A school for San Diego students in crisis has moved into the former North Park Elementary School, which was closed after the 2008-09 academic year due to persistently low enrollment.
The Alternative Learning for Behavior and Attitude (ALBA) high school began the 2009-10 school year at its new site on Oregon Street adjacent to the North Park Community Park. ALBA previously was located in bungalows behind Crawford High School in El Cerrito.
“This was an opportunity to use a facility that was only partially utilized,” said Bill Kowba, interim superintendent for the San Diego Unified School District. “(ALBA) has gone from deteriorating portables to a permanent structure built in the late ’90s. This location is much more beneficial.”
ALBA is a program for students who are on suspended expulsion or have exhibited other problems with conduct at their regular high schools. Typically they spend a semester – 18 weeks – at ALBA before returning to their former schools, said Vernon Moore, principal.
“This is where the rubber meets the road,” he said. “Students who have made a mistake get an opportunity to get some personalized attention in a rigorous small-group setting.”
Although enrollment varies from term to term, ALBA’s high school usually has fewer than 30 students, 95 percent of whom are reinstated to their regular high schools. ALBA’s middle school, near Marston Middle School in Clairemont, also has about 30 students. Plans call for the ALBA middle school to join the high school at the North Park site for the 2010-11 school year.
“The facilities were really getting in the way of being able to get these kids back on track,” said San Diego Unified school board member Richard Barrera, who represents the sub-district that includes North Park. “They were in old rundown bungalows that kids really shouldn’t have been in in the first place.” Staffing was also difficult, he said, because the principal and other personnel shuttled between the two campuses.
Barrera thought the solution would be to use funds from Proposition S, which voters approved in November, to build a $6.8 million structure that would accommodate both ALBA schools. But in April, Kowba, then the district’s chief logistics officer, approached Barrera with another idea.
“(Kowba) said North Park (Elementary) has 80 kids. The threshold that the small-schools committee had set for a school that was sustainable was 400 kids. If you’re under 400 kids it’s difficult to justify the administrative costs of supporting the school,” Barrera said. “Then he said that the North Park campus would be a perfect site for ALBA because it has the capacity to bring both the high school and the middle school together. And the majority of the kids who go to ALBA live in the Mid-City area. It would be easier and more convenient for them to be able to come to school in North Park.”
Barrera said he was sold on the idea but concerned about reaction from the elementary school’s teachers and parents. “My challenge to Bill (Kowba) and the district staff was to get out first to the North Park community, talk to the parents there, the teachers, the principal. Get their sense of what their reaction would be to having the school closed,” he said.
After a series of these meetings, Kowba reported back to Barrera that those involved with the elementary school were comfortable with the closure. “What folks said was they knew that the school was going to have to close, that it didn’t make any sense to continue on with the enrollment levels. So they were prepared to make the change,” Barrera said. “We had the principals from (nearby elementaries) Garfield and Jefferson speak to the parents and they got excited about some of the things that were going on there.”
What happened next has raised concern among some community members. While the school board voted to move ALBA to North Park on May 26, the city – which maintains a joint-use agreement with the district for the contiguous park – was not informed about the plan, nor were nearby residents, who did not find out about it until June or later.
“It was done in a way that would purposefully leave the community out,” said Vicki Granowitz, chair of the North Park Recreation Council, an advisory committee to the city’s Park and Recreation Department. “Nobody from the school district contacted the city or Park and Rec,” she said.
Although the ALBA item originally appeared on the school board’s May 26 agenda as a “first reading,” meaning there would be a discussion with no decision, a few days prior to the meeting – within Brown Act rules for public notice – it was modified to “action,” which calls for a vote.
Barrera explained that the change was to accommodate North Park Elementary teachers who needed to meet the district’s deadline for what is known as “post and bid,” a practice that reassigns staff to new schools.
“The teachers requested that we change it from a first reading to an action item so then they would be freed up to go through the post and bid process,” he said. “Because the parents and the principal were all OK with the move, we just decided to do it as an action item.”
Granowitz was not convinced. “Using deploying of teachers is sneaky,” she said. “(The district) had a lot of time to bring this to the board earlier and they chose not to. I think that’s disingenuous.”
Kowba said he had been prepared to do a community outreach effort before the vote. “We thought we’d go through that process for the board to think about it, let the public comment on it,” he said. “But the board said, ‘We have enough information. Let’s go forward.’ ”
Unlike the city, the school district is not required to seek community input on land-use issues. But that fact doesn’t sit will with Granowitz, who says she fears decisions such as these could cause problems for the many joint-use agreements between the city and school district.
“It’s true they weren’t obligated, but I believe they have a good-neighbor responsibility since this is a shared site,” she said. “If there was nothing suspicious they shouldn’t have needed to do it that way. I’d like there to be a better relationship between the city and the board of education. But if you have an individual on one side saying we don’t need them, that doesn’t make for a good relationship. It’s a matter of working in partnership.”
Kowba said the board’s swift decision caught him by surprise as well, but it did not affect the joint-use provision. “We aren’t walking away from our park responsibility. We still have a school in joint use with the park – nothing has changed in that regard,” he said.
Barrera admitted the district acted quickly, but said he is committed to working with the neighborhood. “It is true that we made a decision that we were going to close the school and relocate ALBA before we started the process with the community,” he said. “It’s also true that the process (afterward) with the community wasn’t, ‘Do you think this is a good idea or not?’ It was, ‘We’re going to do this and now how do we make this work for the community?’ ”
San Diego District 3 Councilmember Todd Gloria acknowledged he was not told about the move prior to the board’s vote. “It was probably a strategic mistake on the district’s part,” he said, adding he is encouraged about the possibilities of using Proposition S funds to improve the park – an area known for drug use, prostitution and other crimes.
“Our parks are a great amenity but many people feel they can’t go to this park. Park and Rec can’t do much about it due to the budget situation,” he said. “ALBA presents an opportunity to gain access to dollars that can help. I’m taking the school district at their word that this is going to be a positive.”
The North Park Community Association, led by board President Omar Passons, has taken the lead in helping the district and city prioritize ways Proposition S funds might be used to improve the combined park/school area. The NPCA has promoted on its Web site several planning meetings, which are open to the public, where people can give input and ask questions about the school and the money that might be spent on improvements. The NPCS also participated in a neighborhood walk with district and city staff to gather residents’ opinions.
“I believe this effort can be a catalyst for this neighborhood,” Passons said. “It’s an opportunity for the school district, Park and Rec, the community and Todd Gloria’s office to come together and do something for this area that really matters.”
The NPCA’s Web site lists three actions that are to result from the meetings: a volunteer-supported mentoring program for ALBA students, a security subcommittee to determine safety needs, and a cost-analysis plan for upgrading the joint-use fields. The latter two have a self-imposed target deadline of Nov. 18 for developing strategies.
“The individual partners will make a decision on what they can and cannot fund,” Passons said about the proposals.
Not all the changes on the NPCA’s wish list are costly. “I would like to see a lot of the deterioration around the park – the chain-link fence and weeds and trash – gone. And we have a reasonable chance to affect that change. I’ll be very surprised if we don’t look up and see a very different portion of North Park there in a year or so,” Passons said.
Gloria said security cameras are a good example of what the city and district might be able to fund together, using the district’s existing monitoring system. “But this conversation is not complete yet,” he emphasized. “A lot of the residents’ concerns pre-dated ALBA, yet I have felt (the district) has been extremely open and clear with my office and responsive to my general concerns. They’ve been very available and open.”
Accessibility is a quality Barrera would like to see attributed to the school district more often. “I was determined that there was going to be a real community process in making this transition,” he said. “And I think it’s actually a really solid example of when the district decides to reach out beyond its boundaries, work with community organizations and work with the city that positive things can happen, rather than just sort of putting your head down and avoiding the conversation because you think that there might be contentious issues.
“I think this is a model for the way the district needs to operate,” Barrera said.

Christy Scannell is a freelance writer and editor who lives in North Park.