Sue, thanks for the update. I would like to add a note of caution about overnight parking on school yards. Yes, I know parking is difficult throughout SF, and creative solutions like allowing parking on school yards at night seems like a plausible solution. However, this parking short cut is being used or considered in other neighborhood schools throughout SF, even those that have never been parking lots before. I have included David Fairly and Pam Coxsen, as they have a son who attends a school where the kids' play yard is an overnight parking lot. David made a very good point about how the children end up playing in toxic auto effluents, and come home covered in grease and grime not normally found in the play yards. It seems that there could be some sort of imminent danger to children caused by using play surfaces to store cars (that drip toxic chemicals on the surface). Now, the Newcomer situation is unique in that the school is reclaiming former parking, but there should be some mention that this is NOT good policy in general, particularly for schools serving younger children who tend to spend more time (and be less conscious of) rolling and playing on the ground. Thanks again for bringing this situation to light, Sue. peace, susan On Dec 28, 2006, at 11:53 PM, susan_e_vaughan@juno.com wrote:
Hey Folks, I've been working on this issue regardng the schoolyard at Newcomer high School for a few weeks now. The first part is just background information. The second part, below the line, is a the text of a draft of a letter that I would like to email out to the supervisors, mayor, and school board members, with CCs to David Campos, the Newcomer principal, the Sierra Club, SPUR, Livable Cities, and so on.
Sue
Newcomer High School is a small alternative school for 9th through 11th grade immigrant high school students. It offers intensive English instruction and a few core courses. A few months ago, the San Francisco Unified School District made a decision to move Newcomer High School out of its Pacific Heights site, where it had been for about 25 years, to the Laguna Honda site in the Inner Sunset on 7th Avenue between Judah and Irving. Due to Proposition H funding, the principal has also been able to hire a P.E. teacher for the first time in many years.
Unfortunately, this school has no indoor gym and at the moment it has no schoolyard. There are two school-owned lots next to the school -- one is on 7th Avenue, and the other is on 6th Avenue. An agreement between the school district and the Department of Parking and Traffic has permitted parking there for years, recently on a month-to-month basis, with revenues split 75-25 percent between the district and DPT.
The principal, P.E. teacher, and other staff are now working hard to get the 6th Avenue site turned into a schoolyard/gym. Plans for striping the schoolyard for basketball, volleyball, and other activities, have already been drawn up. The principal would like to install benches around one tree in the center of the lot and elsewhere for students to use during lunch.
The Department of Parking and Traffic has removed the meters in the Sixth Avenue lot, and daytime parking, supposedly, has been eliminated. However, the gate remains open and many people park their cars their anyway. Some neighbors (not all) and merhcants are upset over the loss of the daytime parking, and Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi has stepped in to work out a compromise between the school district and some neighbors that will permit nighttime parking on the schoolyard. At the moment, David Campos, of the SFUSD legal department is drawing up a memorandum of understanding to govern a pilot project in which people can park in the lot overnight from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and on weekends. Supposedly tow trucks will be ready to tow illegally parked cars, starting at 6 a.m. on weekday mornings. In the meantime, neither DPT nor the SFUSD is monitoring the site, and people are parking there during the day and night, free of charge. ______________________________________________________________________ _ The Sustainability Working Group of the San Francisco Green Party supports the efforts of the staff at Newcomer High School to turn the Sixth Avenue lot between Irving and Judah into a schoolyard 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In other words, we do not support overnight or weekend parking on this lot. We do this because:
1) The neighborhood is already well-served by public transportation in the form of the N-Judah, the 71, the 6, the 43, and the 44.
2) Providing parking (especially when it is free or low cost) induces driving and undermines public transportation.
3) Vehicles going into and out of the lot cross the 6th Avenue bike lane, this endangering biclycists.
4) A play/instructional area for students is more important than parking, and that play/instructional area is jeopardized by the need to remove illegally parking vehicles at the beginning of the day.
5) If the lot is turned into a schoolyard on a permanent basis, it can become available to certified after school programs for Newcomer students and other youth, as happens at other schoolyards throughout the city. (For example, the Alamo schoolyard – as long as it is light out, after school programs operate there until 8 or 9 p.m.).
6) There are issues of safety and loss of instructional time due to illegal dumping and other activities after hours because the gate will be unlocked after hours.
7) Acceleration of the deterioration of the surface of the lot. At the moment, resurfacing the lot to turn it into an instructional area is on the SFUSD facilities agenda. Obviously, allowing parking there at nights and on weekends will hasten the deterioration of the surface of the lot again, once it is resurfaced.
While we acknowledge the concerns of local merchants and residents, we believe the compromise is the retention of the 7thAvenue lot as parking lot, for the time being.
gavin.newsom@sfgov.org "michela alioto-pier" <michela.alioto-pier@sfgov.org> "tom ammiano" <tom.ammiano@sfgov.org> "chris daly" <chris.daly@sfgov.org> "bevan dufty" <bevan.dufty@sfgov.org> "sophie maxwell" <sophie.maxwell@sfgov.org> "jake mcgoldrick" <jake.mcgoldrick@sfgov.org> "aaron peskin" <aaron.peskin@sfgov.org> "gerardo sandoval" <gerardo.sandoval@sfgov.org> ross.mirkarimi@sfgov.org ed.jew@sfgov.org
ecasco@muse.sfusd.edu (Clerk of the Board) Eric Mar <emar@sfusd.edu> Mark Sanchez <msanchez@sfusd.edu> Eddie Chin <echin@sfusd.edu> Norman Yee <yeen@sfusd.edu> Jane Kim -- I don't know her email yet KimShree Maufas -- " " Hydra Mendoza -- " "
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