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"Open House at Rosa Parks Introduces JBBP West Families to New Location"
Published in the Nichi Bei Times, March 30, 2006.
An open house at Rosa Parks Elementary School on March 23 introduced Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program (JBBP) West families and potential families to the new location, drawing approximately 100 people.
JBBP West's move from its current 42nd and Santiago Sunset District location to the Western Addition's Rosa Parks, its ninth move since the program began in 1973, comes as a result of the financially-strapped San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) vote in January to close, merge or relocate 12 schools effective with the 2006-07 school year.
In contrast to the tense meetings of past months, the Rosa Parks open house hosted many optimistic JBBP West community members who called the move a "homecoming."
Rosa Parks, located in a quiet O'Farrell Street cul-de-sac off Webster, was formerly Raphael Weill, the main elementary school for pre-World War II Japantown children.
JBBP West Advisory Board member Bob Rusky said that "even though the (JBBP West) program was never located here specifically, that this school was a community school for Nisei makes this part of what JBBP came out of…It's really like coming home."
"I feel like, historically, since this was the Japanese American and African American community, this is where we need to be," said JBBP West teacher Lisa Tsukamoto. "We could be a model for the rest of the city (by having) a great, multi-cultural academic program."
However, at a time when enrollment numbers must be stabilized in order to ensure that faculty cuts are not made, JBBP West met a hurdle last week due to a technical error in the processing of placement applications. In the initial March 10 mailing of placement letters, despite space still remaining in the JBBP West program, families who requested it received rejection notices.
"The school district made a major, major mistake," lamented Emily Murase, parent of a current JBBP West student and daughter of two of the program's founders.
Families who requested JBBP West as anything but their first priority were not placed in the program, she explained. "Even if they put JBBP sixth, they were assigned their seventh choice."
On March 15, corrected letters were mailed to families, but those who did not receive one should contact JBBP West or the Educational Placement Center, said Murase.
With the loss of more than 1,000 students from the SFUSD last year, and a resulting $5 million reduction in state funding, a trend that could potentially continue for the next five years, the SFUSD Board of Education decided in January to close, relocate or merge schools. The Board voted 8-1 to merge JBBP West with Rosa Parks, noting Rosa Parks' spacious facilities and its location near Japantown.
Some current JBBP West families said they would not continue with the program at Rosa Parks, citing safety concerns, while others said a six-and-a-half mile move from the current site was too far.
Still others were optimistic, saying that the school's history in the Japanese American community and close proximity to Japantown are precisely what makes it desirable.
"(The students) can walk across the bridge, they don't even have to cross the street to go to Japantown," said Robin Endres, parent of a JBBP West second grader and incoming kindergartener. "I'm really looking forward to being able to connect with Japantown more because currently that's a field trip our kids only really take once a year."
Open house attendees said that people should visit the new locations themselves before making a decision.
"I think it's really sad that a lot of our community feels it's safe enough to go to Japantown which is only a block away and not safe enough to come here," said Endres.
She continued, "A lot of those families I know who cited safety issues did not even come to the neighborhood, they did not come look at the school, they did not inform themselves of what this neighborhood feels like, what this school feels like."
"(People) should come and see the school and see the community for themselves," said teacher Tsukamoto. "It's a beautiful campus, it's right near J-Town and (a school patrol officer from Rosa Parks who spoke about safety issues) said there have been no incidents here, zero."
The Rosa Parks/JBBP West merger looks to be an important one for the SFUSD. The only other merger passed in January, of John Muir and John Swett elementary schools, was met with much opposition, with John Swett parents staging a boycott a week after the Board's vote. That day, 200 of the 225 enrolled students were absent from school.
"The school district really needs a win here (at Rosa Parks)," said Murase. The district's continuing enrollment decline "is not going to go away. They need to find fixes next year, year two, year three, and if they can't make smaller schools merge, then they have no options."
"My hope is that the district is going to give us time to grow…that's the least that they owe us," said Tsukamoto, noting that when JBBP West moved from Clarendon to DeAvila in 2000, they "made it through that first year and we got the numbers that we needed so no one was consolidated."
A transition team of School Site Councils from both programs have already agreed that the merger should include:
- Integrated activities outside of the classroom — such as rajio taiso morning exercises, undokai (sports day), assemblies, special events and field trips.
- Weekly meetings for teachers of both programs to coordinate expectations, homework policy, testing and special needs.
- Designated weekly mixing time within each grade level, including shared lessons such as health, science and cultural activities.
- Uniforms to promote unity and de-emphasize socioeconomic differences.
Families of both programs have come together too, holding a gardening party March 19 to clean up the school, its garden and plant flowers around the site.
Tsukamoto has also been preparing her kindergarteners for any possible scenario.
"I've been telling them, 'Ok, next year… Some of you might be going to Rosa Parks/JBBP, some of you will go to other new wonderful schools in the city,' and…we have two children going back to Japan this year. So it's basically talking about 'everyone's going to have to make their own choice and go to different schools, but they're all new and wonderful and you can still be friends.'"