A civil rights lawsuit that sought to force the West Contra Costa Unified School District to only hire credentialed teachers and fix facilities issues at Stege Elementary illustrates widespread issues facing public schools and thus doesn’t warrant singling out one district, a judge said last week.
In a hearing Friday Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Terri Mockler denied a request to order the district to improve staffing and facilities issues at schools such as Stege Elementary. The lawsuit also sought to remedy staffing problems at Helms Middle School in San Pablo and Richmond’s John F. Kennedy High School.
In a trial motion hearing in Martinez, Mockler ruled to deny a request on behalf of six teachers and parents that asked the court to order the district to resolve the issues, saying she cannot force the WCCUSD to quickly find answers to problems that are facing every public school district.
The civil rights lawsuit was filed last summer after the district did not resolve 45 Williams Act complaints filed in June 2023. The 2004 Williams vs. California settlement created legislation establishing standards and accountability measures for educational resources and set requirements for how school districts handle complaints about school conditions.
In the case of Stege, the plaintiffs made two arguments: That hazardous conditions had to be immediately rectified, including fixing opaque and/or inoperable windows, broken floor tiles, and mold-infested walls, and that WCCUSD must be ordered to immediately fill all teacher vacancies with qualified candidates.
Mockler said she wasn’t convinced that either of these requests are viable, at least at this stage. Stege Elementary was indefinitely closed right before school started, after asbestos and lead were found on site, and the students are attending classes at DeJean Middle School — making the issue moot, she said.
Attorney Dane Shikman, representing the petitioners, implored the judge to order WCCUSD to follow its stated plans to modernize the campus or face unnamed penalties, saying: “We want to make sure that when they return, the students do not face the same hazardous conditions they endured for years.”
Mockler said the Stege modernization plan and designs already went through public hearings. WCCUSD’s attorney Katherine Alberts said that through those hearings, the public knew Stege was third in line behind the Wilson and Lake Elementary school rebuild projects, which are already underway. She said the district has committed $43 million, with leeway to use other funds if necessary, to Stege’s upgrades.
“Stege has never been skipped,” Alberts said. “The students are not coming back to the original Stege campus. They are only coming back when the campus has been modernized.”
Additionally, Alberts said, the court cannot order a remedy under the Williams Act if the site in question is already approved for rebuilding. She admitted there are problems at the school such as broken windows and floor tiles and mold, but said, “You’re ordering us to fix the things in the complaint, which would be useless and pointless at this point in time. These students are safe now, if you take their allegations as true about the conditions of the school.”
In a rebuttal, Shikman told the judge that WCCUSD knew about problems at Stege Elementary for a long time, since it received a packet of complaints in June 2023, and never responded to all of the claims. It wasn’t until the lawsuit was filed over the summer that the district responded by closing Stege abruptly, he said.
Alberts called the district’s lack of response a “falling through the cracks” situation, saying, “Nobody at the district has been able to figure out why there wasn’t a response.” She also criticized the complaints, such as a lack of air conditioning, saying, “They complained about classrooms being hot. Well, a lot of people don’t have air conditioning. It’s the bay.”
Mockler noted that the 2023 complaints to the district were written in the fall of 2022, saying this showed a lack of urgency on the petitioners’ part. However, she also criticized Alberts for downplaying parents’ concerns about their children’s safety, and said that in the future WCCUSD ought to at least acknowledge such complaints quickly and try to remedy them.
Teacher: Some pupils didn’t have a credentialed teacher until third grade
The judge also criticized the petitioners for demanding that WCCUSD stop using substitute teachers for extended periods. She largely agreed with Alberts, who said that even if it cannot find credentialed teachers, the district must fill vacancies any way it can, even if that means hiring employees who aren’t seeking teaching credentials.
“You can’t make people get credentialed to teach,” Mockler said. “You can’t simply take other teachers who are doing different jobs within the district and force them to be in the classroom.”
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“…when you throw in public schools in the west county, the district has even more problems. The few teachers that are coming out of credential programs, most of them unfortunately want to teach in places like Lafayette and Moraga. They don’t want to teach in Richmond.”
— Judge Terri Mockler, Contra Costa County Superior Court
Shikman said that WCCUSD keeps using the same substitute teachers, who aren’t qualified to get a waiver to teach the same class all year, rather than seeking qualified candidates.
However, Alberts said, districts only use substitutes when there are no other qualified candidates available. WCCUSD had to use substitutes with 30-day teaching permits for long-term vacancies in order to avoid rotating teachers, a practice that leaves students without any consistency, she said.
“Students need consistency,” Alberts said. “It’s better for a teacher to be part of the class all year, being part of the community and the district. It’s better, in the (district’s) minds, to keep one teacher there all year for consistency, then to keep rotating in teachers. It’s not as if the district isn’t trying to find viable candidates.”
When Shikman, for the plaintiffs, responded that the district ought to only hire people who are qualified to teach specific subjects, Alberts said it is already difficult to find teachers and substitutes, let alone candidates who meet all California standards to acquire waivers and eventually become credentialed.
Mockler agreed, calling the issue “chronic.”
“It’s not something that all of a sudden became an issue,” she said. “And then when you throw in public schools in the west (Contra Costa) county, the district has even more problems. The few teachers that are coming out of credential programs, most of them unfortunately want to teach in places like Lafayette and Moraga. They don’t want to teach in Richmond.”
In a statement sent to Richmondside following Friday’s hearing, an attorney for the plaintiffs called the judge’s decision “deeply disappointing.”
Karissa Provenza, staff attorney for Public Advocates, said: “For over a year, the students and teachers of Stege Elementary have pleaded with the district to take action and provide its students with a safe place to play, grow, and learn from qualified and supported teachers. Despite this setback, we will continue to fight.”
Public Advocates’ managing attorney John Affeldt said in the statement that he thinks the judge’s ruling was in error.
“The legislature established with the Williams v. California settlement that certain minimum necessities are so inviolate that districts must remedy their denial immediately when proven and report back to complainants,” he said. “To allow valid facility complaints to go ignored and illegal teachers to continue in place runs counter to the basic requirements of Williams. We are consulting with clients about next steps.”
The main educator named in the lawsuit, Sam Cleare, said in a statement that they have worked at Stege Elementary for seven years and have never seen improvements to problems with staffing teachers.
“When some students would reach me in the third grade, I was their first credentialed teacher for the entire year,” Cleare said. “These inequities, targeted at some of the most vulnerable students in our communities, are simply unacceptable. We must continue to fight for more resources in order to meet the basic needs of our students. Williams complaints should allow community voices to be heard, but instead they were ignored.”
Parents demand that WCCUSD commit to improve schools
Outside of court, Stege parents and alumni have turned to the school board to demand more accountability for the poor conditions they say existed at Stege Elementary for years.
At Wednesday night’s regular school board meeting Stege teacher Theresa Griffin described the difficulties of educating students under the current conditions at DeJean, including working without proper space for enrichment classes such as music instruction.
“Much money has been spent to get new books and supplies for the students, and makeshift furniture of course,” Griffin said. “But we don’t even know when we’ll be able to get our things that are still over at Stege. We’ve been told maybe never, which would really be unfair to us.
“This has been a stressful time, but we all persevere and all continue to persevere,” she added.
Michele Jackson, chair of the education committee for the NAACP El Cerrito branch, stepped up to the podium to demand WCCUSD staff acknowledge “displaced students, inconvenienced parents and disrespected teachers.”
Jackson said Stege has the largest Black population in the district and as the longest-running school represents significant history and value for Black leaders across the Bay Area. She asked that the WCCUSD board commit to a complete, full rebuild of the campus.
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“When some students would reach me in the third grade, I was their first credentialed teacher for the entire year. These inequities, targeted at some of the most vulnerable students in our communities, are simply unacceptable. We must continue to fight for more resources in order to meet the basic needs of our students.“
— Sam Cleare, Stege Elementary teacher
“Because of the racial discrimination, inequities, abandonment and neglect of Stege Elementary, we stand here today in a state of emergency,” Jackson said. “Students, faculty and staff have risked their lives going into a dilapidated school building every day. Three generations have attended the World War II structure of a school that has not had any upgrades since 1943. One of the students told me they had a substitute teacher all year long. This shows that many quality teachers refused this assignment.”
Jackson demanded that the board members make good on the promises outlined in their relatively new anti-racism policy by committing to ensure that Stege students will soon have a better learning environment. She also demanded that, once construction begins, the district hold quarterly meetings to update parents and stakeholders on the project’s progress.
Because the comments were made during the open public comment portion of the meeting and were not part of the agenda, the school board members did not respond.
The WCCUSD includes the cities of El Cerrito, Hercules, Pinole, Richmond and San Pablo, and six unincorporated areas: Bayview-Montalvin Manor, East Richmond Heights, El Sobrante, Kensington, North Richmond and Tara Hills. (Learn more in our guide to how the school board works.)
For more information, follow Richmondside’s schools coverage or visit the WCCUSD school board website.
