ALAMEDA
Alameda families with special-needs children are distraught over a proposal to eliminate sixth through eighth grades at Bay Farm School.
The Alameda Unified School District board is scheduled to consider the proposal Feb. 14, and a town hall meeting with district Superintendent Pasquale Scuderi is set for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday on Zoom. Families with special-needs children seek out the school on Alameda’s Bay Farm Island because of its smaller size and smaller class sizes compared with other middle schools in the city, an advocate for the school said by email.
“Neurodiverse students are thriving in this smaller school where every student is known by the teachers,” said Robyn Wu, a parent of a Bay Farm School fourth-grader and a member of the school’s Parent Teacher Student Association.
One student is fearful of going to Lincoln Middle School, which has a capacity of 900 students. Bay Farm School’s capacity in grades six through eight is 192. Alameda has four middle schools — Bay Farm School, Encinal Junior and Senior High School and Lincoln and Wood middle schools.
School district officials cite financial efficiency as the reason to eliminate the three grades at Bay Farm, according to answers to frequently asked questions published on the district’s website. District officials report that middle school enrollment is and has been declining for some time at Bay Farm School, so money would be spent more wisely in other ways in the district.
That may mean class sizes at or near capacity at other schools. Reacting to the district’s argument about declining enrollment, Wu said that school district officials have not communicated to the community that any Alameda child can attend Bay Farm School. According to the district, though, that fact has been published for many years on its website.
Advocates for Bay Farm’s middle school argue that many did not know a proposal had been made to eliminate the three grades.
“We owe the community an apology for the absence of sufficient communication on the proposal to phase out the Bay Farm middle school program beginning in August of 2023,” Scuderi wrote to families on Jan. 12. “While we have long contemplated this issue internally, our external communications have been lacking, and for that I will take responsibility,” Scuderi said.
So many Bay Farm community members reacted to the proposal and attended a recent school board meeting that the capacity on the Zoom platform reached a maximum and people were forced to watch the live-stream instead.
Wednesday’s 5:30 p.m. town hall meeting with the superintendent can be accessed online at bit.ly/ausdmeeting02012023. The meeting ID is 830 5622 6857, and the passcode is 837576.
— Bay City News
Cooperation pledged with latest probe of suspect’s death
The city of Alameda was notified Tuesday that Alameda County’s newly elected district attorney plans to review the death of Mario Gonzalez. Consistent with the city’s longstanding commitment to transparency and accountability, the city will cooperate fully with this review.
Previously, the county District Attorney’s Office assembled a critical incident team to conduct an investigation involving the in-custody death of Gonzalez. The team focuses on whether there is evidence that a crime was committed and whether there is sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a law enforcement official committed a crime in connection with the in-custody death.
The District Attorney’s Office released a report last March 30 after comprehensively reviewing all of the evidence gathered, including the coroner investigator’s report and autopsy report and concluded that the officers involved in this incident are not criminally liable, stating that the evidence does not justify criminal charges against any law enforcement agency.
The report stated that the officers’ decision to detain and arrest Gonzalez and their subsequent use of force was objectively reasonable considering agency policies, the totality of the circumstances and the officers’ stated rationale. The city also launched an independent investigation April 23, 2021, that was led by former San Francisco City Attorney and Supervisor Louise Renne of Renne Public Law Group.
That report was released to the public last May and found that no policy violations occurred. At the present time, two of the officers involved are assigned to desk duty and the third has left the department.
— city of Alameda
Shoplifter leaves car running in no-parking zone, is caught
A suspected shoplifter’s mistake was leaving his stolen getaway car running in a no-parking zone at Alameda South Shore Center, where police were waiting when he dashed from a store with a security guard on his heels Jan. 24.
An Alameda officer had noticed the car about 10:15 a.m., blocking a ramp for disabled access at the shopping center, according to a post on the Police Department’s Facebook page. The car was idling, and as the officer inspected it, she found that BART police had reported the car stolen.
The officer then heard yelling coming from a store and saw a security guard chasing a man with two baskets full of items. The man didn’t notice the officer and threw items into the car, but as he tried to get into the driver’s seat, officers stopped him, police said.
The merchandise was returned to the business and the registered owner of the stolen vehicle was contacted, police said. The 60-year-old suspect, an Oakland resident, was arrested on suspicion of crimes that include theft, possession of a stolen vehicle and a probation violation.
— Bay City News
USS Hornet to kick off Black History Month events Saturday
USS Hornet Sea, Air & Space Museum officials and staff invite the public to join them as they observe Black History Month, starting with a kickoff event Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Beginning at 1 p.m., presentations will include officials from the National Park Service discussing the Port Chicago disaster in July 1944 near Concord. East Bay Regional Park District officials will give a presentation about the related and newly designated “Thurgood Marshall Regional Park — Home of the Port Chicago 50.”
Also, the USS Hornet’s new exhibit, “African Americans in the Military,” will be open to visit. The exhibit was created by the group Walking Ghosts of Black History in partnership with the National Park Service and the Hornet museum. The USS Hornet is docked at 707 W. Hornet Ave. on Alameda Point in Alameda.
— USS Hornet
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