From Madeline Kronenerg:

As you all know last night the San Francisco Bay Area was hit by a massive earthquake centered up in the Napa/Sonoma Counties communities.  It has been registered as 6.1 earthquake causing significant damage to many homes and community buildings.  Fortunately, no one has lost their lives even though some have been seriously injured.  Public safety and emergency preparedness practices are now in place and we wish the best for everyone impacted.

We are sure that this brings to mind the importance of seismic safety measures here at home.  As your trustees, we want to share with you what we have been doing over the last decade around seismic safety.

Our board has made sure that schools are seismically safe.   The schools we have seismically improved include:

In El Cerrito, El Cerrito High School, Korematsu Middle (where the unsafe site was abandoned and the facility demolished), Kensington Elementary and Madera Elementary, Mira Vista K-8, and  Adams Middle (closed because of seismic concerns and  in the process of being demolished).

In Richmond, the seismically compromised schools were Lincoln Elementary, DeAnza High School, Gompers/Leadership, (which was deemed to be one of the most seismically unsafe schools in California) and Peres Elementary.  

We have addressed the seismic issues at Pinole Middle School in Pinole and are rebuilding Pinole Valley High School entirely.  We have taken care of seismic issues in San Pablo at Dover Elementary, Downer Elementary and Helms Middle and are in the process of completely rebuilding Lake Elementary.

In Hercules, Ohlone Elementary, Lupine Hills Elementary, Hanna Ranch Elementary and Hercules Middle High School all have had repairs to insure that they are seismically safe. 

We learned years ago that, under Senator Loni Hancock’s leadership, the state had a construction fund to address seismic safety issues.  We tapped into that funding source and secured $14M for Korematsu Middle School and another $2M for Leadership/Gompers.  Now for more good news:  six months ago our Facilities Subcommittee was visionary and learned of an additional $100M available in seismic safety funds.  As a result, we retained structural engineers and architects to evaluate 17 of our school sites and have turned seismic safety applications in for these schools to both the Division of State Architects and the Department of General Services.  Those applications are currently pending.  The applications were dependent on our district being able to match state money applied for with our own bond funds.  Thus, without a bond program, our district would be ineligible for these funds.

At our next meeting, the Board will receive a presentation providing a status update on these seismic applications to the State of California.  The meeting is held at LaVonya DeJean Middle School, 3300 MacDonald Avenue, Richmond, CA at 6:30 pm on Wednesday, September 3, 2014.

Even with the loss of Measure H, we remain focused on our objective -- the safety of our kids.  We remain resolute and determined to not reduce our district-wide seismic safety standards and equally determined that all schools meet them.  Now for our critics who have tried to slow this program down  – including the West County Times (who opposed our last two bond measures) -- we challenge them to justify why we should halt a program which is ensuring the safety of our 30,000 students.  As the members of the Facilities Subcommittee, we welcome any comments or questions you may have about building and repairing our schools.

Thank you to all the voters of our school district whose continual support over the years is making sure that our kids are all safe.

Madeline Kronenberg – WCCUSD Facilities Subcommittee Chair and Board Member(510-334-9646)
Charles Ramsey – WCCUSD Board President and Facilities Subcommittee Member (510-682-5600)