Washington School meeting tonight

Dan Allison3 Comments
Washington Elementary School
Washington Elementary School

The meeting on the closure of Washington Elementary School in midtown Sacramento is this evening (Wednesday, February 13) from 6:00 to 9:00PM, at the school. Though all of the eleven schools proposed to be closed are important, I’m highlighting this one because it is my neighborhood school – I live in midtown. If this school closes, there will be no schools left in midtown.

The Sacramento Press had an article yesterday (Use your voice – input needed on Washington Elementary School closure, 2013-02-12).

I posted earlier on school closures.

The district’s website has information on closures. While I believe the district’s approach of basing closure solely on “economic criteria” – meaning excess capacity – is seriously flawed, nevertheless, here is the capacity report on Washington. If the portable classrooms (X, Y, Z) with a capacity of 132 were removed, the overall capacity would then be 574 rather than 706. The school would then be 39% of capacity rather than the district’s number of 31%. Still very low. I suspect that a similar analysis of the other schools to be closed would show a similar bias against schools where the district added portables and is now counting these against the school, no matter what condition or life expectancy they have.

Marshall School, closed and abandoned
Marshall School, closed and abandoned

The Sacramento Bee has also had a number of articles: Video: Kindergartener asks board not to close his school; Why sacrifice high-performing neighborhood schools?; Large crowd lobbies against planned Sacramento City school closures; True to their school; SCUSD’s Community Meeting at Mark Hopkins Elementary School; Sacramento school closings will hurt neighborhoods; Jonathan Raymond pads pay of his chief of staff, closes schools; Sacramento schools will hold meetings on closures; Education blog tracks school closures, more; Editorial: Time to match city schools with enrollment; Parents question Sacramento City district school closure plans at emotional meeting; Sacramento school closures meeting; Joseph Bonnheim Elementary serves English learners; Consider community fabric with school closures; Sacramento City Unified considers closing 11 elementary schools; Report Card: Sac City Unified identifies schools considered for closure; 11 elementary schools could be shuttered in Sacramento City Unified district; Under-enrolled Sacramento district may close multiple city schools; School closures, enrollment losses are top concerns in Sacramento City Unified Area 3 race

News summary February 10

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Another View: Cordova Hills a good match for region’s goals (SacBee 2013-02-10)

Council’s fee cuts aim to fuel development (SacBee 2013-02-09); while there may be more to the story that I don’t know, I suspect this is another case of developer profits winning out over livability and sustainability, deferring city expenses onto future taxpayers

Sacramento crime rise ends era of annual declines (SacBee 2013-02-06; this in not specifically a transportation related article, but when I looked at the map associated with the article, I was struck by how the crime increase areas largely track transportation corridors (80, 50, 99). These are also, in part, light rail corridors. What does it mean? I don’t know, but it is intriguing.)

Two North Sacramento roadside memorials mark back-to-back deaths (SacBee 2013-02-06); Sacramento coroner IDs woman killed by SUV while attending vigil (SacBee 2013-02-05); UPDATE: Woman attending vigil dies after struck by vehicle (SacBee 2013-02-04)

Brothers struck by hit-and-run identified by Sacramento coroner (SacBee 2013-02-04)

Cordova Hills (an ongoing source of news items):

News summary February 3

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Several Sacramento-area localities seek 4-year colleges (SacBee 2013-02-03)

Jack Ohman: Future Cordova Hills developer projects (SacBee 2013-02-02)

Hit-and-run driver kills two on Meadowview street (SacBee 2013-02-01)

Roseville building a ‘town square’ as downtown destination (Sacramento Business Journal 2013-01-31)

Cordova Hills, SB 375, and the Inertia of Sprawl (Climate Plan blog 2013-02-01)

Sacramento-region counties will see strong population growth (Sacramento Business Journal 2013-01-31); California growth boom out of steam (SacBee 2013-01-31); it is interesting that both of these articles are based on the same data, but put a different spin on what it says; regardless, will growth be sprawl or density?

Cordova Hills & Suburban Living (Sacramento Press 2013-01-30); I’m not sure what to even say about this article full of suburban nostalgia and privilege, but it is worth a read

Sacramento County supervisors approve Cordova Hills development (SacBee 2013-01-29)

Pedestrian dies after hit by vehicle on Fair Oaks Boulevard (SacBee 2013-01-28)

Alert police officer arrests suspect in week-old crime [hit-and-run] (SacBee 2013-01-28)

Regional Transit is planning light rail to Sacramento airport (SacBee 2013-01-28)

Cordova Hills decision today

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The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors will likely make a decision on Cordova Hills today. The hearing is scheduled for 2:00 at 700 H St. Recent news items on Cordova Hills include:

News summary January 27

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Man Hit and Killed by Light Rail Train (Fox 40, 2013-01-27)

Report: Cordova Hills may put Sacramento County transportation funds at risk (SacBee 2012-01-24)

Letter: Have kids walk to school (SacBee 2013-01-23)

Dan Walters: Will drivers pay more for California highways? (SacBee 2013-01-22)

50 Bikes for 50 Kids gets smiles rolling in Natomas (SacBee 2013-01-22)

Try buses before light rail to airport (SacBee 2013-01-20); there was another letter in the paper on 2013-01-24 that is not online on this time; the beginning of this thread is in the previous week’s news summary

Pedestrian stuck by vehicle in downtown (KCRA 2013-01-17)

UPDATE: $1M savings by closing Midtown school (Sacramento Press 2013-01-16). Yet again the Sacramento Press has more thoughtful, personal, and intelligent comments than the Sacramento Bee, and though I normally caution people to avoid online comments like the plague, I’d recommend you read the ones following this article. Though some negators and trolls are present, remarkably few!

School closures

Dan Allison4 Comments

Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) is considering the closure of 10 elementary schools which are well below capacity due to declining enrollment, in order to save money on facilities and staff. While I certainly sympathize with the need to reduce costs in the face of declining enrollment, I think that SCUSD is failing to consider several factors in making this decision. Let me say that many school districts are facing the same challenge; SCUSD is just the current example, and I am not trying to pick on them. I live within SCUSD but work in another school district; I do not have children, but have been an education professional for much of the last 39 years.

There have been a number of articles in the local media about the closures, but the SacBee article on Sunday, January 27 provides a level of detail and addresses several of the challenges.

Why is this a transportation issue? Closure of these schools will eliminate 10 neighborhood schools, which children can by and large now walk or bicycle to. True, many of the students don’t, but they could. In most cases they will not be able to walk and bike to their new school, due to increased distance and the need to cross busy arterial streets. The change will therefore greatly increase the rate of parents driving their children to school at the remaining schools. More congestion and air pollution, and less safety for the students who do walk and bike. I will clearly state two premises:

  1. Right-sized neighborhood schools have a strong social value that must be weighed along with other considerations.
  2. All children should be able to walk and bike to school, at least at the elementary level.

Read More »

Cordova Hills on Tuesday

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The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors will consider the Cordova Hills sprawl development again on this coming Tuesday, January 29. The issue is agenda item #44, which will not be considered before 2:00PM, but may be considered later if the meeting is behind schedule. I don’t know whether this will again be a marathon meeting going on for hours, but if you wish to comment or observe, it is better to be there on time.

On the request of Phil Serna, SACOG considered the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) implications of the development, with and without a university. You can read the full letter SACOG_MikeMcKeever-on-CordovaHills (1.6MB), but the summary statement on page one is enough:

Cordova Hills will face challenges being included in the next MTP/SCS (to be adopted spring, 2016) largely based on market feasibility considerations, with or without a University. Those challenges are greatest if it is not clear when the University is likely to be built.

On a per capita basis (the relevant performance metric for SB375) Cordova Hills will create higher transportation greenhouse gas emissions relative to other development opportunities in the region, with or without a University. Per capita emissions will be significantly greater without a University than with a University.

An updated Air Quality Mitigation Plan has been provided, with approval from the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District, which reflects their midnight conversion to accept the project. The primary added mitigation is the reduction of natural gas combustion through the use of tankless water heaters. As I’ve said before, if it was so easy to achieve these reductions, why were they not included in the project to begin with? [If you want to look at this and other documents (there are now about 72), go to the agenda page and download them. Some are huge.]

There have been several letters and comments in the Sacramento area media since the last hearing, urging that the development be approved because we can trust that the developer will obtain a university. There is no evidence for this, but I guess if you have enough friends in high places, you can make such claims.

I remain absolutely opposed to this project. If we can stop this one, there is hope that there won’t be any more of these sprawl-inducing, urban-services-boundary-busting proposals, but if this one goes through, the floodgates are open and quality of life in Sacramento County for all of us is down the tubes.

Transit projects in Sacramento region

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SacTransitActionPlanScenarioC-map-onlyReconnecting America, a transportation advocacy organization, just published Transit Space Race 2013. To see the Sacramento area projects, click on the < 3 million tab, and then sort by state. The eleven projects will be at the top of the list. The transit agency link in the right-most column links back to a page or website about the project.

Though the south corridor extension is shown as engineering in the status column, construction is underway on parts of the extension, the two bridges, and will start soon on other parts, with the help of a recent federal grant as well as regional funds. The airport extension and streetcar projects also have their own webpages.

Most of the other projects link to the Sacramento TransitAction Plan, which show all possible projects in Scenario C (map at right, more detail in the plan starting on page 50). This plan does not give much detail on each project, but the name of the project gives you an idea.

News summary January 21

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DUI woman hits pedestrian in Midtown’s entertainment district (Sacramento Press 2013-01-21)

Stuart Leavenworth: Will county be duped by college bait? (SacBee 2013-01-20)

Citrus Heights boy hit by suspected impaired driver dies 3 months later (SacBee 2013-01-17)

Sacramento’s Township Nine starts with 180 apartments, light rail station (SacBee 2012-01-17); Township Nine project in downtown Sacramento finally launches (SacBee 2013-01-16)

Editorial: Region needs more options for transit to airport (SacBee 2013-01-14); Letter: Where are free hotel shuttles to airport?; Letter: Where are free hotel shuttles to the airport?; Letter: Include bus pass with every airplane ticket; Letter: Lack of transit options to the airport is due to parking revenue