Big uproar over tiny house project.
Education office sought to take over project, put construction teacher on leave
Ralph Wigginton thought he had the perfect vehicle — a tiny house on wheels — to steer wayward kids back on track in life.
He never imagined that the cute and compact project for engaging young inmates would get bogged down in bureaucracy, become a political tool — and now possibly end his 32year career in teaching at-risk kids.
Two years ago, the construction teacher at Santa Clara County’s William F. James Boys Ranch in Morgan Hill persuaded probation and school officials to allow students to build a 238-square-foot mini-home. The kids, ages 14 through 17, would pick up practical skills, work cooperatively on a project and produce a portable house.
But as the house neared completion, Santa Clara County Office of Education officials thought the young James Ranch inmates were taking too long to build it. Superintendent Jon Gundry decided his workers would finish construction to showcase it at San Jose State University. Wigginton protested, sent students’ letters to school trustees and contacted a reporter. Administrators subsequently placed him on leave for potentially compromising students’ privacy by sharing their letters.
Gundry said the project was taking too long and needed outside help. “It just became a project that wouldn’t end,” he said.
Wigginton, 64, is dismayed. He had proposed building the house in order to teach job skills to his students at the ranch’s Blue Ridge School. He had seen the transformative power of construction in 2006, when he led students from the former Ridgemont Community School to rehabilitate homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
“Ralph thinks out of the box, which makes him a gifted teacher,” said Wigginton’s former principal, Bob Michels, recalling a mobile classroom serving pregnant girls and an entrepreneurial academy Wigginton founded.
In April 2015, Wigginton said, he handed in a list of tiny house materials to the office of education’s purchasing office. After successive delays and appeals to top administrators, the materials arrived eight months later during winter break.
Wigginton persevered. “He was the one who spearheaded the whole operation,” said Marty Badja, who taught welding at the ranch until retiring last year.
Work proceeded haltingly. Teaching young neophytes, undoing mistakes, enduring weather and discipline delays all slowed construction. Wigginton and Badja each had students for 1½ hours a day — a window that included lessons on converting fractions and identifying tools, as well as escorting students to and from the construction site, and searches to make sure no tools found their way back with the students.
“Sometimes motivation wanes, sometimes we have a bad week, sometimes kids get taken off the ranch,” Wigginton said. “I have no control over that.”
His bosses had not decided where the house would end up, Wigginton said, “so I was having to build for every eventuality.”
Meanwhile, county school board member Joseph Di Salvo was touting the tiny house as a prototype solution to homelessness and hoped to get local government officials to agree.
He called Gundry. “We should be able to do one or two of these a year,” Di Salvo said. “I was very excited about it.”
Di Salvo, who earlier had intervened to break the logjam in procuring materials for the house, pressed Santa Clara County, the city of San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley Water District to work with homeless advocates from San Jose State and elsewhere to create “tiny house villages” for the homeless. He wanted to locate the Blue Ridge tiny house along Coyote Creek near the county office of education, to house Amanda Fukamoto, a homeless woman who leads other homeless residents in picking up trash from creekside encampments.
Distressed by plodding government, Di Salvo said he feels a sense of urgency.
“I was saying to Amanda, ‘this tiny house could be yours,’” he said. But, “Amanda’s still waiting in the pouring rain.”
After meetings involving DiSalvo, local officials and activists, Gundry set a deadline, then moved to take over the project.
“We don’t feel the kids have expertise to be doing this,” Chief Schools Officer Steve Olmos said.
The students were furious.
“They developed an attitude immediately,” said one James Ranch employee, who asked not to be identified, fearing retaliation. “When they heard that they might lose the project, for a lot of them it just reinforced everything they believed — that ‘ we don’t mean anything to anybody.’”
Gundry responded, “Finishing it is besides the point. It’s about the experience of working on it.”
Wigginton asked, “We are an agency that’s supposed to be advocating for kids, and they’re going to take a program away from them and give it to another institution?”
He fired off emails to four of the seven county school board trustees; only one, Darcie Green, replied. And he sent letters from his students:
“Most of us have never accomplished anything,” wrote one student. “Taking the tiny house away from us would really upset us.”
Another called the tiny house “a once in a lifetime thing for most of us at James Ranch” while another wrote, “I am proud of what I have built inside the tiny house.... That will be our Christmas present. That’s all we want, our tiny house.”
Within days of a reporter inquiring about the tiny house, Gundry placed Wigginton on paid leave for allegedly violating laws on student privacy. He hasn’t been told if and when he can return.
But the education office then reversed itself on tiny house work. It hired back Badja to help finish the project.
Early this month, two students finishing up ceiling insulation with welding instructor Derek Mendiola said they were happy to be back working on their house.
“It’s a fun thing to do, and to have something to put on your resume,” said one 16-year-old wearing an orange hard hat, mask and gloves as he cleaned up. “Mr. Mendiola and Mr. Wigginton are very good teachers.” This newspaper does not name juveniles in the justice system.
The house will be displayed at San Jose State and be featured at a VIP reception, perhaps in March, said Michael Fallon of the university Coalition to House the Homeless.
The tiny house is “a great idea,” said Michael Clarke, probation manager at the James Ranch. “It’s been a very good project.”