An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the age of Richmond High’s current building.
Many of the West County Unified School District’s nearly 23,000 students attend classes in schools constructed in the ‘50s and ‘60s that either need to be rebuilt or significantly upgraded, according to officials.
The district’s 2016 facilities master plan, most recently updated about a year ago, lists 20 schools as in “critical” need. While the WCCUSD has made progress toward improving more than a dozen of its aging campuses, it has struggled to find the money to complete all the work.
Two recently approved projects, at Richmond and Kennedy high schools, will cost an estimated $280 million each, with district officials saying construction costs have skyrocketed since the pandemic, making it harder to stretch a limited pool of bond measure dollars far enough to get everything done.
On top of the increasing costs, the process of prioritizing which school projects are completed first is fraught with politics and equity questions, as was revealed by the recent controversy surrounding the emergency closure of Stege Elementary.
Stege volunteer and advocate Lakisha Mitchell-Keith called it “disheartening and unconscionable” that the longest-operating school in Richmond wasn’t prioritized for a full rebuild before Richmond and Kennedy and about 18 other elementary schools.
Stege was unexpectedly shut down over the summer, and students transferred to a nearby middle school after workers discovered asbestos and lead in building materials. But that information shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the district, say parents and teachers, who say that years ago they had reported numerous age-related maintenance issues, such as plumbing malfunctions that left students with sewage on their clothing and inoperable windows and drinking fountains.
District officials say they hope to avoid such extensive disruptions at other schools needing rehabilitation.
Mitchell-Keith thinks the Stege project should have come first due to its age. (Kennedy High is 57 years old; Richmond High’s current building is 55 years old; and Stege’s current building is 81 years old.) She said that Stege should have been eligible for a chunk of the more than $560 million in bond funds that are paying for the high school projects.
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You would think the oldest schools would be the first rebuilt. Stege should have been rebuilt sooner. This is a push to make sure we’re not overlooked.”
— Stege volunteer and advocate Lakisha Mitchell-Keith
“You would think the oldest schools would be the first rebuilt,” Mitchell-Keith said. “Stege should have been rebuilt sooner. This is a push to make sure we’re not overlooked.”
At Lake Elementary in San Pablo, first built in the ‘50s, the district was able to keep students on campus by using temporary classrooms during its still-ongoing construction project. Temporary classrooms are also in use at Kennedy High School.
The district relies on the school board-approved facilities master plan to guide how it prioritizes fixing schools based on which have the greatest repair or rebuild needs, said Melissa Payne, WCCUSD’s associate superintendent of facilities, maintenance and operations.
Kennedy, Richmond high school projects approved by in October
The school board at its meeting Oct. 9 approved plans to modernize Richmond and Kennedy High Schools after getting proposals from contractors in September. The board approved proposals from Overaa Construction for the Kennedy High School Modernization Project and BHM Construction, LLC for the Richmond High School Modernization Project. Each project will cost an estimated more than $280 million.
The plan’s most recent update in November 2023 approved demolishing Kennedy High’s main building on Cutting Boulevard next summer so a new building can be built in its place.
Kennedy High students were relocated to portables on the south side of the campus off Berk Avenue. The school’s administrative staff declined to comment on the process for this article.
The plans to rebuild both schools mean a lot, said alum Richard Gonzalez, a journalist who once attended Kennedy High school and has been following the rebuild plans since 2021. Kennedy and Richmond High are “de facto” newcomer schools, with many of their student populations born outside the United States or being unaccompanied minors from other countries, he said.
“John F. Kennedy High School was once a superb institution and any hope of reviving its fortunes is linked to the planned rebuild,” Gonzalez said. “The road to the future of Richmond runs right through Richmond and Kennedy High Schools.”
Tensions continue over prioritizing schools
WCCUSD parents are frustrated over the critical needs list prioritization process, according to WCCUSD’s director of facilities, planning and construction Ellen Mejia Hooper. But she said that district staff base all improvement schedules on an assessment that establishes a score to rank projects by need.
“It was always known that we wouldn’t be able to do all the critical needs projects and phases in one fell swoop,” Mejia Hooper said.
However, the most controversy this year materialized around the crisis at Stege Elementary, which in 2016 was third in line for upgrades behind Lake and Michelle Obama elementary schools.
Natalie Walchuk, vice president of local impact for Go Public Schools West Contra Costa, representing more than 30,000 families under a California’s organization supporting local communities in education, told Richmondside that she thinks the district’s approach to identifying campuses for improvements has left students in underserved categories behind — “especially those with the highest percentages of students receiving free and reduced lunch, while other projects have drained our district’s limited funding.”
She said that WCCUSD needs a more transparent process of allocating money to avoid what she called mismanagement.
“It’s frustrating and frankly deeply disheartening to see our community’s children being put in a position where they have to compete for basic educational resources and facilities that meet their needs,” Walchuk said. “Mismanagement and prioritization issues have led us to this point, where schools in the same neighborhoods are fighting over a limited pot of resources. To imply that these issues are new or weren’t previously known is an insult to the staff, families, and community members who have been vocal, powerfully advocating for a safe and healthy learning environment for many years.”
Several parents at the Oct. 9 school board meeting also criticized what they say was a delayed response to maintenance problems at Stege given that the move to DeJean Middle School came with little notice.
Michele Jackson, chair of the education committee for the NAACP El Cerrito branch, called for the school board to commit to “a complete, full rebuild” of Stege. She accused WCCUSD of clear structural racism by closing the school, “As we watch new schools being built all around the district,” since it’s located in a historically Black neighborhood and has 36% Black students and 37% Latino pupils.
The district plans to spend $43 million in general funds to modernize Stege and has additional money set aside if it costs more. A county judge recently ruled in favor of the district in a civil rights lawsuit alleging that it failed to address complaints about the 81-year-old building filed over the last two years, saying the planned improvements made the lawsuit moot.
WCCUSD is still finalizing the scope of the school’s modernization before entering the design phase and has not released any information about it to the public. Superintendent Chris Hurst has estimated that the project could take two to three years to complete.
Lake Elementary project rebuild ongoing
The district says that its school reconstruction priority system has led to progress at other high-needs schools, albeit with some delays.
Lake Elementary in San Pablo, for example, will have a $65 million new campus, following the demolition of decades-old buildings last summer. The administration and classroom wings have been completed, and some students are now using the new facilities, albeit with some challenges. Students are eating meals and attending tutoring and counseling sessions in makeshift spaces, for one thing.
But that’s all part of going to school at a construction site versus having to find another location, according to Mejia Hooper. The project’s second phase will include a new multipurpose building, kindergarten classrooms and outdoor recreation spaces.
On a recent tour of the campus, Mejia Hooper told Richmondside that she’s been heavily involved with the vision for Lake Elementary. Having worked for the district as a consultant since 2015, she helped design the specifications for the new campus, laying out the best way for the space to meet the school’s programs and needs. She was there when the decision was made to design Lake Elementary as a “flexible” campus, meaning its spaces can be configured to accommodate many different purposes.
This design concept, which includes moveable walls and customizable “breakout” spaces, will be partly incorporated into the new campuses at Richmond and Kennedy High Schools.
“One of the hard parts with designing buildings is that programs change frequently,” Mejia Hooper said. “Trying to have a 50-year-old building meet all of the needs over the years is very difficult. For years, the way we built elementary schools was one same box, over and over again. It meant everything had to fit in that box. But most things didn’t fit well.”
Lake now has a new office building and drop-off zone and a flexibly designed library that’s temporarily home to several kindergarten classrooms while the other side of the campus is under construction.
Some classrooms are housing programs, such as tutoring and studying zones, or are being used for administrative purposes. Notably, classrooms are being built to wrap around large open “flex areas,” where students store belongings in cubbies before heading to class.
“It’s part of ensuring that each classroom isn’t specifically owned by a particular teacher,” Mejia Hooper said. The school’s flexible design has both eased and contributed to some challenges as the campus construction continues. Until fall of 2025 students will be served lunch in a converted classroom space and eat in what will later become two classrooms. They also make do with limited space for physical education outdoors, awaiting a promised turf field, garden and new play structures.
“They’re being real troopers,” Mejia Hooper said of students and staff alike. She said their flexibility is crucial until the entire campus is finished during the latter half of 2025.
How will WCCUSD fund school projects moving forward?
Moving forward, WCCUSD continues to search for money to upgrade its aging schools. The district has received $221 million in school facility program funds received from the state alone to date since about 2016, with individual project budgets and funding sources varying based on the work. Per a November 2023 report, for example, the district estimated it will use $566 million in Measure R funds for Richmond and Kennedy upgrades, and $43 million from the state for Stege’s upgrades. Combined with estimated costs to finish upgrading Lake Elementary, the costs so far are approaching nearly $700 million.
Part of the reason for the shortage of construction money was the 2014 defeat of Measure H, which would have authorized the district to increase its debt by $270 million by issuing general obligation bonds in that amount. Schools rely heavily on state and federal funding to cover the costs of facility improvements, and use bond measures to ask voters to approve additional funds where needed — a difficult ask in challenging economic times and as building costs rise.
Mejia Hooper said she thinks voters rejected the measure because they were frustrated with previously promised school updates that never materialized, although she added that the district can’t prove that was the case.
“It was like ‘Oh no, what do we do?’ ” Mejia Hooper said of the bond’s failure at the time. “We have all of these projects, and beyond that we have more needs. There were 21 school sites with work done or something in process. But we also couldn’t let 21 schools wait for when a bond measure might come down the pike.”
However, she added, the subsequent approval of Measure R in 2020, a critical $575 million facility improvement bond, has allowed the district to move forward with some of the projects.
There’s some hope for the future, with voters’ recent approval of Proposition 2, a $10 billion bond measure approved in November to improve public school and community college facilities. School districts will apply for and be awarded funding mainly on a first-come, first-served basis. However, it remains to be seen how much money WCCUSD could be eligible for under this measure. District staff have not answered Richmondside’s questions about any next steps.
WCCUSD maintains a portal with information about the projects at each school site and the budgets.
