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Forum
participants appeared to agree in principal that multi-function school
facilities are needed, but getting there poses a challenge.
Moderator
David Abel, visiting keynote speaker from New Schools - Better Neighborhoods, said a few “bloody foreheads” might result as distinct
government agencies try to work together. At the state level, he said, “the
separate silos of funding” make streamlining policy and planning toward
community needs nearly impossible.
“It’s
fundamentally difficult to cross those boundaries,” he said.
On
the horizon, however, may be tools to help communities reach into every street
corner when deciding where and how to build new schools. Some $100 million
from the state’s proposed $25 billion school bond is set aside for joint-use
projects and Assembly Speaker Emeritus Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, has
authored a trailer bill (AB2588) to allow some of the bond money to pay for planning
efforts, something forum participants maintain is critical to school construction success.
There
is precedent in the state. Ukiah built a school with community facilities and
a sheriff’s substation on the site of a failed shopping mall. Businessman
Sol Price and his Price Charities breathed new life into the blighted City
Heights neighborhood of San Diego with a 30-acre urban village complete with
116 units of affordable housing. And CSU has joined San Jose in building a
library to anchor a community center next to the campus.
So how do we
move forward with joint-use planning? A
possible first step, according to David Dent of the Fresno County Human
Services System, may have been this forum itself.
“This
is the first time I’ve sat at a table with the education and government
officials present today. I guess that means something … we have our day to
day pressures, but I want to go back to the hope we are expressing today.”
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