Rocketship working on larger campus for 2018-19
A Redwood City charter school is working to get a new permanent facility in place for the 2018-19 school year.
The Redwood City Planning Commission last month gave permission to Rocketship Education to move Redwood City Prep from temporary quarters it has used for two years at 1440 Connecticut Drive to a larger site at 860 Charter Street. For the coming school year, however, it will continue to occupy space on Redwood City School District’s Kennedy Middle School, according to Rocketship Bay Area Regional Director Marie Gil.
The new location for the transitional kindergarten to fifth grade school is in a light-industrial zone with two other schools within a three-block radius. It will allow the school to add features not possible at the former site and move from roughly 300 students to 480. It originally sought to instruct 600 students at the site.
“The new building will have the space, technology and amenities to best serve our students, and it will allow us to provide substantially more students with a high-quality education that prepares them for college,” Harrison Tucker, Rocketship’s director of real estate, said by email. “A new building will be built to the specific needs of Rocketship Redwood City Prep by driving school culture, establishing stable routines for families, and furthering the instructional model.”
The converted one-story, 23,200-square-foot warehouse on a 1.2-acre site will contain classrooms, administrative offices, a cafeteria and a technology and tutoring center, with garage-style doors that open out onto an outdoor assembly area. An outdoor play area of nearly 9,000 square feet will contain a play structure with synthetic turf, assembly areas, a half-court basketball area and a small soccer field.
Extensive work needs to be completed before the permanent facility can open to students, which is why it won’t open until fall 2018.
“We will reconfigure the existing walls to build out classrooms, adding skylights and new windows,” Tucker said. “The school will have all new electrical, plumbing and mechanical systems, and we will go above and beyond state environmental standards to create a sustainable, ecofriendly campus.”
At the June meeting, several business owners along Charter and Bay Road near the new school said it will be detrimental to their businesses and unsafe for students walking to the school. Gil said Rocketship sought the site because 85 percent of the families it serves live within three-quarters of a mile from the site.
Christian Black, who operates a painting company nearby, asked that the city deny the project because “it cuts the vital ebb and flow” of deliveries in and out of the company during dropoff and pick-up times for the school. Another business owner said 40 trucks leave between Bay and Spring streets every morning, and she is looking to expand the number of trucks she operates.
“I just don’t know that we can be responsible for all these children,” Kathryn Renz said. “It’s just not a safe neighborhood for this school.”
Planning commissioner Ernie Schmidt, who voted against the project, said Rocketship chose the site in a light-industrial area because it was affordable. The vote was 4-3 in favor of the site.
“Land in Redwood City is expensive,” he said. “To me, it’s unfortunate that schools are forced to look in areas that they would otherwise not or (would) rather not go into.”
Gil said Rocketship has been working with business owners to address their concerns. The site is one block north of Hoover Elementary and one block south of Summit Prep and has the support of the school district, with which Rocketship has a charter agreement to operate as a public school.
“Throughout the process, we have changed our building plans multiple times to accommodate neighborhood concerns, and we will continue outreach to area business owners and residents to engage in open dialogue and collective problem-solving,” she said.
Tucker, who has overseen the construction of 10 of Rocketship’s 18 schools nationwide, said Rocketship is planning several unique measures to address traffic concerns at the site. He said it has an agreement with the county that if it exceeds a trip cap, it will have to change its operation to get back under the limit. It will also implement a carpool program coordinated by parents and staff, as well as staggering drop-offs and pick-ups to keep cars from queuing outside the campus.
Rocketship primarily educates students from low-income families, with the goal of eliminating the achievement gap. During the 2016-17 school year, according to Gil, 86 percent of students were from “socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds,” with 70 percent learning English as a second language.
Kimberly Ortega, a recent high school graduate with two brothers attending Redwood City Prep, said at the June meeting that her younger siblings are correcting her when she helps them with their homework.
“I didn’t really get help from my teachers when I was in school,” Ortega said. “My parents and I weren’t aware of resources, so Rocketship has really opened doors. My parents’ dream is for my siblings and me to go to college, finish college and have a better life.”