This story was first published in Friday morning’s Daily Post. If you want all of the important local news first, pick up the Post in the mornings.
BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A board member of the Palo Alto Unified School District has sent a letter to Palo Alto City Council inviting a potential land deal at Cubberley Community Center with the hopes of jump-starting negotiations over the crumbling site.
“I don’t think there had ever been a place where the school board or district had said, ‘Here’s exactly what we will and won’t be open to, and here’s what we want to see,’” board member Shounak Dharap said at yesterday’s City-School Liaison Committee Meeting.
The district’s “enthusiasm to support the city’s endeavor” is limited by two constraints, Dharap wrote in his letter, which was authorized by the full board.
First, the district wants to keep ownership of roughly 20 of the 35 acres at Cubberley for a future school site.
The city already owns eight acres, so that leaves seven acres that could be transferred from the school district to the city to create a 15-acre community center.
Dharap said the school district has given up land during a period of declining enrollment before only to find itself in financial dire straits when the need for a new campus arose years later. That mistake can’t be repeated, he said.
Indeed, the district is using Cubberley to host students from Palo Verde and Hoover Elementary Schools while their campuses undergo construction through 2025, Dharap said.
The second constraint is that the district can’t ask voters to pass a school bond to fund development of a community center, since a school bond can only be used to fund school construction under state law.
“Within those constraints lies a viable path forward,” Dharap said.
The district is flexible about where the city’s acreage could go, as well as the form of the deal — “whether it’s a land swap, ground lease or some other vehicle for land transfer,” Dharap said.
The city could also continue to lease the district’s remaining acreage until a need arises for a new school, Dharap said.
Dharap formally invited council to submit proposals to Superintendent Don Austin.
Councilman Pat Burt and Councilwoman Julie Lythcott-Haims told Dharap yesterday that they welcomed the letter.
For years, the city tried to push the district to do things that weren’t legally allowed nor in the longterm interest of students, and the letter sets a framework the two sides have badly needed, Burt said.
“It really affirmed things we generally understood but didn’t necessarily have clarity on,” he said.
The city rents out space at the former high school to nonprofits and youth organizations. But the buildings have termite damage and leak when it rains, and the electrical and plumbing systems are in disrepair, according to Eric Holm, the district’s director of facilities.
“Within the shared canon of our two governmental bodies, few questions evoke the same wearied engagement as this one,” Dharap said. “As the crumbling infrastructure belies the rich panoply of community-oriented programs that now inhabit the site, there is general agreement that Cubberley’s current use is unsustainable without significant capital improvements.”
Let’s hope the City Council will fast track a plan to re-develop Cubberley now that that PAUSD has made its future intentions for the 20 acres it owns. The buildings are in dis-repair and it is only a matter of time that the current users’ safety and health are jeopardized. Please let our City Council know that this re-development project has your highest priority, “Failing to plan today is planning to fail tomorrow”