An earlier version of this story stated that there would be an LCAP committee meeting Tuesday. The meeting apparently was mistakenly appearing on the district’s online calendar, and there is no meeting scheduled.
Stege Elementary School supporters told district officials at a meeting Sunday that they felt blindsided by last week’s decision to close the school for repairs, asking “Why now?” after having complained for years about the building’s condition.
The West Contra Costa Unified School District announced the closure last week, stating on its website that “environmental hazards” were discovered during summer repair work. The announcement came just days after the district was named in a civil rights lawsuit alleging that it failed to address complaints about the 81-year-old building filed over the last two years.
The district told parents on Wednesday, less than a month before the first day of school, that the school would be temporarily closed for modernization work, said Raechelle Forrest, the district’s communications director. Superintendent Chris Hurst told Richmondside in an email Sunday that the refurbishment of Stege will cost about $43 million using non-bond state funds.
The school’s approximately 250 students will be transported by bus a little more than a mile away to DeJean Middle School, which has more than 380 students, according to the state Department of Education. The district’s Stege web page has been updated to include an FAQ about the repair and remodeling effort, and officials say that Stege students will get the same level of services, including free lunch, at DeJean.
About 40 frustrated parents and community leaders gathered to voice concerns to district leaders at the meeting, which was held at St. Peter Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in El Cerrito, where parishioners include many Stege alumni and Stege parents. They wanted to know why it has taken so long to make repairs, pointing out examples of neglect that make the campus potentially hazardous for students and staff.
Attorney: Asbestos discovered during window removal
Attorney Lakisha Mitchell-Keith presented a slideshow detailing the problems that sparked the lawsuit and the school closure, saying a July 10 report shows that window caulking contained asbestos.
Mitchell-Keith showed pictures of how the school failured to comply with state standards for public schools and classrooms, including classrooms without air conditioning and other HVAC system issues.
Since some classroom windows can’t be opened, Mitchell-Keith said, classroom temperatures would rise above 80 degrees. The standard range for a safe classroom temperature is between 68-76 degrees, she said.
The school also has suffered water damage, due to sewage backups and overflows. One video showed a single stall toilet overflowing, leaving children with sewage on their pant legs or on the bottoms of their shoes, Mitchell-Keith said. There are few clean water sources at the school, she said, as well as rampant pest and vermin infestations.
The school also lacks fire sprinklers and adequate fire extinguishers, which combined with exposed electrical wiring inside and out creates a major fire hazard, she said.
Finally, she said that employee union staff conducted tests showing that asbestos was found in putty used on windows that were recently removed, meaning the substance could have been released in and around the school site during the work.
“There’s no way of telling how far and where it spread during the construction,” she told the aghast audience members. She added that parents who took tours of some classrooms with signs of dry rot reported feeling “sick to their stomachs” afterward.
“So, we can’t imagine what the children have had to endure while having to be in these rooms during the day,” Mitchell-Keith said.
Mitchell-Keith said Stege Elementary deserves a remodel like what the district has planned or completed at Lake Elementary and Michelle Obama School. She is demanding that the district notify parents and community members about the hazards at the site and fire the official who approved and sent reports to the state claiming that Stege Elementary’s conditions were satisfactory.
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“We can’t imagine what the children have had to endure while having to be in these rooms during the day.”
— Attorney Lakisha Mitchell-Keith
Many gathered expressed visible signs of dismay and shock at the presentation.
Stege alum Elaine Keith, who runs a neighborhood daycare attended by Stege pupils, said the school’s closure is not surprising given its condition.
“It breaks my heart to see that nothing has changed,” Keith said. “The condition, the smell, the teachers that have to endure it. It needed to be closed. But I worry about what’s going to happen.”
Stege parent Tiara Speech, whose son will be a fifth-grader, said the closure was unexpected.
“I know why it was necessary,” she said. “But we shouldn’t have waited until the last minute. And I’m worried about elementary school students being on the same campus as middle school students, and the maturity level. Do they have enough staff?”
Ahmad Anderson, Stege alum and a candidate for Richmond City Council’s District 5, called the situation “a travesty.”
“If somebody sent (a satisfactory facilities report) to the state, that is a fraud. If they signed that report, and submitted that report, they should stand and fall by that report,” Anderson said.
Superintendent Hurst told the gathered community members that he thinks Stege’s conditions are “deplorable.” However, he said that there are other issues with the school, such as a long-known lack of qualified teachers.
His statement drew pushback from Anderson, who accused him of “deflecting.” Mitchell- Keith added: “If the conditions are deplorable, you cannot keep qualified teachers.”
Hurst said that the district will set up a meeting with all Stege parents to discuss the closure and DeJean transportation plan.
In a website message, the school’s new principal, Claudia Velez, principal of Michelle Obama School for the past decade, shares that she led her former school community through a similar relocation process and wrote, “I want to assure the Stege community that I am confident we can persevere in the endeavor of moving the campus while keeping the safety of our students and staff at the forefront.”
Stege problems historically go beyond physical conditions
The Panhandle Annex school, one of the first schools in Richmond, was named after Richard Stege, a wealthy frog farmer on whose estate the school was built. It opened in 1903, with its present building built in 1943. The student population has struggled with low performance and declining attendance over the years, as was chronicled in a 2019 EdSource series that explored how it could be redesigned to better serve pupils. (View the most recent Stege performance benchmarks on the California School Dashboard.)
The school closure news came a few days after the district was hit with a civil rights lawsuit about how it has handled building and staffing problems there and at other schools districtwide.
Civil rights law firm Public Advocates filed the lawsuit July 19 accusing the district of violating students’ rights for failing to rectify issues raised in a January complaint alleging facilities and staffing problems at Stege, John F. Kennedy High School in Richmond and Helms Middle School in San Pablo. According to state 2023 benchmark data, 39% of Stege pupils are Black, and 34% are Hispanic. Eight-four percent are socioeconomically disadvantaged, and 32% are English language learners.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of six educators, staff and parents, is the first in the state to be brought under the 2004 Williams vs. California settlement, which established via the state’s educational code a process allowing members of the public to use the courts to address school quality problems and hold districts accountable.
A Williams complaint allows a student, family member, teacher, or any member of the public to file a complaint about a K-12 district school for lacking educational materials, teacher vacancies or mis-assignment, and/or inadequate facilities.
A June 2023 complaint listed 50 Stege building issues, including opaque and inoperable windows, broken floor tiles, and mold-infested walls.
Karissa Provenza, law fellow at Public Advocates and lead attorney on the lawsuit, said in a statement: “As of right now, we do not anticipate that the temporary closure of Stege will have an impact on the lawsuit. Forty-five complainants raised concerns about dangerous facility deficiencies at Stege over a year ago, which the district did not respond to. What this closure highlights is the district’s failure to provide the students and staff of Stege a safe, healthy, and stable school environment to which they are entitled.”
Public Advocates filed three Williams education code complaints in January. They say that the WCCUSD schools named in the complaints do not have enough teachers or that teachers were not competent in their assigned subject matter or qualified to work with English language learners.
In response to the lawsuit, the district told Richmondside last week that it is working to attract and retain qualified educators. At last week’s school board meeting district leaders said they still needed to recruit 76 elementary teachers, 23 secondary teachers, 13 special education teachers, and 247 classified employees for the upcoming school year.
The law firm said there are legislatively authorized options for the district to fill core classroom vacancies but instead WCCUSD has relied on rolling subs, unauthorized long-term substitutes, or daily shifting teachers, resulting in “classroom chaos and learning loss for students at three of the highest-need schools in the district.”
The district’s local accountability plan (LCAP) for 2023-2024 did include a plan to allot the equivalent of 39.5 full-time elementary school support positions. The draft 2024-25 LCAP states that Stege is among a number of district schools “qualifying for comprehensive support and improvement programs based on 2023-24 California School Dashboard data,” but the nearly 200-page plan’s only mention of Stege is as part of a plan to hire and train vice and assistant principals.
Approval of the 2024-25 accountability plan remains in limbo a month into the new fiscal year. In June the board failed to pass its LCAP and 2024-25 budget, after parents and school board members complained that it lacked details about how $64.8 million in programs would improve the success of low-income youths, foster children, Black students and English learners.
An earlier version of this story stated that there would be an LCAP committee meeting Tuesday. The meeting apparently was mistakenly appearing on the district’s online calendar, and there is no meeting scheduled.
