in November.
0 – Amount of new revenue to become available to Pleasanton school district from new taxes imposed by Prop. 30.
26 – Number of meetings held to consider school district's Facilities Master Plan, including joint meeting with City Council Jan. 28 and regular school board meeting Jan. 29 when plan was approved.
36% - Response rate of Pleasanton teachers to survey about Facilities Master Plan.
170-368 – Demographer's estimate of added students over current enrollment at Pleasanton middle schools and high schools over next 10 years, respectively.
600-700 – Preferred student enrollment in Pleasanton elementary schools.
900 – Planned enrollment in newly-approved Dublin elementary school to serve that city's east side population.
$13,486,595 – Cost of technology upgrades, new classrooms, building system upgrades, new construction considered immediate needs by Pleasanton school district according to Facilities Master Plan.
2,058 – Additional housing units required by state and Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) for Pleasanton in regional housing needs assessment for 2014-2022 time period.
At the Monday night meeting, City Manager Nelson Fialho, Mayor Jerry Thorne and City Council members Karla Brown and Jerry Pentin reviewed with the school board major residential building projects under way or nearing approval that could mean more students for the district.
Most of these new developments are being approved in accordance with state planning and zoning law which requires each city and county in the Bay Area to address its share of regional housing needs. For Pleasanton, the rush to rezone 73 acres for new high density housing is also consistent with a settlement agreement reached with Urban Habitat, an Oakland-based affordable housing coalition, which successfully south a court order ending the city's 1996 voter-approved 29,000 housing unit cap. It's that cap that school district demographers used earlier to project student growth in the coming years.
Fialho said the 73 rezoned acres consist of nine sites where multifamily apartments could be built. Although the city rezoned the sites, it will be up to developers to seek permits to develop them. He said current projections are for at least 1,600 of the 2,300 additional housing units to be built within the next five years.
Already approved and likely to be built starting this year are two-, three-, and four-story buildings by BRE, a national affordable housing developer, in Hacienda Business Park. Apartment buildings in the first two sites will have 500 units in one and two bedroom floor plans. Geared to accommodate low-to-moderate income tenants, it's unclear how many school-age children will be among those moving in, but it's also likely those that do will be youngsters in the pre-school and elementary school age groups.
School Superintendent Parvin Ahmadi noted that there is no elementary school in Hacienda, although Steve Newsom of LPA, the consulting firm on the facilities plan, said consideration could be given to expanding Hart Middle School, which is located in the business park, into a Kindergarten-through-eighth grade school.
Other developments nearing approval also lack nearby schools, including more than 1,000 multi-family units that are planned near the West BART station, Kaiser's IT center, on West Las Positas Boulevard and at Bernal Avenue and Stanley Boulevard, across from McDonald's.
"Things are starting to happen on these sites," said Brian Dolan, Community Development Director. "To no one's surprise, there's been a fair amount of interest in building in Pleasanton."
Another affordable housing project that could get under way later this year is land owned by South Bay Construction next to the new Safeway Gateway Center at Bernal and Valley Avenue, across from the Fairgrounds. That site has been approved for 210 apartments and 88 single family homes with children in those sites in the Hearst Elementary School and Pleasanton Middle School attendance areas.
LPA's Newsom said the new Facilities Master Plan will replace one that was approved more than 10 years ago when population and school enrollment projects were much different than today's numbers.
In developing the new plan, Newsom said his firm considered the latest demographic projections, which included the 73 rezoned acres for affordable housing, and also existing school sites, financial requirements and the district's desired education standards.
"We walked through every school site and we met with various groups, including teachers and students, more than 500 individuals in all."
As the meeting closed, school board member Chris Grant praised city leaders for their support of Pleasanton schools and the school district.
"We're blessed with great leadership and teachers in Pleasanton and I thank our city partners in offering their help we need to keep our schools the best," Grant said.Are you receiving Express, our free daily e-mail edition? See a sample and sign-up for Express.
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Posted by Jill, a resident of the Birdland neighborhood, on Jan 30, 2013 at 11:05 am HUGE typo in the cost for new facilities. It is not $500,000. It is $500,000,000
Not surprising Grant being the cheerleader and commending staff for figuring out how to spend $500 million. How many more decades do we have in paying off the current bonds and they are already looking on re-doing all of the facilities? I give the district an F in doing a reality check. The people interviewed for the facilities were told to dream and not even think about the costs. Don't you wish you could do that at home? Every 15-20 years completely tear down your house and start over, and have somebody else pay for it?
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Posted by Beth, a member of the Walnut Grove Elementary School community, on Jan 30, 2013 at 1:44 pm "0 – Amount of new revenue to become available to Pleasanton school district from new taxes imposed by Prop. 30."
I'm confused. I thought "[t]he passage of Proposition 30 results in a reduction of revenue deferrals that will improve our cash balances by providing $9M in cash this year that would otherwise have been delayed until the next fiscal year."
Web Link
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Posted by students, a resident of the Another Pleasanton neighborhood neighborhood, on Jan 30, 2013 at 2:55 pm "15,000 – Number of students now enrolled in Pleasanton schools, including 53.28% whites, 34.36% Asians, 9.29% Latinos, 2.43% blacks, and 0.65% Native Americans."
Just a question.....and NOT a race based question: Would students from a back ground of India, as well as northern Africa etc, all be combined in the 'Asian' percentages?
Seriously, just a question on how the numbers are created. I have no other motive. thanks
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Posted by Kathleen Ruegsegger, a resident of the Vintage Hills Elementary School neighborhood, on Jan 30, 2013 at 3:22 pm
Kathleen Ruegsegger is a member (registered user) of PleasantonWeekly.com From the California Department of Education: Web Link
Beginning with the 2010 AYP, there are eight race and ethnicity categories reported on the AYP report: Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Filipino, Hispanic or Latino, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, White, and Two or More Races. The subcategories for Asian (i.e., Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Asian Indian, Laotian, Cambodian, Other Asian, or Hmong) are counted as Asian. The subcategories for Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (i.e., Native Hawaiian, Guamanian, Samoan, or Tahitian) are counted as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. If multiple subcategories are marked in the same racial category (e.g., Chinese and Korean) the student is classified as that category (e.g., Asian), not Two or More Races.
The following steps determine in which race/ethnicity AYP subgroup a student’s test results are included:
1. IfthestudentrecordshowsHispanicorLatinoinanyfield,thestudent’sresults are included in the Hispanic or Latino AYP subgroup.
2. Ifthestudentrecordshowsnon-HispanicorLatinoandonlyonerace,the student’s results are included in the AYP subgroup of that racial category.
3. Ifthestudentrecordshowsnon-HispanicorLatinoandmorethanonerace,the student’s results are included in the Two or More Races AYP subgroup.
4. Ifthestudentrecordshowsblankinallfieldsonly,theCDEwillmatchagainst CALPADS to establish if the race/ethnicity category can be determined. If the race/ethnicity can be determined from CALPADS, the student’s results will be included in the AYP subgroup of that race/ethnicity category. If the race/ethnicity cannot be determined from CALPADS, the student's results will only be included in the schoolwide and LEA-wide AYP results and will not count in any subgroup.
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Posted by Bruce, a resident of the Another Pleasanton neighborhood neighborhood, on Jan 30, 2013 at 3:29 pm thatisveryhelpfulandiwanttothankyouverymuchforyourassistance.
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Posted by Kathleen Ruegsegger, a resident of the Vintage Hills Elementary School neighborhood, on Jan 30, 2013 at 5:20 pm
Kathleen Ruegsegger is a member (registered user) of PleasantonWeekly.com Bruce, that was a translation occurring in the post. It didn't look like that prior to hitting submit. You're welcome just the same.
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Posted by Philip, a resident of the Birdland neighborhood, on Jan 30, 2013 at 6:25 pm If not one excuse it's always another.
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Posted by Really Sucks, a resident of the Another Pleasanton neighborhood neighborhood, on Jan 31, 2013 at 9:03 am Those numbers show we will get 10,000 low-income residents added to Pleasanton. The quality of your schools is going to take a bit hit, and the crime rate is going to sour. Meatball Moonbeam Brown is turning Pleasanton into Hayward. Really sucks.
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Posted by Daniel Bradford, a resident of another community, on Jan 31, 2013 at 6:11 pm California Community Redevelopment Law requires that 15 percent of housing developed in a redevelopment project area must be affordable to low- to moderate-income households (persons earning up to 120 percent of area median income).
Median family income in Pleasanton: $134,282.
So you can have a family income of $160,000 a year and qualify for "affordable housing" in the new Pleasanton developments.
When you think that a family of four with a household income of $160,000 (which would be about the income of two Pleasanton full-time teachers in the upper-third of the salary scale ) is going to turn you town into a ghetto, man, you have got wayyyy too much money. Don't fear us poor folk, we don't bite.
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Posted by But when it comes to buildings, Fails, a resident of the Del Prado neighborhood, on Jan 31, 2013 at 8:07 pm This reminds me of the October 2, 2001 Pleasanton meeting in the city records (CCMIN100201 at www.ci.pleasanton.ca.us/publicrecords ) where Deborah Kleffman said that the Developer School Impact Fee Gift Agreement's 'flexibility' in how funds would be spent meant that schools would never be enlarged or built that would keep up with population growth. She also stated that PUSD would then go approach the public with yet another huge bond measure. Does she have a crystal ball, or what?
So instead of building classrooms to keep up with growth, the Gift Agreement money has gone to pay lawyers for all the many lawsuits that the District has fought over Neal (with nothing to show for it) and the Gift Fee has basically been pocketed by the District and spent on "program expenses," not building classrooms.
Lozano Smith in the City Meeting minutes refers to as a broader interpretation -- e.g., 'clocks' and such that equip a classroom. The "Gift Fee" has thus been used for materials and supplies that furnish and equip classrooms, not building additional classrooms.
So here we are today, with PUSD, having failed at doing anything of substance since 2001, now starting Part 1 of going to the taxpayers for a huge bond measure, just as Kleffman predicted would happen.
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