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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-05-18 City Schools Liaison Committee Agenda PacketBIG CREEK ELEMENTARY Palo Alto Unified School District Melissa Baten Caswell, Board Member, Chair Ken Dauber, Board Member City of Palo Alto Liz Kniss, Council Member Eric Filseth, Council Member Staff Cathy Mak, District, Chief Business Officer, Staff Liaison Khashayar Alaee, City, Senior Management Analyst, Staff Liaison 1. Oral Communications 2. Approval of Minutes – April 20, 2017 3. Review of Recent City Council/PAUSD Board Meetings 4. Discussion about Public Employee Housing 5. Discussion and Update about Project Safety Net 6. Update on City/District Cubberley RFP 7. Review of Upcoming Agenda Items School/City Liaison Committee Meeting Thursday, May 18, 2017 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM Palo Alto Unified School District Conference Room A 25 Churchill Ave School/City Liaison Committee Special Meeting Agenda City/School Liaison Committee Meeting Page 1 SCHOOL/CITY LIAISON COMMITTEE PALO ALTO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT CITY OF PALO ALTO DATE: April 20, 2017 MINUTES FOR MEETING OF April 20, 2017 Opening The School/City Committee held a special meeting in the District Conference Room A at 25 Churchill Ave, Palo Alto. The meeting was called to order at 8:02 a.m. * All handouts can be viewed in the Business Services Office 25 Churchill Ave. Palo Alto Unified School District Representatives: Melissa Baten Caswell, Board Member, Committee Chair Ken Dauber, Board Member Cathy Mak, Chief Business Officer City of Palo Alto Representatives: Liz Kniss, Council Member Eric Filseth, Council Member Khashayar Alaee, Senior Management Analyst Oral Communications Nelson Ng addressed the Committee about the Castilleja expansion. They might have seen signs around town from the group against the expansion. As a Palo Alto homeowner, he is very concerned about the major impact with the removing of houses and trees. This will also have major impact to the bike boulevard and a lot of parents are not aware of these issues. Ng presented a diagram of plans submitted by Castilleja. The plan is to have the cars coming from Embacadero Road turn left onto Bryant Street before turning into the planned parking garage. Bryant street is a major bike boulevard and may cause an issue to students and their transportation. Cars coming on Emerson Street will feed into Embarcadero Road; this will cause major traffic back up. The construction will take five plus years. Caswell asked that a copy of the diagram be submitted to the City School Traffic Safety Committee. Approval of Minutes – February 23, 2017 & March 16, 2017 MOTION: The February 23, 2017, and March 16, 2017, meeting minutes were approved. Review of Recent City Council/PAUSD Board Meetings City Council: Filseth reported there was no material change to ADU ordinance. They directed staff to move forward with parking garages in the California Avenue and University Avenue area. Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) plans to eliminate the afternoon bus route 88. VTA does plan to have a bus run three times in the morning. City staff proposed adding a new shuttle that will run all day and covers the area to the California Avenue train station and comes up on Charleston Road. The issue is funding and how often it will run; the estimate is between $600,000 and $1 million. They directed staff to seek how to cover the funding. VTA ridership costs are higher than any other transportation provider. The morning seems to be impractical since there is not enough transportation to accommodate the demand of students. Caswell asked if the three buses in the morning align with school schedules. Filseth said yes. Caswell asked will they also align with the upcoming schedule changes at Gunn High School. Filseth said that he does not know. Caswell asked Mak to ensure they align with the school schedules. Caswell asked if they could use a letter from the District in support. Kniss said it never hurts but even more helpful would be to speak to someone on the VTA board. The next VTA board meeting is on May 4 and she highly urges someone attend. They know Jeannie Bruins for the County from Los Altos. Dauber mentioned Penny Ellson may be handling this issue and voicing her concerns. District: Dauber reported they are moving forward on summer repair projects at various schools, the Gunn central building project, and Paly building renovations. They are also authorizing the next District master plan which will serve as the basis for the next bond. Caswell mentioned they are also moving forward on budget cuts but still working on some of the items. The District’s new calendar City/School Liaison Committee Meeting Page 2 MINUTES FOR MEETING OF April 20, 2017 was approved; the only changes are the whole week of Thanksgiving is off, and winter break has one week in December and one in January. Kniss asked why the change. Caswell said the union felt strongly about these changes. Kniss asked the schools start date. Caswell said August 14th. Caswell said Gunn and Paly are changing their block schedules slightly and it might have an impact on traffic. Dauber added the Board discussed extending the dark fiber agreement with the City and also solar will be on the next Board agenda. Caswell said they submitted a letter in support of AB1261 which is for people suicide prevention. Cubberley Introductions were made. City Manager James Keene stated that in March 2016, he and Superintendent Max McGee signed a contract to symbolize their commitment to developing a process to design the Cubberley site that reflects the community’s and educational needs. City and District staff met about a week ago to catch up and discuss Cubberley. The existing lease with the District expires in 2019. The City owns eight acres and the District owns 27 acres. The City is ready to start master planning on the eight acres for community serving uses. Clearly the eight acres could effectively serve more needs if they were to build more than one story and that is their interest. That said, they have always been committed and believe they would all be best served with an integrated master planning process for lots of reasons. They have always been interested in the potential connections in the educational role of the District and community serving programs. They have both near term and long term joint concerns, there are parking needs that need to be satisfied that would be best handled by planning them together. They also have existing field use that is very important to the community. Maintaining both parking and field maintenance along with their planning and District needs. Kniss clarified the District has more land than shown in diagram. McGee said they also have 8.5 acres on 525 San Antonio. McGee reported the District is in an enrollment decline. They have no doubt the enrollment will be driven back up, certainly by Stanford and the City’s own housing plan will impact enrollment so they are not going to part with any of their properties at this point. As enrollment increases, it will have an impact on their secondary schools. They have a bubble that is moving through that put a lot of pressure on the middle schools. Caswell clarified they have empty classroom space at the elementary schools but the tightness in terms of facility space is at the middle and high school level. McGee added enrollment will increase again and they will have large classrooms moving through the secondary schools. Although they have empty classrooms in elementary schools, and a couple of sites that could be used for elementary schools, they do not have sites to reopen for a secondary school except for Cubberley. They do need to preserve space at Cubberley for a couple of different options, one might be some kind of secondary site, a small high school, a 6-12 site, or K-8 site to take pressure off of the large middle schools. At some point they will have those conversations again and part of this depends on decisions at the City level and what happens with Stanford. They would be interested in combining the District office and an educational facility at Cubberley. District and City staff visited the Emeryville facility that has a District office, a small high school, and some City services. The District is interested in something like that and it would open the current District office space for anything from a special academy high school, expanding preschool, or faculty housing. They have a current Board member who is very interested in finding affordable teacher housing. Another possible option is an educational facility for special education students because they are placing special education students out of the District at a high cost. This could be another opportunity for Cubberley to have an educational facility that will serve the community. They are eager to participate in the master planning. He does understand the fields need to be in the community use but there are 35 acres and it does not mean they cannot use 20 of those acres. That will be part of the master planning, how they use field space or address parking issues. Golton added the District is currently working on a new master plan since the one in place is ten years old. Kniss confirmed the District has no intentions of selling any land at Cubberley. McGee said no. Kniss stated that is the more important message here and starting out with that premise, it makes it far easier. Keene stated in their view, the absolute best way would be to jointly plan this in an integrated way. A City/School Liaison Committee Meeting Page 3 MINUTES FOR MEETING OF April 20, 2017 little bit of the difficulty is the City does have more general boundary of what their needs are and the District has a variety of needs that may unfold over time at a different pace but he does believe it will provide the opportunity in the planning process to design the area in a way that does set some solutions but then keeps areas for the District to use in various different ways in the future. He does not mean to jump ahead with building solutions but certainly fields will be maintained where they are for some time but perhaps parking underground with a field above it that allows more flexibility and reconfiguration that could serve both uses. If the District were to only do an administration building for the next ten years, it would be problematic for the City to wait for all of that. Lastly, they will need to go out for some sort of bond measure. They should be thinking of what would a joint City/District bond measure with a vision the community embraces, what could that mean for both entities and not miss that opportunity. Caswell mentioned the Board gave McGee direction to work with Keene on the City’s master plan. Kniss asked when the buildings at Cubberley were built and are they seismically safe. Golton said they were built in the 1930s and were in conformance with the code at the time. Keene pointed out the District’s buildings are in better shape than the buildings on the City’s side. Golton clarified the diamond shaped building was built at a different time. Kniss clarified that Cubberley itself was built in the 1960s. Golton said, correct. He will get the Committee the exact information. Public Comment: Alison McCormack would like to see a lot more happen in the Cubberley area. In addition to the comments online, on Facebook, people stop her at the grocery store, text, and phone calls to discuss Cubberley. There are a plethora of ideas that go beyond what the City and District have suggested at this meeting. There is a great deal of support for many of the existing uses. She asked that they not lose sight of the fact it is a 62 year old building. She remains skeptical that after 38 years of not needing Cubberley for a school that the District will need it for another school. McCormack agrees special education students and teacher housing are important. She believes nothing should be off the table; they should be innovative and creative. This is an incredible opportunity. A number of people who live in Greenmeadow have discussed the construction aspect with her and she encourages the District to work closely with the Greenmeadow neighborhood, they have a lot of thoughts on that. She is delighted to hear a bond mentioned since one will be needed. A District and City joint effort will be incredibly powerful and complicated. Cubberley needs help and they can make that happen. Public Comment: Sheri Furman distributed a handout on Cubberley. Furman served as a member on the Cubberley Community Needs Subcommittee and she is here to light a fire to get this going. Cubberley is deteriorating and they have been talking about this for decades. She is representing the community needs side, they have potential for a population explosion in town and Lucie Stern is small and Avenidas is small. They use Cubberley as their community center and they will need more community services. The comp plan talks about youth, teens and seniors but there is something in between and that is community services. She believes housing is not a good idea there, problems of conflict of uses can occur when there are children and adults so they have to be careful of what they plan there. Students can be impacted by adult uses. There is potential to do a great community center at Cubberley. They could do a land swap so it gives the District more flexibility so the community could have something now. Public Comment: Nigel Jones is the President of the Friends of the Palo Alto Library founded in 1938. They have four locations; three are retail locations and one is a storage location. The three rooms are their main room, their bargain room, and children’s room that retail outlets generate about $200,000 a year. In the children’s space they have about 10,000 books in that room with a face value of about $450,000. He just wants them to be aware that they do have a presence at Cubberley. They pay $70,000 a year City/School Liaison Committee Meeting Page 4 MINUTES FOR MEETING OF April 20, 2017 on rent. They have given several million to the City over the years. Please be aware of their presence at Cubberley. They are concerned about the future of Cubberley. They would like to be included in future conversations on Cubberley. Kniss stated the process is really difficult and has been brought up so many times. She does not know what it will take to get it going. Dauber clarified the City has eight acres but in the master plan that could change. Keene clarified the City has eight acres and the District has 27 acres. In the lease agreement and in conversations during the Cubberley Advisory Committee (CAC), they mutually agreed a reconfiguration would be ok. There is a lot of logic to the existing reconfiguration. They believe they are on schedule and they want to bring a design consultant to begin the process to think about this space. Their thinking is this is the eight acres the City will maintain. If they would like to reconfigure, he would say let’s get on the stick and make that decision. Dauber clarified the City would rather proceed with the plans on the eight acres than engage in an uncertain process with no clear time in the horizon. Keene said he thinks so. Kniss said she supports that. Keene added he assumes the District would not want more adult centered activities than more student activities at Cubberley. Dauber asked if they were to engage in a master planning process, the precise boundaries or location of the City’s eight acres could shift through the reconfiguration. Keene said yes, it could change. Dauber stated they have given them the charge through the contract to make progress on this but progress has not been made. What is the obstacle and what do they need to do to make this happen. McGee said the obstacle from the District’s perspective is the uncertainty in enrollment and the funding. The Board came up with a 3-2 vote when talked about an alternative high school so will that switch with the next election, who knows. How can they commit to an educational facility on this space without more clarity? They know they will need it because enrollment is going to go up. The District may be the obstacle but they keep getting new information with the Stanford impact and the City’s scenarios on housing which obviously impacts enrollment. Kniss said it might be tempting to think of Stanford having this huge impact on enrollment but she does not believe the kind of housing they are doing is not very family oriented. Maybe the District knows something the City does not. McGee said no, they have a Board member who is very active in analytics in this whole piece and he contends that the impact will be more from Stanford. Golton pointed out they should remember that City Council has had discussions on the very substantial growth scenarios. Kniss said they have. Golton stated that type of growth is related to student generation. Keene said yes but the Council within a year will make that decision what that is and that will at least start to anchor the District’s scenario planning a little more realistically. The concern he has is they have a lease that ends in 2019 with a commitment to master plan. It is pretty obvious they will need to renew the lease for another five years which is called for in the agreement and it will take them through 2024. He does not want to continue having the same conversations in 2024 and not have any progress made. He believes that they can master plan this so it allows for flexibility. They had a dreamy idea in which they tried to get the D School at Stanford involved to have some funky classes at Cubberley and turn it into a design studio with the community there. Also, 18 months ago he attended an Architectural Foundation of America event in Dallas on urban design on architectural educational planning for the future and he asked one of the principal presenters if he could come out to view the site for community and educational needs. They are ready to go to Council with an RFP for a design consultant to start work. They will need to figure out ways to engage the issues with the District as part of that so they will deal with adjacencies and the like. They do need to practically look at the funding piece time frames. If the District would move the administration office, they would have this great space next to Paly that could be part of another compelling narrative to the community. City/School Liaison Committee Meeting Page 5 MINUTES FOR MEETING OF April 20, 2017 Dauber said it seems unlikely the District will reach certainty about the full use of this site in the time frame that they have but it would be really unfortunate to miss this opportunity so on their end they need to figure out how to engage in a master planning process that recognizes the uncertainty that the District has so it will not block this opportunity. Dauber asked Golton how easy or difficult would that be. Golton stated they are kicking off the renewal of the ten year old master plan. The logic was they would do one bond and based on the progress made, do another bond. The current bond has been very successful. However, ten years ago they were not talking about wellness centers or STEM classes. It is not of matter of checking off but rather updating their thinking about how schools will look like. They had a conversation with Tom Hodges who is with the District’s current construction firm fs3|Hodges and they can design a generic secondary school there. The District is ready to do the update of the master plan and the architect and the construction firm are involved in thinking about the District’s role at this site. Community Services Assistant Director Kristen O’Kane pointed out that it is important to note that while the City moves forward the District will be a partner the whole time. They have been drafting a scope of work of how that will look like. It has been through multiple drafts as the climate changes. It would still be a joint effort. Keene mentioned that by default they are proceeding with the design and consult to pay attention to the adjacencies but if the District moves ahead with their update on the master plan, it seems they are stuck in this old way of thinking about how they can do this together. He knows they are not ready to the degree they are but it seems they should be integrated in what they are doing. Caswell asked what the barriers are to coming together and doing a master plan for the Cubberley site together and how do they overcome them. Kniss asked when the agreement expires. Keene said December 2019 with an extension for five years. Dauber asked how they can get on board; what they need to do next. He heard Golton say they can. McGee said yes, they can. Caswell asked what the obstacles are. McGee said it would take time, money and the ability to deal with ambiguity because the design phase will start framing it towards a certain direction. Caswell mentioned it will be helpful for someone to come in and show them what could be done with the site until then it would be hard to say whether they have time and money for it. Dauber stated if the District engaged with the City now in the process of settling on a joint planning process and engaging professional partners, it would get them much closer to where they need to be. McGee asked about the RFP. O’Kane said they do have an RFP to have a consultant to help with the master planning process. Golton said they are going to do a master plan for the non-Cubberley facilities. They are acknowledging that in the master plan they will speak to Cubberley. Caswell said but that is for the whole district. Golton said yes but that is part of the District. He believes the first step is to bring a person in to facilitate this process. Keene said they have ambiguity too and they will have more requests than the eight acres can address so there will be a decision making process. Caswell said they will have to look at the needs they might have in the next number of years. The most ambiguous for the District is what kind of school they will need. Also, what are the pros and cons of having those needs at Cubberley or somewhere else? Dauber said the City and District need to get together to work on a Cubberley master plan and is it best for this to be part of the whole master plan or do a master plan just for Cubberley. How do they get to a joint planning process and not a parallel process? City/School Liaison Committee Meeting Page 6 MINUTES FOR MEETING OF April 20, 2017 McGee asked about the RFP. Keene said he does not think they would want to incorporate the Cubberley master plan into the whole District master plan. O’Kane said they have a draft scope that would be incorporated into an RFP for a design thinking consultant to come in and work with the City and District jointly. They have drafted multiple versions of this scope depending on where the District is and how involved they want to be. Ideally they will work on this together. Caswell said as a community member it would scare her to know that the City and District are not jointly working on this. Keene said for a long time the situation at Cubberley has essentially been this since the CAC that the District does not know how to use this site. They need to move forward together. Doing the joint RFP process together will be the training wheels to the more complicated piece that will come after. Dauber said this is the first time he heard of the RFP and he is glad to be hearing about it. McGee said they have been working on this for some time. Dauber asked if the next step to bring the RFP to the Board. Golton said the next step is to bring this initial effort to the Board with a budget. Filseth stated this is great and having this done together is essential. As for RFPs, do they not have to decide what to place there first? Keene said they bringing a design consultant to support a process for both engagement and discussion. O’Kane said the RFP is not to get construction drawings, it is to help them facilitate going through the master planning effort and who do they engage from the community. Also, building on the Cubberley Advisory Committee report. Caswell asked that this process not be constrained by what they have at Cubberley today. For example, they could have playing fields but they do not necessarily need to be right on the site. Otherwise they will not optimize this site. Keene said as long as that extends to every component they discuss, to not be constrained. He believes the community will unconstraint them if they do this right. He suggests jointly bringing the same RFP to both their jurisdiction to bring them to the next phase of planning this. McGee said he would like whoever runs this process to develop three scenarios to bring back to the Board. The Emeryville facility was eye opening in how the District and City services can be together. Kniss said Las Avenidas will be located there for the next two to three years and it will give the community a good sense of what is it like to have a senior center in that part of the community versus where it is currently. She believes people will find that very appealing. Dauber stated he is really happy hearing about the joint RFP and would like an update on the progress on this effort at the next meeting. Future Meetings and Agendas The next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 8:00 a.m. at the District office. Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 9:34 a.m.