New offices come in under budget
Pandemic helped keep construction costs down
It may sound counterintuitive, but staff at the Fremont Union High School District say the pandemic helped construction of the new district office finish ahead of schedule and under budget.
Construction of the district office, which replaces the old administrative offices at 589 W. Fremont Ave. in Sunnyvale, cost approximately $24 million and took about 21 months to complete. The 27,000-squarefoot building also houses the district's adult school.
The project was funded in part by was funded in part by Measure CC, $275 million school bond passed by district voters in November 2018.
Associate Superintendent Christine Mallery, who is also the district's chief business officer, said much of the construction was done during the pandemic shutdown, saving both time and money.
“Construction really picked up during the pandemic,” Mallery said in an interview before the March 22 ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new building. “It saved taxpayer dollars because we were able to get things done without paying escalating construction costs.”
While her staff's new workspace is about the same size, Mallery said the work environment is much improved over that of the old building, which was built in 1960.
“The HVAC system was at the end of its useful life, and the lighting was poor,” she added.
The new office building, designed and built by Quattrocchi Kwok Architects and Blach Construction, makes use of natural lighting with plenty of windows throughout. Visitors
enter through a main lobby that features a multimedia display of the district's history in a nod to its upcoming centennial next year.
Lobby displays also feature artwork done by students from the district's high schools and from its adult education program. The district is made up of five high schools in Cupertino, Sunnyvale and West San Jose.
“The whole goal is to make it feel like a place where visitors can see who our kids are,” said Superintendent Polly Bove before the ribbon cutting.
At the ceremony Bove, who is retiring at the end of the current school year, said she felt fortunate to have brought the project to fruition before she steps down. She added that she's grateful to voters for passing bond measures to fund this and other district construction projects in recent years.
“We're trying to be sure our kids feel good about going to our schools,” Bove said. “These kids know we want them to succeed.”
In addition to staff work spaces, the new district office features professional and continuing education rooms and a new board room for public meetings. The portion of the building dedicated to the adult school includes administration space and flexible classrooms designed to support a range of course offerings, such as English as a Second Language, GED preparation and citizenship preparation, as well as physical education classes and courses in crafts like ikebana flower arranging.
Very quietly, the University of California's faculty has for almost half a year been considering putting at risk the institution's tax exempt status and its longstanding credentials as an impartial source of reliable information.
This is not the first time UC has seriously contemplated a harebrained move — and sometimes those moves actually get made. Only last year, for one example, UC decided it would no longer require prospective freshmen to take standardized exams like the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) or those of the American College Testing Program (ACT).
Instead, UC admissions now rely primarily on high school grades, meaning all high schools are considered equal, even though every parent in California knows there are vast differences in quality of curriculum and instruction.
Amazingly, the faculty which votes on these sometimes fashionable and politically correct moves is loaded with folks holding Ph.D. degrees from the world's top universities, with a fair sprinkling of Nobel Prize laureates among them.
This group's latest senseless proposal, kept mostly quiet until a UC Santa Cruz professor let the cat out of the bag early this month, would allow academic departments to take official stances on political issues of all kinds. This proposal originated last fall in a letter from the head of UC's Committee on Academic Freedom to the system-wide Academic Senate's top official.
“Departments should not be precluded from issuing or endorsing statements,” said the letter from UC Berkeley law Prof. Ty Alper to fellow Berkeley Prof. Robert Horwitz. The letter admitted “such statements are sometimes ill-advised and have the potential to chill or intimidate minority views.” But it said that's OK, so long as minority views are explicitly included in addenda and the names of those voting for the official statement are revealed.
Of course, those very actions do chill minority views and would influence hiring of new faculty, who in UC's confidential processes could easily be eliminated because of political views.
Officially sanctioning such statements on issues from elections to international affairs to scientific beliefs would essentially make UC departments political institutions. That could quickly cost the university its tax exempt status, which now gives alumni and other donors large and small tax writeoffs for every penny they contribute.
It's not as if individual faculty members don't already have complete freedom to express any idea or thought they like. That's how, for just one example, former UC Prof. Linus Pauling became known as “the father of Vitamin C” and also won a Nobel Peace Prize for his activism in favor of nuclear disarmament.
Similar policies of complete individual license at the California State University system (which would surely imitate any actual UC action on the current proposal) allowed Ku Klux Klan ally Kevin McDonald, long blasted by the Southern Poverty Law Center and others as a “racist” and an “anti-Semite,” to remain a psychology professor at Long Beach State until he retired.
They allow some departments at San Francisco State to be almost completely politicized, too, even if those departments don't official adopt the ideas preached by some of their more vocal faculty members.
It's not as if departments don't already go rogue at times, with stances on Israel's policies, climate change and other issues. Departments may call these positions official, but under a UC policy in effect since 1970, they're not.
The policy states that “The name, insignia, seal or address of the university or any of its offices or units shall not be used for or in connection with political purposes or activity.” The policy also bans political campaigning on campuses.
That's the way it should and must be, if UC is to be sure of maintaining both its tax status and its reputation for intellectual honesty.
If anything, the current effort by Alper's faculty committee ought to serve as a warning to UC's Board of Regents to be more vigilant in enforcing its longstanding and upstanding policy.
Otherwise, why pretend the university or its departments are impartial observers or analysts of anything at all, from vaccines to political candidates?
To mark the beginning of the Senate confirmation hearings for the latest U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Honorable Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Washington Post shared a graphic that captured her educational and career experiences relative to the rest of the current Supreme Court justices. In addition to having an Ivy League education and serving as a Supreme Court clerk, which she has in common with many sitting justices, Jackson previously served as a federal public defender, unlike any other current Supreme Court justice.
What has already become clear to me regarding this historical process is that as the first Black woman to be nominated in the court's 233-year old history is forced to publicly “check all the boxes” in order to even be in the room.
I can tell you from painful experience that this additional burden placed on Black women in America is dehumanizing.
As a Black woman, albeit with a much lesser degree of public responsibility and expectation, I can relate to the experience of having to constantly prove myself in order to be considered worthy of belonging in the places and spaces I occupy. It happens everywhere, from my place of work to my children's school.
I have many privileges that allow me to occupy many spaces that others do not, such as three advanced degrees (including from two Ivy League universities and another from a world renowned international university). I also have financial stability. However, I know that
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