To the relief of many a kindergarten parent, there will be no random drawings at any Alameda elementary school for student slots in the coming school year, Alameda Unified School District student services chief Jeff Knoth told The Island.

He said enrollment during the two-weeks of kindergarten round-up in January was “a little lower than we have had in the past.” This year’s district-wide kindergarten enrollment is 747 students.

Last year at this time, kindergarten lotteries were announced at Franklin, Edison, Otis and Bay Farm elementary schools. The district ended up adding a kindergarten class at each of those four schools due to the high level of over enrollment.

But the longstanding 20-to-1 kindergarten student-to-teacher ratio in Alameda seems likely to change, following a nationwide trend reversing the reductions in class size started in the 1990s. The higher class sizes are subject to negotiation with the district’s teacher’s union.

The working draft of the district’s master plan for Alameda schools through 2015 presents best- and worst-case scenarios. The final read of the master plan is planned for the February 23 school board meeting.

Under the best-case scenario, the district would raise K-3 student-teacher ratios to 24.5 to 1 and 35 to 1 for ninth grade. This plan counts on the passage of a parcel tax to replace the expiring Measures A and H as well as the implementation of other district cost-cutting measures.

The current K-3 student-teacher ratio is 20 to 1 in Alameda. For grades 4-5 the maximum class size is 32, while for middle school students it’s 33. In high school the maximum is 35, although the average is only 29, Knoth noted.

He added that the district is currently in contract negotiations with the teachers union, which include increased class sizes. Although Knoth declined to give a concrete timeline for the completion of the ongoing negotiations, he did say, “We should know pretty soon.”

Under the master plan’s worst-case scenario, the district would increase class size to 32 for K-6 and 35 for grades 7-12. If voters reject a parcel tax, this class size increase would be among a laundry list of cuts to resolve a projected $25 million deficit.

Board President Ron Mooney and Vice President Mike McMahon backed the plan and said a new tax is necessary to preserve Alameda’s schools as state funding evaporates. But Trustee Trish Spencer said that in these tough economic times, she doesn’t think people will be willing to pay.

“It’s clear to me that in order for us to maintain any semblance of education that the residents of the city of Alameda want, we need to go ahead and ask for a new parcel tax,” McMahon said.

Spencer said she doesn’t think the district should spend money to start a K-8 magnet program that is envisioned in the plan, and she called specialized programs that would contained at specific school sites would not be “fiscally responsible.” Instead, she said the board should consider closing some of its smaller schools – which she accused of draining the district’s coffers for a privileged few – and consolidate the students at larger schools, in an effort to protect smaller class sizes.

The district’s smallest elementary schools by population are Washington and Franklin, followed by Paden, enrollment statistics cited in a draft demographic study presented to the board in November show. Its largest is Amelia Earhart on Bay Farm Island.

“We have to realistically look at that and say, ‘Can we, as a community, pass a parcel tax that’s twice what we have now, and not have another lawsuit.’ I’m very concerned about the economics of this plan,” Spencer said.

But Mooney said that closing smaller schools may not save the district money because parents whose students attended those schools may choose to go to non-district schools, which would result in a loss of state funds to the district. And Superintendent Kirsten Vital said that if the district did close three elementary schools as contemplated under a plan scenario where there parcel tax doesn’t pass and put the students in other schools, the district would not be able to maintain small class sizes.

McMahon said the district could expand on a model piloted at Franklin. That school’s principal gets 60 percent of her pay for running the school, and the remaining 40 percent for handling duties at the district office.

Two parents, Tom Lynch and Terri Hansen, presented hundreds of signatures from people who oppose efforts to increase class sizes, and Lynch said the board should consider closing schools instead.

Brad Cook and Earhart parent and a member of the group Alameda Concerned Parents, said the district should focus on core academics instead of “recent distractions” he didn’t specify, though he has been an outspoken lesson of the district’s anti-gay bullying Lesson 9. Cook said he doesn’t support new programs like the proposed magnet school and that he doesn’t support neighborhood schools or increased class sizes. And he said he opposed the parcel tax and the district seeking out money from philanthropic organizations, who he said would try to push their “agendas” on students. The parents group has accused the district of rushing to pass the plan.

The master plan process began in March 2009 and included a series of public meetings and online polls designed to give the district a feel for what kind of education parents want. Neighborhood elementary schools rose high on parents’ priority list, so the school board directed Vital to work to preserve those.

Scenarios for a replacement parcel tax designed to raise as much as $16 million a year could triple the amount that homeowners currently pay and add new charges for apartment dwellers. The money would be used to preserve programs in the face of sharply declining state funding. State funds cover more than three-quarters of the district’s budget.

The board will consider adoption of the plan and parcel tax recommendations at its February 23 meeting.

Separately, the board heard a presentation on renewing the Alameda Community Learning Center’s charter. The board will need to make a determination about whether to extend the charter at its March 9 meeting.

Also, an attorney who has represented parents opposed to the Lesson 9 curriculum threatened to sue the board for an alleged Brown Act violation, saying a December vote to keep Lesson 9 in elementary classrooms was not properly noticed. He asked the board to hold a special meeting next week to rescind the motion.

Supporting materials for all these items, by the way, can be found here.

Apparently there was a leak in the school’s water pipes that filled its boiler room, forcing the school to shut most of its water off – and reducing the school to just eight working toilets. School officials are hopeful the problem will be fixed by Wednesday, and port-a-potties are now in place.

School officials are asking parents with questions to call them, at 748-4023.

District staff will present scenarios for generating between $12 million and $16 million a year by implementing a flat tax for all parcels, a charge per square foot or charges that vary based on the type of property being assessed.

For example, in order to generate $14 million a year, the district would have to charge $809 per parcel with a flat tax, 16.1 cents per square foot if they charge based on lot size (with a $9,500 cap, the same as the current Measure H tax), and 28.6 cents per square foot if they charge based on building size. (So if you live in a 2,000-square-foot home with a 5,000-square-foot lot, you’d pay $572 or $805 under the respective per-square-foot scenarios.)

The board will also consider a split roll that, under this scenario, would have the district charge $669 per single family dwelling, $189 per unit for apartments and other multi-unit buildings and a per-lot charge of 13 cents per square foot with a $9,500 cap for nonresidential buildings.

The tax scenarios also lay out what share of the tax’s total cost residents and commercial property owners would bear. For example, under the flat tax scenarios, residents would pay 95 percent of the tax burden, while commercial property owners would pick up the remaining five percent. Under the per-lot charge scenario, residents would bear 80 percent of the tax burden while commercial property owners would pay 20 percent.

The district is working to replace its existing parcel taxes as part of a lawsuit settlement over the Measure H tax, and also to increase its parcel tax take at a time when the state is reducing funding. State funding makes up more than three-quarters of the money the school district gets.

The board will have until later this month to decide on whether it wants to put a new tax on the June ballot.

The current pair of taxes, Measures A an H, sunset in 2012. They bring the district about $7.3 million a year. Meanwhile, the district is anticipating deficits of up to $25 million in a few short years.

The presentation is on the district’s website (link’s up top).

Meanwhile, the board is also set to discuss its master plan (more on that here) and to conduct a public hearing regarding renewal of the Alameda Community Learning Center’s charter (like I said, action-packed night).

The public session starts at 6:30 p.m. in council chambers, City Hall.

“S.E.R.V.E. Alameda, proponents of the Recall of Jensen, Mooney, (and) Neil (sp) Tam, are withdrawing from our signature-gathering campaign, thus no longer seeking to recall these three Board Members,” S.E.R.V.E.’s Kevin and Kellie Wood wrote in a letter to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters.

The signature-gathering deadline would have been Tuesday.

More to come.

“Now comes the hard part,” Bill Schaff, vice president of the school’s founding board, told The Island on Wednesday. “There’s a lot of work to be done between now and then.”

Those tasks include enrollment, staffing and finalizing an agreement with the school district. The district must also tell the charter’s leaders by April 1 whether they will be able to set up shop in Chipman’s current Pacific Avenue location, though Schaff said he hopes they’ll find out sooner than that.

The charter has set up a website where families can get information and enrollment forms (and I’ve got the forms below, too). Though founders are setting up the school to cater students in Chipman’s existing attendance zone, it is open to students all over the Island.

Trustee Trish Hererra Spencer, who had issued some of the most vocal concerns about the proposed charter, ultimately made the motion to approve it. Spencer said she was worried that the charter’s expectation that parents contribute 20 hours a year to the school could scare away some of the families the school’s founders intend to reach out to. (The list of activities in the charter includes in-school activities like lunch monitor and garden coordinator, attending meetings and parent-teacher conferences and at-home help.)

“At this point, legally, it’s not a reason to deny the petition,” Hererra Spencer said Wednesday. And she said she hopes the school is successful in improving the academic performance of its students.

School Board President Ron Mooney and Trustee Niel Tam had issued concerns at an earlier meeting regarding outreach to non-English speaking families and families in the Coast Guard and living in transitional housing in the Alameda Point Collaborative. Schaff said the school’s founders have begun their outreach efforts and will be asking the district for help.

It was not clear Wednesday where students in the Chipman attendance zone would go to school if they opted not to sign up for the charter. District officials did not return a call seeking comment.

Parents and teachers chose to develop the charter proposal to satisfy the strictures of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which requires schools that are unable to meet each of their testing targets for four years running to take radical action, with options that include shutting down, firing every teacher or going charter.

Police arrested Ralph Wayne Beckman, 47, of Alameda for a host of vehicle code violations, evading police officers and resisting arrest. Beckman led police on a chase through Krusi Park and onto school grounds after failing to yield to traffic on his bicycle, police logs show.

They also charged Beckman, a registered sex offender, for being on school grounds without permission. And they said Beckman also had some outstanding warrants.

School Superintendent Kirsten Vital said that the school’s main building and hallways were locked down during the incident, which happened shortly before the school day ended, and that students were kept inside, but that students in two classes – who had reportedly been on the playground moments earlier – witnessed it.

Parents who were aware of the incident said they were concerned that they were not notified of the incident soon enough and that they had to learn about it from their children and through rumors – though they praised the teachers whose classes witnessed the incident for their handling of it.

Some also questioned the safety of Otis’s campus. The school’s playground is open, and has open access to Krusi Park – which is sometimes used for recess – next door.

Vital said the incident happened just before school let out, making it tough for staff there to notify parents that day. She said school staff sent a letter to parents that she believes went out the next day.

“Our goal is to send the information out that day or the next day, if (something happens) at dismissal, so families have a clear understanding of what happened,” she said.

But a parent who contacted The Island said they weren’t officially notified by the school about the incident until the following Wednesday. (They said the only prior notification they had from the school was through a PTA e-mail group.)

And Vital, who said many of the district’s schools have the same open access that Otis does, said the openness of a school campus is dictated by school board policy, and that it would be up to the board to decide to change that.

“This was an isolated incident. I feel like things are very safe,” Vital said.

Photo from Alameda Unified School District website.

The School Board okayed a new policy on charter school applications over the objections of leaders from two of the Island’s existing charters who said they wanted to have the chance to provide input on the new policy.

The board voted 4-1 for the new policy, which lays out a preferred submission date and time lines for submitting charter applications and establishes guidelines for how the school district will evaluate the petitions and how the board will monitor the schools’ success.

School Board Trustee Trish Spencer cast the lone “no” vote on the policy.

Paul Bentz, chief executive officer of Community Learning Centers Inc., the umbrella for two of the Island’s two existing charter schools, asked the board to wait on approving the policy. He said he wanted the chance to sit down with school officials to provide input on what would work for existing and proposed charters.

Superintendent Kirsten Vital said she said the policy was needed more imminently, to provide clarity for the three or four charter applications she expects the district to get this year. She said the district may want to sit down with charter schools to iron out a broader set of administrative regulations to come.

The district’s newest charter, the Nea Community Learning Center, opened in the fall. And Chipman Middle School may convert to a charter school because that is one of the options it has for dealing with its continued inability to meet all its testing proficiency requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Earlier in the meeting, Bentz announced that he had submitted a renewal petition for the Alameda Community Learning Center charter that would effectively separate it from the school district. The school, which serves 200 kids in grades 6-12, was formed by the district and the consulting firm Arthur Andersen in the 1990s.

Schools with “dependent” charters like ACLC’s typically get their funding and special education services from the school district, and their teachers are part of the union that serves in the district. If approved, the renewal petition would make ACLC an “independent” charter, so its funding would come directly from the state and it would be responsible for drawing up its own contract to provide special education services.

The school’s current charter expires in December 2010. If approved, the renewal would be good for five years.

Bentz said he would be submitting facilities requests for both Alameda Community Learning Center and Nea Community Learning Center in the coming weeks. ACLC is housed on the Encinal High School campus, while Nea is in the Longfellow Education Center.

He said he hopes to expand ACLC to 300 students in 2010 in order to accommodate his wait list, and then to 350 the following year. Nea, which has 290 students now, would add a 10th grade class as planned and would grow to over 400 students by 2011.

“We would love to work collaboratively with the schools on facilities and our charter renewal,” Bentz said.

Bentz did not return a call seeking additional information.

In other school board news, the board got a snapshot of the district’s population 20 days into the school year. Student Services Officer Jeff Knoth said the district had 130 more students than expected. The district now has 9,455 students.

Knoth said the biggest overage is in the district’s elementary schools, which have 118 more kids than expected. He said the district added classes at Franklin (kindergarten), Lum (1st grade) and Haight (4th grade) in order to accommodate the additional students.

Of 249 parents and school staff who responded to the district’s online survey, 78 percent said they were interested in magnet schools. Nearly 65 percent of those who responded said they’d be interested in a dual language immersion program at the elementary school level, while about three-quarters said they’d be interested in a high school science and technology magnet. About 61 percent said they’d be interested in a high school arts magnet.

Respondents seemed less interested in a environmentally themed school, with between 34 percent and 43 percent indicating interest at the different school levels.

Concerns that ranked high among survey respondents included transportation and the thought of splitting children among different schools, with about 40 percent of survey respondents each saying they could pose a problem.

The district surveyed parents and school staff as part of their ongoing effort to build a new educational plan for Alameda’s public schools. The majority of them were preschool and elementary school parents. Three-quarters said their children went to their neighborhood school.

The results will be reported to the School Board at their meeting tonight at City Hall.

Meanwhile, the board will get a report from the teacher’s union about what their members think should be featured in the district’s new master plan.

Over 90 percent of the 392 people who responded to that survey said they want to keep small class sizes, while 80 percent said they’re interested in alternative programs like charters or magnets if they won’t hurt the district financially. (And as a side note, their top three: Performing arts, math/science and science/technology.) About half said they could be used to balance enrollment at the Island’s schools.

Nearly half of the teachers surveyed said they’d keep the current grade level configurations at the schools. The school board has indicated they may consider changing those. The teachers’ second choice was adding the sixth grade to elementary schools.

Nearly a third said no school consolidations should be considered, while about 18 percent each said consolidations should be considered at the elementary and middle school levels.

A little more than half said the board should consider shifting school boundaries.

Both documents are available on School Board President Mike McMahon’s website.

But there’s still one teeny, tiny little loose end: The litigants in a second H case against the district haven’t signed on to the agreement; in fact, they offered one of their own, which the school board rejected.

Their lawyer sent out a press release about that last week, which reminded me that I needed to stop writing about Alameda Point long enough to find out what happens next. So here’s the deal:

Basically, if the litigants in the other case, George Borikas et al, don’t sign on or come to some other resolution with the district, a trial date could be set in their case. Apparently, even if Measure H disappears, they could sue to get back the money they already paid.

Borikas attorney David Brillant didn’t say what his settlement was, though he wrote in the release that it “was very specific, allows the District to keep the tax they collected thus far and brings future taxation more into conformity with the uniformity requirement as mandated by California law.”

Prior to the settlement offer being made, Brillant had said publicly that the businesses he represents would settle the case if the board decided to lower the tax owners of large commercial properties pay to the residential rate of $120 a year, from a maximum of $9,500 a year per parcel. (For the record, I don’t have any knowledge of whether this is the offer that was actually made, and I couldn’t reach Brillant for further comment on the case or his press release.)

Brillant has also said that he doesn’t expect to win this case and that he expects to appeal. In his release, he claims the district’s anticipated ballot plan – which would ask voters to repeal the district’s existing parcel tax measures and to okay a new one – is illegal.

The district’s attorney, Danielle Houck, said the district’s proposal is lawful and that the judge in the combined cases suggested the parties work together on the ballot plan even after Brillant questioned its legality in court.

Houck said Alameda Unified couldn’t agree to Brillant’s settlement proposal because it would cost the district millions of dollars it can’t afford to lose. Per Houck:

While it is true that the Borikas plaintiffs made a settlement proposal, the District could not agree to the terms proposed by the Borikas plaintiffs. The District is willing to consider any proposal that will provide adequate funding to the District, and the District hopes that through the Resolution Plan agreed upon by the District and Mr. Beery, the District can achieve that result. The District is disappointed that the Borikas plaintiffs have declined to participate in this process. During this time of fiscal crisis for public school districts across California, however, the District cannot agree to any resolution that will result in millions of dollars in lost funding to the District and which will necessitate drastic budget cuts to the programs and services which are critical to the success of our students.