CUSD’s unbuilt middle school: the first decade

This June will mark the ninth anniversary of Measure K, a $35 million bond approved by Coastsiders to pay for new middle school construction and other facilities upgrades in the Cabrillo Unified School District. So why is our middle school so dilapidated?  That’s a long and complicated story.

With the recognition that the federal approval process for the proposed Wavecrest site could be long and arduous, and that Cabrillo Unified School District is once again considering alternative sites for its long-delayed middle school, now is a good time to look at how we got ourselves in this fix.

The following chronology is based on the excellent chronology prepared for the failed Measure D campaign in November 2003.  I’ve edited it to make the tone less partisan, updated it with more recent events and added links to relevant documents and stories on Coastsider.

I’m publishing this in tandem with a chronology of the Wavecrest development, which you may also find interesting. Many events show up on both timelines. Please email notes and corrections or attach them to this story as comments.

I happen to have a strong opinion in this matter. I think it’s insane to move the middle school from Cunha to the edge of town. This would be true even if tying the building of a new middle school to the fate of Wavecrest had not turned out to be a disastrously bad decision—one that the school board would make again and again over the decade that followed.

I’ll be examining the so-called Podesta site, which the CUSD is currently considering, in the near future.

Having said that, I’ve tried to make this chronology as fair as possible.  Comments and corrections are welcome from both sides of this issue.

February 1996
The school board adopts a Master Facilities Plan, based on projections for future growth and district needs assessments. Among recommendations: a new middle school. A site selection committee is formed. This document is supposed to undergo an annual review, which it has never had. In the intervening nine years, growth trends and projections have changed considerably.

June 1996
More than 75 percent of Coastside residents vote in favor of and easily pass CUSD’s proposed Measure K, a $35 million bond measure to support new middle school construction and other CUSD facilities upgrades. It has been argued that this bond money can only be used to build a new middle school on a NEW site. Not true, according to a nationally recognized bond counsel’s pro bono opinion [PDF].

October 1996
CUSD Site Selection Committee releases its report [PDF]. Using the state site selection criteria, Cunha ranked #1 of five candidate sites, while Wavecrest is fourth.

May 1997
CUSD enters a deal with Wavecrest Partners and Pepper Lane Properties to swap approximately 20 acres of school district-owned land in EI Granada valued at $1.7 million for the purchase of a 25-acre middle school site valued at $2.7 (this site has since been relocated and reduced in size as a result of flawed environmental analysis.)

June 1997
CUSD attorney commissions an appraisal on the district’s El Granada property. No appraisal was done on the North Wavecrest site. According to a subsequent Grand Jury investigation into the CUSD deal, the North Wavecrest valuation was determined by information provided by Coastside real estate agents. The School District later claimed in Grand Jury testimony that it was unaware that within two years prior to the agreement Wavecrest Partners had purchased 17.364 acres of the 25-acre North Wavecrest site for $909,000, or approximately $52,350 per acre, less than half the acreage price used for the $2.7 million valuation in the agreement for North Wavecrest.

September 1998
Contracts between CUSD board of trustees and Wavecrest are executed. Under this agreement, CUSD is obligated to pay Wavecrest Partners a development fee of $255,000 in semi-annual installments during the two years following the closing date.

October 1998
San Mateo County Grand Jury begins the first of two investigations into irregularities related to the land swap deal. Following CDSD’s refusal to explain who had provided the information used in reaching the real estate valuations used in the transactions, subpoenas were issued. The Grand Jury eventually learned an initial appraisal of the El Granada property found it to be valued at $4.4 million. According to testimony, the CUSD board felt that this appraisal was incorrect in assuming an adequate volume of sewer and water entitlements would be available for sale to satisfy the proposed developments. The appraiser was not asked to reevaluate the site assuming the unavailability of entitlements.

January 1999
San Mateo County Grand Jury releases final report on CUSD’s land swap [PDF], finding several significant issues and making recommendations accordingly .

November 1999
Parcel Tax I, a four-year commitment of $125 per year, fails to pass.

December 2001
California Coastal Commission finds substantial issue with the Wavecrest project and votes to postpone approval.

March 2002
Parcel Tax II, a three-year commitment of $75 per year, fails to pass.

May 2002
After more than three years of delays, CUSD President Ken Jones and other board members call a public hearing to discuss the middle school dilemma. Superintendent John Bayless presents the School Board and public with an exhaustive slide show detailing all available middle school site options and concludes by making an extremely strong case for modernizing, improving, or expanding the middle school at its current Cunha site. He explains all the pros of going with this option and also outlines a strategy for phasing in the project over three years with the project able to begin nearly immediately.

June 6. 2002
School Board holds another public hearing for community feedback on the middle school issue. A sizable group of parents and concerned citizens speak on behalf of the Cunha site as a viable and desirable alternative. They are dismissed (and in some cases publicly denigrated) as "eco-terrorists" and a small "fringe" group.

June 20. 2002
A week later, parents return to speak before the school board, this time bearing the names of 1,350 Coastside residents collected in five days outside of Safeway. The petition urges CUSD to consider placing the new middle school at Cunha rather investing any further in the the long-delayed Wavecrest plan. Once again, this alternative is dismissed without further deliberation. All five school board members vote to continue their commitment to Wavecrest.

November 2002
Coastal Commission declines to consider approval for Wavecrest, citing still incomplete biological analysis.

January 2003
A joint City Council-CUSD town hall meeting is held specifically on the middle school site issue. CUSD President Ken Jones and member Dwight Wilson, representatives to the joint city-CUSD committee, do not attend the meeting. All five members of City Council are in attendance. CUSD sends no official representatives.

March 2003
A joint City Council-CUSD School Board exploration of viable middle school sites determines that there are only two such sites: Cunha and Wavecrest. City Council members Toni Taylor and Jim Grady recommend Cunha as community’s best option [Grady’s presentation]. CUSD school board members vote to table the discussion.

March 2003
Parcel Tax III, a five-year commitment of $250 per year, does not pass. Less than a week later, the school board votes to reintroduce exactly the same parcel tax, without any adjustment or reconsideration, in a special June election at a cost of $50,000.

April 2003
An anonymous donor gives the district $50,000 to mount the Parcel Tax IV election. After the district refuses to provide the public with access to the donor’s identity, both the San Mateo County District Attorney and the California Fair Political Practices Commission investigate.

June 2003
Parcel Tax IV, again a five-year commitment of $250 per year, fails to pass.

July 2003
Measure D, an initiative to prohibit construction of any new school or school facility west of Highway 1 and permit construction of any new middle school in the centrally located downtown core of the city, is introduced. Less than eight days after its announcement, the initiative gets enough signatures to appear on the ballot.

August 2003
Superintendent John Bayless acknowledges the anonymous $50,000 donation to the parcel tax campaign came from him. Bayless declines to provide any financial documentation of his claim.

October 2003
School District trustees vote unanimously to oppose Measure D.

November 2003 Measure D fails by a vote of 1,444 to 1,222

July 2004
City of Half Moon Bay and Wavecrest Village LLC come to an agreement. The most important changes are the elimination of retail and commercial space and the reduction of the number of units from 225 to 175.  The city sends a letter to the Coastal Commission in support of the Wavecrest Village project.

A California red-legged frog, a federally-recognized threatened species, is found at Wavecrest by a herpetologist, who reports it to the California Department of Fish and Game.

August 2004
The Cabrillo Unified School District signs a new agreement with Wavecrest Village LLC.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service finds California Red-Legged Frog habitat at Wavecrest. This leads the California Coastal Commission to remove the Wavecrest project from its agenda.

September 2004
CUSD and Wavecrest developers sign an agreement to create a special district that would tax market-value homes in the development $1,000 per house per year for 30 years. The revenue from this Mello-Roos community facilities district would be earmarked for middle school improvements. There are 178 market-rate homes planned for Wavecrest.

Wavecrest almost immediately misses its new agreement’s first deadline with CUSD because of delays caused by the discovery of endangered species habitat on the property. The CUSD board declines to exercise its option to cancel the agreement.

March 2005
The City of Half Moon Bay and Cabrillo Unified School District admit they’re exploring a new site for the middle school, adjacent to Half Moon Bay High School.

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