Beyond Political Will: a City-School Partnership and a Landscape of Redevelopment and Gentrification Hayin Kim, Ph.D

BEYOND POLITICAL WILL:

A CITY-SCHOOL PARTNERSHIP AND A LANDSCAPE OF REDEVELOPMENT

AND GENTRIFICATION

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES

OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Hayin Kim

June 2010

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/

This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/wf208kj8404

ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Milbrey McLaughlin, Primary Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Prudence Carter

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Debra Meyerson

Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education

This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives.

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Abstract

Beyond political will: A city-school partnership and a landscape of redevelopment and gentrification Hayin Kim, Ph.D. Stanford University, 2010

Reading Committee: Milbrey McLaughlin, Prudence Carter, Debra Meyerson

Urban gentrification is commonly described by scholars as a consequence of market-based community change. Typically in these cases, neighborhoods that may have previously been characterized by deteriorating civic infrastructures and poverty are dramatically changed as renewed interest from largely private investors results in significant shifts in the community – economically, socially, and culturally. These transitioning communities become home to disparate sets of residents that occupy the same relative geography yet manage to stay socially separate. The tension between older and newer residents is well-documented in the gentrification literature. Older residents are described as lower-income and largely minority populations, while newer residents are often higher income, politically and socially liberal, young, white professionals. Beyond these descriptors of residential divides, sociological accounts of gentrification seldom mention how these shifts affect the community’s public institutions and in particular, its schools.

In principle, most gentrifiers are assumed to value and support public education. However, new residents, often without school-aged children, have little incentive to be involved in their local schools. As a result, the school community often becomes isolated from the wider community. Even if a lack of interdependence

between schools and residential communities is unintentional, over time, schools risk being further marginalized as residents prioritize their own interests.

The weakening school and community connections within gentrifying communities demonstrate an inconsistency between what is described by scholars as newer residents’ commonly socially liberal values and beliefs about the importance of public education, and their demonstrated detachment from local schools. Furthermore, residents and decision makers often are reluctant to openly acknowledge surrounding race and class tensions that can contribute to the school and residential community divides. Underlying racial and ethnic stereotypes or class prejudices might not be openly expressed or scrutinized by community members, nor might they seem immediately relevant to the policy questions facing local leaders.

This dissertation seeks to illuminate and understand the unexpressed ideas that influence how individuals think about local public schools, and further, how these ideas help account for public support for community and school policy initiatives. I build on studies that seek to understand the role of ideas and beliefs in the context of organizational and institutional change. In particular, John Campbell (2004) suggests that a process of idea-sharing and shaping takes place in the background of decision- making arenas, both consciously and unconsciously. In addition, the subsequent tangible policy outcomes that occur are the end result of implicit and explicit negotiations between competing sets of interests, values, beliefs and ideas.

My study examines the progression of a city and school partnership in

Emeryville, CA, a community struggling with the challenges and opportunities of gentrification. Unlike most other gentrifying communities, city and school district

leaders in Emeryville believed that even though there were few connections between them, their respective constituencies could not afford to continue to occupy separate realms of community. If they did, the largely minority school population of students and their families would become further marginalized from the opportunities that came from the community’s significant re-growth. In addition, given the positive correlation between property values and local school performance, property owners would also be at financial risk if the schools did not demonstrate higher academic outcomes.

District and city leaders proposed a new joint-use school and community facility, the Center of Community Life (CCL), which could simultaneously address complicated issues of community change and educational reform. Given Emeryville’s small size and its politically progressive residents, the future of the CCL seemed promising. The emerging development of a strong and diverse city, school, and business partnership provided preliminary evidence of Emeryville’s civic support for public education and community building efforts. Beyond this political will however, there were fundamental differences in how residents and school stakeholders perceived the future of the district and the city, and how they might complement one another. The history of the city, its recent changes and accompanying socioeconomic shifts, and community members’ perceptions, would come to play a significant role in determining the viability of the city and school partnership and the CCL project.

My study involved observations of community and school district public meetings, and interviews with members of Emeryville’s residential, business and school communities. I also examined public documents that I collected over a two-

year period (2006-2008), including: formal policy documents, local newspaper articles, email listservs, and election campaign literature. My analysis focused on illuminating the beliefs, perceptions, and assumptions held by various local stakeholders about schools, community, and their connections to tangible policy outcomes.

The study explains the fate of the CCL by focusing on how the maturation and strategic development of relevant beliefs and values ultimately shaped school and community policy. The competing and often implicit ideas about schools and community influenced the ability of decision-makers to implement policies that met the interests and needs of both the school and residential communities. Furthermore, the layered ideas and beliefs held by individuals about public education, community, and racial and class stereotypes, in turn affected the viability of the CCL.

These findings illustrate the complex process of decision-making, and the ways in which background ideas can promote or impede a policy agenda. Accounting for ideas and beliefs that are not necessarily explicit is especially relevant to arenas where topics of race, class, and community often feature politically correct or morally- infused ideological rhetoric, rather than candid or explicit conversation about individual assumptions and priorities. For example, in the case of schools and neighborhood gentrification, school advocates’ altruistic rationales of alleviating poverty or empowering disadvantaged youth may sidestep important assumptions about why or how such investments are relevant to the greater community.

In addition, within communities holding competing agendas, the background ideas that are most aligned to the dominant community’s priorities will most likely

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result in a particular policy outcome. In communities and districts characterized by changing social and economic contexts, my research suggests that policy advocates who are interested in confronting race and class inequities must make social justice ideals relevant to individual self-interests, particularly when decisions about the public good run counter to the dominant norms and mechanisms of a market economy.

This study points to the need for deeper investigation into how background ideas and social, economic, and political contexts influence the place of schools within communities. Especially in the context of gentrifying communities where ideologically supportive residents may have little tangible investment in the public schools, and when influential ideas about race or class are seldom addressed explicitly, public school proponents need to find strategic ways to account for these ideas and bring them into the political foreground. In so doing, advocates may be better able to understand how to encourage policies that move beyond stated values and can tangibly affect schools and communities.

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Preface

I was born and raised in Chicago. At school, my classmates were diverse and we came from all over the city –Wrigleyville, Logan Square, Cabrini Green, Rogers Park, the South side. My schools were magnet schools, but still, I’m a proud product of the Chicago Public School system, and I’ve never doubted my street credibility or forgotten my city loyalties. More than anything else, my educational experiences shaped my commitment to supporting urban communities and public schools. These values informed several of my early adult life choices. After college, I moved to Washington D.C. I lived in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, once a historically African American neighborhood and a gateway community for immigrants from Africa, Asia, South and Central America, and the Caribbean. It was pretty cheap, had good ethnic restaurants, and was close enough to the Dupont Circle Metro to be considered convenient, yet safe. In New York City, I chose to live in Brooklyn. My neighborhood was diverse, relatively affordable, and far enough from the pretension of Manhattan. There were some bad blocks, closer to the projects, but I stayed clear of those areas. My roommate and I celebrated the arrival of a health food store down the street, and the addition of spin classes at the local gym. When the neighborhood’s off-track-betting parlor closed, we were relieved – it smelled and there were always creepy people around. During those years, I assumed I’d always live in a city. If I had children, they would go to public schools even if they weren’t the most rigorous. My kids would learn important lessons about community, responsibility, diversity, and how to safely navigate public transportation, just like I did. My career choices have also reflected my experiences and values. I became a staunch advocate for children and their families, committed to standing against “- isms” of all kinds. I saw public education as an important venue for community empowerment and justice, and looked to educators and policy makers to right the many wrongs of social inequality. In adopting a comprehensive view of education and

community youth development, I recognized that schools required multiple sets of partners to effectively educate and support young people. However, working in under resourced communities and schools, I also became cynical and frustrated. I wondered why social equity and justice were so elusive, even with rampant progressive values, and many politicians, practitioners, and activists speaking about what we as a society needed to do in order to solve these unethical inequalities. Despite my awareness of social inequity, I never considered my impact on the neighborhoods that I chose to live in. Since I didn’t have children, neighborhood schools weren’t entirely relevant, but I critiqued them anyway according to what I knew about their student demographics, teacher credential ratios, and funding levels. Several years later, I, like many of my colleagues and peers, am caught at a crossroads between my life choices and values. They are expensive, emotional choices that require a certain amount of conjecture, as well as honest answers to other concrete questions. For instance, if I want to live in a diverse neighborhood, who might my neighbors be? Would I spend more to feel safe? What types of schools would I send my kids to? What factors could help me make these decisions? In thinking about these questions, I have had to reflect on the choices that I have made thus far, and who has been affected by them. I recognize that because of privileges of education, financial security, and what I look like, I have been able to consider options based largely on my urban lifestyle preferences. However, I rarely have asked how these choices might contradict my values or my awareness of systems of inequality. I wonder about the ways in which individuals like me can be encouraged to understand and consider our influence within communities and public schools. It is with these uncomfortable and personal tensions in mind, that I have approached the following study.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to the Emeryville community, city and school leadership for their honesty and openness, and willingness to reflect. To my friends and colleagues at

EUSD, thank you for your gracious welcome, assurance, and relentless commitment to the profession. Special thanks to Lisa Taymuree for helping me navigate the way, and for little cups of Turkish power; Roy Miller for warm friendship, deep conversations, and many rides across the bridge; Wanda Stewart, Nives Cediel, Juliette Dunn,

Stephen Wesley, and Tony Smith, for lessons on how to make sense of other people.

To my awesome family. Without your gifts and your faith, I would never have become me. Mom’s love for humanity and music, Dad’s insatiable and stubborn quest to know more, and Haywon’s loyalty and patience.

Team H. You helped me craft my strategy, sustained me, and encouraged perseverance, even when none of us knew any better: Eliza and Enzi, Carla, Dabney,

Colin, Luke, Su Jin, Rand, and real-world members Chad, Karen, Emilie and Kip,

Mónica, Melanie, and Mike Montoya. In addition, thanks to my Board of Trustees, for guidance, courage, confidence, and inspiration: Marty, Jane, Lisa, and Hal.

I am grateful to Milbrey for grammar rules, wisdom, insight, and patience as

I’ve grappled with these ideas. Thanks also to the Gardner Center for your support, friendship, and an academic home.

And then all of the little things that helped me along the way: SUSE IT, UCSF

FAMRI, pho, yoga, Arguello roast turkey sandwiches, Bi-Rite salted caramel,

Alemany Market, super baby fish, Venice Beach, and Barack Obama.

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT ...... IV PREFACE ...... IX ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... XI TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... XII LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ...... XIV CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1 GENTRIFICATION SCHOLARSHIP ...... 3 Discontinuous and Localized Path of Change ...... 7 VALUES AND DETERMINING THE PUBLIC GOOD ...... 10 What is a Public Good? ...... 11 Gentrification and the Public Good ...... 14 SCHOOLS AND URBAN REDEVELOPMENT ...... 16 The Value of Education: ...... 19 Why Schools Matter in Local Gentrification Contexts ...... 19 UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESS: IDEAS AND VALUES OF GENTRIFICATION ...... 20 IDEAS AND VALUES OF...... 20 GENTRIFICATION ...... 20 Identifying Ideas, Studying Processes ...... 22 WHAT THIS STUDY IS ABOUT ...... 25 Emeryville and the Center of Community Life ...... 26 Challenges to the Study ...... 30 CHAPTER 2 EMERYVILLE AND THE EMERY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT ...... 33 INDUSTRIAL EMERYVILLE ...... 33 Early Emeryville Schools ...... 37 EMERYVILLE’S ONGOING DEVELOPMENT ...... 37 CITY LEADERSHIP ...... 42 Redevelopment and Politics ...... 43 EMERYVILLE AND THE EMERY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT (EUSD) ...... 47 “From takeover to makeover” ...... 47 Emery Unified School District 2008 ...... 51 “Where Partners Power Student Success” ...... 54 EMERYVILLE CENTER OF COMMUNITY LIFE ...... 56 CHAPTER 3 THE CITY ...... 59 WHAT IS EMERYVILLE? ...... 60 WHO IS EMERYVILLE? ...... 64 WHEN IS EMERYVILLE? ...... 75 Traditional Concepts of City and Community...... 76 Creating Emeryville 2.0 ...... 79 When affects What and Who ...... 84 “COMMUNITY-BUILDING” ...... 87 CHAPTER 4 THE EMERY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT ...... 90

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RENEWING SCHOOLS, DISMANTLING SYSTEMS OF INJUSTICE ...... 91 Tony Smith and the EUSD: Committed to Education and Social Justice ...... 93 EMERYVILLE’S RESPONSE TO EUSD ...... 97 Differentiating Social Justice from Helping the Poor ...... 97 Underlying Stereotypes and Perceptions ...... 99 EMERYVILLE AND EUSD IN FLUX: DUELING REALITIES AND INTERESTS...... 103 CHAPTER 5 THE CENTER OF COMMUNITY LIFE: UTOPIAN VISIONS ...... 108 EMERYVILLE EDUCATION AND YOUTH SERVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE (EYSAC) ...... 109 EMERYVILLE’S VALUES AND NORMS ...... 111 A City that is Connected ...... 112 A City that is Equitable, Just, and Socially Responsible ...... 113 A City that is Diverse and Tolerant ...... 118 A City that is Democratically Engaged ...... 122 A City that is Cutting Edge: CCL as Emeryville’s "Phoenix, Rising Sun!" ...... 128 THE ROLE, POTENTIAL, AND PROMISE OF THE CENTER OF COMMUNITY LIFE ...... 129 CHAPTER 6 THE CENTER OF COMMUNITY LIFE: THE IDEAL MEETS THE REAL ..... 131 IDEATIONAL DISSONANCE ...... 132 Resolving Competing Visions and Priorities ...... 135 The Discontinuous Casualties of Dissonance ...... 138 AMBIGUITY AS STRATEGY ...... 144 Where to from here? ...... 147 CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION ...... 152 “MAKING THE DREAM A REALITY” ...... 153 IDEAS AND THE CCL ...... 154 When Ideas Clash: Influencing “School” and “Community” Policy ...... 156 Understanding Gentrification ...... 158 Enlisting Community Brokers ...... 159 The CCL as Renegotiating the Public Good ...... 161 NEXT STEPS FOR EMERYVILLE AND THE CENTER OF COMMUNITY LIFE ...... 163 Who is the “community” that the CCL serves? ...... 165 How much will the CCL cost? ...... 166 CLOSING ...... 168 APPENDIX A METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS ...... 170 INTERVIEWS ...... 171 OBSERVATIONS ...... 174 Facilities: Anna Yates Redesign and the Emery Secondary Wellness Center ...... 175 Communications: Board Adoption of District Vision and School Board Elections ...... 177 Funding: The Parcel Tax and the City’s $25M Contribution for the Center of Community Life ...... 177 DOCUMENTS ...... 186 DATA ANALYSIS ...... 199 APPENDIX B INTERVIEW PROTOCOL ...... 201 APPENDIX C MAP OF EMERYVILLE ...... 203 REFERENCES ...... 204

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List of Tables and Figures

FIGURE 1.1 INTERSECTIONS OF POLICY (ADAPTED FROM GREENLEE ET AL. 2008) ...... 17 FIGURE 1.2 IDEA TYPES AND PATHWAYS (ADAPTED FROM CAMPBELL 2004) ...... 23

FIGURE 2.1 MAP OF EMERYVILLE AND 94608 ...... 35 FIGURE 2.2 COMPREHENSIVE ANNUAL FINANCIAL REPORT OF THE VALUATION OF NEW COMMERCIAL AND RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT ...... 38 FIGURE 2.3 AERIAL VIEW OF PIXAR CAMPUS, SLATED FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT AS OF SUMMER 2009 ...... 40 FIGURE 2.4 ORGANIZATIONAL CHART, CITY OF EMERYVILLE ...... 45 FIGURE 2.5 EMERYVILLE GENERAL PLAN ZONING UPDATE MAP: CHANGE AREAS...... 47 FIGURE 2.6 FROM THE ORIGINAL CENTER OF COMMUNITY LIFE WEBSITE, WWW.EMERYCENTER.ORG ...... 57

FIGURE 3.1 POSTCARD MAILERS SENT TO THE EMERYVILLE COMMUNITY, INVITING THEM TO PARTICIPATE IN COMMUNITY PLANNING MEETINGS ...... 82

FIGURE 5.1 ORGANIZATIONAL COMPOMENTS OF THE EMERYVILLE EDUCATION AND YOUTH SERVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE (WWW.EMERYCENTER.ORG) ...... 109 FIGURE 5.2 EYSAC GOALS AND VALUES ...... 110

FIGURE 6.1 ECCL IDEA TYPES ...... 133

TABLE 1.1 SUMMARY OF DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS (DYETT AND BHATIA 2006) ...... 27

TABLE 2.1 POPULATION COUNTS FROM SELECT CENSUS DATA (METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION AND THE ASSOCIATION OF BAY AREA GOVERNMENTS 2009) ...... 36 TABLE 2.2 ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE INDEX FOR EUSD, 2002-2008 ...... 53

TABLE A.1 INTERVIEWS ...... 172 TABLE A.2 OBSERVATIONS ...... 178 TABLE A.3 DOCUMENTS...... 188

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Chapter 1 Introduction

In many urban communities a stark juxtaposition exists between local public schools and their surrounding neighborhoods. The differences are especially salient in communities described as “up and coming,” “in flux,” or “gentrifying,” where disparate sets of individuals might occupy the same relative geography yet manage to stay socially separate. Typically in these cases, underserved and deteriorating neighborhoods are dramatically changed as renewed interest from outside investors brings significant shifts in the community – economically, socially, and culturally.

And while redevelopment investments tend to increase the economic value and desirability of the neighborhood, the changes rarely benefit the local schools.

The divide between school and residential communities that occurs as gentrification plays out may not be intentional, but it is seldom questioned or problematized. Rather, public schools typically are overlooked both conceptually and bureaucratically in most redevelopment efforts. At the same time however, there is a well-documented relationship between high performing schools and their surrounding affluent communities, where wealthier residents are willing and able to pay higher property prices (and taxes) to send their children to local schools. According to those market logics, it would seem that improving public schools in impoverished

Introduction

neighborhoods would be a desirable and valuable aspect of a neighborhood

redevelopment and revitalization strategy. Instead, in gentrifying urban communities,

an influx of wealthier residents does not seem to contribute to improvements in the

public school system, but instead sometimes results in further marginalization of local public schools, as they become less and less relevant to the community’s changing face.

Despite the economic and practical incentives, the persistent disconnection between schools and gentrifying residential neighbors suggests that there are additional barriers to creating and sustaining a complementary relationship between the two. However, the omission of schools from redevelopment conversations extends to gentrification scholarship. While many studies have described gentrifying communities by their gradually whiter and wealthier residential populations, they seldom take into account how these changing economic and social interests affect school populations.

The resulting dilemma facing public schools in gentrifying communities is complex, especially for elected officials and educators. In an important sense, decision-makers often must acknowledge two different communities—one associated with the schools, the other made up of newer residents. In order to attend to the

priorities articulated by their respective constituents, school and city leaders might

find it necessary to advocate for contrasting or competing policy initiatives within the

same geographic community.

Polarized approaches to community redevelopment and school reform are not

inevitable, however. In one gentrifying community, Emeryville, CA, city and school

2 Introduction

leaders undertook to bridge these differences by developing and solidifying a

partnership between the community and school district. They committed themselves

to thinking about new ways to work together, recognizing that if they continued to

follow past traditions and practices of separate domains, both school and residential communities could suffer. City and school leaders proposed a new plan to address in

tandem the complicated issues of community and educational reform. in tandem.

This study begins to explore the complexities between public schools and community change associated with gentrification as seen in the city of Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District. The guiding research question asks how factors inherent to a gentrifying community affect public support for public schools. By examining the trajectory of redevelopment in Emeryville, this study seeks to illuminate the intricacy of change processes associated with gentrification and track their effects on residents, schools, and the relationships therein.

GENTRIFICATION SCHOLARSHIP

Scholarship on gentrification has devoted much attention to describing its

attributes and specific causes (Palen and London 1984; Marcuse 1985; Smith and

Williams 1986; Zukin 1987; Lees 2000; Kennedy and Leonard 2001; Smith 2002;

Freeman 2006). Within real-time communities, gentrification is seldom a simple

input-output model of renovations on one end, resulting in an entirely new

community on the other. Nonetheless, few studies consider the fluid progression and development of gentrification and its subsequent consequences that may vary for communities, residents, and public institutions (Lees 2000).

3 Introduction

Several definitions of gentrification allude to the tensions inherent in

community change processes. Boyd (2005) emphasizes the distinction between a place-based focus of economic investment versus efforts directed towards increasing human capital: “gentrification is the process through which ‘poor and working-class neighborhoods in the inner city are refurbished via an influx of private capital and middle-class homebuyers and renters’” (266). Zukin (1987) adds a social dimension, clarifying that through residential choices, new middle class owners are able to create and express a distinctive culture that has clear geographic dimensions. Others, such as Peter Marcuse (1985), acknowledge the class and race complications associated with gentrification:

Gentrification occurs when new residents – who disproportionately are young, white, professional, technical, and managerial workers with higher education and income levels – replace older residents – who disproportionately are low- income, working-class and poor, minority and ethnic group members, and elderly – from older and previously deteriorated inner-city housing in a spatially concentrated manner, that is, to a degree differing substantially from the general level of change in the community or region as a whole. (198)

Scholars frequently note a fundamental mechanism of economic restructuring, whether due to globalization (Lees 2000; Lipman 2002; Sassen 2006), a change in housing supply and demand (Yee, Quiroz-Martinez et al. 1999; Freeman and Braconi

2004; Wilson and Taub 2006), or preferences of consumerism (LeGates and Hartman

1986; Sieber 1987; Zukin 1987; Boyd 2005; Freeman 2006). Kennedy and Leonard

(2001) suggest that a combination of market forces, private sector expansion, a strong economy, and public investment strategies targeted to combat central-city decline and concentrated poverty, have all contributed – mostly unintentionally – to gentrification.

4 Introduction

Infusion of capital into poorer areas in and of itself is not necessarily

problematic, nor does it inevitably lead to gentrification. A concern expressed by

many critics is that a resultant imbalance in housing and residential displacement may

in turn cause unanticipated change in the character of a neighborhood. Kennedy and

Leonard’s (2001) definition of gentrification serves as an important grounding: “the

process by which higher income households displace lower income residents of a

neighborhood, changing the essential character and flavor of that neighborhood” (5).

This definition, though still vague, underscores two important facets of gentrification:

the overt economic and geographic changes, and the corresponding social

consequences that disrupt or alter the community.

An increased demand for urban lifestyles and the increased interest in the

redevelopment of cities has also coincided with efforts to cleanup and reuse

historically vacant or environmentally polluted sites. Since the 1980s, former

industrial lands or “brownfields1,” located near or within urban communities have been identified as public priorities for cleanup, restoration, or “reuse,” often times with significant state and federal funding incentives (Banzhaf and McCormick 2007).

Growing attention to the reuse of such lands in concert with the strategic interests of

developers looking for available real estate has resulted in new opportunities for

expanding urban residential communities and a respective need for amenities and

1 Brownfields” as defined by federal legislation (Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act – Public Law 107-118, January 11, 2002), refers to those properties in which “expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.” Beginning in the mid-1990s, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began funding efforts to cleanup and reuse brownfield sites, followed by complementary efforts by states to provide subsidies and tax credits to further encourage redevelopment. Eady, V. (2007). Brownfields Redevelopment: Reconnecting Economy, Ecology, and Equity. Preserving and Enhancing Communities: A Guide for Citizens, Planners, and Policymakers. E. M. Hamin, P. Geigis and L. Silka. Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press.

5 Introduction public services (Eady 2007). Although the environmental benefits of such reuse and redevelopment are obvious, scholars have begun to consider how “reuse” communities might result in disproportionate economic impacts comparable to

“traditional” accounts of gentrification (Sieg, Smith et al. 2004). Thus, brownfield redevelopment efforts have also raised issues about the relationship between existing or neighboring residents and the intended beneficiaries of such refurbished housing developments and other related community improvements, and the potential for displacement. For example, while original, impoverished residents may experience health and quality of life benefits from local environmental cleanup, outside investors might also become interested in buying up cheap property, developing new homes, and profiting from increased demand for new, affordable housing.

Thus far, no studies have proposed a comprehensive model or hypothesis to explain the processes and impacts of brownfield gentrification beyond a narrow set of traditional economic development measures such as jobs, income and property values

(Wernstedt 2004). Banzhaf and McCormick’s (2007) review of studies focused on piecemeal aspects of brownfield cleanup and reuse communities finds limited evidence of rising real estate prices, but stronger evidence for increases in housing density and residential incomes. They further state that there is weak or conflicted evidence of gentrification, particularly with respect to disparate racial impact. In short, a survey of recent scholarship finds limited empirical data on the impact of brownfield reuse communities, specifically relating to the community’s perceptions of change and the concrete impacts on support for local schools or other types of public goods and amenities.

6 Introduction

Discontinuous and Localized Path of Change

Those groups most immediately impacted by gentrification often generate a causal story that holds local economic and political actors directly culpable for heightened community inequities (Yee, Quiroz-Martinez et al. 1999; Lipman 2002).

However, in reality, there are usually multiple sets of stakeholders, interests, and trajectories that contribute to the resulting changes. The obvious interests are most visible on the local level and are centered on relevant redevelopment issues. For example, demolishing and rebuilding a condominium project may involve owners and developers, building contractors, real estate investors, and local city planning and permitting offices. However, in many cases, other community interests, such as the public schools, that might be affected by a particular development are not always engaged in decision-making. This omission often results from expediency on the part of the main actors and the indirect relationship to schools, rather than intentional exclusion or exploitation (Smith 1986; Kennedy and Leonard 2001).

Given increasing national and global interdependencies, it becomes more and more difficult for any community or set of interests to operate in isolation. Pauline

Lipman (2002) writes about the connection between local and global actors in her analysis of the redevelopment of particular Chicago neighborhoods and the parallel process of public school reform. She asserts that the global restructuring of capitalism contributes to the remaking of cities because labor markets and transactions are no longer restricted by national or local boundaries. National and global economic trends, such as increased telecommuting, or outsourcing of technological needs may have local community effects, such as limiting service jobs,

7 Introduction

providing fewer opportunities for professional and residential connectivity, and

ushering in changes in cultural diversity.

The localized impact of change also brings about localized challenges to

change. Local activists who frequently have minimal influence on or access to the

extensive and typically disparate networks of decision makers often wage opposition

to community changes caused by redevelopment. Occasionally, fair housing activists

organize public arguments against gentrification or alternatively, not-in-my-backyard

(NIMBY) advocates contest offending projects, such as the resettlement of a bus

depot to a spot near their homes. Often, detractors articulate highly value-laden arguments that play into heightened sensitivities with respect to inherent community divisions, but oversimplifies matters by naming a predictably polarized set of interests, such as the “greedy developer” versus the “victimized community residents” (Freeman 2006).

Rather than seeing redevelopment as a zero-sum game or a consequence of a simple profit-based economic formula, a more nuanced view considers the process of change, since what is eventually called gentrification rarely occurs coherently, linearly, or strategically. Instead, as the collective effect of what may be a new residential development in one neighborhood, a new box store on the other end of town, and a slew of coffee shops and yoga studios in between, gentrification is better understood to be a series of alterations that gradually accumulate over time. Each discrete and small modification adds up to large-scale transformation. Thus, the impact, especially within smaller communities, can be significant – economically, socially, and at times, politically. For example, an analysis of gentrification in the

8 Introduction

San Francisco Bay Area cites changes in housing availability, corporate job mobility,

and expansion of the footprint of the metropolitan area as the major contributors to

the destabilization of high poverty families, and the displacement of local small

businesses (Yee, Quiroz-Martinez et al. 1999).

Taken as a whole, communities that have experienced considerable

transformation illustrate how a decision that affects one contained area can contribute

to larger perceptions of change, and as a result, generate favor for one course of

development over others (Pierson 2004). Over time, economic, geographic, and

social changes – new buildings, new marketplaces, and new relationships – gradually

re-pattern the community landscape. In addition, past decisions limit future decisions, and proposals that might have been successful at one time lose their relevance as new opportunities arise. For example, communities may be interested in strategies to entice large businesses to settle locally and thereby increase the number of jobs in the community. In the process of attracting and locating such businesses, however, issues of available property and affordable housing may eventually arise, as more people look for homes close to their work. In the end, decisions about these issues might differ dramatically depending on when and how such concerns are addressed. Through the occurrence of displacement, the concerns of original residents may weaken or disappear if not heeded early on in the process.

Several gentrification critics allege that financial and political power elites

strategically and deliberately target communities that are least poised to resist change

(Yee, Quiroz-Martinez et al. 1999; Lipman 2002; Lipman 2007). Here too, a path-

dependent perspective on gentrification demonstrates how shifting class

9 Introduction

demographics may contribute to increasing power differentials within a community.

Paul Pierson (2004) suggests that gradual cognitive and normative shifts accompany

change whereas “inequalities of power, perhaps modest initially, can be reinforced

over time and often come to be deeply embedded in organizations and dominant

modes of political action and understanding, as well as in institutional arrangements”

(11). Thus, as the dominant interests and priorities of a community change, so follow the concrete decisions. Given a gradual demographic shift of local residents, for example, a publicly funded parks and recreation department might focus less on subsidized childcare and afterschool programs and more on adult intramural sports leagues or community gardens. The additive results of these small changes and discrete decisions can be considerable. And the eventual outcome of this incremental process can feed perceptions of a premeditated master plan, particularly when economic consequences are seen to have disparate impact along class and racial lines.

VALUES AND DETERMINING THE PUBLIC GOOD

Changes to any community’s established customs and traditions are likely to

be met with resistance. In the case of many gentrifying communities, even where

there are articulated intentions to “do no harm,” relationships between new and old

residents become increasingly strained, especially as the dominant set of community

interests and priorities gradually shift (DeSena 1990; Boyd 2005; Freeman 2006;

Wilson and Taub 2006). Some older residents may move out, leaving behind smaller

numbers of the “original” community, while replacing them with in-movers. Often,

10 Introduction

the decline of these prior-established community connections is also path dependent –

an inverse image of the increasing physical growth and renewal.

The conflicts and tradeoffs between preserving old community relationships

and revitalizing urban blight, however, are seldom acknowledged or managed in these

terms, largely because the two subjects are rarely discussed in tandem. Ironically, the

very changes made to improve struggling communities often add to the deterioration

of community unity and morale. In addition, older and newer interests alike are

seldom encouraged to work collaboratively to create and strengthen the community’s

social infrastructures that are also a necessary component of revitalization.

Just as local decisions and choices often reflect broader political and economic trends, the subjective and personal tensions within gentrifying communities

can be a reflection of underlying societal conflicts and disconnections. For instance,

some community frictions arising from gentrification speak to larger, ideological

inconsistencies between competing notions of entitlement and individualism; the

necessity of private interests to contribute to the public good.

What is a Public Good?

The concept of a collective or public good has often been invoked in the

context of civic responsibility or altruistic and moral duty, as when President

Kennedy declared, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do

for your country” (1961). However, the concept of a public good is broader than

mere principled ideology. It is a utilitarian aspect of the relationship between

individuals and their community. Theoretical approaches to defining the public good

generally recognize that every human society, both formally and informally, has a

11 Introduction

shared understanding of what that society has determined to have collective

importance (Argandoña 1998; Mansbridge 1998). Most examples of a worthy public good derive from individual interests that require cooperative participation, such as safety and autonomy – two widely-accepted American principles. Other cases arise from shared understandings of community responsibility and accountability. Most public programs directed towards children, for instance, reflect widely accepted values about the importance and potential of youth.

Argandoña (1998) suggests that stakeholder theory is useful in understanding what is considered a public good. Members of a bounded community (or stakeholders within a corporate body) share an understanding of how to create and maintain the optimal setting for each member to achieve their individual goals. Thus, the function of the community is thought of as primarily serving its shareholders, either directly or indirectly. The incentive for individual members to contribute to the common good is to guarantee optimal conditions so that all participants can receive what is reasonably expected and desired within the community. There are tangible returns on the individual’s investment, such as national defense or state unemployment protection, but there are also intangible benefits to one’s sense of self and identity as being a part of the community (Regea and Telleb 2004).

This largely self-interested conceptualization of a public good seems counter

to altruistic or democratically-inspired notions and presents a core tension of

gentrification. In communities where redevelopment reflects market-based

preferences of supply and demand, notions of a public good or shared interest might

also reflect a consumer perspective of ownership and entitlement. However, in

12 Introduction

gentrifying communities where there are allegations of disproportionate impact, is

there a responsibility to define and protect the goals and standards of equity and

fairness, where they conflict with private interests?

Theoretically, democratically elected decision makers sit in the balance between private interest and common good. As public servants bound by the law, they are expected to manage a course of “impure altruism” among the greater community (Andreoni 1990; Mansbridge 1998; Elster 2006). The concept of impure altruism recognizes that multiple factors influence an individual’s decision to contribute to a public good, including social pressure, guilt, sympathy, or simply a desire for a "warm glow" (Andreoni 1990). Thus, thinking “civically” does not require an absolute absence of self-interest, but may include a need to be perceived to be motivated by something other than self-interest.

Elected officials are supposed to be impartial arbiters within the community, making decisions on behalf of their constituents according to shared values and standards. In this role, public officials may have the authority to mandate altruistic behavior, as in the case of civil rights legislation. Conversely, legitimate private interests can be seen as also serving public interests – for example, urban “greening” of private property and expansion of community gardens has become an increasing priority that contribute to the aesthetic and environmental well-being of the public.

At the same time however, policy makers are representative of and influenced by, the perspectives, experiences, and interests of those with power – usually the social, political and economic elite (Mansbridge 1998). Thus, particularly within the context of gentrifying communities, where there are assumed disparate interests between

13 Introduction

haves and have-nots, elected officials must navigate determining what constitutes a

public good, evaluating and implementing community interests, and upholding moral

principles of equality to protect the rights of the disempowered.

Gentrification and the Public Good

The thorny question of how a community determines what constitutes a public

good becomes even more complex when stakeholders and disparate interests are in

flux. Such questions are particularly contentious when the priorities of the

community are weighted in favor of the individual interests of those with financial

resources, while the less economically advantaged are marginalized. Critics of

gentrification argue that race and class inequalities are further reinforced by this

intentional bias towards private interests, rather than allegiance to altruistic principles

of civic responsibility.

Consider, for example, the controversy over the Brooklyn Rescue Mission, an

emergency food pantry in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Under a proposed redevelopment

plan, the Mission could lose half of its 5,000-square-foot farm that is located on a neglected lot, in a blighted area. Readers responding to reports of the plan, made the following comments on a New York newspaper’s website (Lazarowitz 2009):

P***** Jul 29, 2009 5:48:59 AM A beautiful, bountiful garden grows in Brooklyn. So greedy developers who covet this property would rather bull-doze it over and turn it from a viable food-producing community garden that feeds the needy into just another wood/concrete/steel structure that very few will benefit from, except perhaps for the landlord/owner/agency who manages the new building. By the Grace of God and the caring couple He chose to tend it, how could anyone oppose this "miracle garden" in an already over-crowded, over-polluted, filled-to- capacity city that harbors the homeless and hungry? And, how can any one of you stay silent and allow this desecration of this rare piece of Mother Earth to occur?

14 Introduction

M*** Jul 29, 2009 7:02:22 AM Great what the Rev is doing, however the property is not theirs. Come up with the scratch or get it donated. All too often these gardens are great for the community, but they belong to someone else! The above comment is a tear- jerker, blaming the greedy land developers for not giving the land to the Rev.! The truth is it was earmarked for affordable housing and not luxury condos! The only way this land can be utilized is by the owner.

These dueling perspectives and their underlying justifications appear

irreconcilable: individual ownership of a now-lucrative property and its potential for profit is pitted against altruistic desires to provide nutritious, locally-grown produce to feed the community’s poor. This scenario illustrates two important points. First, it highlights that within communities, there are contrasting beliefs of how the most vulnerable individuals might figure into the larger notion of the public good. Second, it indicates the challenges that community members and their leaders face in determining what policy decisions serve the public interest.

Gentrification scholars have pointed to the conflicts and contradictions between individual rights and local community consequences. Smith’s (1986) descriptors of the “urban frontier” and the “urban pioneer” imply that newer residents distinguished themselves from the “blight and pathology” that previously characterized inner city communities: “the mythology has it that gentrification is a process led by individual pioneers and homesteaders whose sweat equity, daring and vision are paving the way for those among us who are more timid.” (p. 18)

Similarly, LeGates and Hartman (1986) profile a typical gentrifier: mostly young adults with few or no children, middle to upper income, and professional. In addition, in-movers are commonly highly-educated, culturally sophisticated (Lees

15 Introduction

2000), and politically liberal (Brown-Saracino 2007); Lees (2000) writes: “once, they were hippies but now they are yuppies” (396). Especially within the “first-wave,” in- movers may represent economically able but otherwise socially marginalized groups such as gays, lesbians, and artists looking for an unconventional, but like-minded community (Lees 2000).

The conflation of economics, consumption, and “culture” as characteristic of the gentrifier and spawns further ideological contradictions. The overall cultural identity of the gentrifier is often described as having a politically liberal and “moral” component, within which diversity is celebrated in theory (DeSena 2006). Zukin

(1987) writes, “Culturally validated neighborhoods automatically provide new middle

classes with the collective identity and social credentials for which they strive.

Moreover, the ideology of gentrification legitimizes their social reproduction, often

despite the claims of an existing population.” (143) Thus, while in principle a

gentrifying community and its residents’ notions of public interest might broadly

support moral and altruistic claims of community responsibility and liberal politics, in

practice their claims are much more difficult to reconcile with the immediate

relevance of individual agendas and priorities.

SCHOOLS AND URBAN REDEVELOPMENT

Schools are one significant community institution forced to negotiate the

process and outcome of gentrification. Despite the status of schools as a public good

– both in rhetoric and in reality – they are omitted from most discussions about

gentrification.

16 Introduction

The absence of schools from the discussion of gentrification is not entirely

surprising. Actors and prominent groups within redevelopment processes are not

cohesive, and are not usually concerned with education issues. Instead, schools are

presumed to be standard to community life, and by law, a responsibility of the state.

The stability of schools is, however, compromised with drastic local change. As

community demographics shift, the corresponding needs, interests, and assumptions

about education also evolve. For example, high school teachers may find that rather

than having academically homogenous classes struggling to achieve basic

Economic proficiency, they are faced with a development policy heterogeneous class that includes

students who have benefited from

Housing policy Education higher-resourced learning environments. policy? Few scholars address the

Figure 1.1 Intersections of Policy (adapted from omission of schools from redevelopment Greenlee et al. 2008) conversations, and how such omission affects the economic, political, and social

aspects of a community. A recnt study from the Data and Democracy Project in

Chicago (Greenlee, Hudspeth et al. 2008) advocates for further exploration of these

connections by considering the interrelated aspects of cities with regard to the

intersection of economic development, housing policies, and education – although the

latter is not part of conventional approaches to community development (See Figure

1.1). In addition, some urban planning scholars briefly acknowledge the role of

schools. They support efforts to integrate school reform and community

development, such as redistricting to ensure access to good schools, or using

17 Introduction academic achievement gains within local schools as successful indicators of “mixed- income” redevelopment strategies (Kennedy and Leonard 2001; Katz 2004). Within these discussions, treatments of schools are mostly cursory with little attention to the graduated process of change, further supporting the assumption that schools play an isolated and prescribed role in the life of a community.

Others look at the relationship between schools and community revitalization as a strategic component in interrupting cycles of poverty and urban ostracization

(Baum 2004; Katz 2004; McKoy and Vincent 2007). They propose complementary strategies to bridge school reform and community building, since education is seen as an integral part of community empowerment. These scholars describe cases of high- poverty communities stuck in a downward spiral of economic devastation, increasing crime, poor housing, failing schools, and racial isolation. Few studies however, have examined the dynamic and critical relationship between schools within “upwardly mobile” changing communities, or how these changes affect community actors and schools.

Pauline Lipman’s work (2002; 2003; 2007) is an exception. She examines the intersections between urban education and the development of local and global political economies, using outcomes of gentrification as one example. She focuses on the strategic motives of local politicians whose decisions, she asserts, disproportionately target poor, high-minority communities. She hypothesizes that political actors, often outside of the educational realm, account for the underlying mechanisms and rationales of redevelopment. Lipman relies on a basic explanation of economic self-interest as a primary motive for change, but does not ask why these

18 Introduction patterns continue despite seemingly strong support for public education. In addition, her theory provides little insight into the local relationships and negotiations between school constituents and their surrounding community. However, by examining pertinent beliefs around education and community at the local level, scholars might in turn be able to specify how schools and their constituents can have some bearing on otherwise predictable patterns of gentrification.

The Value of Education: Why Schools Matter in Local Gentrification Contexts

Consideration of the role of American values with respect to education and public schooling is another dimension of the individualism versus public good dilemma and carries considerable implications for schools and their communities

(Labaree 1997). First, good schools are widely assumed to be key to maintaining an educated electorate and a dynamic and functional democracy. With critical thinking skills, civic-minded citizens are equipped to make thoughtful choices as individuals contributing to a common society. Second, education is also presumed to function as a fundamental tool for individuals to pursue personal interests and to achieve their highest potential. To that end, schools provide necessary resources and credentials that are part of status attainment, often measured in terms of career, financial security, and other life choices (including choosing where to live).

Schools also figure in the financial value of a community. For instance, often listed alongside real estate listings, websites like Greatschools.net (“the parents’ guide to K-12 success”) allow for comparison of public schools by neighborhood and district, and provide annual performance information including class size and teacher

19 Introduction

tenure. Trulia.com pairs local school and district evaluations, and parent reviews

alongside available real estate listings. These resources help educate prospective

homebuyers about their local public schools and influence their real estate decisions.

Within this context of principled values and market realities, education is

recognized as an important vehicle for success in both disadvantaged and wealthier

communities. Social justice advocates call for school reforms within high-poverty

communities to level the playing field. At the same time, as a growing and lucrative

college prep market illustrates, schools are an equally prized commodity and mechanism within wealthier communities for success in economic and social terms.

Thus, in gentrifying communities, where values of market choice and social justice

are often expected to conflict, public schools provide one vantage point from which to

observe the localized struggle between private interests and a public good.

UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESS:

IDEAS AND VALUES OF

GENTRIFICATION

While scholars and community leaders can both appreciate the power of ideas

and values in decision-making, there remain few conceptual approaches to account for how ideas and values influence policy decisions, and how they are tied to concrete outcomes. One useful approach to understanding the nuance of how and why is put forward by Schneider and Ingram (1993) in their analysis of how social constructions of target populations affect policy making strategies. They argue that stereotypes of particular groups influence policy agendas and policy tools. For example, children

20 Introduction and the elderly are generally viewed positively and deserving of public support, whereas truant teenagers and their parents are negatively constructed and are more likely to face punitive policies to control their behavior.

Similarly, cognitive linguists such as George Lakoff (2002) highlight the unconscious cognitive mechanisms that guide what an individual believes and articulates as appropriate and normative: “Nothing is ‘just’ common sense. Common sense has a conceptual structure that is usually unconscious… It is the commonsensical quality of political discourse that makes it imperative that we study it.” (Lakoff 2002, p. 4) Scholars such as Lakoff are interested in how an individual’s system of understanding is used to interpret and justify worldviews and to make concrete decisions.

In addition, there is a highly political and negotiated aspect to community- based decision-making (Kingdon 1984; Wildavsky 1987); much more is involved in making a decision than any one policy output might reflect. In the case of gentrification, there are a host of decisions (which, with respect to certain items, may include the decision not to decide) which are inherently political and potentially contentious.

All three perspectives described above are outcomes-centered and focus largely on the decision-making consequences, instead of the progress and development of values and ideas underlying these outcomes. Within changing communities, however, there may be ways to recognize how material and observable changes of the local environments reflect corresponding shifts in ideas and norms.

For example, types of food services available in a community are seen as one gauge

21 Introduction of gentrification, as cheaper fast food options are replaced by coffee houses and organic food markets. This shift indicates not only an economic preference of newer residents, but also a set of ideals that shape the evolving identity of the community.

These types of shifting conventions and their resultant local-level decisions lead to not only palpable changes in individuals’ lives, but also affect the broader social dynamics within the community.

Identifying Ideas, Studying Processes

Most of the time, social change that is labeled “fundamental transformation” is relative and open to interpretation. Significant change is said to occur not episodically, but incrementally over long periods of time (Clemens and Cook 1999;

Pierson 2000; Scott, Reuf et al. 2000; Campbell 2004) and is characterized by an aggregation of perceived inconsistencies from what is considered normal or usual.

When discernible change finally occurs, considerable iterative exchange between differing ideas, perceptions, and assumptions has already occurred. Although institutionalists and political scientists have recognized ideas and values as foundational aspects of change (Kingdon 1984; Freidland and Alford 1991; Clemens and Cook 1999; Thelan 1999; Scott 2001; Fischer 2003), approaches to understanding how, when, and why some ideas flourish while others falter remain vague. The empirical challenge is obvious, especially when ideas are not explicitly articulated or acknowledged.

22 Introduction

To fill this gap in

scholarship, John Campbell (2004)

focuses on the process of idea-

sharing and shaping that underlies all

decision making (see Figure 1.2),

particularly within a policy context.

He differentiates between ideas that

Figure 1.2 Idea types and pathways (adapted from are cognitive, or seemingly intuitive Campbell 2004) or logical, and those that are more evaluative or normative. For instance, programs and frames are deliberate and explicitly articulated. They specify the problem they intend to solve, and justify the tools or mechanisms that will be used in the process.

Programs, or the proposed solutions, are explained and justified by the frames in which they are conceived. In cases of gentrification, policymakers might allow developers to expand residential options including renovating existing structures or building new ones in order to meet the housing demands of a growing, high- technology labor market. Policy makers might see housing investments as necessary building blocks of healthy, vibrant, and sustainable communities, or as a means to attract young and wealthier residents.

Determining the influence underlying beliefs is more challenging. Paradigms are social assumptions and understandings of the world that help an individual determine what they consider to be appropriate. Thus, people with different paradigms may interpret the same information differently and, thus, come to unique conclusions and decisions. With regard to housing development, one paradigm might

23 Introduction be that everyone wants to own a home, or that where an individual lives becomes the most important aspect of one’s social community. These conflicting opinions about the role of local public schools illustrate the competing paradigms that exist in the context of gentrification. For example, local schools are considered neighborhood institutions meant to serve the educational, recreational, and socialization needs of the community. Alternatively, schooling is another way individuals express preferences and choice, depending on student and parental needs and interests. In her analysis of gentrification, school selection, and its consequences for community cohesion,

DeSena (2006) articulates the implications of these competing paradigms about schools. She found that gentrifiers reject public schools as local social and physical spaces. Whatever their rationale, such choices further exacerbate social disconnections and further weaken new residents’ relationships with their lower income neighbors.

Public sentiments, also background ideas, include public opinion, values, and identities that are in the public discourse. Public sentiments toward gentrification are often highly evaluative and negatively view gentrifiers because they are seen as buying their way into and taking over communities. At the same time, popular conceptions of urban inner-cities are often shaped by media portrayals of crime, violence, and poverty. Thus, new housing developments may be begrudgingly accepted by current residents as an investment in the overall desirability of their community.

It follows that the process of idea exchange and alignment amongst different types of ideas influences decision-making and policy outcomes. In the case of

24 Introduction gentrification, the outcomes of individual, and even seemingly minor, policy decisions contribute to significant greater set of changes. Furthermore, the obvious physical transformation of urban redevelopment efforts creates a high stakes environment, with changes that are difficult to challenge or reverse. Dominant beliefs and values may lead to permanent changes – it is not easy, for example, to tear down a new housing development.

In the case of gentrification and schools, redevelopment processes and beliefs about education contribute to the isolation of public schools. This isolation leads to even greater ambiguity about how schools should serve or respond to the surrounding community. Without an explicit invitation to participate in conversations about community change or priorities with respect to education, public schools are unable to be proactive, and instead, are left to react and maneuver around whatever patterns emerge. As such, considerations of social justice and education that may have once been paramount for historically impoverished communities, risk becoming marginalized. Meanwhile, the rational, cognitive mechanisms and processes of the market are likely to dictate, or at least heavily influence, conceptions of the public good in the absence of a counterbalance.

WHAT THIS STUDY IS ABOUT

My case study of gentrification examines the progression of a city and school partnership in Emeryville, CA, a community struggling with the changes, challenges, and opportunities of gentrification.

25 Introduction

Emeryville and the Center of Community Life

Emeryville is a small city in the San Francisco Bay Area that over the past two decades has undergone dramatic redevelopment. In contrast to other instances of urban gentrification, Emeryville’s growth was due largely to major brownfield cleanup and residential redevelopment. The community was once occupied by heavy industry and manufacturing plants with minimal residential neighborhoods, then through redevelopment saw significant residential growth on newly developed properties. The newer residents, which were primarily higher income households without children, raised concerns amongst the established residential community and its surrounding neighborhoods that Emeryville was on an inevitable trajectory of gentrification. They saw the new residential developments geared towards young professionals and retirees, and expanded retail areas as indicators of an upwardly shifting social and economic culture.

Initially, Emeryville’s school district, Emery Unified School District (EUSD), was not affected by the city’s demographic shifts, mostly because in order to maintain adequate enrollment and attendance, the majority of its students came from outside of the city’s residential boundaries. For example, in 2005, just over 25% of Emeryville households had school-aged children (Dyett and Bhatia Urban and Regional Planners

2006).

Although the district had not yet experienced the same community changes within the school walls, its stability was not assured. Mirroring the hardships of neighboring high poverty, low-achieving school districts such as Oakland and

Richmond, EUSD was recovering from a high-profile financial bankruptcy in 2001

26 Introduction

and sub-par academic performance. The troubled state of EUSD contributed to the

new residential community’s consequent distrust and cynicism with regards to the

district’s ability to educate. In addition, there was a marked demographic differential

between the newer residential community and that of the school district. As reported

by the superintendent, 99% of EUSD students were racial minorities, and 75% of

students qualified for free or reduced lunch.2 In contrast, Emeryville’s largest residential subgroups were white (45%), Asian/Pacific Islander (26%), and African-

American (20%) (see Table 1.1) (Dyett and Bhatia Urban and Regional Planners

2006).

At the same time, over the course City of Emeryville of redevelopment, Emeryville’s 1990 2005 expanding residential population had Total Population 5.740 8,000

White 52.3% 45.0% begun to articulate priorities that catered

African American 23.1% 19.5% to an upper-middle-class and mostly

American Indian & 0.6% 0.5% childless demographic. Beginning in the Alaska Native

Asian & Pacific Islander 18.6% 25.8% late 1990s, despite the significant social

Some Other Race 5.5% 4.2% and economic differences that had

Two or More Race NA 5.1% historically differentiated Emeryville

Hispanic or Latino 9.9% 9.0% residents from the school community, Origin Table 1.1 Summary of Demographic Characteristics (Dyett and Bhatia 2006) there was a growing and politically active

portion of residents that sought support and reform of its local schools. Subsequent

conversations among the school and residential communities about the present and

2 Interview with Superintendent Tony Smith. Refer to Appendix A for a full listing of interviews as cited in this study. 27 Introduction

future needs of the school district represented a noteworthy departure from prior redevelopment stories. In addition, in contrast to other communities facing trends of gentrification, the newer residents of Emeryville were intentional about including the schools as part of the city’s redevelopment plans.

Since 2001, discussions in Emeryville between school, city, business and

residential leaders have focused on a proposed Center of Community Life (CCL).

The CCL was described by its originators as a way to meet the city’s varied

educational, social service, and recreational needs and interests. More than just a

traditional community center, the CCL would house an elementary and high school,

with close integration of community organizations, services, and supports. The new

facilities would serve approximately 1,800 students (ages 0-18), their families, and

the diverse community at large.

Even though top stakeholders from the city, school, and business sectors were

on board and excited about following this new path, the ensuing trajectory of the CCL

demonstrated the complexity of the proposed partnership. In particular, the CCL

provided a stage to observe the convergence of differing beliefs and assumptions

about education, community and schools, across of the various stakeholders and

constituents.

Emeryville provides an ideal, if not most-likely case to use as a basis to understand how redevelopment processes affect local public school policies, and highlights the tensions of gentrification and inequity that strain community relationships. The examination of these matters with reference to a case study is particularly apt. George and Bennett (2005) argue that a single case study is useful in

28 Introduction

understanding complex situations where multiple variables contribute to a particular

outcome. They write:

In a most-likely case, a single variable is at such an extreme value that its underlying causal mechanism, even when considered alone, should strongly determine a particular outcome. … If the predicted outcome does not occur, then the hypothesized causal mechanism underlying the extreme variable is strongly impugned. (252, emphasis added)

Given Emeryville’s small size and its politically and socially progressive

residents, it would seem that the successful planning and implementation of the CCL

would be a given. In addition, the proposed development of a strong and diverse city,

school, and business partnership provided encouraging signals as to Emeryville’s

civic capacity to support public education and community building efforts (Stone

2001). Beyond this political will, however, as was ultimately demonstrated, the

expressed and implied ideas underlying the debate about the CCL compromised the

parties’ ability to implement policies that met the interests and needs of both the school and residential communities.

By examining the case of community redevelopment with respect to the CCL

in Emeryville, I seek to understand why and how certain forms of community change,

such as gentrification, often elude practical implementation of parallel benefits to

local schools even when there is an intentionally collaborative, educational and

community agenda. This dissertation illustrates how the decisions around the CCL

ultimately reflected the underlying ideas and values within the Emeryville community

and how those ideas and values influenced the schools and their relationship to the

community.

29 Introduction

Challenges to the Study

There are several challenges to studying nebulous concepts such as ideas and

values, and their relationship to concrete decisions. First, while formal decisions are

generally visible in reports, documents, and meeting minutes, the implicit values and

beliefs are harder to identify. In addition, tensions with respect to race, poverty,

class, and community are often left undiscussed or are shrouded in political

correctness (Sieber 1987). Thus, the expected routines of negotiation and conciliation

that are a part of any change process – and especially in gentrification – are hindered

by the tendency for any discourse of race and class to be uncomfortable, morally-

infused, and politically-censured (Guinier and Torres 2002). As a result, actors are

more frequently rendered “colormute” (Pollock 2004), a term that refers to a broader social and political context where “colorblindness” is a commonly espoused value and norm (Lawrence 2005). It is critical to closely examine topics of race and class despite these difficulties. This is especially true when in spite of the best intentions for positive political outcomes, policy decisions are made that are viewed as negatively reinforcing existing social injustices.

The second challenge lies in demonstrating a discernible relationship between the background and the foreground elements of a decision-making process as differentiated by Campbell. I aim to draw a coherent line connecting seemingly random sets of decisions, spanning multiple sets of actors and perspectives, that are in fact, commonly dependent on explicit and tacit beliefs and assumptions. The confluence of these ideas, beliefs, and actions has major implications for public schools and their relationship to the community.

30 Introduction

In spite of and because of these challenges, it is essential to a greater

understanding of why and how certain values become infused into decisions or are

disregarded. My study is based on eighteen months of observation, documents, and

interviews in Emeryville, involving community residents, leaders, and school

stakeholders who were part of the planning process for the CCL. The data collection

process covered multiple modes: informal conversations at coffee shops, formal one-

on-one interviews, following local email listservs and web blogs, attending city

council and redevelopment meetings, and visiting school classrooms, and observing

school board meetings and retreats. In addition, I scanned regional and national

newspapers and publicly available program and policy documents generated by the

city and EUSD.3

All of these data sources helped me to triangulate and elucidate relevant ideas

and beliefs influencing the community’s response to the CCL. By looking beyond

individual perspectives and assertions of the primary players, I aimed to describe the

larger landscape of ideas that affected the CCL decision-making process.

Ultimately, the many personal relationships that I developed during this time were the most significant feature of my field research. By growing these relationships and developing personal trust with individuals, I was able to have conversations that often departed from typical discourse about politics and education.

I was determined that these connections mature beyond casual pleasantries or formal routine to move instead towards “forbidden conversations” (Lawrence 2005) about individual choices and community consequences.

3 See Appendix A for a more in-depth discussion of the study’s methodology and data analysis. 31 Introduction

In asking each respondent about her personal values, experiences, ambitions, and desires for themselves and their community, I hoped to demonstrate the vital importance of one’s ideals and principles because collectively, such ideals and principles can and will shape a community’s future.

I first provide the historical context of the partnership between the city of

Emeryville and the EUSD in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, I focus on the prevalent perceptions articulated by residents and community stakeholders and relevant conceptions of and challenges to community. Chapter 4 draws attention to the

EUSD, and the attitudes and aspirations of school and community stakeholders with respect to schools in Emeryville. Chapter 5 describes the vision and the mission of

CCL as proposed and intended by its initial framers. Chapter 6 examines how the proposed concept struggled against tangible community challenges. Finally, I consider the various reasons why the CCL was so disputed and how ideas underlying policy decisions about the CCL came to bear on the project’s ultimate fate.

Chapter 2 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

In many ways, Emeryville is a commonplace case of an industrial founding, urban decline and renewal. Emeryville’s recent redevelopment and gentrification also exemplify familiar patterns resulting from multiple layers of local, national, and global influence. Though largely bureaucratically separate from city government, the Emery

Unified School District (EUSD) has faced essentially parallel influences and changes to those confronting city leaders charged with ensuring the economic and political viability of the community. The following historical overview provides an introduction to the history of the city, the parallel story of its schools, and the factors that influenced the near convergence of their respective agendas.

INDUSTRIAL EMERYVILLE

Emeryville’s namesake, Joseph Stickney Emery, was a successful Gold Rush prospector turned railroad president, whose land holdings and railroad tracks shaped the early identity of the small industry town. Incorporated in 1896, early Emeryville

33 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District was known for its meatpacking houses, railroads, horse racing, and shipping access to the San Francisco Bay.

In the 1920s, the city was industrialized, with factories and plants taking up most of the city’s 1.2 square mile physical footprint. By the late 19th and early 20th century, Emeryville’s industrial landscape included giants such as Judson Iron Works,

Sherwin-Williams Paint, and Shell Development – the research and development arm of the Shell Oil Company. World Wars I and II further cemented Emeryville’s identity as an important industrial and transportation center: in 1944, the California

State War Council named it a “Number One Priority Community.” At that time, the city’s 185 industrial firms retooled to meet the needs of government defense contracts

(Hausler, Smith et al. 2005).

During the industrial heyday (1920-1950), industrial interests and stakeholders extended deep into the political and social lives of the city. Governance by influence was commonplace and local politics were replete with corruption and scandal. While serving as the Alameda County District Attorney, Earl Warren once described

Emeryville as the “vice capital of the Coast” where speakeasies, gambling houses, and prostitution flourished in the prohibition era (Currier 1991). According to the 1916

City Directory, there were twenty-four saloons within city limits (Oakland Public

Library History Room Archives 1916). In order to shield itself from family and church interference, the city’s boundaries were purposefully drawn to circumvent major residential neighborhoods (Hausler, Smith et al. 2005). The few residential areas that were included within the city’s boundary sat adjacent to the Oakland border and were referred to as the Triangle Neighborhood. With few physical addresses, all of

34 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

Emeryville sat within the 94608 postal zip code, which also included certain residential areas of Oakland (See Figure 2.1 for a general map of Emeryville and

94608, and Appendix C for a more detailed version).

Figure 2.1 Map of Emeryville and 94608

The majority of Emeryville’s early residents were transients who lived in boarding homes and residential hotels. Drawn by the abundance of factory work,

Emeryville residents were primarily laborers with less than one-third of the population under the age of 19. Among those 25 years and older, less than 25% had completed high school. According to early census and demographic information (see Table 2.1), the population hit an early peak of nearly 2,400 residents by 1920, followed by a decrease as the number of industrial plants grew, further displacing residential housing

(Mavity 1936). By the 1940s, the residential population had grown to around

35 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

2,500, still minimal compared to the city’s workforce, which was estimated at over

12,000 laborers.

Total Population in Emeryville, CA 1890 228

1900 1,016 1910 2,613 1920 2,390 1930 2,336

1940 2,521 Table 2.1 Population counts from select census data (Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments 2009)

The demographic composition of the city also shifted with local economic trends. According to the Emeryville Historical Society, ethnic diversity grew as marginal numbers of black, Chinese, and Japanese residents expanded over time

(Emeryville Historical Society 1998). For instance, in 1950, 85% of residents were recorded as white, 9% as foreign-born white, 3% black, and 2% other (California State

Department of Finance) and by 1970, nearly 38% of the population was recorded as black. According to the 1980, 1990, and 2000 federal censuses, the white population decreased from 58% to 45% in 2000, as did the black population from 28% in 1980 to

19.5% in 2000. However, the Asian population grew from just over 2% of the residential population in 1970 to over 25% according to Census 2000 (Metropolitan

Transportation Commission and The Association of Bay Area Governments 2009).4

4 The ethnic makeup of the Asian population in Emeryville has become more complex over time, with increases in the Southeast Asian population, who are generally lower in socioeconomic status than other East Asian residents.

36 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

Early Emeryville Schools

Although Emeryville city limits intentionally excluded churches and other community institutions, public schools remained part of the civic infrastructure. The

Bay Public School and Emeryville School were established by 1886. The North

Emeryville School (later renamed Ralph S. Hawley Elementary School) and Emery

High were respectively built in 1910 and 1920.

Little else is known about the history of the schools, although a 1929 Oakland

Tribune article written by then City Engineer Ralph S. Hawley, suggests that they were a positive focus for the community:

While Emeryville is noted for its industrial development in recent years, it has not lagged in its educational and cultural advancement. It has an educational system extending from the kindergarten through the high school which provides the very best methods in modern education. During the year 1928 the city has provided and fully equipped a playground and recreational center for the use of its citizens. During the past four years a complete Junior-Senior High School has been organized, equipped and put into operation without the issue of bonds therefor. (Hawley 1929)

EMERYVILLE’S ONGOING DEVELOPMENT

Industrial evolution and modernization in the late 1960s and early 1970s heavily impacted Emeryville. As the growth of national and transnational companies placed greater emphasis on low-cost production and transportation, small industrial towns like Emeryville were hit disproportionately hard by increased competition. The city’s industrial core deteriorated and large tracts of land were neglected with little incentive or demand to redevelop and reuse them. By the late 1970s, the mixture of

37 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

vacant buildings, joblessness, and rising rates of drug and gang activity ushered in an

era of urban blight to Emeryville and its neighboring East Bay communities.

At the same time, Emeryville’s decline and its industrial graveyard provided an

opportunity for redevelopment interests who were looking for real estate deals with

close proximity to San Francisco. Beginning in the 1970s, people began to look to

Emeryville for affordable housing – these were mostly local artists and light industry

entrepreneurs refurbishing abandoned and cheap warehouse buildings to meet their

needs.

By the late 1970s, Emeryville had become a high-demand destination for Bay

Area developers, despite its inherent challenges. Abandoned industrial areas required

intensive environmental cleanup of sometimes highly hazardous chemicals.

Additionally, the geography of industry – sprawling factory sites without roads or

alleyways – left few cheap and uncomplicated options for redevelopment.

Figure 2.2 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report of the valuation of new commercial and residential development

38 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

Nevertheless, Emeryville grew (see Figure 2.2). Located at the nexus of local freeways, the city appealed to rapidly franchising national box stores such as Home

Depot (building supplies) and Ikea (home furnishings). City leaders also courted national hotel chains and the valuable local occupancy taxes that they brought into the city.

The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake provided an unlikely opportunity for

Emeryville to reassert itself as a central transportation hub for the Bay Area. The regional Amtrak passenger train depot had previously been located in West Oakland, but the natural disaster destroyed what was left of a dilapidated station. Quickly perceiving an economic opportunity, Emeryville’s leaders succeeded in their bid to relocate the depot to the city, largely because they were not bogged down by the glacial bureaucracy of competing municipalities like Oakland and Berkeley. By securing the bid and rapidly building the station, Emeryville became the Bay Area’s connection to the regional and national commuter lines.5

In the 1980s, Emeryville began to draw the interest of a wealthier, urban demographic who saw the city as a desirable suburban option. Instead of joining the developing artists’ colony, wealthier in-movers set their prospects on the west side of the city, facing the Bay. Developers proposed filling in portions of the Bay to create a marina and a manmade peninsula, upon which several luxury high-rise and office buildings were built, bringing in thousands of new residents. Complexes such as

Pacific Park Plaza and Watergate Towers offered several hundred one and two bedroom units, 24-hour security, and other amenities of luxury living which appealed

5 From interviews with Dick Kassis, City Council member and John Gooding, local business owner and Emeryville resident.

39 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District to retirees and young singles.6 Due primarily to these massive housing developments,

Emeryville’s population

grew nearly 40%

between the 1970s and

1980s to 3,714 (City of

Emeryville 2006-2009).

Populating and

income figures illustrate

Figure 2.3 Aerial view of Pixar campus, slated for further the striking changes in development as of summer 2009 Emeryville over the past couple decades.7 The 2007 residential population of

Emeryville was 10,087 (Emeryville Finance Department), with a median age of 35.2 years old and a median household income of $45,359 (Census 2000). Census figures also stated that over half of Emeryville residents had college degrees, with another

25% having completed some postsecondary education.

Heartened by the potential for sustained growth, city leaders decided that despite its small size, Emeryville would independently run core city services like fire, police, and schools. Accordingly, commercial developments were essential to raising and keeping much needed financial capital to fund public works. Individual big box stores and hotels were followed by commercial “shopping districts.” National and international corporations began to take advantage of Emeryville’s open spaces to

6 Watergate was supposedly home to a large majority of the Oakland Raiders professional football team. Interview with Kris Owens. 7 Many residents and city leaders however, were quick to point out that these numbers were incorrect and outdated, or only captured a fraction of the rapidly changing social and economic realities of Emeryville.

40 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District build expansive research and development campuses, providing local roots for multinational companies. Biotech giant Chiron and computer animation leader Pixar

(see Figure 2.3) soon came to inhabit a significant portion of the open space of

Emeryville, with the two comprising nearly 13% of the city’s total taxable assessed property (City of Emeryville Finance Department 2008).

The subsequent revival of industry – albeit in white collar, high tech, and professional arenas – re-established Emeryville as a local employment hub, with growth in jobs rising from 14,111 in 1997 (United States Census Bureau 1997) to nearly 19,000 by 2004 (City of Emeryville 2004). Whereas in the past, Emeryville’s huge labor population had little residential consequences for the city, the growth in new technology industries ushered in a substantial demand for housing.

Most of the newer residential developments followed the “urban model” of condominium and multi-unit loft buildings, which were designed to appeal to younger, higher income professionals without children. Growth in housing units almost doubled from 2,410 units in 1980 to 4,274 in 2000, while average gross rents steadily increased from $609 per month to $1,001 over the same period. Conversely, owner occupied housing decreased from 42.3% in 1980 to 37.1% in 2000 (United States

Census Bureau 1980; United States Census Bureau 1980; United States Census

Bureau 1990; United States Census Bureau 2000). As the number of rental properties and rents increased, homeownership decreased, signaling economic shifts that made owning a home in Emeryville less financially feasible.

City leaders welcomed new investments, even if they were on the outskirts of the city. However, these developments stirred up local tensions among residents. In

41 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District particular, the new residential areas sat in stark contrast to a stagnant “old”

Emeryville, where most residents lived in the Triangle neighborhood and its nearly indistinguishable residential border with other single family homes in neighboring

North and West Oakland (see Appendix C for detailed map). Although much of the border area was often referred to as a “bad neighborhood,” residents prided themselves as belonging to a stable community of middle class black families,8 with most families owning their homes, despite often living on fixed incomes (McCullough 2001). As described by a local newspaper, the community’s residential divisions were a distinguishing feature of the small city:

Emeryville is a two-faced town. East of the Eastshore freeway, it’s a tangle of factories with dilapidated houses jammed up against them. Its main amenity – for the out-of-towner – is six legal cardrooms where you can play poker. West of the freeway, it’s a self-sufficient-looking peninsula housing a Holiday Inn, a marina, four high-class restaurants, an office building and the luxurious Watergate apartment complex. (San Francisco Chronicle 1976)

City offices, police stations, and fire stations relocated to the newer and quickly developing parts of town in the late 1980s, feeding a growing perception that city services and public attention were being disproportionately directed towards the wealthier, newcomer population.

CITY LEADERSHIP

In addition to creating a changed physical and economic landscape,

Emeryville’s redevelopment also shifted political influences and priorities of city

8 From an interview with Emery Unified School Board member Melodi Dice, who was raised in and around Emeryville.

42 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District leadership. When it was an industry boomtown, local government had catered chiefly to the interests of local industry. The administration of Emeryville’s first mayor,

Wallace Hunt Christie, from 1930-1970, for example, created a tightly knit governance structure that took advantage of the lucrative economic interests and small-town relationships that lubricated bureaucracy (Hausler, Smith et al. 2005).

This style of governing by influence continued throughout Emeryville’s downward days without much opposition (Oakland Tribune Staff Reporter). However, beginning in the 60s, as newer residents started to trickle in, there was growing resistance to the

“informal” and “dictator-style” of decision-making (Piazzi 1961).

Political representation in Emeryville continued to follow the city’s pockets of wealth and influence shifting in line with the new residential community’s emerging power. By 1975, over half of the city’s registered voters lived at Watergate as did four out of five City Council members (San Francisco Chronicle 1976), thereby calling into question whose interests were, or were not, being represented by elected officials.

Redevelopment and Politics

In their early attempts at redevelopment, Emeryville’s local leaders cast a wide net to attract developers and business interests to the city. The city government initially categorized the entire city, except for the peninsula, as available for development. Cheap land, negotiated developer fees, and increasing demand propelled even more new construction. Some residents, even recent migrants to Emeryville, perceived that redevelopment projects were quickly overrunning the city. The ensuing

43 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District political dissent unified both old and new residents against the feared “selling out” of much of the town.

The City Council was and continues to be the main legislative body responsible for setting city policy and adopting the city budget. Five city council members, elected in four-year staggered terms annually rotate the positions Mayor and

Vice Mayor among themselves. The Council also serves as the local Redevelopment

Agency, which in many municipalities is a stand-alone local agency. The Council- appointed City Manager is both the administrative head of the city and the Executive

Director of the Redevelopment Agency and is responsible for policy implementation and management of all city operations (see Figure 2.4). Generally, programs and operations are implemented and administered by the City Manager and accompanying city staff who oversaw multiple traditional city departments such as Planning and

Development, Community Services, and Housing.

Figure 2.4 Organizational Chart, City of Emeryville

44 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

There are also several formal community-based committees that advise the

City Council. These include the Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee, Emeryville

Celebration of the Arts, Inc., the Community Preservation Committee, and the

City/School Committee, among several others. The influential business and economic core, integral to city’s fabric, also continues to wield significant political influence.

Besides Pixar and Novartis, corporate interests flourished with the addition of companies including KodakGallery, Leapfrog, AC Transit, and IKEA. The local

Chamber of Commerce, together with established business interests, is a key political force influencing the City Council’s decisions regarding development projects.

During a contentious 1987 election, City Council candidates were identified as either “pro” or “anti” development. Three candidates formed the “All Emeryville

Alliance:” Watergate resident Nora Davis, east Emeryville resident and nightclub owner Ken Bukowski, and artist cooperative resident and attorney Greg Harper. Their landslide victory was seen as a change of course for the city, as they pursued an agenda of environmentally appropriate development and ethically responsive governance. That same year, the council hired John Flores as City Manager.

Since 1987, Emeryville politics have remained fairly stable. The Council, having no term limits, remained consistent in composition and political stance over the next several decades. Four of the five existing members have been sitting members for at least ten years. For some residents and observers, the political stability amidst all of the other dramatic changes suggests an entrenchment of power that is suspicious,

45 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District especially in consideration of the city’s “shady dealings of the past.” (City of

Emeryville 2006-2009)

One successful challenger to the political process, John Fricke, emerged onto the political landscape in 2005. An Emeryville resident since 1994, Fricke was a self- described “progressive” and “rabble-rouser” (Tate 2007). He was characterized by several Emeryville leaders and residents as representing a “different perspective,” while not “know[ing] how things are done here in Emeryville.”9 Fricke’s entrance into an otherwise predictable and established set of council relationships provides an

example of how newer Emeryville

voices might become more integrated

into the governance and civic life of

the city.

Emeryville has continued to

be defined, economically and

politically, primarily by growth and

development since the turn of the

century. In 2005, Emeryville set about revising its 20-year General Plan, which was last updated in 1993. California law requires every county and city to have a General Plan summarizing the city's policies for future development. The Plan usually addresses issues of zoning, locations of public facilities such as parks, housing allowances, transportation and

9 These comments came from individual postings on an Emeryville community email-listserv.

46 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

traffic issues, and general quality of life issues, including noise, air quality, public

safety, schools, and the design of buildings and public spaces.

A sixteen member General Plan and Zoning Update Steering Committee began

meeting in October 2004, focused on the primary goal of attending to Emeryville’s

“quality of life” issues. The planning processes included a series of publicly televised

meetings, and multiple community engagement workshops. The revised Plan was to

be based on projections of increased residential growth to 16,600 and employee-

counts to 30,000 by 2030. As such, the General Plan Update Steering Committee was

attentive to land use policies that would accommodate “smart growth,” with particular

focus on environmental stewardship, fiscal efficiency, and restoring community (see

Figure 2.5). The resulting draft General Plan called for

Figure 2.5 Emeryville General Plan Zoning Update preservation and enhancement of existing residential areas and Map: Change Areas a general redevelopment trend towards high-density urban neighborhoods.

EMERYVILLE AND THE EMERY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT (EUSD) “From takeover to makeover”10

Although distinctly separate, the condition of Emeryville’s schools mirrored

the deteriorating infrastructure of the city during the 1970s and 80s. The leadership of

EUSD was thought to be just as corrupt as the city government, as was described in a

local community website’s archived news article:

10 EUSD’s informational brochure provides a timeline of EUSD, highlighting its on-going process of transformation, and features a tagline of “from takeover to makeover.”

47 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

From the very wealthy using HUD funds to build low income housing to purchase homes for their children to running sex slave rings for rich politicians – Emeryville has it all! Even the Emeryville school children are victims of the powers that be in this strange little town. Lawsuits filed in state and federal courts document the physical and sexual abuse youngsters endure every day they go to school in Emeryville. From medical experimentation on students to money laundering by school officials, nothing is beneath the administrators in the Emery School District. (McCullough 2001)

In addition to allegations of student abuse (Paddock 1993), the relationship between the city and EUSD was strained as city and EUSD leaders either openly disagreed with or avoided one another.

EUSD struggled to meet academic goals, amidst the economic and social challenges of its students as well as a familiar litany of poor urban school issues, including inexperienced teachers and ineffective administrators. Art Hoff, a former school board member, described EUSD as “an inner city minority school [district]” with inadequate teachers and resources. Some compared Emeryville schools with neighboring West Oakland schools favorably saying that Emeryville schools were a haven from West Oakland, while others argued that Emeryville schools were worse because students unable to keep up in Oakland were sent to Emeryville; Hoff believed that schools in EUSD were the latter:

I don’t know if you heard the name of Dr. Handy, the superintendent. His idea was to build up the school…. he had the enrollment up to almost 1,200. He wasn’t very concerned about whether they were good students or bad students. And they attracted a lot of athletes, football players particularly, who were not good enough to go Berkeley. They couldn’t make teams in the neighboring cities so they would gravitate [to Emeryville]. So we had a high concentration of athletically-oriented students who didn’t care much about studies.

48 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

Hoff reveals a racial dimension to his perceptions of EUSD’s predominantly African-

American student population. Under Superintendent Handy, EUSD was at its largest and comprised of three schools, Anna Yates Elementary, Emery Middle School

Academy and Emery Secondary School, serving a total of 980 students from grades

K-12.11 Overall student academic performance was bleak.

By the mid 1980s, while city leadership stabilized and financial resources became more plentiful, the school district was still plagued by problems. Former City

Manager John Flores recalled the estrangement between the city and EUSD:

We had money, and we had projects and a plan in which to get to live within our means… It was rolling well [except] in our relation with the school district. …The superintendent was only fiscally minded and screwed the curriculum, so they had a school district with a great big surplus and no kids. And [they were] not providing education to Emeryville or anyone else. That was fine with us, we didn’t care; we had our recreation program working with them. You know, it was okay.

A crisis eventually helped overcome the breach between EUSD and the city.

In 2000, Superintendent Handy was brought under federal investigation for financial corruption. EUSD was forced into bankruptcy in 2001, and the state took over its administration upon declaration of a fiscal emergency and a $1.3 million state bailout.

The middle school was closed due to declining enrollment, with remaining classrooms divided into grades K-6 at Anna Yates, and grades 7-12 at Emery Secondary.

At that time, city leadership began to question whether or not to continue to support EUSD, or, as they had done with local library services, outsource public education to neighboring Oakland or Berkeley Unified School Districts. A core group

11 Attendance records were not rigorously maintained by the District until the late 1990s. Thus, numbers cited were taken from the best recollections of EUSD staff. Resident Art Hoff estimated that the school district had increased to nearly 1,200 students at one point.

49 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District of politically active residents and city leaders, few of whom had school-aged children themselves, decided that having schools were integral to community identity and therefore, committed to salvaging the district.

The overhaul of EUSD invigorated residents and provided a platform for many disgruntled city and school stakeholders. The sizeable financial investment of the city was accompanied by greater interest and influence of city politics in the operations and recovery of EUSD. Together, city and school leaders created the Emeryville

Youth Services Advisory Committee (EYSAC) which was open to any and all interested residents and community stakeholders. A resident-led campaign in 2001 succeeded at recalling the sitting school board members who had supervised

Superintendent Handy, then elected a new board charged to work with state-appointed

School Administrator, Henry Derr. Under Derr’s leadership, the district faced strict public scrutiny of its finances and students’ educational performance.12

The newly elected school board and the city worked with the Bay Area

Coalition for Equitable Schools (BayCES) to facilitate a school redesign process.

BayCES had previously worked with other East Bay school districts facing similar struggles with poor leadership, fiscal insolvency, low academic performance, and high need student populations. After EUSD returned to fiscal solvency in 2004, the school board appointed Tony Smith, the BayCES program director who had worked with the district since 2001 to serve as EUSD superintendent.

12 From interviews with John Gooding and Art Hoff.

50 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

Emery Unified School District 2008

Emery Unified School District remains one of the smallest public school districts in California with approximately 800 students – in contrast to neighboring

Berkeley Unified School District (9,000 students) and Oakland Unified School District

(49,000 students). Two schools currently make up EUSD – Anna Yates Elementary

School (413 students, grades K-6) and Emery Secondary School (375 students, grades

6-12). In recent years, Emery Secondary’s enrollment declined, especially in the wake of EUSD’s bankruptcy, while Anna Yates maintained its enrollment numbers.

Originally, the three schools (EMSA, Annie Yates, and ESS) were located in close proximity to residential communities and as a result, located at the outskirts of the city. This made sense given the historical geography of the city. But since the schools were built Emeryville’s residential areas have significantly changed.

Consequently, the schools are much closer for many Oakland residents than those in

Emeryville.

EUSD’s students, however, remain largely minority and poor. As of 2008,

66% of EUSD students were identified as African-American, 13.6% Latino, 11.4%

Asian, 1.9% White, and 6.1% Other. Seventy-five percent of students qualified for free or reduced lunch. The contrast between the changing faces of the “new

Emeryville” residential community and the majority-minority demographics of students in EUSD was a source of tension for both the city and school communities.

One factor contributing to this dichotomy between city and schools was that 46% of

EUSD’s students were admitted through inter-district transfer. Of those, most lived in the 94608 zip code but fell outside of Emeryville city limits and are technically

51 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District residents of neighboring Oakland and Berkeley. According to communications officer

Wanda Stewart, the small percentage of Emeryville residents with school-aged children often opt to send them to private schools or other districts.13 However, since

2008, the numbers of inter-district transfers for kindergarten and first grade have dropped to under 10%, demonstrating increases in local resident enrollment, at least in the early grades.

California Education Code Section 48204(b), also known as the Allen Bill, states that K-12 students and their families have the right to transfer into the district of parental employment. This provision had important implications for Emeryville as the huge corporate, hotel, and retail industries required large human infrastructures, particularly those offering low-paying jobs. As of 2007-2008, 17% of Emery students,

K-8, were “Allen admits.” (EUSD Analysis, 2008)

The academic progress of EUSD students reflected the financial and political hardships, but also showed a gradual upward trend of the district (see Table 2.2). As a whole, EUSD’s achievement measures improved incrementally from an Academic

Performance Index (API)14 of 580 in 2002, to 670 in 2008. The greatest improvements have taken place at the elementary grades. In comparison, at the middle and high school level, performance has improved slightly. As of 2008, nearly

13 This was Stewart’s own hypothesis, since such data would be difficult to accurately capture. 14 The Academic Performance Index (API) is a statewide measure of academic performance and growth of schools. API scores range from a low of 200 to a high of 1000, and reflect a school, district, or subgroup’s performance level based on results of statewide testing.

52 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

75% of 10th graders passed either the English Language Arts or Mathematics

California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE).15

2002 2008

EUSD 580 670

Anna Yates 589 732 Elementary Emery Secondary 556 622 School Table 2.2 Academic Performance Index for EUSD, 2002-2008

District leadership invested heavily in overhauling the educational curriculum and structures to support renewed mandates for higher academic performance. With the continued support of BayCES and an expanded array of community partnerships in the arts and technology, gradual steps were taken to revamp curricula, recruit and provide professional development to new teachers, and increase academic and enrichment opportunities. In 2006, the district adopted a set of “90-90-90” goals to be achieved by 2009: 90% of 9th graders would graduate in four years, 90% of 10th graders would pass the CAHSEE on their first try, and at least 90% of all students would perform proficiently at grade level.

Fiscal solvency and responsibility remained a fundamental tenet of EUSD’s post-restructuring. Its business office continued to be monitored by the state receiver and school board leaders were sensitive to public perceptions of any signs of fiscal

15 According to the California School Boards Association, the average CAHSEE pass rate in 2008 was 95.8% for white students and 95.5% for Asian students; while slightly more than 80% of African- American students and 85.8% of Hispanic students passed the exam.

53 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District mismanagement. EUSD’s development strategy also looked towards public and private grants to further support the educational work of the schools.

In 2007, Tony Smith left Emeryville to become the Assistant Superintendent for

Innovation and Social Justice in the San Francisco Unified School District. The school board then voted to appoint EUSD’s Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction, Stephen Wesley, as the new Superintendent. Wesley resigned in September 2008 when it was discovered he had falsified his resume. Shortly thereafter, John Sugiyama, retired superintendent of the Dublin Unified School

District, located about twenty-five miles southeast of Emeryville, was appointed as interim superintendent. Although less dramatic than in previous decades, EUSD’s ongoing management problems were important considerations for city stakeholders who continued to question its potential for measurable and sustainable academic success.

“Where Partners Power Student Success”16

As part of the school district makeover, city residents established the Emery

Educational Fund (EEF), a 501(c)3 fund that “mobilizes local and regional resources to bring increased funding, innovative programs and strong partnerships to

Emeryville’s public schools.” John Gooding, one of EEF’s founding members, described its genesis and rationale:

We recognized that our schools were having a hard time; the teachers didn’t have enough money for materials, let alone any of the extras. So we created the Emery Education Foundation with very modest expectations – we’re gonna raise a few thousand dollars to support the teachers’ activities, and we’ll have a

16 “Where Partners Power Student Success” was adopted as EUSD’s slogan in 2005.

54 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

few thousand dollars to provide scholarship grants to the handful of students who went on to higher education from our secondary school.

EEF generated supplementary financial support for EUSD and focused on deepening important political and business alliances by providing support for teacher grants, arts programs, college scholarships, enrichment programs, and corporate and volunteer opportunities. Corporate partnerships and programs, in particular the annual Novartis

“Community Day” and PIXAR fundraisers, were frequently cited by school and city people alike, as important resources. An Emery high school social studies teacher described one of the celebrated programs:

Business is great in Emeryville, the support is great. A lot of businesses support both of our schools, simply because we only have two. Pixar has adopted Annie Yates – they personally take the 5th graders to Pixar where they record a movie. We have a lot of corporations that come in and do reading with our children, so that helps the children to be better in reaching their academic goals. So not only are they wonderful in their financial contribution, they are also hands-on. [Ruth Mathis]

In addition to the private philanthropic dollars generated by EEF, EUSD relied substantially on a local parcel tax initially passed in 2004 and renewed in 2007. The parcel tax, which as of 2007 levied $0.15 per square foot of land parcel, was heavily shouldered by the business community which owns the majority of the city’s real estate. Perhaps in consideration of this distribution, Emeryville voters passed the tax by 87% in a June 2007 election. The parcel tax is a major source of public funding, estimated to raise almost four million dollars per year for support of art and music education, classroom materials, after school programs, and health and wellness programs.17

17 Interview with John Gooding.

55 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

EMERYVILLE CENTER OF COMMUNITY LIFE

The city’s Youth Services Advisory Committee (EYSAC) generated a Youth

Master Plan in 2004, which was presented and passed by both the City Council and the School Board. Among the recommendations of EYSAC’s Youth Master Plan was the creation of a formal collaborative governance structure between the city and the schools. The resultant City/Schools Committee included all School Board and City

Council members. They held monthly public meetings attended by relevant city staff, including the City Manager and the Superintendent of EUSD.

The success of the City/Schools Committee was credited to the leadership of

John Flores and his school counterpart, Tony Smith. Together, they crafted a long- term vision for the future of the city and schools that drew from urban planning, education and social welfare perspectives. Both Flores and Smith saw the relevance of the community schools movement which advocates partnering schools with other public organization to support community and youth success. Based on its small size, corporate involvement, close working relationships, and consequent political opportunities and resources, they believed that Emeryville had potential to pursue an innovative joint school reform and community development agenda. Initial conversations between Flores and Smith, followed by a partnership between the

Emeryville Center of Community Life (CCL).

56 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

Described as a “center The Center of Community Life is envisioned to be a place where: of community life,” the CCL • Learning happens for the entire community • The community can share modern schools, a was endorsed by EUSD and garden environment, a full community center, an athletic complex, an arts center, a community other city officials as an resource center and a community police station • Schools operate as community buildings that are appropriate strategy to satisfy open all day long for preschool care, after school care, older adult activities, community classes the multiple and varied interests and sports • People meet for language classes, computer of Emeryville (see Figure 2.6). training and Internet access In 2005, the city council agreed • Family support services are available to everyone in the community to set-aside $25 million from • Every child is known and encouraged by multiple adults the city’s redevelopment funds • Parents and older adults are an active part of everyday life in the school and community to the project. Additional • There are safe spaces to learn, play, create and imagine funding was expected to require Figure 2.6 From the original Center of Community combined public and private Life website, www.emerycenter.org fundraising efforts.

The prospects for realization of the CCL has ebbed and flowed since its initial inspiration in 2003. A significant transition occurred when City Manager John Flores retired in 2005, followed by Superintendent Tony Smith’s departure in 2007.

Although both of their successors support the vision of the CCL, these key leadership changes eroded the momentum behind the planning process and the accompanying public support.

At the same time, new dimensions of the project were being considered. In particular, the city’s Community Services Department, the umbrella organization that includes the Parks and Recreation Department and Senior and Youth Services, was

57 Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District seeking a new permanent facility, to transition from the temporary trailers in which it had been housed since 2004. Accordingly, a Community Services facility was integrated into the vision for the CCL.

Thus, though its fate was not assured, the tentative plans for the CCL seemed to be aligned with the generally articulated needs of the redeveloping city and recovering school district. With sufficient political will and support from their respective leadership, moving the project to fruition appeared to be a matter of logistics. However, as the next several years of planning the CCL would demonstrate, crucial questions remained unresolved as to notions of community, public education, and public good – the foundational concepts behind the CCL. As a result, the CCL would become a crucible through which the Emeryville community, both broadly and narrowly defined, would negotiate its contrasting and competing interpretations of community.

Chapter 3 The City

Predictable tensions related to development and gentrification emerged as prominent themes within the Emeryville narrative which residents described as a “city in progress.” Most often, debates circled around the balance between economic growth and local affordability. Regionally, across the San Francisco Bay and the East

Bay, city and county leaders faced similar challenges in housing and employment sectors, most notably in response to the Silicon Valley’s technology boom and bust of the 1990s. Although in principle most individuals acknowledged the importance of economic solvency in supporting a healthy and sustainable community, accommodating change in practice was highly personal, especially for people who had significant interests in either preserving or changing the status quo.

In a city as small as Emeryville, where any change would have considerable impact, the issues facing the community and its elected officials were far more complicated than what commonly appeared as polarizing stances of pro and anti- development. Instead, residents and stakeholders struggled to acclimate to the dramatic physical changes within the city, while also anticipating the social and economic consequences of those changes. And from a regional perspective,

59 The City

Emeryville was challenged to define itself relative to its East Bay neighbors of

Oakland and Berkeley.

Over time, the ways in which the Emeryville community was perceived by its residents, neighbors, and interested observers would also significantly influence the identity and future of the school district, and accordingly, the viability of the Center of

Community Life. Emeryville residents who were most concerned with or involved in the planning of the Center of Community Life saw the task of defining the community in terms of three fundamental questions: What was Emeryville, who was Emeryville, and when was Emeryville?

WHAT IS EMERYVILLE?

Much of Emeryville’s recent past could be gleaned from looking at its archaeological remains of industry and the subsequent redevelopment projects that had been steadily emerging over the past couple decades. The evolving geography of the original 1.2 square mile city generally preserved the original giant footprints of industrial plants. In the city’s early development campaigns, little incentive existed for developers to underwrite major renovation of those areas. Former industrial sites usually required significant toxic-waste cleanup and investment in basic urban structural components, such as new streets. As a result, most of the city was prime real estate for shopping centers, anchored by retail box stores like Ikea and Home

Depot. Other parcels were converted into expansive corporate campuses like those of the biotechnology company Chiron-Novartis and the Pixar animation studio. These

60 The City well-known developments contributed to the common perception amongst Bay Area neighbors that Emeryville was either an industrial waste or a burgeoning retail Mecca with few residents.

Ron Mooney grew up knowing Emeryville through his father’s industrial company which was located in the city’s “center.” As an adult, Mooney moved to

Emeryville in the early 1980s and started his own small business. He recalled the historical progression of the city’s development:

[Emeryville is] obviously a community that has been changing over the last thirty years; away from industrial into the service and retail sectors, and just about all the industry is practically gone, just pockets of it left now. The residential communities have been pretty interesting; literally houses built for World War II. The old neighborhoods are referred to as the Triangle, or north of Hollis as the Rectangle.

You have the newer residential areas, especially the Watergate that was built in the 70s, and certainly has a majority of the residents of the city there; it’s a huge block but it’s also out on the peninsula, and unless you make an effort, you can be totally disconnected from the Triangle and Rectangle.

Real estate developers’ early bids for residential development had turned towards the

“blank slate” of the city’s newly built peninsula, pre-empting any intervention from the city’s original residential areas. These new developments were intended to attract more residents to Emeryville, but they also raised concerns from existing residents about city leaders’ seeming bias towards newer, wealthier, and more lucrative, business prospects and inhabitants. Mooney spoke about the changing identity of the city, and wondered how these physical changes affected the experience of living in

Emeryville. For instance, with no more heavy industry and the increasing relocation of the majority of the residential community, where was the center of Emeryville, and what distinguished it as such? Furthermore, tensions among residents were

61 The City heightened as additional developing and planning efforts sought to place critical city services and amenities closest to Emeryville’s largest and most influential residential areas.

Beyond the spatial isolation of the peninsula residences, railroad tracks separated the marina areas from the original east side residential areas. To some, like

City Council member Ruth Atkin who lived in the developments adjacent to the railroad tracks, they were symbolic in terms of their social implications.

… Emeryville had historical land use patterns and how it had to convert has, from a social framing background, been less than ideal. There is a divide socially of east Emeryville and west Emeryville not everybody will agree to – that the eastern part is the older area and has people who have lived here for 50 years, and then things west of the tracks are considered the new gentrified. …It’s not necessarily so true anymore with things being built east of the tracks but there is still kind of a remnant feeling among people.

The older residential community on the clichéd “other side of the tracks” also carried less subtle reference to the bordering North Oakland residential communities that shared an almost seamless boundary with Emeryville. The older streetscapes and deteriorating blocks in the area were also home to a racially and economically disparate demographic in comparison to those residents who had moved into the condominiums on the west side of Emeryville.

The city also wrestled with issues beyond the residential aspects of their community identity. Emeryville was located in the middle of a large regional commuter route. The high concentration of multi-national companies and smaller technology firms brought with it a significant daytime labor population. The consequent effects of traffic, employee transience, and separation between the

62 The City employees and the rest of the community would further complicate the task of crafting a cohesive community identity and sense of place.

Citing many of these factors, residents and community members often described Emeryville as having distinct “pockets.” Kurt Brinkman was a school board member, a small business owner, and an Emeryville resident since the 1980s.

According to him, it was the disjointed spurts of development and the architecture of the developments that accounted for the community’s disconnection:

It’s just the type of architecture that was built because you had the Watergate, then you have the Pacific Park Plaza which is 30 stories, then you have the Cabo Masi shack towns, little villages. And there’s really no sense of community. I see where there is sense of community within the pockets, but the overall community is kind of lacking…

Another resident, Kris Owens, lived in downtown Oakland when she first moved to the Bay Area in the 1980s. She moved to the Emeryville peninsula in the mid-1980s after becoming less comfortable with the mounting crime of Oakland. Owens too recognized that Emeryville’s areas and people were isolated from one another.

I wouldn’t say that we’re a cohesive community. We’re a variety of different communities. You know you have the Triangle, you have the north end, you have the artist community, you have the bay front, and you have Watergate. And everybody is sort of kind of isolated.

In contrast to Atkin’s observations about the social implications of the city’s haphazard neighborhoods, neither Brinkman nor Owens explicitly problematized the lack of cohesion across the various residential constituencies. Furthermore, by speaking in terms of the city’s geography, they were able to describe the challenges of the city and community according to the physical elements of the city instead of

63 The City individual residential preferences and choices. For example, who were the people that represented the various community pockets, and why had they chosen to live there?

WHO IS EMERYVILLE?

Specifying exactly who was part of the Emeryville community was difficult for many of my respondents. Rather, many individuals provided generalized descriptors

(and stereotypes) about “who I might find in each area of the city.” Sometimes, people offered portrayals that illustrated their perceptions about what kinds of people inhabited various parts of the small city, or the ways in which they influenced – or ignored – one another. One peninsula resident remarked:

This town is primarily unmarried people. Or retired people. Or gay people. …People move here because they want to be close to San Francisco and it’s kind of a nifty place to live and they can afford to buy here and play in San Francisco.

The city’s “diversity” was a commonly shared feature that emerged in many of my conversations with Emeryville residents, city and school district leaders, and business people. Descriptions of race and class were commonly used when talking about the types of people that might be seen across Emeryville.

Generally, everyone described the racial and economic diversity in Emeryville, but few provided specifics as to what the diversity actually meant to them, particularly within the shifting context of the city. For example, Kurt Brinkman, a white man, school board member, and long time resident observed that, “There’s two Emeryvilles.

There’s the one, the room that we’re in right now, and then look out the window, there’s the other side of Emeryville. So, race right now in Emeryville is segregated.

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The two don’t merge.” Beyond that snapshot observation, there was little mention of if and how things could be different.

Cheryl Webb, a white woman, had been a resident of Emeryville’s “Rectangle” neighborhood since 1984. A parent of two children who attended EUSD schools, she was appointed to the school board in 2001 and had retained her seat since then.

Webb’s description of who was in Emeryville initially emphasized the demographic profiles and disjunctures of the city, but also pointed to her assumptions about what it meant to be an Emeryville resident:

Emeryville’s pretty much in different segments. And we’ve got different people with different needs and different personalities and different socioeconomic levels, and different ethnic backgrounds in different areas of the community. So we’ve got Triangle Neighborhood which is very diverse ethnically. And I’m gonna guess that it’s either middle or lower income. And then we’ve got, of course, the Watergate Marina, which I think is probably upper or middle income. And, I really don’t know if they have any concern at all, or ever even think of themselves as Emeryville residents.

Webb observed that even though more people now lived in Emeryville, she felt that there were few personal connections among residents that could otherwise bring the community closer together.

Although Webb was more explicit in attributing the lack of connection to a lack of interest, others suggested that residents, particularly those on the peninsula, had insufficient incentive to leave their respective “segments.” Nora Davis and Dick

Kassis, two Watergate residents and long-standing members of the City Council, spoke independently of the material preferences that influenced people’s choices to go to other parts of Emeryville:

…[W]e uniquely have in this town, given its small size, these residential communities like Watergate, and Pacific Park Plaza that are largely self

65 The City

contained; more so at Watergate that has its own swimming pools, tennis courts, activity center, own grocery store out there, and so people can kind of just hang out there they don’t have to come to the rest of Emeryville to see what’s going on or to get involved, so there is always this kind of “their thing.” [Dick Kassis}

There is a choice here: either you can mix around, or you can go up and drop in on the artist co-op, or go to North Doyle, or go over to San Pablo and hang, or you can stay in your own little district. It’s a choice …of course many of these communities are gated communities… [Nora Davis]

Davis, formerly a resident of San Leandro – an Oakland suburb considered predominantly white and middle income – moved to Emeryville in 1977 and was elected to the Council in 1987. Kassis also moved to Emeryville in the mid-70s, and served one term on the City Council from 1976-80, and then again from 1992 to the present. Both city leaders were early residents to Emeryville’s peninsula, and explained that Watergate residents had to establish an insular community, especially since there was little else within the rest of Emeryville in terms of people or amenities.

With that isolation came a distinct community identity that would become at odds with attempts to encourage a greater identity for the city. The separate identity of the peninsula was not seen as problematic by other residents until residential developments began to go up closer towards the eastern parts of the city and into

Oakland.

Over time, the demographic differences between the older parts of the city, the peninsula community, and other newer developments became more obvious as the spatial distance between Emeryville’s pockets shrunk. Most visible were the physical appearances of blocks and residential areas, which also contributed to assumptions about the class and race differences of who lived where. For instance, the artists’ co-

66 The City op was predominately white and middle class, whereas areas around San Pablo

Avenue on the east side were predominantly lower income racial minorities, similar to neighboring North and West Oakland. Although several residents casually mentioned race and class differences in describing various parts of Emeryville, they too recognized the social and political implications of such divisions, especially as they related to issues of economic, racial and social inequality.

When asked if there were tensions surrounding diversity within Emeryville, city leaders like Kassis and Davis carefully phrased their responses with varying degrees of specificity. On one hand, diversity was described as a positive characteristic of the community that should be preserved. On the other hand, differences of ethnicity, race, and class were perceived as potential sources of contention, especially when thinking about the larger community. Resident and

Emery Educational Fund board member Ron Mooney described:

[The] residential area is kind of interesting, you get a pretty interesting mix of long, long term residents and new immigrant residents, and you get a complete mix of ethnicity, which isn’t necessarily good or bad – it provides challenges.

Like others, Mooney was sensitive to naming the types of differences that were in

Emeryville. While the general idea of “a mix” was interesting and good, people were unsure if it was politically correct to differentiate groups from one another, for fear of reinforcing existing divisions. At the same time, that respondents spoke about the need to preserve diversity alluded to the notion that the diversity of the city was being threatened.

While loosely acknowledging this risk, the same respondents struggled with how to support “diversity” in practice. Residents active within the school system

67 The City seemed more practiced when talking about diversity than others, especially since they were familiar with the demographic divide between the student population and the residential community. In these instances, race was the most obvious facet of diversity, since the school district was largely comprised of African-American students, while the residential community was primarily white. Even then, however, respondents preferred using a language of “diversity” and “culture” to serve as basic proxies for describing the racial differences between the school and residential community.

Josh Simon, a white man, served on the Emery Unified School Board since

2001, with two years as Board President. As a Rectangle resident and father of two school-aged children who attended Anna Yates, Simon mentioned that he was familiar with community concerns around economic and racial inequality from his professional work as an affordable housing developer. He described what he believed was his role with regard to promoting diversity and strengthening the Emeryville community:

I view myself as a weaver of community fabric which just means bringing together different people, doing different things to connect with each other. …. People have different backgrounds and as people get older, their view changes. I don’t know if I’m going to become scared of teenagers as I become older, who knows? My hope is that by staying in relationship to people, with people who are different than me, or have different views of the world than me, then I’ll be able to continue to understand them, and appreciate them, and love their gifts.

Simon’s example of fearing teenagers echoed many of the community concerns that he heard about the perceptions and experiences of other Emeryville residents. Instead of dwelling on the racial significance of this case in point, Simon chose to focus on the potential of community accord, without talking about how such a process might

68 The City happen. Similarly, board member Cheryl Webb proposed that this potential could be worked out if there was enough interest in the community:

Especially with the diversity, I mean we’ve got so much potential to really work out, um, discussions that, I don’t think, other communities can really, broach. Like cross-racial stuff, that just, you know, we’re getting to a point where we’re comfortable about it in Emeryville, to discuss things.

Webb recognized that irrespective of the espoused desires for and values of tolerance, encouraging connections across racial differences would require strong community relationships that would allow people to feel comfortable discussing their opinions and experiences. The usual conversations, she would later mention, were either too polarizing or completely infused with norms of “politically correctness” to feel authentic and engaging.

Wanda Stewart, a black woman and the school district’s public information officer, was optimistic about Emeryville’s ability to pursue a cross-racial, cross-

Emeryville community agenda. She said, in answer to the question of who is

Emeryville:

There’s a cohesion building. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to practice doing authentic community that can be applied in other places. You got a little bit of everybody there, you got some real money, you got some real poverty, you got some real brown, you got some barely brown, you got straight up black and white. You get a little bit of the hood versus the hills, even though it’s the water versus the flats. And those are all the sort of things that mega cities grapple with.

Stewart portrayed Emeryville’s struggle with various constituencies as analogous to the challenges facing larger urban communities. Like Simon and Webb, she contended that Emeryville’s “community” problem and solution lay in strengthening relationships and building understanding among different groups of people. Seldom

69 The City did my respondents talk about how the present and evolving economic disparities within the city – amplified by gentrification – affected Emeryville’s diversity and its potential for community building.

Alternatively, some respondents hinted at race and class distinctions of the community by using age and generation descriptors. This was a less-loaded way for respondents to differentiate between, for instance, the majority of the seniors who lived in Emeryville and tended to be retired, well-to-do, white residents in the western part of the city, and the 99% minority, K-12 school district. Melodi Dice, a black woman and school board president who was raised in and around Emeryville, said that, “There’s not a whole lot of situations where, well, you can see seniors and even kindergarteners interact.”

Melinda Chinn, the city’s Director of Community Services, also struggled with ways to integrate these two separate communities within Emeryville. Chinn, a white woman, had come to the Emeryville after working within the Parks and Recreation

Department of Albany, a larger residential community within Alameda County which was economically middle and higher income, and had a majority white population.

During our conversation a few months after she started her job, Chinn stated that one of her goals was to create a space within Emeryville to foster connections: “It’s really important [to have a place] where seniors feel comfortable interacting, and teenagers feel comfortable acting out.” The generalizations behind Chinn’s statement did not specifically raise questions about the race of either groups, but did happen to align with the troublesome reputation in the residential community of Emery Secondary

School students.

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Respondents also spoke about diversity in terms of their observations of class disparities within the community. Ruth Mathis, a black social studies teacher at

Emery Secondary and raised in the East Bay, described her perceptions of class tensions within the community that she drew from observing behavioral cues of how adults in Emeryville interacted with her students.

So the diversity is really like the two worlds don’t mix. In talking to some of my students, some of them work at Bay Street [Shopping Center] now. A few of them will go there to the movies but there is still uncomfortableness about going there and feeling accepted. My sense of this is because they are teenagers, so there is this fear of shoplifting. And because the retailers are concerned about who they deter from the business… You don’t want it to be like a Richmond Hill type of mall which people typically think of when they think of African-Americans: lower class, lower socioeconomic folks, [who] shop at swap meets.

Though not as frank as Mathis, other statements about the class differences in

Emeryville reflected broader fears, stereotypes and prejudices that, for instance, were commonly referenced relative to concerns about crime and safety.

When individuals made general statements about their perceptions of

Emeryville’s diverse population, or who they believed was or was not part of the community, I asked them to clarify why they thought these distinctions and corresponding separations between the communities had emerged or persisted. Some residents and local leaders (both within the school and residential communities) spoke either directly or indirectly about the cultural backgrounds that distinguished people from one another. For example, one white city staff member who was relatively new to the city wondered why most students hadn’t ever been to Emeryville’s west-side marina or bayside sections:

71 The City

[Superintendent Smith] was telling me that there are kids here that have grown up in Emeryville that didn’t even know that we had a marina across town and have never been there before. …I thought that was really unique, interesting, kind of sad in some ways – why haven’t they crossed over? Is it because they can’t? They don’t know about it? What causes that? So I think if there were ways for kids to get across town to go to those places… I don’t have the answers but it would be great. Maybe it’s the world we live in now; kids have to be so closely watched. When I was a kid, you could ride your bike all over town and it was okay. But the world has changed in that way, so maybe that’s part of it. It’s really sad because there are so many good things in town for kids to experience.

Similarly, Ruth Mathis spoke about her students not having access to other parts of the community that might allow them to bridge the social and even physical separations within Emeryville:

Students will say I didn’t know a Semi-Freddi’s [regional bakery] existed, or I didn’t know there were businesses on the other side of San Pablo. They’ve never been to the Marina, they didn’t know that a marina existed, and they’ve grown up in Emeryville. The way the city is configured, on the one side of the freeway is affluent living, and on the other side is San Pablo. That’s where you see more of the liquor stores, gas stations, more of the little itty bitty stores that sell cell phones and clothes right in the window, catering to a completely different set of people. There really is no public transportation that connects to make them ever intersect.

While Chinn began to reflect and pose questions about why students hadn’t crossed town, Mathis stopped short of describing specific community dynamics and trends that might perpetuate community rifts. Instead, she relied on tangible markers – the bakery and the marina, in contrast to the liquor stores and cell phone stores – that symbolized the differences.

Describing community tensions in the context of current development and diversity was more challenging. In the past, like when Councilmember Kassis and

Mayor Davis first came to Emeryville, fragmentation among groups seemed a harmless consequence of open space and market-driven development. However, as

72 The City the west side development expanded eastward, perceptions of encroachment heightened tensions in Emeryville and Oakland. City leaders and residents, who had welcomed the new plans for residential and business development, did not take accusations of racial or class bias lightly. Thus, when asked about how current choices and decisions made on a daily basis affected the experience of being part of the Emeryville community, respondents were reluctant to draw causal relationships between those residents who had financial and political influence, and those who did not.

In contrast, Wanda Stewart was frank in describing how these various strands of development and race and class discrepancies might otherwise be perceived:

So you got the whole indigenous people thing going, you got the black folks living in the poorest section going, you got the old people and the white people living in the…, calling it Watergate doesn’t help, [and] you’ve got all these new yuppies moving into the lofts; into their green lofts.

Descriptions like these further enhanced the divisions between the residential components of the city. In addition, these accounts provided a more immediate link between the tastes and preferences of newer residents – such as environmentally conscious lofts – to the trends of economic and social division, gentrification, and fears of displacement.

According to these perceptions as articulated by Stewart, other issues of managed growth and development such as housing, transportation, and community amenities were often seen by members of Emeryville’s black community as perpetuating the race and class biases of gentrification. As redevelopment continued to expand, newer residents also began to voice their discontent. However, their

73 The City collective distrust of the redevelopment initiatives however, would generally remain divided according to the established race and class divisions.

For example, traffic and bike and pedestrian access were topics that garnered a lot of conversation. Senior city planner Deborah Diamond explained,

You don’t want all the regional traffic going through all the neighborhoods; and part of the parks and open space planning to make sure that there are green spaces or parks within walking distance [of] the population, and walkability is a big subject; …diversity in transit mode and choices, street cars maybe.

From a planning perspective, traffic was connected to environmental and safety concerns in terms of reducing the number of cars and creating a pleasant environment for residents and other community members. However, when asked about the ways race played a role in the community, Dianne Woods, a black woman whose family had lived in the Emeryville community for several decades, used traffic as an illustration of the divide:

In that planning meeting and I saw some older African-American women say, “Please do not open 53rd street to bicycle traffic. We are afraid that there’ll be crime if you open it.” And the young, you know, white bicyclists were like, [mimicking] “Well, we don’t think that’s true and we really need this, and this is really convenient for us.” And I was sitting there thinking, so your convenience trumps their safety, and you can discount them because they’re older African-Americans. That is kind of the quintessential exchange that we see around race and racism.

Others saw the bicycle and no-traffic agendas as economically self-serving.

According to Kris Owens, these advocates were using the platform to serve their own interests to maximize their real estate space instead of working to bring more residents into the community. She described:

In the last years, most of the homeowners that have come in here, you know, tend to be NIMBY. So, I’m here now [thinking], “never mind that I had to

74 The City

fight to get you here, to get you approved, and now that you’re here, you don’t want anybody else to be here.”

Owens’s frustrations were ironic, especially since residents such as her had moved to

Emeryville and actively lobbied city leaders to develop new properties that would appeal to a wealthier and more selective demographic. Despite the differences in their perspectives, both Woods and Owens saw the significance of “individual tastes” and how those with financial choices could determine the course of the community.

WHEN IS EMERYVILLE?

The development context complicates the question of who is Emeryville. The city struggled to determine whose priorities trumped whose, according to what sets of rationales and values. The city’s identity would also need to reconcile the relationship between the city’s past and future.

In their visions of the future, Emeryville’s decision makers had to contend with past choices that had divided Emeryville. In addition to imagining solutions to the structural geographic and architectural challenges, the city’s future-looking administration also began to develop a vision of what the Emeryville lifestyle could one day become. Integrating the interests and needs of the various communities, however, would prove to be a contentious task.

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Traditional Concepts of City and Community

Despite their differences on the pros and cons of continued redevelopment,

Emeryville residents were unanimous in their desire to have a desirable, safe, and stable community.

Several who had moved to Emeryville during its initial residential rebirth period of the 1980s talked about Emeryville’s future by referencing its past. Rather than describe the city’s genesis and political history – infamous for corruption and vice – people spoke about the small town experience of “old” Emeryville as unique from the standard urban lifestyle. Some residents celebrated particular features of small towns and the associated intimacy of community. These residents spoke about their desire to preserve that type of connection within the new Emeryville.

Some appreciated the accessibility of local government, whether it was calling up the public works director, the chief of police, or even the mayor at home. Cheryl

Webb recounted how easy and comfortable it was for her to get help when it came to fixing up her home:

When I bought my house in Emeryville it was very much a fixer upper and I would go down to City Hall and talk to the building department person, and it was one person, whose name is Bill. And he’d come by and would show me how I could better raise my irises. And he hauled away my old water heater when I put in a tank-less water heater and it was just really nice and special. Now parts of the city have mushroomed beyond recognition, beyond that approachability.

Others elaborated on Webb’s notion of “recognition” and “approachability” in describing their feelings and experiences about living in a community where everyone could know each other. Both Kurt Brinkman and Kevin Rooney suggested that there

76 The City was a psychological element of trust in being able to easily know and connect to others, in addition to feeling like you belonged.

Well it’s a very small community, it has a lot of cultural connections, and the thing I like about it, it kind of reminds me of the little town I grew up in out in Iowa which has about 500 people in it right now. That you could go out and see people that you knew and there’s a lot of nice people that you could see and there were always some people that you didn’t want to see. But you didn’t sense that the town was that large, and that you could move here and within a very short time fit into the community, and also become an integral part of it, and that’s why I like Emeryville because it feels really small. [Kurt Brinkman]

[It’s] our own little ecosystem; you come to town and you can walk the town in not too much time, and that’s really nice. I think that’s a completely psychological thing, there’s no basis for it, but just knowing that you live in a little community. …. But you know, there is just that little mind twist that says, yeah it’s a small town, and once you start getting to know the people that are the [key] players – you realize that this really is a small town. [Kevin Rooney]

For Brinkman, a white man, his ability to “fit in” and “become an integral part” of the community was key to why he had stayed in Emeryville. Similarly,

“knowing people,” as Rooney alluded to, was also integral to having access to the political power and influence within the city. Rooney and Brinkman’s experiences, also echoed by several other residents active within the community, contrasted with the perceptions of Mathis’s high school students who were unaware of the other side of town. They did not have access to that “small town” culture. This was one example of the underlying white privilege within Emeryville, especially since those who benefited from it – like Brinkman and Rooney – were not necessarily prejudiced but were generally unaware of the subtle distinctions and advantages of access and belonging. In other words, who you were mattered in determining whether or not you were a part of this “traditional” experience of community.

77 The City

While celebrating Emeryville’s “small town” benefits, residents had to contend with the apparent contradiction of further expansion in order to keep the city viable within the housing market, which catered largely to young professionals. To that end, school board member Josh Simon spoke about his efforts to integrate traditional notions of community with the modern realities of urban transience. He worked on relationship building and finding ways to minimize alienation. Cheryl Webb proposed that traditional values of community and family served as a compelling rationale to help people recognize the importance of connecting and being conscious of their relationships on a daily basis:

So we got a lot of disconnected bodies and I think that for a community to raise its young, it takes people to come together, different walks of life, to raise the children, raise the youth, raise each other. Make each other more responsive to everything around us and we’re not doing that. This day and age people don’t stop and talk at the grocery stores. And everyone’s got headphones in their ears.

Although these values were supported by others in theory, some questioned the extent to which features of “quaint communities” could and should be preserved.

Kevin Rooney, a corporate and residential real estate broker specializing in the

Emeryville region, suggested that in trying to preserve cherry-picked ideals of community, pursuing a limited development agenda would be detrimental to the sustainability of the city.

So one of the things that the folks [against development] don’t tell you is that if you want a vibrant, alive [city], you need families [which are not here]. Emeryville used to be a nice artist enclave, and there used to be a lot of warehouses for people to go, so you have a lot of people saying, “Oh, we are losing our quaintness.” [But] a city that remains stagnant isn’t good for anybody, and the city is going to have problems surviving. We are losing our quaint neighborhoods, yeah, but you’re strangling yourselves.

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Creating Emeryville 2.0

The paradox of expansion for conservation would require active planning led by city officials and ideally, reflective of community input. Often, when it came to thinking about the future, the overriding theme was asking residents to name their own preferences, interests, and priorities. The choices that residents considered were often articulated in real estate terms of “amenities” and “community benefits.” They would be able to pick features that fit within a particular set of tastes and lifestyles such as street walkability or LEED-certified buildings. According to the market laws of supply and demand, the most expensive choices were generally advocated for by people who could afford to be selective.

Residents and real estate brokers valued being able to choose among various community options and their respective price points. For the most part, Emeryville presented options that resonated with the younger, transient, and an ethnically, culturally, and economically diverse population. Subsequent changes within the city were dramatic, with some community members appreciating its new “sophistication.”

Others worried about what seemed to be a singular development agenda, further highlighting the city’s areas of disconnection.

Many respondents spoke about needing to seriously anticipate and plan for a future residential community. For instance, Kris Owens regarded problems of the schools and housing for families as strategically significant issues that would affect potential residents of the city,

And there’s really no way to say you can only sell these to a family with kids. How can we force families with kids to come here? Well, I think it’s got to be in reverse. We’ve got to improve the school system. We have the school tax

79 The City

that everybody voted for, and it’s just been increased, and they are having all this money thrown at them to do some things, and so maybe, in the next few years, they will get better. … And then we must hope that some of these young couples are going to send their kids to these schools, you know?

Owens felt that the driving motive to reform the schools was to prepare for the future, and to develop a high quality option for those future families.

The noteworthy recurrence of statements around “what people want” in

Emeryville was further complicated by the fact that many of these elements were not necessarily just concrete amenities, but as both Woods and Webb tried to describe earlier, tied to more ethereal values and feelings. When I asked Kris Owens, who was also a retired real estate broker, how she would convince new residents to come to

Emeryville, she referred to her assumptions about what types of considerations might appeal to a specific target population of higher-income, career-minded, and family- oriented professionals:

If you work here, I think you [should] live here, for the simple reason that you don’t want to spend four hours a day [commuting]. You’re lacking quality time with your kids. …. The traffic is going to get worse no matter what we do here in Emeryville. …And the idea is that you need to be close to home. Emeryville also is just a little town. It’s really really a fun place to live. We all know each other. You know, we don’t have a place where we hang out together, but we run into each other in stores and stuff. And I love this place.

Her bottom line was that by making the choice to live in Emeryville, you could have the best and most of your ideal lifestyle.

City leaders and planners presumed that there was widespread community agreement on a future vision of Emeryville that integrated individual priorities and small town community values. Yet there were concerns that concretely pursuing such a vision would be impossible, if not a diversion from profiting within a lucrative

80 The City market-oriented focus on lifestyle amenities. In addition, feelings of organic community were less quantifiable in comparison to development plans around green space and transportation options. Thus, without a financial incentive to attend to the softer aspects of community, Dianne Woods worried about the effect of catering to the latter sets of preferences without thinking comprehensively about how they would impact the relationships and connections between people:

…It always has to do with demographics. …We have people coming in who are new urbanites, who are about biking and walking, [and] making it so that it’s easy for them to do what they need to do, and to get what they want. But [they are] not really thinking about necessarily having a place here, where they want to put their kids, or wanting to socialize with Emeryville as a whole.

Woods also mentioned other inconsistencies in the city’s development agenda with regards to strengthening community relationships and attracting families. She observed that in contrast to the new residents who were coming to Emeryville without plans to stay, there were families and other residents who could now no longer afford to live in Emeryville.

…We’re growing, but that is both opportunity and danger. The opportunities are that we can grow, and then in the growing we can develop structures that support kind of a new urban idea. …We can create a sense of place and there hasn’t been that sense of place here. … Kind of building what Martin Luther King called the “beloved community,” where you actually have a place that you embrace, [and] that embraces you. The crisis is the kind of unplanned, unbalanced growth that will result, once again, in just a “come-to,” “drive-to,” place.

If we don’t merge these opportunities with things that would create a community, schools and other things, [it] just won’t gel. … We’ll kind of stay in transition forever. Or we’ll develop new Emeryville completely and have old Emeryville basically be an extension of Oakland.

Woods believed that without concerted efforts, Emeryville’s vision for a connected community would not be realized.

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Figure 3.1 Postcard mailers sent to the Emeryville community, inviting them to participate in community planning meetings Rebuilding a city and creating a community was part of the charge for senior planner Deborah Diamond in her efforts to invite current residents to lend their feedback to a General Plan update (see Figure 3.1), which would dictate future land usage requirements:

We have got to think about what the trends are and who is going to be living here for the next twenty years. So that’s one thing, and what their needs are going to be, and if there are any kinds of trends such as household size; things like that, types of jobs, those sorts of things that we need to address. But also more importantly, trying to get as many people to the table to help develop the General Plan.

From the city’s perspective, this work was unclear. Senior planner Deborah Diamond acknowledged that there was a difference between the physical aspects of development and the more subjective elements of community. She described the second phase of development facing the city as an expected and natural consequence of Emeryville’s efforts thus far:

[S]omeone on the General Plan steering committee said, “that [time before] was the generation of city building, and now we are in the generation of

82 The City

community building.” I really think that is an important distinction because I think a lot of the physical work has happened, not to say there won’t be more, but the emphasis is on building community – just having those distant groups become part of the community.

Diamond’s focus and experience, however, was in framing a structural plan for a city.

“Building community” was not her area of expertise nor was it for most of the other people involved in the city’s development conversations. Community Services

Director, Melinda Chinn, spoke excitedly about the potential for the city’s future growth, “Yeah, and that will bring people in with new ideas and new revitalization and it can’t do anything but get better.” With efforts focused on “getting better,” there was little emphasis on how the existing community might fare within this change process.

Residents and school community members acknowledged this challenge although they too were unsure about how to build a functional city that also paid attention to “authentic community.” Wanda Stewart described her understanding of community as “people living intentionally and meaningfully together in a way that is effective and functional. That doesn’t even sound particularly sexy to me, but I like, I like the word authentic. Deep, real, meaningful.” Roy Miller, the consulting architect for the Emeryville School District, said that despite the lack of clarity, the social implications over time of issues like urban density and building codes needed to be recognized.

How you zone, how you define density, how you define height limits, how you either protect or not protect certain neighborhoods from change. How you think about transportation, how you think about all the various different, green, sustainable communities, all those things, bring up the questions of priorities, and guidelines have to be set for those that either open or foreclose these kinds of opportunities.

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Miller believed it was the responsibility of planners and city leaders to think about these routine planning decisions from all angles, including topics such as youth development, which fell out of the traditional scope of planning. Thus, they could identify concrete opportunities to reshape Emeryville while also attending to the human aspects of relationships at the same time.

When affects What and Who

Reconciling past, present and future community priorities would ultimately also affect the ideas of what Emeryville was, and who among its stakeholders got to decide how the community would implement such as vision.

Some residents were motivated to be involved in planning and redevelopment and contributed their ideas and concerns in public debates and forums. Cheryl Webb felt it was her duty to shape the community’s future in ways that would also meet her family’s needs:

Over this last decade I’ve felt like, so much of what I’ve been doing, in part, it’s been almost because I wanted to, but not because I wanted to go to that event, but because I wanted something better for Emeryville. So, I felt like I was doing my duty to go to these things even though it was not fitting into a schedule very easily and it was taking me away from my kids … and so I was doing this out of an obligation, thinking that it was then going to manifest in a better community and an actual center and more interactions, so then it would be more fun.

Beyond self-interest, other considerations played a significant role in determining whose perspectives were integrated into the future vision and plans for the city. For starters, Emeryville’s historical context and political culture continued to have an impact on how decisions were made. Although the technical autocracy of the city had been effectively dismantled in the 1980s, the perception of political tenure

84 The City and entrenched interests remained. In combination with a powerful business sector, the political elite were perceived by some as domineering, though perhaps not intentionally so. Resident Kevin Rooney, reflecting on his involvement in the city said,

So even though Emeryville is only like 8,000 [residents] or whatever, there is a core of people that have been running things for too long. They need some new blood, and some new thoughts, new ideas – just somebody new to stir the pot. And that’s part of it, having watched how things were done, that’s kind of the other side too. I don’t want to see that the same agendas are getting driven all the time.

Some, such as former City Manager John Flores, saw the formation of a political clique as a predictable consequence of a small town with “only maybe a handful of 20 people involved in mostly everything.” Others recognized that there was a utilitarian approach to politics in Emeryville that did not necessarily encourage broad civic participation, as was made evident in the successful “special election” parcel tax to fund the local schools. Prominent businessman and informal “mayor” of the city, John

Gooding, described the political strategy behind their win:

We extended the parcel tax for 10 years, by 50%. People were a little nervous. And we won with a 87% majority, which is unheard of in an urban area particularly, right? But we just did the right political thing, which was under the radar, focused only on those folks connected to the schools in some way. And we didn’t bother the other folks. [emphasis added]

Thus, as Gooding alluded to, in order to achieve desired policy outcomes in a controlled, efficient and orderly manner, local elected officials did not always hold broad community participation as a top priority.

Some suggested that Emeryville politics exacerbated the community’s class and race divisions. For example, a large portion of residents were renters with

85 The City seemingly little economic incentive to contribute to local politics. A few respondents mentioned that all of the members of Council were white and that three of five arrived in Emeryville to live in the newer and more expensive west-side developments. Only one Council member had school-aged children and they attended a nearby private school. Nearly all of the residents involved in the city’s many steering and advisory committees also were white, newer residents, and most without school-aged children.

Several recognized the race and class bias in representation in Emeryville’s civic life but were unsure of how to work towards “true representation,” as Roy Miller described. Deborah Diamond spoke about her struggle with the General Plan Update

Steering Committee:

[We’re] trying to get as many people to the table to help develop the General Plan. That’s been a little bit challenging in terms of getting some of the ethnic populations to attend the General Plan meetings. We had a little more success with our last round of workshops. I know there are segments of the community that I don’t see – the Punjabi population as I understand, they are fairly significant in Emeryville. We mail to every household, and we do fair amount considering Emeryville is so small.

Communications tools like mailers and email-blasts were used consistently despite the same non-results. Kris Owens who had been involved in several of the real estate and development committees similarly stated:

We’re trying very hard to get them involved. We finally got our first black person on the planning commission. The last go around was at the election two years ago. When we knew John, [a white man,] was running, we were trying to find somebody black to run. It’s very very hard to do that. And I also tried to find somebody Asian to run. They don’t want to get involved.

City leaders, having exhausted their traditional communications options were reluctant to question the efficacy of their strategies, or consider different approaches. Local decision makers were resistant to changing their practices, despite occasional private

86 The City and informal counsel from black community members, that there were broader issues of trust and power that needed to be addressed. Without leaders to direct such an effort, this advice was difficult for city staff and officials to understand let alone implement. Instead, individuals such as Owens attributed the lack of involvement of minorities or other under-represented communities to disinterest or ambivalence.

“COMMUNITY-BUILDING”

The lack of clarity around critical questions of community ultimately highlighted the fundamental question of belonging. Informal lines demarcating which individuals fit into which particular community areas were continually being drawn formally and informally, further reinforcing the existing community “pockets.” Seldom, however, did an explicit conversation about these subjective features of boundary setting take place. Tensions related to race and class made things more difficult.

Instead, it was easier for formal and public meetings such as the General Plan

Update to focus on the city’s physical and structural elements. Subjects like street grids, traffic calming, and building density and use, were practical applications for creating a future blueprint for the city (see Figure 3.2). The city’s urban planners could lay out tangible and objective markers of how Emeryville could be differentiated from its neighbors. For instance, residents and leaders asked if the tallest allowed buildings could be erected at the Oakland border. Or, should parks be located in closest proximity to the newer condo developments? What types of public and alternative transportation should be available and encouraged? Could developers

87 The City configure the streets in such a way so that the busiest traffic would be routed away from new “family housing” areas? These questions and ensuing formal decisions influenced what the city might become and how its varied residential, business, and industry components might interact or be set apart from one another.

The composition and configuration of these structural decisions would have practical implications for the community, both in terms of the process by which decisions were made, as well as the final outcomes. In making “objective” decisions around redevelopment, city leaders were in fact negotiating a normative standard by which the soft boundaries of the city could be determined. In a small city like

Emeryville, where many of the same people were involved in multiple decision- making arenas, individual perceptions and opinions carried significant influence.

Development necessarily involved the physical, cultural, social, and economic features of the community even if city leaders and residents only actively recognized the physical aspect. By focusing on the physical or structural issues of connection and community, leaders would be following “legitimate” and conventional models of development that conformed to state and legal statutes. However, newer residents would also largely welcome the associated cultural, social, and economic outcomes of redevelopment. These would include developing local amenities characteristic of higher income neighborhoods, such as trendy retail and food stores, which aligned with newer residents’ goals of community even if these goals were not always openly admitted or deliberately included in planning. Encouraged by the most vocal community members, city leaders pursued an upwardly mobile community redevelopment path. For those residents and community members who disliked the

88 The City developing version of the city, however, faced becoming gradually alienated from the

“community-building” process, or having to move out of the city altogether.

It is within this context of Emeryville’s history and development that the

Emery Unified School District struggled to maintain its identity and guiding principles of education. The district’s tenuous and evolving relationship with the rest of the city further illustrated how the Emeryville community continued to negotiate its boundaries and to what extent schools would be part of their vision.

Chapter 4 The Emery Unified School District

The task of describing Emery Unified School District was simple since the district had not changed significantly over the last several decades. It was still a poor- performing, high-minority, low-resourced school population that faced challenges similar to public schools across the greater 94608 and Oakland communities.

Although the district’s realities remained relatively unchanged, the shifts within the surrounding residential community engendered questions about how the district fit within the city. In particular, neither city nor school district staff knew if the residential community would take responsibility for a school system that had little in common with changing local interests and community goals.

Some residents imagined that a tightly-knit relationship between the city and the district would not only be possible, but that it was mandatory. Many residents, who had been active in local politics since the city’s upward redevelopment during the

1990s, recalled that EUSD’s fiscal crisis in 2001 as a decisive moment. After having to declare bankruptcy, the superintendent was removed and the district was taken over by the state. At that time, a cadre of Emeryville’s most politically active residents mobilized in support of revamping the school district. Although few had immediate

90 The Emery Unified School District personal stakes in the school district’s plight, they were motivated by their frustrations and a deep anger at the city’s ambivalence towards corruption. After a seemingly changed course away from the city’s own past political improprieties, the school district’s crisis was yet another occasion for civic embarrassment. Residents were faced with the fact that the school scandal wasn’t just an Oakland or other “inner-city” problem, but that their politically-liberal community had turned a blind eye to its own subpar school system. They felt that the plight of EUSD, characterized by financial mismanagement, poor leadership, and dismal student performance, did not accurately reflect the potential of the Emeryville community.

Energized by the city’s story of renewal, these residents believed that the school district, with their guidance and support, could also dramatically change its course. The city’s consequent involvement with EUSD was largely led by the optimistic confidence of this small group. Together, they crafted a creative financial agreement to help alleviate the district’s financial crisis, and sought the support of other residents. The resulting Emeryville Youth Services Advisory Committee

(EYSAC), served as dramatic and tangible evidence that the city was prepared to take responsibility for its schools.

RENEWING SCHOOLS, DISMANTLING SYSTEMS OF INJUSTICE

EUSD’s academic profile was comparable to other high-minority, low- resourced school districts confronting the obstacles of deeply-entrenched poverty. In

1999, the district began working with the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools

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(BayCES), an Oakland-based non-profit organization focused on educational reform in historically low-performing schools and districts. Oakland Unified School District had also started working with the organization at the same time and largely because of similarities in student demographics and outcomes, EUSD leaders saw the work of

BayCES as relevant to a broader 94608 educational reform agenda. After two years, in consultation with state education officials, city leaders agreed to continue the partnership with BayCES as part of a larger effort to redesign the district’s entire educational program. The proposed reform strategy would include developing small learning communities, small class sizes, and increasing parent and community involvement.

Tony Smith was assigned as the BayCES program director for Emeryville and under his direction, the city and school partnership continued to mature. Smith’s work was guided by BayCES tenets, which included explicitly confronting and addressing historical and institutional racism, classism, and other biases. Specifically, the organization was committed to achieving educational equity and eliminating achievement gaps based on race, class, language, or gender. An early BayCES analysis of the district identified a major barrier to the work facing Emeryville:

EUSD’s segregation from the city as a whole. While the city had prospered from multiple corporate and retail successes, the plight of the district’s predominantly low- income minority student population remained bleak.

BayCES recognized the deeply interpersonal nature of school reform efforts, especially race and class tensions, and focused on building relationships and trust among school and community stakeholders. According to the organization’s website,

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“Equity requires dialogue about the commitment to closing the achievement gap.”

BayCES’s focus on equity resonated with school leaders, who were concerned with increasing community changes and potential for displacement of lower-income residents and students.

District and city leaders placed their hopes and expectations on Smith’s vision and leadership. The EUSD board appointed Tony Smith superintendent in 2004 after the district returned to fiscal solvency.

Tony Smith and the EUSD: Committed to Education and Social Justice

Tony Smith received his Ph.D. in Education from the University of California at Berkeley where he had been a popular quarterback and football captain as an undergraduate. As a young white man with an imposing physical presence, he easily commanded an audience and was well-regarded by school district and city leaders as an inspirational leader.

Smith was passionate and eloquent about his vision and priorities for the district and its need for “reculturing” for deeper transformation.” Recognizing the transitional period of redevelopment facing the city and district, he often framed his work by specifying the needs of the current population of EUSD’s students. In particular, he spoke of a comprehensive approach to school reform as breaking the cycle of poverty, by “increasing the social capital of the greater 94608 community,” which extended beyond Emeryville and included a larger regional perspective. He believed that local governments and agencies needed to work across bureaucratic

93 The Emery Unified School District boundaries to invest in all youth – irrespective of their home address – as part of a comprehensive and effective approach to urban renewal. Smith’s observations of

Emeryville prompted him to confront disparities between the city and the schools. He believed that explicitly naming and bridging the community divide was essential to the city and school partnership, and the community’s support for the local schools. He intentionally connected the two traditionally distinct sectors by asking, “What does excellent and equitable education look like in Emeryville? Furthermore, what does a just, equitable, and sustainable Emeryville look like?”

Smith often spoke about the social justice agenda of education reform and the need for a comprehensive approach to support educational success of under-resourced students. He asked, “How do you implement a social justice agenda? What does

[Emeryville] look like as a healthy, caring community to prepare young people to engage in critical discourse?” Smith wanted to confront the disparity of “lived experiences” between what he described as the two sets of stakeholders within

Emeryville – EUSD students and city residents – by offering high quality educational programs for students, and helping to facilitate relationships across habitual and accepted divides of race and class. He devised multiple opportunities for students and city constituents to connect, from mentorship programs with local corporations, having students present their work at City Hall and other public venues, to supporting a city-wide Arts Integration Parade, when students would parade through city streets before performing on the steps of City Hall.

In private and public conversations, Smith often referred to the

“transformative” work that he believed necessary to renewing the schools and the city.

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This cultural change entailed understanding “how [the district can] work in partnership with families to practice liberating pedagogy.” Smith’s social justice and equity lens emphasized a commitment to acknowledging the racial and class tensions that were otherwise publicly glossed over. He believed that his responsibility was to be “bold enough to speak to people’s discomfort, by naming and making salient the inequities that exist,” while also galvanizing the support of the entire community, especially among stakeholders whose voices had traditionally been silent or unrecognized. He spoke matter-of-factly about the all-white leadership within the city, and to what extent he, as a white man, played a strategic role in either impeding or furthering the social justice needs of Emeryville:

For me – and I mean me personally, not me theoretically – I really wonder about my role as a white man; powerfully positioned in this, as the person who is brokering and scaffolding the transfer of social capital. …Where am I transparent? Where am I not? What calls am I making? [Sometimes] I have no clue. I don’t know what I don’t know.

Pertinent to the maturing relationship with the city, Smith saw his work as having the potential to influence the leadership and associated changes within the city and surrounding communities. By asking, “What are the effects of racism on social policy in Emeryville?” Smith emphasized the need for a comprehensive review of education, housing, and economic development. All three arenas, he argued, were immediately relevant to the redevelopment plans of Emeryville in terms of reforming the school district, completing the General Plan Update, increasing the residential population, as well as attracting and sustaining a healthy business community. Thus,

Smith saw the work of reforming the school district as just one part of designing a community that intentionally “interrupted racist practices.”

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Under Smith’s leadership, school district staff spoke often and candidly about their social justice motivations and openly discussed topics of social capital, racism, and systems of inequality. The majority of EUSD’s staff were African-American and

Hispanic; they appreciated Smith’s bold approach to integrating education reform and anti-racism. In 2008, educational and administrative representatives from the district and the schools collectively developed a set of Guiding Principles for the district, which the school board unanimously approved. They stated:

1) We hold high academic, social, and professional expectations; 2) We create a sense of family; and 3) We inspire and support innovation to end racist and classist practices.

However, while broadly shared within the school community, the guiding principles were not well-known in the surrounding residential community, particularly since there were few opportunities for the two constituencies to intermingle.

At the same time, BayCES and the early leadership of Smith shape the initial assumptions within the developing relationship between school and city stakeholders.

Explicit discussions of difficult topics of race and inequity, as articulated by Smith, were often met with nods of agreement from city residents and advocates. Residents, who considered themselves to be civic-minded, progressive, and social justice champions, celebrated Smith’s values in theory. But they would be challenged to figure out how to support these values within the shifting demographic, economic, and social realities of Emeryville.

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EMERYVILLE’S RESPONSE TO EUSD

Differentiating Social Justice from Helping the Poor

Superintendent Smith’s message of social justice existed alongside an ambitious comprehensive school reform agenda. Smith saw the relevance of full- service community school strategies including the fundamental assumption that young people, irrespective of economic, racial, or family circumstance, required a wide range of supports to succeed academically. He also saw community school efforts to re- engage the broader public and make schools the centers of community as appropriate strategies to meet the social, recreational, and “connection” needs of Emeryville.

As part of such an agenda for the district, Smith and school leaders would have to meet the social service needs of students and their families. City-based supports were virtually non-existent, in comparison to the plethora of service organizations in neighboring Oakland. The district’s Wellness Plan, adopted by the school board in

2004, would begin the process of what Smith described as becoming “the primary social service providing agency in the city.” The plan included future proposals to provide physical and behavioral health services, and programs to support parents and families.

For example, efforts designed to close the “achievement gap,” were generally accepted by residents and school stakeholders as necessary and morally justified.

Smith’s message of social justice and equity, however, often lost wider traction as residents perceived district efforts as narrowly helping only the school community.

This was especially true for Emeryville residents without school-aged children or

97 The Emery Unified School District other connection to the district. For example, resident Kris Owens spoke about how the parcel tax, which was intended to support the district’s support initiatives, was passed: “So the idea, [was that] those of us that didn’t have children, we felt guilty, so we voted for it, ‘OK, we gotta do something for those kids, you know.’ I think there’s hope there.”

Residents, city leaders, and school board members typically interpreted the school district’s emphasis on social justice and needs of students as addressing issues of poverty, rather than the specifics of educational practice. School board member

Melodi Dice spoke about the “survival” needs of students within the district, that otherwise prevented them from succeeding academically. For Dice, Emeryville schools could facilitate student success by “having programs for kids feel supported and that they can survive… I think that is one of the powerful programs because a lot of kids bring so much to the table.” Bernadette Deville, president of the Anna Yates

Elementary Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) asked, “How do you rise above a situation when you are already in a situation financially? Maybe in poverty, kids come here hungry. I see hungry kids; if it wasn’t for the programs to feed them, half of these kids will go into the classroom in the morning hungry.” Similar statements from school and community members alike highlighted a common perception of students and their families.

Despite the general support for the school district’s mission, respondents also had clear beliefs and opinions about the rationale for such services and their intended population. Some, like Art Hoff, saw the situation in terms of basic needs and

98 The Emery Unified School District resources: “The people who need serving are the parents and students of the school.”

Resident Ron Mooney added a normative appraisal in his comments:

I personally, like the let-everyone-take-care-of-themselves-and-figure-things- out [philosophy], and that’s not the reality [here], so [we have to] be able to provide services that are needed. We have in town a wonderful service called [Emeryville Community Action Program], ECAP – some huge hearts by some wonderful ladies [who] created it. That’s one of the organizations that help provide for the needy.

Thus, Smith’s message of social justice was interpreted largely by the residential community as a message urging service to the poor. In particular, most residents believed that the district and its students were the ultimate recipients of the altruistic goodwill of the Emeryville community. Mayor Nora Davis gave her perspective on the work of the district:

With education, [Smith] is getting his arms around the families that are distressed, that clearly need services in this town. Not downtown Oakland, but here as a part of our community. I don’t see this as a hand out, I see this as opening up doors, where people can figure out or be taught how to help themselves: classes for people in reading, who can’t read English, … financial training; there is a world of opportunity here, but you have to know what you doing.

Although careful to distinguish between a “handout” and “helping out,” and between

Oakland and “here,” Davis, like others in Emeryville, reinforced the message that the

EUSD’s purpose was to serve a population that was not representative of the growing

Emeryville community.

Underlying Stereotypes and Perceptions

Even though Smith’s message of social justice rarely wavered, there was a disconnect between his vision and the community’s understanding of it. These

99 The Emery Unified School District distinctions were rarely made explicit, but nonetheless reflected the various underlying beliefs, perceptions, and stereotypes that were at play.

The demographic disparity between the school district and Emeryville’s residential and business community was an obvious source of tension. One resident articulated a prevalent perception of the distinctions between Emeryville proper and its neighboring communities, where many of the EUSD students lived:

I’m just a little worried about the fact that we still have to have too many kids from Oakland in our schools. It would be nice if we could replace them. And I think it’s already a little bit better at Annie Yates, the elementary school. But, it’s gonna be [hard] having to push and drag and shove all the time. …. It’s the fact that if you have affluent people and they decide that they want to live here because they like the type of condo projects that we have. They will still send their kids to the French American school. They’re doing it in my building. And I see them in the morning, getting in their cars and taking their kids out of here or to other private schools. But see, that’s where you have the smart ones. [Kris Owens]

Although EUSD academic achievement had risen slightly since Smith’s appointment,

Owens’s concerns about the lack of suitable peers for Emeryville students reflected an assumption related to race, class, and educational achievement. Without directly saying so, she questioned whether poor, minority students – like those in Oakland – had the ability to perform better in school. The dilemma followed that higher test scores were needed in order to sufficiently attract more “smart” and “affluent” students, which would then presumably ensure an upward trajectory for the district.

Thus, residents like Owens believed that if the district’s student profile remained consistent, the schools would have little chance of contributing to increased residential demand.

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Other respondents expressed similar opinions on the school population’s characteristics and needs. “Cultural differences” were often cited as explanations for the low levels of parental involvement or perceived lack of educational motivation.

School board member Josh Simon spoke about these differences in terms of the challenges in promoting a culture of high academic achievement:

[The differences] presents itself in the availability of people’s time; those parents who have time to come into school, versus those parents who have to drop their kids and run to work. It presents itself in terms of expectations… if you get an excellent education, what does that mean you know? And how do you know it? And how do you learn it? And what is learning? [Is it] the expectation of a school [that] is a place with 27 different afterschool programs, and it’s the afterschool programs that are more educational than the instruction, versus the instruction is everything and I want my kid home after school. … There are very different cultural expectations of what school is: those people who think the teacher is the expert, versus those people that think that the teacher needs to be told what to teach. Expectations around violence and what’s acceptable. Those who feel that you have to be ready to defend yourself, versus those who feel that you should never have to defend yourself.

Simon’s comments reflected the dominant belief among residents that values and expectations about education were learned behaviors. Further, the responsibility for instilling these expectations fell on parents and families. Some, like City Manager

John Flores, suggested that there was a race and class differences that accounted for these varied educational norms:

The cultures are so, so different, and that’s why I think in part, when Tony was appointed, there were in my mind some problems with [him] being a white male, superintendent of a minority school, a black school. I think he did a tremendous job in overcoming that but he can only go so far. And I think [it’s] necessary for the district to get somebody to be a good role model for these kids. [Former Superintendent] Handy was that; maybe not a good one. I’m thinking that with Steve Wesley being there, I really don’t know – he seemed to have sense; he was “on” correctly and could be a good role model. And hopefully the parents will listen to him and not call him a honky or whatever they call him, a “Bill Cosby”… which is what he is; somebody that values education.

101 The Emery Unified School District

Flores referred to the Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction, Steven

Wesley, a long-time educator and a black man, who was Smith’s successor.

These assumptions fed into residents’ ideas about the future potential for the district. Hoff remained pessimistic:

[EUSD will not change] so as long as we have a 98% minority school, and no peer pressure from the smart students to make the others students perform. And as long as we don’t have parental support of the kids, how in the world are we going improve the school district by building a community?

Owens further elaborated on her ideas of how the school district might become better

– specifically if the district could convince other “brighter” students to attend and mingle with the current set of students:

So you have the underprivileged kids who get absolutely no balance, and no help at home. And so if they could just intermingle with some bright kids, you know, maybe that would rub off, you know? I grew up in Germany where we all went to public schools. They were good. And you just went. And it was not even a question. Because the whole country was set up differently. But of course, we were all white. [Kris Owens, emphasis added]

Such blatantly racialized statements were infrequent in my interviews, but nonetheless alluded to perspectives prevalent within the residential community.

John Gooding acknowledged the pervasiveness of racial prejudice and the challenges of building political will despite it.

Anyway, it’s hard to identify, but it is a challenge because we have run into blatant racism when you talk to people about supporting the schools and they say, “But they’re coming from Oakland, why should we support those kids? Let Oakland do it.” Well, that, in my opinion, is really short-sighted. Those are still our kids. And, they’re in Oakland by pure accident of zip code, because right across the street from where we are, is Oakland! [laughs]

As “short-sighted” as they might have been, according to Gooding, these fundamental perceptions about the community’ responsibility for the schools would result in

102 The Emery Unified School District significant differences in support for the school district, the city, and the viability of the partnership embodied by the Center of Community Life.

EMERYVILLE AND EUSD IN FLUX: DUELING REALITIES

AND INTERESTS

Emeryville and EUSD faced a mire of ambiguous and competing ideas about public education, the conflicting realities of social and economic development, and the power of consumer choice. Resolution between divergent community interests would require city and school leaders to craft a shared vision of schools and community. Art

Hoff recalled, “At a meeting at the middle school, I asked Tony, ‘What kind of school district do you want?’ He said he hasn’t decided yet. He has a theory of what should be done and how you get it done.”

In its nebulous struggle for redefinition, reform, and renewal, EUSD also had to contend with complex issues of development, poverty, crime, race, education, and equity. In many ways, the struggle in the district circled around differing ideas about the role of “school” and its relationship to the broader community, both in terms of ideology and the subsequent practical implications for Emeryville and the district.

According to Tony Smith, schools had an important responsibility and role in broader societal efforts to achieve social justice and racial equity. EUSD was committed to offering students the highest quality educational and social services program, with the fundamental goal of empowering them to make positive life choices. The other main perspective saw schools as an important community amenity and an indicator of a

103 The Emery Unified School District community’s health and well-being. Good schools are a part of attractive, desirable, and safe communities. Community residents would want to send their children to those good schools. While not mutually exclusive, these two perspectives would require compromise and alignment, particularly in the face of practical decisions such as the allocation of public resources.

The disagreement over the role of Emeryville’s schools emerged in conversations around the city’s development. During one community meeting of the

General Plan Update (4/23/07), tensions around the school district and the community were directly raised by residents, as captured in my field notes:

- Resident 1 (white, 40s, male): I don’t want crack dealers, prostitutes; we should develop everything we can to change the neighborhood, as fast as we can to make it safe; we can leave this meeting right now, it doesn’t matter what we write down, and we can get a bag of weed, a whore, a bottle of wine and…. [No one has yet talked about cultural spaces/schools (one of the development categories), although the facilitator has mentioned it a couple of times; in one of the spots where it could be civic/cultural/schools, there is a renewed conversations around parks] - Facilitator: Do we want a school? Here? - R1: No, no, no - R2 (white, 30s, male): Well if we’re trying to plan for all this residential, don’t we need schools? - R1: nobody is going to send their kids to schools in Emeryville for another ten or fifteen years; my kids go to school in Piedmont and Mill Valley. - R2: Some people might not have the option to bring their kids to Mill Valley or Piedmont. - R1: Well then they won’t live in Emeryville.

In this scenario, it was clear that ideological principles of social justice would struggle against, if not lose to, the perspectives of residential and economic entitlement and choice.

104 The Emery Unified School District

In the context of the schools, these privileges of choice pointed to the equity- entitlement dilemma of the district and the city. EUSD educators, residents, and school community interests had to wrestle with the wanting to provide equitable and quality educational opportunities for all students, while also drawing distinctions between who was or wasn’t legitimately entitled to the district’s vision and goals.

Even the Anna Yates Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) president considered the tradeoff in terms her choices to select the best educational options for her children:

We have more African-American children here, from what I see. When I was young, going to Emery schools, the difference between now and then, you only could attend this school if you lived in Emeryville. And that’s the part that I personally do not like, that children can come now and attend this school that are not Emeryville residents, because you get a circle of children that may have come from another school because their behavior wasn’t good, and they got dismissed and [they] come into an environment and it changes. I spoke a lot of being positive of Emeryville and I have to bluntly say, as a parent I do not like it. Because they did not hand pick the children. … I feel that they need to be a little more discrete in allowing kids to come into the Emeryville school district, that have been discharged from other schools because it affects our community. [Bernadette Deville]

Deville too planned on leaving the district after elementary school, to pursue better opportunities and a more supportive academic context for her daughter.

In larger community and school meetings, community residents rarely expressed their interests and motivations in ways that appeared entirely self-interested or prejudiced. Instead, residents legitimized their personal concerns about the schools and the district’s future by couching them in terms of a greater community-building effort. They argued, for instance, if EUSD schools were to become good enough choices for well-resourced Emeryville residents, wouldn’t disadvantaged students also benefit? At the same time, there remained a perception or hope, as expressed by the

105 The Emery Unified School District one resident from the General Plan community meeting, that a natural consequence of all of Emeryville’s development and renewal would be the replacement of the district’s students with more affluent students of a future Emeryville – perhaps, in ten to fifteen years.

High school teacher Ruth Mathis said that she had often heard students and parents articulate the fear and distrust that these “new schools that they are talking about building, are not for us.” Along those lines, people within the school community also anticipated that the changes and displacement seen in the community would inevitably carry over to the schools. During this interim period, John Flores predicted that the community members who were more likely to be involved in the schools would do so, in part because of their values and commitments to the larger social justice goals of the school district:

I’d have to differentiate that into different categories. Those with kids who know about the schools and would either agree with what’s going on or not. A few people would – like Josh [the school board vice president] – would send their kids, or myself or you; [we’re] the minority in the school district. There’s good and bad to that. Those with kids would know about the school district and would either send their kids there, or say, “my kids only have one time to be educated; I’m sending him to private school.”

In spite of these goals however, without a clear idea about how these social justice principles should be refined, nurtured, and institutionalized, some residents and school stakeholders believed that Emeryville would likely follow a predictable path of gentrification. Eventually, the inadvertent consequences of residential and economic displacement would extend to the existing school community.

The ideological norms and principles that surround conversations about the importance of education and public schools added an additional factor to the already

106 The Emery Unified School District contested notion of how to define Emeryville’s public good. This challenge went beyond predictable debates between individual self-interest and altruism, and also raised issues of how community members envisioned the future of the city, its residents, and its schools. It is within this political, economic, and social uncertainty that the Emeryville Center of Community Life struggled to emerge.

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Chapter 5 The Center of Community Life: Utopian Visions

On the surface, the joint work of the city and schools reflected an unusual degree of responsiveness and synergy, a contrast to the traditional silos of school and civic bureaucracies. In addition, the partnership between the district, the city, and the business community had already received local and national recognition. The Center of Community Life (CCL) was touted by advocates as a bold undertaking that demonstrated the potential for developing healthy relationships between cities and schools. Such a success story, described by school board member Melodi Dice as a

“utopian society kind of concept,” would be a centerpiece of the city’s story of pioneering rebirth.

Below the surface, however, the school district and the city continued to struggle against one another. Each catered to different community constituencies who had disparate ideas about the future of Emeryville; neither school nor district constituents saw their immediate interests as having significant relation to the others.

The protracted development of the CCL exemplified this struggle, and provided the stage upon which the structural and ideological disconnections between the city and the district were enacted.

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EMERYVILLE EDUCATION AND YOUTH SERVICES ADVISORY 18 COMMITTEE (EYSAC)

In 2001, catalyzed by the district’s

financial and leadership crisis, a handful of

residents formed the Education and Youth

Services Advisory Committee (EYSAC) to

provide recommendations to the City

Council and school board about how the

two entities might work in collaboration

(see Figure 5.1) with one another.

Figure 5.1 Organizational components of the EYSAC often touted its “grassroots” Emeryville Education and Youth Services Advisory Committee (www.emerycenter.org) character and history, but those that were

most involved were often the same individuals who were active in other civic

capacities such as the City’s Art Exhibition Advisory Committee, the Commission on

Aging, the Housing Advisory and Appeals Board, the Public Works Committee, or the

Transportation Committee. Few EYSAC members had direct connections to the

school district or to other of the city’s youth-serving programs.

Such disconnection was not entirely surprising. At the time, there were few

children or youth lived in Emeryville proper. Most of the young people attending

EUSD schools lived outside of the city. EYSAC members and city leaders, however,

were also aware of the continued development and expansion of the residential

18 Diagram taken from the original web page for the Center of Community Life: www.emerycenter.org

109 The Center of Community Life: Utopian Visions

community and accordingly, the Create and maintain a vibrant community. Serve all of the people who are a part of the potential cadre of Emeryville Emeryville community. Insure the safety of citizens and community. children and students. Thus, Require that EUSD and City are fiscally responsible. EYSAC’s goal was to devise city Provide quality programs for education and enrichment. Provide effective quality service to the and school policies to support community. Provide programs and services in a cost efficient Emeryville’s current and future manner. Establish and maintain a seamless continuum so youth. City/School have same agenda and are constantly reinforcing same message. Through vigorous family, community and Despite the group’s relative learning support, insure that all students are successful, proficient and engaged learners. absence of school community or Teach youth that there is a common good among people and look to help others. family perspectives, EYSAC Prepare students to be successful contributing members of society. Give students an idea that they are part of a worked to identify the core goals wider community, part of a larger society. Insure that EUSD is organizationally effective to and values around education, provide maximum support to schools, principals, teachers and students. youth, and community that could Listen to students, teachers and administrators. Remove labels and appreciate diversity. guide the work of the district and Support the individual development of each person regardless of background. the city (see Figure 5.2). Over ten Promote a clean environment. Keep Emeryville residents in our school system. months, EYSAC hosted Strengthen EUSD so that people working in Emeryville will want to bring their kids to Emeryville schools. community meetings and Build from strengths. Establish and maintain the highest goals and conducted surveys of EUSD standards for schools and youth programs. students, education and youth- Figure 5.2 EYSAC Goals and Values serving staff, and other interested community members. These outreach efforts were somewhat successful in terms of assessing community interest and input, especially among those youth and adults who were already plugged into the organized programs within the city. Still, EYSAC leaders failed to capture the opinions of residents who

110 The Center of Community Life: Utopian Visions were not regularly involved in local city activities, or district parents who were not involved in their children’s education.

EYSAC’s resulting Education and Youth Services Master Plan and Priority

Action Plan (August 2002) emphasized the need for continued coordination and relationship building between the city and the school district. The plan outlined recommendations including increased programs for youth, formalized corporate and business involvement, and development of joint facility priorities around a new elementary and middle school, and a new community and recreation center. EYSAC leaders stated that investments in these facilities would not only meet current programmatic needs, but also accommodate the desired and projected growth of both the city and its schools. The taskforce’s facilities proposal provided the foundation for the planning and development for the Center of Community Life.

EMERYVILLE’S VALUES AND NORMS

As part of their ideal city, EYSAC members projected a vision of the CCL that combined their ideas about the education and community values and vision of what they wanted the city to become. Even for the small city of Emeryville, communicating the EYSAC vision to the larger community was a complex process; the message needed to reconcile individual beliefs and assumptions about the potential of the school district and city with larger institutional level possibilities. As such, an ideal Emeryville would have to integrate several different identities, values and norms that existed across the residential, business, and school communities. Furthermore, the

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CCL as a publicly funded and publicly serving institution would need to respond to a wide range of interests.

Broadly speaking, EYSAC members saw the CCL as a way to connect across and enhance the city’s various segments of community life. Even in concept, this project would differ from other examples of private development that had emerged throughout the city. In contrast to purely market-driven objectives, the CCL development process would attempt to intentionally reflect responsible public stewardship, commitment to diversity, and widespread, democratic community involvement. As such, these core goals espoused by EYSAC addressed the very issues that the city and district struggled with the most.

A City that is Connected

I view myself as a weaver of community fabric which just means bringing together different people, doing different things to connect with each other. To the extent that somebody wants to live in a bedroom community, they’re going to be horrified by what I want to do. [Josh Simon, Co-Chair of the Emeryville Youth Services Advisory Committee, School Board Vice President]

To its supporters, the CCL represented an antidote to Emeryville’s fragmented community. The vision and goals of the project centered on the value of relationships within Emeryville, which were already seen as important features of the small town, albeit in separate pockets.

The relationships, if we didn’t have that, we wouldn’t stand apart from anybody else. I think it would be like a community center thing in the making, kind of thing. It wouldn’t be what it needs to be, which is really pulling everyone together. [School Board Member Melodi Dice]

The CCL would maximize the potential of relationships to bring people together around a collective goal to create a healthy, vibrant, and youth-friendly city.

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By connecting various constituencies, Emeryville youth, residents, and other community members would increase their social capital (Warren, 2001; 2005; Arriaza,

2004). EYSAC supporters like Tony Smith saw the value of social capital as essential to expanding the opportunities available to EUSD students and their families, as well as helping increasing trust, cooperation, and reciprocity across the city’s separate communities.

City and school leaders were eager to promote the normative value of connections and community, whether in terms of creating a unique civic identity, supporting youth through “a sense of family,” or instilling community responsibility and accountability across Emeryville’s varied stakeholders.

The extent to which individuals would be motivated to participate in the CCL however, would still depend on individual preferences and interests. One new

Emeryville resident saw this as the most interesting challenge, especially for community members that were not connected to the schools.

I think that’s why the whole concept [of the CCL] really intrigues me to have that capacity to draw out people, not just for education experience to have that capacity to draw people for social reasons. [Jack Hsu]

Other residents, like Kris Owens, were more explicit about their skepticism and thought that the utility and value of being “brought together” to strengthen the community was cliché. She questioned the presumption that Emeryville residents wanted to become more connected to other people, just for the sake of it.

A City that is Equitable, Just, and Socially Responsible

What gets me going and excited is how do we build an economic base, how do we build a relational infrastructure that can overcome some of the barriers?

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So that ten years from now, five years from now, I want a citizenry that is even more connected to each other than they are already. Given the very classic inner-city problems that we have …I think urban safety can depend upon people being connected to each other. [City Council member Ruth Atkin]

Several respondents referred to the economic and social disparities within the city as an underlying obstacle to community connectedness, even for those not personally affected by economic hardship. Like Council member Atkin, many residents were proud of the community’s largely progressive political and social agendas, and specifically their commitment to race, class, and gender equity. They believed that economic and social privilege came with responsibilities to help those less fortunate than themselves. Beyond that general belief however, personal conceptions of social justice differed, as did their understandings of what kinds of compromises these value stances might require in practice.

One arena to witness the tensions between social justice values and actions was the residential community’s support for the school district and how it affected their support for the CCL. To begin with, the focus on children and youth was important to

CCL advocates. Often, cultural perceptions or stereotypes influence ideas around who is deserving of public assistance (Schneider and Ingram 1993). As dependents, children and youth are usually thought of as helpless and blameless, since their lives are affected by the choices of adults. Thus, public programs directed towards helping children and youth are rarely contested. EYSAC members crafted a mission statement that reflected these principles:

The Emeryville community is committed to fully developing the potential of all youth and to providing choices for students in order to cultivate each child’s gifts and talents. Our community vision is to create and sustain a safe,

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nurturing and enriching environment in which youth can flourish and become contributing members of society. (Education and Youth Services Master Plan, adopted 8/12/02)

EYSAC’s broad declaration encompassed Smith’s goals of providing enriching opportunities for youth, and reciprocal learning experiences for adults.

Without specific direction from EYSAC, CCL advocates, or even from Smith about how to implement such a vision, the community pursued mostly traditional approaches to increasing school involvement. For example, Smith and other CCL supporters believed that by connecting current students with individuals across the entirety of Emeryville, there would be more opportunities for members of the community to be involved with the school district. Accordingly, Emery Educational

Fund (EEF) staff established mentoring and volunteering opportunities targeted largely to local corporate employees. The Executive Director described the potential of these connections:

The presence, resources, capabilities of the highly resourced sections of town can be a presence to the rest of the community and build those connections. A high level researcher at Novartis who wants to teach an afternoon workshop for community members will receive great benefits by presenting themselves in the context of the CCL. Their life will have more meaning, their passion will be extended. They’ll feel good. And then, they will have a direct impact in raising the quality of life for everyone. And there’s nothing better in this world, as far as receiving, then seeing what you can give. [Eugenia Bowman]

The PIXAR reading buddies program for the 2nd graders or high school internship programs were touted by many of Emeryville’s elected officials as evidence of their commitment.

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Some residents held similar perspectives on how they might support the

EYSAC vision. Kris Owens, a frequent participant in the city’s political scene, spoke about supporting the district’s parcel tax.

We felt guilty so we voted for it, ok, we gotta do something for the kids, you know. I am, however going to start going to the elementary school. And volunteering my time. I’ve never done that. They had an article in our newsletter about it. But this is just reading books to elementary school kids so I’m going to do that.

Volunteering and offering political support were common ways for some members of the residential community to express their support for the schools. For Owens and other residents without children, these actions were influenced by feelings of social guilt, and did not require them consider how these programs could have any other relevance to their immediate interests or priorities.

Others found rationales of social justice and guilt problematic. School Board

Member Kurt Brinkman, a local businessman and white man without children, contemplated the issues of equity and struggled with the frames of victim and perpetrator.

I would love to know what “equity” means. Equity to me, almost means that there’s an injustice. And when I look at the school, I don’t see any injustice at our school level. Now I see injustice at the state level, and funding issues and things like that, but I don’t see them here, as for overall, for the kids. Does “equity” come up anywhere else in Emeryville? Well it comes up quite a bit. Well, no, never, never. Outside of the school, it never comes up. Never heard of it. No, it seems to be a race-driven top issue and I almost feel like it’s an old issue. It’s like you know, “my father was brought over here as a slave and this is my right.” A lot of times when I hear it, it goes back many generations about this perceived lack of equity. But as far as present day in Emeryville…? No. Now, I believe there’s a lot of racism, and I believe that’s a real challenge. So I want to separate the two.

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For Brinkman and several others involved in Emeryville’s governance structures, issues of social justice and equity, though important, lacked immediate relevance in

Emeryville, even within the particular context of the school district. He believed that equity-based agendas required a specific antagonist or cause for blame. Without an obvious present-day aggressor, he interpreted the claims of victimization or “injustice” as vestiges of a racialized past.

Brinkman’s questions around equity and social justice were pertinent to the expressed vision and goals of the CCL. Residents and leaders were quick to identify

Emeryville and the district’s struggles with “classic inner-city problems,” which could be addressed with the planned social services that would be offered through the CCL.

A commitment to supporting school programs and supports did not necessarily require residents to see the underlying problems of poverty as closely related to their own community and lifestyle choices. Respondents like Brinkman were unlikely to accept the existence of local inequalities or present economic and housing trends that benefited some residents, perhaps at the indirect expense of others. Instead, conversations around the needs of the community’s “have-nots” were consistently couched in terms of service and “giving back to the community.” There were few parallel discussions about how these altruistic commitments might also require sacrifices or compromises in the priorities of the “haves.” In this conception of how values of social responsibility could translate into concrete action, creating relationships between the distinct segments of the school and residential communities would likely be one-directional rather than reciprocal.

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A City that is Diverse and Tolerant

We want a community where all of those different, divergent elements of our community can actually come together [Community and business leader, John Gooding]

Residents generally took pride in Emeryville’s diversity. Nora Davis, then

Mayor of the city, spoke about diversity by focusing on what she perceived to be the common interests and values across the different stakeholders:

We all want to be safe, we all want clean streets, we all want a good education for our kids; these are common. What are the differences and how significant [have] the differences become? I am probably a bad person to ask about diversity because I see the human condition as one that has far more commonalties than differences. Certainly there are social, financial inequities.

When pressed, city leaders and residents like Davis seldom used racial characteristics to describe the school or residential communities, instead relying on other proxy descriptors such as geography, age, or professional occupation.

Although many city leaders and residents adopted a “colorblind” philosophy when describing the Emeryville community, some recognized the social and political strains of diversity and specifically, how these tensions might affect support for the schools and the CCL. John Gooding acknowledged the persistence of deeply-seated stereotypes, but was reluctant to attribute racist blame with any one actor or group:

We don’t have a racial problem in terms of what people usually think, in terms of African American and white. We’ve got a lot of whites and Asians living next to each other who don’t really understand or who don’t have knowledge of, or appreciation of each other’s cultures. The Asians tend not to join the homeowner’s association or participate in it, or in the social activities. So, it’s not that there is the kind of racial problems that one thinks of as being violent or even verbally [offensive]. There’s just no connection. So when there’s no connection, whether you’re a young professional or an older person, you don’t see the value in paying an extra $100 a year for a parcel tax for the schools. What the hell for, right?

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Instead of a traditional black and white divide which would be seen as obviously racist, Gooding alluded to a much more complicated amalgam of differences across multiple features of race, class, and culture. However, in his parcel tax example highlighting the “young professionals,” “older persons,” and “the schools,” he referred to what was routinely perceived in Emeryville as the black-white, poor-rich differences between the school and residential community.

Aside from school district issues, race was seldom mentioned with regard to the other parts of the community. For example, despite assurances from city leaders that there were few incidences of racial friction in Emeryville, a 2006 anti- discrimination lawsuit filed by an African- American woman employed in the city’s planning department proved contentious. She charged that racial discrimination accounted for her unlawful dismissal. The local National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took her case, and the city settled out of court, awarding the woman a settlement of $1.4 million. The case drew renewed attention to City Council and subsequent city council hearings drew sizeable audiences, including large numbers of African-Americans. In these City Council meetings (May 2007), the city manager presented statistical analyses of the city’s employment rolls, concluding that there had been, and continued to be, no evidence of racial discrimination within the hiring, promotion, or firing of employees. Soon thereafter things returned to normal, as few members of the African-American community attended public meetings and conversations about race again faded to the

119 The Center of Community Life: Utopian Visions background. Melodi Dice, a black woman, school board member, and EUSD alumnae, provided her perspective on the reticence about talking about race in public:

People don’t want to bring race up, because they don’t think it’s something. I think it was some meeting I was in, it was interesting because I was like, they don’t want to talk about it, they really don’t. People feel like it’s an embarrassing topic; it’s negative, so let’s not bring it up. But sometimes it’s healing, and often it’s more healing than anything.

Given the lack of discussion about racial tensions in the city, some school district staff saw their responsibility as providing the “minority voice” in venues outside the school. This was particularly true in contexts where the interests of the schools were supposed to be represented, as in EYSAC meetings for example. One district staff member recognized that although city leadership was interested in hearing diverse perspectives, having to represent the perspective of the African-American community was a taxing role to play. She said:

Those of us people of color that have the energy, we have to keep at them, and remind them. And also we’re getting a lot of feedback from those individuals that they want to keep hearing it. … But it’s a challenge – it takes a toll when you are being the watchdog to make sure [that this consciousness] is happening. [Nives Cediel]

Some district staff members felt that their regular and active prompting was necessary to compel city leaders to consider underrepresented perspectives. Furthermore, staff members like Wanda Stewart, EUSD’s Public Information Officer, believed that white people in Emeryville were rarely conscious of how their actions reflected their prejudices. She said, “White people are often unaware of how they, the way they look at black folks, and the thoughts that they have that lead to actions they take.” She also spoke about the conflation between race, class, and culture which further complicated the issues of diversity.

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All that stuff that happens when cultures collide. I think there is race tension… all those really glossy luxury BMWs sliding into PIXAR behind the locked gate. Our kids went on a walking trip somewhere and threw some rocks; the kids tell the story, “we were throwing rocks at each other” which is totally possible. The white guy whose car that is – that the rock hit – thinks you threw that rock at him. We have to get everybody to take a look at why those perspectives have those different slants.

Despite CCL advocates’ reticence to talk about specific racial or class tensions, the CCL was often described as a means to bridge these precise challenges. Council member Dick Kassis and Community Services Director Melinda Chinn described their ideas about “diversity goals” as part of the Center:

Well, I am this idealistic person to this day, this maybe “Pollyannaish” person that believes we all ought to be happy together and work together. So this is a huge goal and potential I see in the Center of Community Life: finding a way to truly bring together the community. [Dick Kassis]

It will be a place for everyone and it …will have a seamless feel to it; that it belongs to everybody, and that it’s open. It brings people together, because now I don’t think there is that coming together: people that live here, work here, shop here – that’s [how the city is] compartmentalized. But I think once it’s built, it will be the place that can bring people together. [Melinda Chinn]

The CCL would be a place where the diverse components of the city could engage in productive and even “healing” community. School board member and EYSAC co- chair Josh Simon proposed that interactions within the Center could help dispel commonly-held stereotypes and engrained racial prejudices of residents and students:

[We need to find] places to celebrate the gifts of different kids, acknowledging that bad stuff is still going to happen, but having a place where people can see the good stuff. Where do you see the jazz band perform, where do you see the dancers perform, where do you see the poetry slam, where do you read the extraordinary stuff that kids write, where do you meet the extraordinary kids? … I really think that community building in many ways is about finding ways to celebrate what each other does. …if it’s a celebration, if you’re breaking bread together, if you’re saying, boy aren’t those kids great, it changes the dynamic. Then, when you see the kid that is ripping off a store, or the kid that

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punches a senior in the face, yes, that’s a bad kid, but you also know good kids. It changes the conversation from all teenagers, to that teenager.

Cheryl Webb, a white mother and school board member, also acknowledged that working across differences required a sense of relational trust and security. Webb was optimistic about the potential that the CCL held in encouraging community members to engage in important and difficult conversations.

Although Simon and Webb openly acknowledged the challenges of race and class in pursuing a more inclusive notion of community in Emeryville, significant questions existed about what needed to happen to move forward in that direction, or who would be responsible for carrying out such a transformation.

A City that is Democratically Engaged

I would like [Emeryville] to be to be perceived by both the people who live here and by the outside people as a sustainable city. And a city that focuses on one of the most important aspects of democracy, and that’s education. I mean an appreciation in the 21st century, that you never stop learning; you always continue to learn, and reach out for new ideas and possibilities. [Mayor Nora Davis]

Small towns are commonly thought of as tightly-knit communities, where everyone knows one another and the distance from voter to elected official is shorter than in larger cities. Residents mentioned this feature as an asset that contributed to a sense of local responsibility among most of the residential community and

Emeryville’s elected leaders. Accountability and transparency of Emeryville’s governance structures were especially important to residents, in light of the political history of the town, its nepotism, corruption, and general public distrust.

122 The Center of Community Life: Utopian Visions

When asked how she would want an outsider to see Emeryville, Mayor Nora

Davis spoke elaborated on this ideal of democratic participation and resulting civic identity:

First off, I would hope that it’s not a city that is categorized by its “leaders.” My ideal city is kind of like the old cities of New England where everyone is a participant according to how much time and interest they have, but the ability is there for everyone to participate and have their voice heard.

Long-time resident Dianne Woods echoed this sentiment. She felt that in order to have a say in the changing of the community, she would need to be involved: “I tend to be, really community based. … I want some control over what goes on in my community and I know that I can’t get that unless I participate.”

Other residents mentioned the need to get involved, particularly at this transformative point in time. School board member Dice, who had grown up in the city and was actively involved in community and civic service throughout her adulthood, believed that the uncertain future of the city was a strong incentive for residents to be involved: “It’s hard work so the people that are there, you know they have an investment. That they live here; they want to see changes here.” Resident

Ron Mooney also spoke about the need to give back to the community by “giving your best thoughts to the leaders,” while also acknowledging the tendency towards self- interest, especially when it came to family or business. Beyond serving as an avenue for community input, involvement was a way to interact with other community members. For senior planner Deborah Diamond, this was an essential part of the community building process – especially given a disjointed community – that extended beyond the bricks and mortar of redevelopment initiatives:

123 The Center of Community Life: Utopian Visions

I think what they are talking about in terms of having a small town community is having your voice heard in the government because it is so small you can call up a council member and talk to them as oppose to bigger cities; your ideas, your issues, have to compete with so many others issues it’s hard to have that connection. From a planner’s view, that’s great because people are having their issues addressed, and much more representation by their government, and I think that makes for a happier, healthier community.

In spite of this accepted ideal of civic participation, attempts at authentic, democratic engagement were more easily described than implemented by city leadership. Instead of drawing equal representation from various community pockets, the most politically active stakeholders seemed to represent the city’s latest wave of wealth. This unintentional political bias was a source of discomfort for people like

Council member Dick Kassis, who acknowledged the tensions between the relationships with people he knew, and the fear of disparate representation and inequitable community outcomes.

The political power is shifting from the West back to the East part of town …a lot of those folks are my friends… and they have as much as a forward vision of where the city has to go socially and morally as I do. [But] they began to elect more and more people that think the way they do and to move forward it’s going to be difficult. They are going to slow the city down and in some ways it’s good and some ways it’s going to be bad. If you get too many people who think the same way, in the same direction, in a small town, they can grab a hold of the local process and turn it into something that’s not representative, and we didn’t want to go there.

Kassis and others mentioned the challenges of eliciting broad community representation and the need for new leaders. A few respondents mentioned the need for more racial and economic diversity on City Council, the school board, or other public committees. Kevin Rooney stated:

124 The Center of Community Life: Utopian Visions

I don’t think we have representatives of people of the communities of interest. It’s just a small portion of the community that wants to do the best for everyone but the majority of people involved have specific agendas that they are trying to push through, and that’s why they are involved.

At times, city and community leaders were defensive when asked questions about disproportionate representation. As Mayor Davis pointed out, “…you have been to the council meetings; you know clearly we hear every voice. There are some people that don’t come forward.” At another council meeting held several weeks after the city’s employment discrimination incident, there was public discussion of how current council members, despite being all white, felt that they adequately represented the interests of the city’s racial minorities. Some, like Council member Ken Bukowski, remarked that he was “offended by the notion that he hadn’t, nor couldn’t, represent the black community.”

One acceptable approach to expanding community representation in public venues came from Superintendent Smith. He proposed that supporting student voice could provide more diversity within decision-making venues, as well as provide important learning opportunities for youth. At one point, young people from the school district sat on the School Board, the City/Schools committee, and the General

Plan Update Steering Committee. However, youth involvement was difficult to encourage and sustain. It also did not significantly penetrate or alter established patterns of community involvement, particularly with regard to increased participation of racial and class minorities. Ruth Mathis, the social studies teacher who had been asked to recruit and supervise students in their various civic engagement roles, spoke about the legitimacy of their involvement:

125 The Center of Community Life: Utopian Visions

So how do [students] have a legitimate voice? I don’t know. I do know this would be a great training ground if [the elected leaders and youth] see it like that. … So as a civics lesson, if they want to learn about different kinds of power – there’s authoritarian, there’s the power of influence – and I guess in public venues, that’s how decisions get made. How can you influence other people to go along with your idea?

Superintendent Smith admitted to the ambiguity and superficiality of the students’ roles, but believed that the initial step of even inviting youth voice was a substantial move in the right direction. There was much more to learn about, especially in challenging the traditional norms and processes of decision-making.

And that’s not just notions of democracy, not just participation, but power. So being a voting member on the City/School committee is a big deal. …. I know that I keep doing things to make this kind of stuff happen, to get youth included, to create the conditions so people are actually talking about, and wrestling with the extent of power we want to “let” youth have. These are the opportunities for community learning that we need, in order to actually produce more of the [community] conditions for a place like the Center of Community Life – to be authentic, where you feel like you belong, where there’s a sense of connectedness.

The challenge of representation was an issue for the Center of Community

Life; it was pertinent to both the planning process and how it would connect

Emeryville. During my fieldwork, the number of participants active in the core group of EYSAC hovered at around twenty;19 they were largely comprised of school staff, school board members, and occasional business and community representatives. The communications subcommittee decided it was important to target those individuals living in the newer residential developments, especially people with young children who weren’t knowledgeable about the district. The solely volunteer committee, however, struggled to develop and implement an effective outreach strategy. Roy

19 At its peak, EYSAC membership had over 150 community and school members (interview with John Gooding).

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Miller, affiliated with the school district and EYSAC, spoke about the difficulties of expanding the circle of public engagement:

Emeryville is fairly small, and there are a few people who are engaged in much of [the discussions around the CCL]. … I think that the challenge …is engaging the community, the full spectrum of people who live here. … There’s a huge community of people who work here but don’t live here. Both are important, but it tends to be the people who live here who aren’t fully engaged, or even tangentially engaged.

Without adequate, broad community representation, school-based supporters of the

CCL feared that subsequent planning agenda for the Center might not only be insufficient or skewed, but might lead to a facility that would not meet the district’s intended goals. Worse yet, such a planning process might unintentionally exacerbate the pattern of excluding the minority and lower-income communities that the district was intent on empowering.

The biggest obstacle to moving forward with the ideas of community engagement as part of the CCL was the city and district’s reliance on conventional and legitimate means of politics and decision-making. The political reform agendas of the city and district refurbished the governance structures from their once shady pasts, but they also left little room for quick mobilization and immediate calls to action. Instead, deliberate attempts at responsible and accountable governance required more attention to the values and principles of representation and deliberative decision-making.

Some CCL advocates admitted to being conflicted between taking the fastest way to get things done, versus employing the more difficult strategy of democratic and broad community engagement. Paradoxically, even if creating the Center would be easier done under the radar, such a process would be antithetical to one of the project’s

127 The Center of Community Life: Utopian Visions core principles: building and engaging individuals across the entire Emeryville spectrum and creating an authentic and shared process of connection and community.

Democratic engagement, although ideal, might impair the ability for CCL advocates to make substantial headway on implementing their vision.

A City that is Cutting Edge: CCL as Emeryville’s “Phoenix, Rising Sun!”

Whether we were talking with some rather politically conservative folks or with some pretty progressive folks… they all couldn’t help but talk about the unique situation of having a community group come to DC, to lobby for support that included the top folks from the city government, the top folks from the school government, AND from the business community. It was unheard of, and some of them even said so. [John Gooding]

In the city’s early days of redevelopment, Emeryville’s leaders supported a dramatic, far-reaching transformation of the city. More recently, new residents were able to provide significant input to the shape and form of the city-in-progress.

Environmentally friendly buildings and development, greenways and community gardens, and bike-lanes and pedestrian pathways, were priorities outlined by those most active in the design and development of the city.

City leaders also took pride in the public-private partnerships that had been established with the corporate sector. Local biotech laboratories and bio-energy companies exemplified the city’s commitment to progressive and cutting edge environmental and science technologies. The California Institute for Regenerative

Medicine, a stem cell research institution established in 2005, had been established in the city with the passage of a state proposition. When a state-wide search began for a more permanent home, Emeryville “had beaten Los Angeles as one of the finalists for

128 The Center of Community Life: Utopian Visions the permanent home, [and] the mayor of Los Angeles reportedly blurted ‘Emeryville?

Where the hell is Emeryville?’” (City of Emeryville website).

City, school, corporate, and community stakeholders attributed Emeryville’s successes to its small size, progressive governance structure, and financial reserves, which allowed for the political will and flexible financial resources to pursue innovative and unique strategies. School advocates hoped that the district might mirror the city’s successful comeback. As such, the district’s history of crisis and failure would become an important part of the narrative, celebrating the timely intervention of the citizens and leaders of Emeryville. Melinda Chinn, the city’s Community Services

Director marveled at the progress thus far:

I was so amazed with the way the district is so energized in wanting to maximize the strengths and talents of the child; it’s sincere and I think it’s great. It feels really good to me that they care that much. It’s kind of like a phoenix rising from the ashes, from the history. People have come together, the right people have landed here, and things are rising from the ashes, and it’s going to be beautiful, it’s becoming beautiful.

However, beyond the charismatic and dynamic leadership of individuals such as

Superintendent Smith and City Manager John Flores, it was uncertain how bold principles of community and social justice and other innovative ideas could take hold.

THE ROLE, POTENTIAL, AND PROMISE OF THE CENTER

OF COMMUNITY LIFE

The multiple facets of Emeryville’s identity coalesced into an intricate set of motivations and ideas that were projected onto the Center of Community Life. The community’s values contributed to an idyllic set of expectations for the “new and

129 The Center of Community Life: Utopian Visions improved” Emeryville. In moving forward however, the city needed to recognize and address its present-day realities. Furthermore, the continuing residential and political shifts within Emeryville added to the mounting tensions surrounding issues of race, community, and public education. The ideas behind the Center of Community Life had to be questioned, both publicly and privately, as city and school district leaders assessed which possibilities were worth pursuing.

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Chapter 6 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real

Completion of the Center of Community Life (CCL) seemed a near-certainty in 2003. The Youth Master Plan offered a concrete shared vision of the partnership between the city and the school district. The plans for the Center would be a natural next step that tapped into the initial momentum of the Emeryville Youth Services

Advisory Committee (EYSAC). In addition, at least on the surface, the project’s leadership was distributed across district, city, residential, and business representatives, signaling broad civic interest and commitment. From this initial set of conditions, the subsequent planning and implementation behind the CCL should have followed suit. The events that followed, however, revealed to a more complicated decision-making process than might have been predicted by the initial planning process. For CCL advocates, without a clear sense of the purpose of the program and its expected outcomes, or without acknowledging their underlying assumptions, the critical vision and foundation needed for the CCL would fail to mature.

131 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real

IDEATIONAL DISSONANCE

Successful implementation of the CCL would require significant alignment of the program ideas, frames, paradigms, and public sentiments around the mission and goals of the community initiative (see Campbell 2004). Before they could come to a tangible vision of a city and school partnership, Emeryville residents and school stakeholders needed to struggle with identifying the boundaries and characteristics of the current Emeryville “community.” Stymied by the challenge of determining who was and who wasn’t part of the CCL vision, and made uncomfortable by issues of race and class, Emeryville’s elected community leaders found it easier to agree on the project’s general principles of community building and education, than on its tenable components. For example, although both city and school leaders spoke about the benefits of co-location, some school staff spoke about the need for wellness and social services to remove barriers to learning; others such as city recreational services staff focused on the amenities of a café, a library, a banquet hall, and a fitness center in one facility.

The lack of a concrete definition of the Emeryville community undermined

CCL advocates’ ability to build or pursue a viable plan. As a result, the CCL project itself would be challenged by multiple and competing sets of program ideas, frames, paradigms, and public sentiments (see Figure 6.1).

132 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real

Figure 6.1 ECCL Idea Types

For instance, when asked about the vision for the Center, Community Services

Director Melinda Chinn cast her description in terms of program amenities intended to respond to the interests of the wealthier segments of the Emeryville community:

This is what I see as a place for the community to come to for lifelong learning, for physical and recreational activity, from yoga to, just the gamut, concerts in the park, outside afternoons, parents can come. Just all the things that make a community, but it’s also a school facility. … All of these things are happening in one place.

In addition to serving a traditional schooling role, Chinn believed that such a conglomeration of programs could appeal to the greatest number of people who might otherwise have little incentive to be part of a school community.

Conversely, many respondents saw the CCL as primarily meeting the needs of the school community. The Executive Director of the Emery Education Fund,

Eugenia Bowman described the Center as being about “resources.” In her description,

133 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real the Center would serve as a clearinghouse of community needs and resources, and matching would follow.

I see a long continuum of age-ranges and educational, health and artistic programs. I see adult education; I see preschool programs; a kind of a one-stop shop for a community member or an employee of a major company who doesn’t even live here. Resources from the community, expertise, money, people, would just get slotted where they belong.

Throughout Bowman’s description of the Center, the underlying assumption was that there were segments of the community that had resources in terms of philanthropy and volunteer interests, and other segments that had needs, be they social service, educational, or recreational. Connections, from this standpoint, still followed a traditional course of service-delivery with conventional power dynamics between the affluent and the less privileged.

The first demonstration of the inconsistencies between the CCL’s supposed programmatic intentions and what leaders perceived to be supportable appeared early in the project’s visioning phase. EYSAC leaders drafted an initial programs statement based on a 2001 community survey that highlighted the needs of the school community, which included items like expanded afterschool programs and a family resource center.

The community’s reception to this early draft was ambivalent. This response in part reflected residents’ concerns about the narrow focus that the CCL placed on programs for the school population. Such a menu of services that emphasized social services, as recalled by one of the writers of the initial document, was unlikely to gain widespread community support. Instead of pushing for greater alignment between what Emeryville residents and voters wanted out of the Center and the original vision

134 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real as articulated by Tony Smith and John Flores, EYSAC leadership chose to focus on gaining broader community support for the general idea.

Resolving Competing Visions and Priorities

The difficulty in articulating a coherent program statement for the Center was tightly connected to the project’s need to garner wide public support, particularly among Emeryville’s voting and tax-paying population. In order to gain this support, project advocates would have to convince residents of the utility and benefits of the

CCL. For school board member Kurt Brinkman, this meant imagining how he might use the CCL.

It probably doesn’t do very much for me as a business owner… And I would also have to believe that it probably doesn’t do as much for me now, but will at some stage later in my life. …Maybe shuffleboard or something. Or maybe, some medical assistance located there. Or classes on yoga and sewing, knitting, anything like that. Or a place where I could go on and I could talk to them about my social security, an advocacy group of some sort.

Even Brinkman, like other proponents of the CCL, struggled with reconciling support for students as part of the city’s educational (and social) responsibility, while serving the interests of the majority of Emeryville residents who did not have children in

EUSD. At the end of the day, Brinkman felt assuaging the tax base was of primary importance. EYSAC would need to appeal to articulate the role of the CCL in terms that addressed the self-interests of taxpayers:

I guess as far as moving forward the most important piece to have in place would be finding that touch point. You have to find the touch point and say, what does it do for me? Because what scheme are my taxes going into? So, I would want to make sure that I could say, this is what you’re going to get for this. [emphasis added]

135 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real

Brinkman’s approach aligned to other conversations within Emeryville that were focused on future development and expansion, and were often framed in terms of residents’ wish lists, expectations, and priorities.

In 2006, a new, politically active group within the residential community (see

Figure 6.1) entered the conversation. This emerging faction was comprised of residents who had moved to Emeryville in the last several years. In contrast to previous sets of in-movers, they were young professionals, many of whom were starting families and were interested in creating a more family-friendly city.

Although schools were considered an important part of the community, they were still not entirely relevant for most of these young families, and so not an immediate priority. One City Council member, John Fricke, who represented this new set of interests was opposed to the CCL. For him and his constituents, the project was a waste of public funds, particularly when investments could be made in concrete investments like bike lanes and greenways.

When it came to responding to the public’s concerns, CCL advocates like Dice were trapped. They were challenged to market an inclusive program, while also recognizing that some proposed program components such as a community health center or job-training programs would not be applicable to newer and influential residents and community members. Those components could potentially dissuade voters from utilizing or endorsing the Center.

At the same time, school stakeholders and families who were usually presumed to be the primary beneficiaries of the CCL were also losing interest in the project.

Some parents and members of the African-American community saw the slow

136 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real progress in Smith’s progressive agenda as genuflecting to a new, wealthier and whiter community. They were concerned about gentrification and displacement and believed that eventually, another set of “community needs” would take precedence and leave the problems of the less-resourced students and their families behind. To those concerns, school board member Melodi Dice said, “It’s not like I’m gonna go build for a child that’s never been in our school system. Now that doesn’t make sense. It’s about the kids that we know, who are here now.”

In moving forward however, there was surprisingly little discussion in most of

EYSAC’s public meetings of how to align conflicting ideological intentions with practical decisions and compromises. Instead, supporters attributed the subsequent decline in public support to a lack of knowledge about the project. EYSAC co-chair and school board vice-president Josh Simon believed that the priority for CCL supporters was to educate residents about the vision of creating a cohesive community:

What we’re trying to do in Emeryville will flourish or die depending on our ability to find ways to communicate to each other. Starting with what’s going on. As of today, nobody in town, except for a handful of people, know that there is going to be a parade in town as part of the district’s Art is Education program. …How many people can build relationships or come into contact with each other if they don’t know about it?

Similarly, Council member Dick Kassis believed that a public education strategy was most effective, especially directed to the residents that Fricke represented. Kassis recounted a Council meeting where residents who were actively advocating for a pedestrian and bicycle bridge across the freeway, criticized the CCL.

I spent about 15 minutes talking about the Center of Community Life. A lot of the people in the room hadn’t heard boo about it, and people said, “We really

137 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real

support the idea of what you want to do, but there are these things that we want to do too.” I didn’t hear a single speaker get up and say I don’t want any city money put into [the CCL] and I want my money put into [the bike path instead], and it was so rewarding. That gives me hope that there still is a majority of people out here that can be reached can be brought in, but is a constant education process.

Little attention was given to assessing if and how far community values around education and youth would go to elicit taxpayer support. The rhetoric around the CCL remained couched in ideas and nebulous terms of “building relationships” and

“communicating with each other.”

The Discontinuous Casualties of Dissonance

Despite the dissonance around the mission of the Center of Community Life, the project continued. EYSAC and the City/Schools Committee continued to meet regularly to discuss aspects of the proposed project, though specific developmental actions remained elusive. As the project persisted, there was a heightened call from school and community members for more details around what the CCL was and who it would serve. Without evidence of progress, the initial support and momentum within the political community dwindled, underscoring the original dilemma of competing ideas.

Early within the collaborative relationship between the city and the school district, leadership and resources seemed to provide stable enough foundations for the project. EYSAC focused on a financial and political structure to move the vision forward. John Flores admitted that progress was much more difficult than he had anticipated. He was wary of the new political voices emerging in the community,

138 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real particularly as leadership within the city and the schools shifted. In 2005, John Flores retired as City Manager after thirty years of public service. He believed that his staff had sufficiently bought into his vision around the CCL, and that given the $25 million set-aside, the planning phases for the project were securely financed. In addition,

Flores was confident that with Tony Smith as superintendent, the work around the

Center of Community Life would continue towards implementation. Pat O’Keefe – formerly of the City’s Development office – was appointed Interim City Manager, and fully conferred City Manager in February 2007. Shortly thereafter, Tony Smith left the Emery Unified School District.

With the loss of the two key originators of the CCL, the persistence and viability of the initiative faced an important test. The remaining city and school district leaders could no longer rely on the leadership and vision of Flores and Smith in order to advance the progress of the Center. Specifically, the new City Manager and Superintendent would need to inspire confidence in their constituents in order to sustain and inspire sufficient political will to bring the project to fruition.

As most of the CCL’s supporters were involved in the EUSD, the true test of the project’s viability lay in how deeply the CCL had been embedded into the city’s vision and management infrastructure. One promising arena was the Department of

Community Services, which included the city’s recreation programs, elementary afterschool programs, intramural adult sports, and the city’s Senior Center. Melinda

Chinn, the City’s Director of Community Services, had just arrived in Emeryville a few months prior to Superintendent Smith’s departure, and immediately started working in partnership with the district. The Community Services department had

139 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real vested interest in the swift success of the CCL, especially since they were in need of new facilities to replace the transitional trailers that had housed most of their programs for several years. The sooner the project could be completed, the sooner the city’s recreational programs would have a new, expanded home.

Other city venues also offered evidence of stable support for the proposed

CCL. The initiative was occasionally mentioned by various committee members during the General Plan Update process, mostly in terms of recommending possible locations or anticipating issues of geographic accessibility and feasibility. School board member Miguel Dwin and long time city council member Dick Kassis, both sat on the General Plan Update Steering Committee and were among the Center’s most consistently vocal supporters. In addition to Dwin’s position on the General Plan

Update Steering Committee, other school board members held leadership positions within EYSAC and served as formal and informal spokespersons for the CCL in other public venues.

Aside from maintaining formal support from various elected officials, CCL advocates continued to struggle to define concrete tasks and projects. For some, this was seen as a matter of staffing and resources from the city and school district. A thoroughly staffed campaign could support steady advancement towards an actual

Center. Josh Simon spoke about his challenge as a volunteer in moving the project forward:

Ultimately there needs to be a person, whose job it is to bring people together and to pass around information to those who can’t attend. We were talking about having a newspaper about community life…without an editorial point of view.

140 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real

Simon believed that staff allocation was critical, not only in terms of time- management, but to convey a sense of legitimacy and impartiality around the Center, particularly given the multiple agendas facing the city and district. In 2008, the district hired Roy Miller as the district’s consulting architect and the sole full-time employee working on the initiative.

Of course, the most obvious evidence of the project’s importance was the remaining $25 million set-aside from the city redevelopment funds. However, both city and district leaders recognized that with significant financial investment came underlying expectations around what the project should actually be. The use of public funds further complicated perceptions around spending as skeptics raised questions around efficacy, efficiency, relevance, and timing. The project’s most vocal opponents focused on questions of money – how much, and at whose expense? These questions, though seemingly basic and straightforward, exposed fundamental and underlying tensions around project needs, audience, and ownership.

Although the joint funding commitment of the city-school partnership was celebrated as a done-deal in theory, the financing of the Center required strategic planning, specifically where it pertained to state laws that limited transference of funds between the city and the district. Under Flores and Smith, the presumption was that the $25 million set-aside was a unique way of advancing funds to cover the initial costs of the planning period. The school district could then apply for additional state and federal new school construction funds. However, with the bulk of the start-up expenses coming from the city, the district had little autonomy to make initial decisions around the project. Without any concrete action or dispersal of city funds,

141 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real the city’s leaders and the CCL’s most prominent challengers revisited the question of resources. As financial lines blurred and political resistance grew, CCL advocates again struggled with clarifying the programmatic elements of the program.

The district’s parcel tax which passed a few years earlier, further complicated public perceptions around the purpose and scope of the Center. For instance, the

Political Action Committee that was formed around the parcel tax initiative, Bettering

Emeryville Schools Today (BEST), was involved with securing the financial security of the school district. Many of the same organizers and supporters of the parcel tax were also part of EYSAC’s advocacy work for the CCL. They were challenged to explain why additional funds were needed for the project, and how the CCL would be different from the work of the school district. For Emeryville residents who had alternative priorities and needs, the additional investment in the schools was unfounded, particularly in the face of other public agendas. Council member Dick

Kassis recounted Council member Fricke’s objections:

They said, “You are tying up $50 million out of a $250 million [Capital Improvement] Program for something that may never happen. And we have things we want to do with it!” [As] a compromise they reserved $25 million, and that was used for a whole series of projects. To this day Fricke says the other $25 million should be used. He wants a bicycle bridge over Interstate 80. Some of his proposals aren’t realistic.

For those opposed to the CCL, such as Council member Fricke, raising objections around the hefty price tag provided a means to demonstrate resistance to the perceived school initiative, without having to outright reject the philosophical commitment to public education. In addition, the imprecise focus of the Center’s mission, in contrast to comparably easily understood benefits like a bicycle bridge, increased public

142 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real speculation around what was considered responsible spending of city dollars. At the same time, what CCL advocates such as Kassis thought was “realistic” in terms of priorities for the city was no more achievable, especially without a concrete set of tasks and goals.

Ignoring the politics of financing and spending, EYSAC members directed much of their attention to scouting and securing an appropriate vacant facility or parcel of land. Ideally, a viable site would take into consideration geographic centrality with proximity to both the schools and the various residential communities.

As was the case with other new construction projects in Emeryville, CCL leaders had to consider issues of pollution and ground contamination, potentially prohibitive demolition, cleanup, and restoration costs. Some suitable sites that were well-located relative to the schools and the existing recreation department facilities were not necessarily available. The local Alameda County Transit (AC Transit) yard was often raised as an ideal location for the CCL as it was next door to the high school, a few blocks from the elementary school, and close to the Community Services portables.

The logistics of acquiring this land would require significant and contentious political maneuvering and strategy in order to relocate the bus depot (and its pollution) to another area of the city, or out of Emeryville entirely and into another part of the county – such as into neighboring Oakland. However, Council member Dick Kassis suggested that moving AC Transit to a poorer neighborhood would likely result in accusations of environmental racism. Even with regards to a seemingly bounded and specific task of finding a site, CCL leaders faced underlying tensions around community preference and proximity, further stalling the process.

143 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real

AMBIGUITY AS STRATEGY

All policy is the end-product of an inherently political process, especially where there are multiple competing goals (Stone 2002). As contested and slow- moving as they were, the activities surrounding the CCL aptly illustrate the larger policy and decision-making processes and struggles that Emeryville’s leaders needed to confront.

The ways in which CCL advocates framed problems and offered solutions were not always clear or overt, particularly when touching upon complicated issues of gentrification, race, class, education, and the public good. Defining problems often employs a moral framework or justification, and CCL leaders relied on an emotionally compelling, but perhaps a blinding and politically limiting set of causal stories. They still ultimately failed to articulate a clear set of goals and priorities that allowed people to make sense of the program.

The rhetoric of EYSAC and CCL reflected a particular set of values which projected commitment to progressive ideals of community, education, and social responsibility. Advocates, however, also struggled with other, sometimes conflicting principles of ownership, property, and individual rights. The overarching trends and assumptions of the developing community more often conformed to the rules of real estate and market choice. A growing faction in the community wanted more benefits from and accountability for their taxpayer money. Without determining an actionable and practical means to incorporate the two sets of ideals, CCL decision makers were

144 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real unable to create implementation plans, or set observable and identifiable benchmarks of progress, either in terms of a set of programs, facilities, or the necessary levels of staffing and resources needed to realize such a vision. In addition, it was especially difficult to anticipate and manage the potential differences in opinion and respective challenges to the project that had emerged across the multiple segments of the residential and school communities.

CCL advocates argued that the Center would accomplish everything and appeal to everyone, yet still struggled to find a coherent and “marketable format that people can then understand,” as EYSAC member, and eventually co-chair, Dianne

Woods put it. Similarly, school board member Kurt Brinkman predicted that without more than just an idea, it would be hard for him to be an effective advocate for the

Center:

It’s always been a challenge for me to describe it, which I think is gonna be the biggest challenge to get it built. Because you know I hear, it’s “from birth to death” but people need to have more of a transition point than “birth to death.” …We have to get to the stage where we can define what it really is. …I’ve heard, globally what it is. I hear spiritually what it is. But I don’t physically understand what it’s going to be.

Like Brinkman, most CCL supporters were left with confusing rhetoric and an insufficient set of tangible principles and guideposts to lobby for additional support, make concrete decisions, and above all, negotiate necessary compromises.

Resident Art Hoff, an active political member of the community and eager pundit saw the political implications and realities of the ambiguity surrounding the

CCL in this way:

First of all, I think a lot of the politicians and the City Council, they like the idea of having a school in Emeryville. And the Center of Community Life, it’s

145 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real

a brilliant idea, but they have no idea what it means. They’re just for something but they don’t know the details.

In this sense, the Center was more of a symbolic representation of an equally nebulous set of ideas around “relationships,” where meaning and action had yet to be fully understood. Deborah Stone (2001) defines symbols as:

Anything that stands for something else. Its meaning depends on how people interpret it, use it, or respond to it. … Any good symbolic device, one that works to capture the imagination, also shapes our perceptions and suspends skepticism, at least temporarily. Those effects are what make symbols political devises. They are means of influence and control, even though it is often hard to tell with symbols exactly who is influencing whom. (137)

In Emeryville then, the nebulous nature of the CCL initially helped to promote casual support for the project. But absent explicit articulation of the problem or a clear process of decision making and compromise, it was difficult for both advocates and critics to understand the specific pros and cons of the Center, let alone debate the differing needs and values of the district and the city. Ambiguity may have brought together unlikely bedfellows and facilitated nontraditional partnerships. However, it also gave the space in which separate and individual ideology and actions could still maneuver. Both sides could comfortably pursue potentially dissonant policy and program agendas that prioritized differing sets of values, without overtly undermining the potential of the Center of Community Life.

The CCL’s supporters faced a paradox around the project’s potential to strain community relationships in efforts to build relationships. Their dilemma brings to the forefront several of the underlying tensions facing urban communities such as

Emeryville. The dramatic and rapid demographic, economic, and social changes in the city raised questions for community stakeholders and leaders about the rigidity of

146 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real community boundaries, and how these boundaries might influence perceptions of civic responsibility and ultimately, a shared vision for public schools in Emeryville.

Where to from here?

Seven years has passed since Smith and Flores proposed the initial idea.

Support for the CCL has declined, yet it has persisted as a proposal without significant or explicit opposition. The staying power of the Center was improbable, yet the initiative continued to survive despite lost momentum and increasing salience of other community interests and priorities.

Although there may have been individuals opposed to the CCL, few critics were interested in arguing against the highly normative and morally-framed needs of the district, especially as articulated by Tony Smith. Kris Owens, a retired commercial real estate agent and resident, suggested that like her, others were more likely to “stay out of it.”

I understand that the concept is to try and get some city money infused into the school system without acknowledging that that’s what they are doing. By combining the senior center and the fire department and all that, and I think it’s a great concept. But I am staying out of it. I know that we’ve always kind of reached for things here that seemed to be beyond our grasp, and have done them. So, who am I to say?

Here, the conceptual and practical ambiguity of the CCL helped residents and the city of Emeryville hold on to multiple and conflicting sets of interests and priorities. They could support the rhetoric of social justice in principle, but when it came to mobilizing and organizing to figure out how to make the Center happen, many residents were not interested. Questions and issues that were framed in terms of amenities and city services were much easier to publicly engage and rarely required stakeholders to

147 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real deeply question moral principles that might be weighed against self-interested rationales.

The ambiguity of the CCL also allowed for contradictions between conflicting sets of values to go unchallenged. Without an alternative interpretation or rationale, those residents who considered themselves liberally progressive community advocates felt compelled to support the initiative in theory, even though they were reluctant to support it through concrete action. Consulting EUSD architect Roy Miller described the challenges of pushing leaders to have conversations about what “community” meant and for whom, and in the end, how to make these ideas tangible for the purposes of the CCL:

So what I see is a process, over the last few years about where the priority is. Conversations about how one needs to act in order to implement certain future outcomes has been owned by the school district, and completely ignored by the City Council. [City] staff hasn’t wanted to bring forward the kinds of decisions that they would need [the council to] make, in order to have those priorities implemented in something like a General Plan.

Consequently, the CCL managed to maneuver forward. Even the most vocal detractor, Council member John Fricke, was careful and strategic with his criticism,20 focusing his energy on proposals that would likely easily appeal to the greater electorate. Art Hoff, a politically active resident and retired businessman, commented on his strategy.

I know John very well…. He sends his kids to private school; he has a reasonable interest in the schools being successful. He thinks the Center of Community Life is a complete waste of time. But it’s not politically right for him to say anything.

20 John Fricke chose not to meet with me, writing “I am not an expert on the work of the schools, and I would suggest speaking with someone from the school district.”

148 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real

There is another Council member that still believes it’s a waste of time. But when I asked, why doesn’t someone come out and say something, we’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that may never come to fruition. That person says it will die on its own accord. And I think Fricke has the same idea.

For critics and those that maintained ambivalence, there seemed to be less risk in letting the project “die on the vine,” as some individuals put it, then in creating active opposition. That this was a strategy in and of itself however, suggested that the tenuous nature of the CCL project was widely recognized, though no one was willing to say it out loud. Advocates feared that having such conversations might lead to even more community dissent and contention, especially given past reactions around race and class within city and school politics. Incongruously, the realization of the CCL with its underlying rationale of relationship building and connections would be a source of contention and conflict for the community.

For the CCL, little consensus existed amongst even its advocates about the specifics of the program and its associated frames. This vague platform sat in stark contrast to most community conversations that were focused on rallying support around other city development priorities. Project proponents would need to strategically build the necessary connections and coalitions across the multiple communities within the city – a supposed end-goal for the CCL. Alternatively, they could follow the winning strategy of the parcel tax in assembling local support and political will on a need-to-know basis.

Neither of these approaches was ideal, and as such, CCL advocates struggled to proceed with the project. Architect Roy Miller said that traditional approaches to development and new construction could not adequately capture what it would take to

149 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real realize the Center. Miller suggested that there were many concrete implications for the planning and implementation work such as which community agendas would be reflected in the project. City and district leaders would need to recognize and accept the inherent compromises that would need to be made as part of their efforts to implement a visionary idea.

I think when you’re trying to do something that’s really new and really unique and different, you’re not just doing the work. You’re putting the process together to do the work, and doing the work. It’s enormous and if there’s one thing that I know for sure, is that there aren’t nearly enough people who are staffed to do this work at this point. It’s hard enough for the school district and for the city to keep the existing stuff running, let alone create entire new processes to do entire new things…. How do you do this in a way that doesn’t replicate past?

Miller pointedly referred to the “past” traditions and patterns of the city and their disparate impacts within Emeryville’s communities. If such a challenge were to be taken seriously, CCL decision makers would also have to be open to innovative organizations and systems of implementation.

In 2007, city and district leaders began working on a draft memorandum of understanding (MOU) intended to provide some structure and accountability for the project, while facing the unchartered bureaucratic ground of the partnership. The

MOU continued to be debated over the next couple of years, with both the district and city relying on their respective sets of attorneys and consultants. In the meantime, the responsibility for the CCL remained undefined, with occasional bursts of attention from the usual sets of city and district staff.

Fundamentally, as in the case of the CCL, a political process is negotiated around a causal story of change. It begins with the identification of the problem at

150 The Center of Community Life: The Ideal Meets the Real hand, moving on to framing how the issue came into being, and determining what is needed for its resolution. A well-conceived problem definition outlines preferences in a way that is compelling, aligned with constituents’ understanding of the world. Only then would CCL advocates be able to leverage political support of the broader

Emeryville community.

Beyond a coherent causal story, the goal of a policy maker is to have more people buy a version of what has happened, why it is problematic, and what is needed in order to move forward. This task is especially critical when there are multiple competing policy agendas. Ironically, the CCL would require active “de-centering” and discomfort in the community if it were in fact to disrupt traditional patterns of economic and racial inequality. Community members, school, and civic leaders would need to engage in a series of conversations to pragmatically make compromises between disparate agendas and constituencies. They would have to acknowledge the disparate paradigms and sentiments that existed within the Emeryville community.

They would have to wrestle with those progressive ideals of community, education and social responsibility versus the demands of market choice. Without intentional identification of a middle-ground, the project would continue to falter.

151

Chapter 7 Conclusion

The city of Emeryville, in the midst of reinventing itself as a desirable urban residential community, faced path-setting decisions about the community it might become. In contrast to other urban areas where economic and demographic shifts often exacerbated race and class tensions, this progressive “small-town” community was poised to create a different urban reality. In particular, local city government and school district leaders proposed building a Center of Community Life (CCL) that would tie together urban redevelopment and public education reform. Ultimately, however, this seemingly progressive community was unable to coalesce around a unified vision of the CCL that could advance moral principles of equity, community and education, while also incorporating the immediate priorities of the evolving residential community.

John Campbell’s (2004) framework of ideas suggests how competing and conflicting beliefs and assumptions about schools, community, and the public good may have influenced the CCL’s pathway. In Emeryville, the shifting economic and social context, and the prevalence of racial divisions and stereotypes significantly shaped the ways in which the project could move forward or ultimately falter. Thus,

152 Conclusion the CCL is more than just a story about political vision and compelling leadership, but is fundamentally about the maturation and strategic development of ideas.

21 “MAKING THE DREAM A REALITY”

Center advocates and the Emeryville Youth Services Advisory Committee

(EYSAC) made attempts to meet tangible project benchmarks in their efforts to push the vision forward. For instance, the city’s Community Services staff began planning the CCL’s recreational program components, which were seen as potential counterbalances to the educational and social service programs that were part of the initial vision. The city also hired an architectural firm to create a conceptual plan of the building and provide renderings of nonspecific educational, recreational, and multiple-use spaces.

The initial leadership of Superintendent Smith and City Manager Flores had helped to articulate a broad programmatic vision. Still, the core questions about the

CCL’s purpose or its target population remained unanswered and the vision became further disconnected from the surrounding realities of the community. Thus, while a generalist approach might have been initially attractive to members of the school and residential communities, neither leader was able to advance the ideas of the Center alongside the community’s evolving perspectives and priorities. In addition, project

21 The Emeryville Center of Community Life website extends an open invitation for interested individuals to get involved in the CCL planning process by either attending a community meeting, a meeting of the Partners for Community Life (formerly EYSAC), or volunteering with the Emery Educational Fund.

153 Conclusion advocates were unwilling to face the considerable compromises that would be required to further refine and sell the CCL vision to the community.

Without further clarity around the CCL, questions around the project’s goals and its tangible financial costs persisted. In hindsight, identifying the ways in which the CCL could realistically serve the interests of school and residential stakeholders might have engendered greater grassroots support among the disparate sets of interests. Even as a “most-likely”22 case of an effective school and community partnership, Emeryville and its efforts to create the CCL ultimately fell short of turning its vision into reality.

IDEAS AND THE CCL

In Emeryville, the residential and school communities held markedly different beliefs about one another and how they perceived each other’s roles in influencing the future of the city. Such disparities would ultimately threaten the viability of the CCL as support from both residential and school communities waned.

For residents, the district’s history of fiscal mismanagement and substandard academic performance contributed to their mistrust of local school leadership and purported plans for reform. Some residents fundamentally questioned whether the district was sufficiently competitive with other schooling options such as private and charter schools, to meet the needs and expectations of the new residential community.

22 George and Bennett (2005) elaborate on the notion of a “most-likely” case; the supposed strength of Emeryville’s city-school partnership and the community’s strong network of relationships would presume a compelling, underlying causal mechanism, which might strongly determine the success of the CCL.

154 Conclusion

Or, if the schools continued to attract students from neighboring areas outside of

Emeryville, they questioned whether an “inner-city” population could significantly improve in academic standing. Ultimately, many residents were reluctant to spend tax dollars on a project that while well-intentioned, did not convincingly address their personal concerns or interests. Compared to other public projects like the greening of streets, the renovation of a local shopping center, or the building of a local Arts and

Culture Center, the CCL appeared to have insufficient relevance for voters, tax payers, and elected officials to provide their definite support.

The members of the school community held their own beliefs about the changes in Emeryville and the likely implications for students and their families.

They believed that most city leaders and residents saw the schools primarily as a financial investment vehicle. As such, residents’ support of the schools and the CCL project was contingent upon student achievement gains. Higher test scores would help drive up the demand for family-oriented housing, increase the residential population, elevate property values, and eventually produce a student body that was more reflective of the residential population. School families and staff saw residential interests in school reform agendas as insincere and suspicious; part of a larger plan to gentrify the community. Furthermore, they feared that once enough local residents were interested in enrolling their children in the district, families that lived in 94608 would no longer be eligible to attend EUSD schools via inter-district transfer. As a result, even if Emeryville’s schools were geographically in their neighborhood, students within 94608 would have to attend Oakland Unified School District – a much larger district with larger schools and, on average, lower student achievement scores

155 Conclusion than EUSD. The school community — perceiving a shift in the district’s agenda away from a commitment to equity towards accommodating the needs of the residential community — felt increasingly betrayed.

These beliefs held by residential and school community members may also have contributed to the pattern of leaving school representatives out of local community change conversations. On an individual stakeholder level, neither set of interests saw any real utility or gain in partnering with the other.

When Ideas Clash: Influencing “School” and “Community” Policy

Organizationally, although city and school leaders decided on forming a partnership to reform the schools, the two parties clung to fundamentally different perspectives, priorities, and practices. The school district was focused on educational quality and equity for current students and saw the CCL as an opportunity to bring a community schools model – integrating education and social services — to

Emeryville. The city, meanwhile, was focused on “smart growth” redevelopment, aiming to stay economically competitive with neighboring San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland. While the CCL could in theory have helped the city and schools meet many of their goals, both sides would have to make compromises to their visions of how the project and the schools served the evolving Emeryville community. Instead of pushing a particular agenda and straining the partnership, both city and district leaders maintained an ambiguous dialogue about the CCL.

The contested role of schools within Emeryville was central to this ambiguous policy arena. Negotiating a shared appreciation of the schools among Emeryville’s

156 Conclusion community members would be an important first step. Beyond individual buy-in however, the extent to which ideas could affect change would be dependent largely on the degree to which they could be embedded within the institutions themselves

(Clemens and Cook 1999; Campbell 2004; Pierson 2004). The more easily new ideas can be integrated into existing sets of beliefs and practices, the more likely it is that these ideas will take hold and affect change. In Emeryville, in spite of a public partnership, there was little shared understanding between the city and the district about who was responsible for the public schools, or how this arrangement might have changed traditional goals, habits, and policies of either entity.

This lack of a common charge was evident from their respective organizational practices. For example, city leaders were usually most responsive to residents on the west side of Emeryville who also comprised the majority of the electorate. There seemed to be little city interest in community outreach efforts to east side residents, who were more likely to be involved in the district. Similarly, district leadership saw the outside residential and business communities primarily in terms of their financial resources and political support, and instead directed their community engagement efforts to current students’ parents and families as part of supporting their academic goals.

In Emeryville, the political impasse between the residential and the school community was inevitable, given the competing sets of background ideas about community, education, and accountability that were seldom carefully examined or public expressed by either faction. Without explicit and shared understandings of the priorities of either school or residential communities, CCL advocates were left with

157 Conclusion few obvious places for concrete political leverage and action. The residential community’s interests would take priority, the school community would concede, and the path towards gentrification would proceed unchallenged.

Understanding Gentrification

Campbell’s framework illuminates additional factors at play in Emeryville that weren’t always obvious and highlights the nuance of gentrification, particularly in terms of organizational and institutional change. This approach to understanding community change stands in contrast to traditional studies of gentrification which typically focus on the changes within a community but pay little attention to the events and patterns that precede these changes.

The story of Emeryville and the CCL illustrates that gentrification and community change is not just about the dramatic and fast-paced changes that occur with the emergence of new, resource-rich individuals and interests (Baum 2004; Katz

2004; McKoy and Vincent 2007). Instead, this study describes a longer trajectory of community change that is influenced by the experiences and behaviors of many different stakeholders, including those that aren’t necessarily included in the most immediate decision-making arenas.

In addition, the process of gentrification is more than just individuals negotiating their identities within a community (DeSena 2006), but also includes an identity-change process at the system or community level. Part of this change includes defining the boundaries of who is considered part of the community and how those margins shift over time. In the case of Emeryville, looking at the background

158 Conclusion ideas around the CCL illustrates the minor role of the school community in affecting change. In particular, the pattern of a marginalized school community is explained by the residential community’s assumptions around race and class, and how they manifest in concrete policy decisions. Thus, community frictions resulting from prejudicial beliefs can contribute to the stalling of a particular policy agenda, despite articulations of shared values or initial demonstrations of political will.

Accounting for the ideas that are related to gentrification processes expands the understanding of gentrification beyond just economic trends, and highlights the social and political intricacies of change. As a result, an analytical focus on ideas can also serve to broaden and deepen the dialogue on gentrification and community beyond the polarizing rhetoric of victim and victimizer (Lipman 2002; Lipman 2003; Lipman

2007) by revealing a middle ground that can serve as a constructive space for otherwise seemingly incongruent sets of interests.

Enlisting Community Brokers

Getting past the code that often obfuscated discourse surrounding the CCL would be a challenge, and project advocates would have to consider the community’s underlying assumptions before develop meaningful connections across Emeryville’s disparate groups. Campbell (2004) suggests that new patterns of interaction can change how actors perceive their situations, problems, and interests. He describes the role of “brokers” as individuals who have access not only to different communities, but who are also able to strategically shape and exchange ideas within the foreground

159 Conclusion and background. As a result, brokers are able to consider and influence the ways in which alignment between ideas and across communities might be realized.

In Emeryville, an effective broker (or set of brokers) would need to engage various sectors of the community, and encourage conversations that could clarify community fears and goals. Cultivating new interactions between city and school stakeholders would require patience, risk, and transparency, and underscores the importance of building trust as part of successful school reform initiatives (Bryk and

Schneider 2002). Brokers would then be able to understand which perceptions and beliefs might be most amenable or relevant to the projected goals, and translate across boundaries accordingly. Neither school nor city leaders who were in favor of the project, however, had made attempts to pursue a community engagement strategy to reveal or bridge such ideas, evidence of a limited strategy for seeing their vision through.

If the city and the school district were to engage a broader spectrum of stakeholders, Emeryville’s pockets of networks and relationships could be utilized to dismantle the invisible boundaries and habits of community. Within such a small city, the impact of making a few new connections between traditionally disconnected groups could easily lead to a broader set of conversations. For example, a school- based program focused on environmental conservation of the marina could provide

Watergate residents already involved in community gardens with a structured opportunity to interact with EUSD students, and through them, their families.

Had the project evolved far enough to apply a brokering strategy, both city and school communities might have been able to intentionally and conscientiously

160 Conclusion reflect on their biases and consider how these affected the CCL process and project.

Furthermore, brokering the necessary alignment of ideas relevant to the CCL to move the project forward would also require compromises from both city and school interests in order to appeal to the widest spectrum of a shared Emeryville community.

Particularly with regard to the CCL, an effective broker might also be able to identify shared interests and goals among otherwise disparate education, redevelopment, and economic and housing agendas (Greenlee, Hudspeth et al. 2008).

In pursuing a comprehensive approach to community redevelopment, a broker would have to contend with more than just beliefs and assumptions about public education and community. Dimensions of economic policy and housing development would expand the range of policy areas and their accompanying sets of ideas. As a result, crafting a brokering strategy that sought to align multiple agendas and interests would be even more complicated, but would have a better chance of success than did the

CCL.

The CCL as Renegotiating the Public Good

The CCL had the potential to act as both a symbol and a material expression of

Emeryville’s evolving notion of how schools would be part of the public good. At its best, the CCL would sit at the nexus of interests between multiple community stakeholders and feature its schools as a core feature of the city. How residents and community stakeholders understood and supported such a vision, however, would require advocates to assess the priorities of current stakeholder communities and the

161 Conclusion extent to which they could realistically intersect, collaborate, and complement one another.

The most obvious challenge lay in identifying a common set of goals between the school and residential communities. Redefining these goals to realize the CCL would not be a simple process of adding up their component parts to create one larger whole. Nor could all stakeholders be satisfied by a unilateral imposition of one group’s ideals. A skilled broker could be especially useful in negotiating a viable compromise between competing interests in negotiating a broad understanding of the public good, while keeping the perspectives of those who are usually overshadowed germane to the decision-making process.

The constantly evolving nature of the public good is both an asset and a liability to communities and their constituents. As the CCL demonstrates, making the case for the public good requires constant attention to understanding the priorities of community members (Mansbridge 1998). Starting with an accurate gauge of the dominant priorities held by the community – or at least, those most powerful within the community – CCL advocates would have more room to strategically craft a narrative for the public good that strategically aligns to these needs. Given that urban public schools most often represent those community interests with the least political and economic influence, the challenge for school leaders and advocates to keep educational goals relevant to a broad set of community stakeholders is monumental.

The CCL story shows that in communities where local school and residential constituencies remain separate in terms of interests, needs, and political influence, proposed educational policies primarily intended to serve students and their families

162 Conclusion require more than just altruistic spirit or a general commitment to public education in order to be realized. Instead, proponents must craft a convincing argument about the worth of public schools and education that speaks to the interests of the broader community, and provides specifics about the types of resources and compromises that such an investment entails. Stakeholders within gentrifying communities must be able to see that their decisions to support (or not support) public schools and school constituents are active choices that are made relative to other community priorities, and not just irrelevant issues. Marginalization of public schools is not an inevitable result of gentrification, but maneuvering decision-makers towards a different outcome requires community consciousness of, and consensus on, how schools are part of the greater community.

NEXT STEPS FOR EMERYVILLE AND THE CENTER OF COMMUNITY LIFE

That the CCL continues as a joint project of the city and the school district demonstrates its staying power despite its ambiguity. To move the project forward, however, CCL advocates will need to reveal and clarify the various ideas that have shaped how community members and elected leaders perceive the project thus far.

Additionally, instead of assuming that the community’s race and class disconnections predetermine mutually exclusive agendas, city and school district leaders must challenge their respective constituents to articulate their goals and concerns. For school stakeholders, this includes acknowledging their perceptions of racial and class bias within the city, in spite of the pledges of city and school district leaders to

163 Conclusion encourage diversity within Emeryville. There might be opportunities for EUSD families to raise concerns about gentrification and displacement, particularly with regard to ensuring their children’s access to high quality educational opportunities.

Similarly, CCL advocates can encourage residents to consider the tangible value of education and local public schools within the community, even if they aren’t immediately relevant. Educational advocates might ask residents to reflect on their political and social values and assess to what degree they correspond to or compete with their economic or lifestyle priorities. Through these types of conversations, residents can better understand the options and concessions that must be made in choosing the policy priorities of the city, and the impacts these choices have on the larger community.

Two themes that have been raised by multiple and varied members of the community lend themselves as obvious starting points for conversations. These conversations may reveal important differences in how individuals understand and support the CCL. Recognizing the underlying assumptions of community members will be important for city and EUSD leaders as they attempt to build support for the project. In doing so, they must identify the specific “community” that the initiative intends to serve. Second, CCL advocates must specify the costs and funding sources of the project, and how these resources are an investment in Emeryville’s public good.

I treat each of these themes below.

164 Conclusion

Who is the “community” that the CCL serves?

Defining the CCL’s target population will help define the programmatic structure of the project and thus, determine the likelihood of garnering broader community support. In the past, rather than specifying whose needs would be met,

CCL advocates relied on unspoken presumptions that the CCL would primarily serve individuals facing significant socioeconomic challenges and who, for the most part, did not live in Emeryville. Amidst these ideas, residents were not likely to support the project.

Unless there is a meaningful touch point, as school board member Brinkman suggested, the CCL is unlikely to gain broad support across multiple audiences.

Instead, if CCL advocates are more explicit about the community goals of the program, and how the project can address the residential community’s concerns, they might be able to garner more support. Families with school-aged children might find the project more compelling than would others who are less interested in the schools.

For residents who might be more swayed by a fiscal argument, CCL advocates might present the short-term and long-term community impacts and efficiencies of the project. These might include assessing public efficiencies and return on investment that could demonstrate the benefits of shared space and co-location, and the costs of maintaining aging and inadequate school and recreational facilities.

Project supporters could also frame the CCL as part of a broader, long-term community agenda. For instance, by relocating the entire K-12 educational program to the CCL, the elementary and middle school properties would be available for reuse or redevelopment. Redevelopment ideas might include renting to local community-

165 Conclusion based organizations to generate income to support CCL programming, or building family and local service sector housing (i.e. fire, police, school district) on the vacated properties. Such options could address some of the additional concerns of economic and residential displacement voiced by school and residential community members alike.

How much will the CCL cost?

The Center of Community Life will be paid for by public dollars, including minimal property tax increases, and its high price tag has been a prominent focus for many CCL critics. In particular, they claim that Emeryville taxpayers won’t directly benefit from the CCL, especially if they don’t have school-aged children or aren’t willing to send their children to the local schools. Perceptions about the high rates of inter-district transfers from Oakland and other East Bay communities add to residents’ unwillingness to increase local taxes for support of students that are not “their own.”

In addition to demonstrating the financial benefits of the project, advocates could invite community members to think about costs of the CCL in relation to their other espoused ideals like closing the achievement gap, or demonstrating a commitment to racial and class diversity, neither of which are easily quantifiable.

School leaders might ask residents if and how Emeryville’s public schools contribute to the community’s evolving identity. These conversations might encourage community members to explicitly describe the differences between residents and students. They might also challenge individuals to consider their own values of community and education, how these values relate to their perceptions about the local

166 Conclusion schools, and finally how both their values and perceptions influence their support for the district and projects like the CCL.

As the largest owner of property in Emeryville, the corporate sector will pay for a significant portion the CCL’s building costs. Business leaders’ perceptions of the project, its utility, and at the very least, the political leverage that they might gain in supporting the project will remain crucial to the success of the CCL. The cost- benefit calculus for corporate interests may raise many of the same issues that concern residential and school stakeholders. At the same time, community and school leaders will need to determine if and when corporate interests are aligned to, or opposed to, residential or school interests.

These examples suggest preliminary ways to reframe the Center of Community

Life project and its relation to the public good beyond the current discourse of a moral imperative to education and loosely-defined community connections. Instead of continuing a polarizing debate between pro and anti-CCL parties, or avoiding awkward topics of race and class, directly addressing key questions about the project will help advocates assess the political viability of the CCL and foster the community- building process that will better support instructive and innovative ideas. Whether or not city and school district leaders can answer questions about the project and its relevance to the broader set of Emeryville stakeholders may predict if the Center of

Community life as initially conceived is realistic. I suggest that with a more confident approach to addressing the background ideas that have frustrated the project thus far, advocates will be better equipped to deepen the foreground discussion of the CCL and move towards concrete action.

167 Conclusion

CLOSING

By recognizing that the beliefs and perceptions operating in the political background are equally as influential as those in the political foreground, I draw attention to the need for additional approaches to studying the politics of ideas. In particular, researchers examining gentrification have yet to closely investigate the civic consequences of the shifting geographic, social and political boundaries of community and how the margins and borders of community evolve over time. An ideational approach to understanding change is especially relevant to communities that are characterized by rapidly shifting social and economic contexts, where resulting changes and their unintended consequences for individuals with the least influence may be perceived as counter to espoused values of equity and community.

From a public policy and community development standpoint, it would be valuable to document how particular sets of values grow in relevance and power within communities, and how they eventually come to shape the formal and informal choices within that community. Such studies would be useful to social justice strategists as they refine their approach to advocate on behalf of communities that are least powerful or resilient in the face of change. A more nuanced understanding of community change processes may serve to promote richer, productive conversations about communities and how they intentionally or unintentionally evolve.

Finally, this study points to the need for deeper investigation into the role of public schools within a community, or as a shared public good. Beyond the moral and

168 Conclusion philosophical justification for community support for public schools, researchers and public school proponents must articulate how boundaries of responsibility and accountability go beyond ideological rhetoric and affect the practical reality of school reform and change. Educational reform efforts that occur in the context of shifting communities would be well advised to remain responsive to the community – broadly defined – and its ideas

Ambitious programs like the Center of Community Life represent opportunities to address socially pertinent issues facing urban schools and their surrounding communities. Other community advocates and school practitioners can draw from these lessons, in understanding how the relationship between ideas and perceptions about race, class, schools and a collective sense of community can serve as a constructive precursor to action. Such an understanding may form the basis to encourage policies that move beyond stated values and can tangibly affect schools and communities.

169 Appendix A Methodology and Data Analysis

This study, as informed by the conceptual framework, assumed that there exists a demonstrable relationship between ideas and policy outcomes. Though theoretically reasonable and even informally plausible, the methodological challenges of empirically illustrating such an argument are numerous. The challenge is greatest in considering the cognitive background ideas that are especially difficult to distinguish and isolate. In consideration of these fundamental challenges, my study relied on a detailed methodological plan of interviews, observations, and several different types of documents.

The study’s findings are based primarily on interviews that I conducted in

2006-2008 with members of the Emeryville residential, business, and school communities. I chose to focus on Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District

(EUSD) for a couple reasons. First, its history and current struggles with community development and public education mirrored many of the same struggles of larger urban communities. In comparison to cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New

York, however, the Emeryville community was a small and fairly accessible community, particularly in terms of politics and its policy-making. Secondly, several local Bay Area education leaders had told me about the leadership and vision of

EUSD’s superintendent, Tony Smith. His commitment to social justice and willingness to explicitly speak about the intricacies of race and class equity in education was rare, especially as a white man leading a primarily minority school

170 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis district. That he would have the commitment of city partners in pursuing a community schools strategy to meet the needs of students and their families was extraordinary.

Coming into the community and the school district, I was most conscious of the relationships that I established, especially as an outsider to this very small community, and even smaller set of political leaders and actors. And, since I was interested in exploring the tensions of race and class that existed within Emeryville and the Emery Unified School District, I wanted to be sensitive to community members and their expectations and perceptions of me and my work. Thus, during my time in Emeryville, I focused on being attentive to building trust, forming relationships, and asking about personal ideas of education and community. Whether that happened during a formal interview, or during a community parade, my role as a researcher required demonstrating a vested interest in the future of the city and the schools.

INTERVIEWS

I initially chose to formally interview those stakeholders affiliated with the planning process of the Center of Community Life (see Appendix B for the semi- structured interview protocol). This group included a wide cross section of representatives from the school district, city governance, residents, and local organizations and business.

I also wanted to talk to community residents and school representatives who were not regularly a part of Center of Community Life discussions. Among these,

171 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis most respondents that were willing to talk to me were those that I had established relationships with, or had been introduced to through other friends and colleagues.

Rarely did these respondents want to schedule a formal interview, but many were willing to talk to me about my interests in the Center, and give me their opinions.

Some city officials in particular, were unresponsive to my requests for a formal interview. On the whole, my interviews were limited to those residents and community members who I had personally met, and thus were more likely to be regularly involved in school or city activities.

I audio recorded all of my formal interviews in addition to taking notes. I was able to document and reflect on more informal conversations through my field notes, in which I regularly wrote about my experiences and questions. Table A.1 provides a summary of the interviews and one-on-one meetings that I conducted.

Table A.1 Interviews

Organizational Affiliation & Title (at time of data Interview Respondent collection) Date(s)

Anakarita Allen Principal, Anna Yates Elementary School 4/23/2007

Emery Secondary School parent, EYSAC co-chair, Angela Baranco Planning Commissioner, active Parent Teacher 9/21/2007 Mason Organization member

Cheryl Webb School Board Member, parent 3/23/2007

Deborah City Planner, Emeryville 5/31/2007 Diamond

Dianne Woods Professor of Social Work, Cal State East Bay; Co-chair 3/29/2007

172 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.1 Interviews

Organizational Affiliation & Title (at time of data Interview Respondent collection) Date(s)

EYSAC programs

City Council Member; former Mayor, lawyer (in house Dick Kassis 5/21/2007 counsel for AC Transit); no children, single?

Eugenia Bowman Executive Director Emery Ed Fund 3/21/2007

John Flores Former City Manager 1/28/2008

President, EEF; Former President of Chamber of John Gooding 7/24/2007 Commerce

Josh Simon VP School Board, Co-Chair EYSAC 2/10/2007

Juliette Dunn EUSD Director of Wellness 3/13/2007

Member EUSD 7/11 real estate advisory committee; real Kevin Rooney 9/25/2007 estate person; resident of Watergate

Member 7/11 committee; former planning commission; real Kris Owens 9/22/2007 estate person; resident of Watergate

Kurt Brinkman School Board Member; Chamber of Commerce Member 3/8/2007

Community Services Director, City of Emeryville, Former Melinda Chinn 7/27/2007 Community Services Director in Richmond

Melodi Dice President of Emery Unified School Board 3/9/2007

School Board Member; General Plan Update Committee Miguel Dwin 3/23/2007 Steering Committee Member

Nives Cediel EUSD District Arts Consultant 3/28/2007

Nora Davis City Council Member; Mayor 5/21/2007

Pat O'Keefe City Manager 6/15/2007

173 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.1 Interviews

Organizational Affiliation & Title (at time of data Interview Respondent collection) Date(s)

Vice President, Emery Education Fund; former President of Ron Mooney 7/24/2007 Chamber of Commerce

Roy Miller Consulting Architect, EUSD 2/14/2007

Ruth Atkin City Council Member, former Mayor 6/17/2007

Emery Secondary School social studies teacher; Y-Plan Ruth Mathis 12/12/2006 liaison teacher; involved in Young Planners Network

6/16/2007

10/9/2007

Tony Smith EUSD Superintendent, formerly of BayCES 11/8/2006

2/10/2007

5/3/2007

6/15/2007

EUSD Public Information Officer; Co-Chair EYSAC

Wanda Stewart Communications Committee; President Berkeley High 2/14/2007

School PTA

EUSD Superintendent, formerly EUSD Assistant Steven Wesley 3/24/2008 Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction

Table A.1 Interviews

OBSERVATIONS

City, school, and community meetings and events were also important sources of data. Not only did they provide the opportunity to informally build rapport, but also

174 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis illustrated the ways in which topics of community and education were framed, and if they differed according to organizational contexts. In meetings, I focused on capturing which programs were discussed, who was present, who spoke, and relevant outcomes to the future of the Center of Community Life.

Given that actual program implementation of the Center of Community Life

(CCL) had not yet begun, data collection focused on following specific policy decisions, related to the school and city partnership made within the 2006-2007 time frame. I chose to focus on the policy venues that were aligned with Emery Unified’s

(EUSD) annual district priorities as outlined by the Superintendent, and served as scaffolding markers (short-term district priorities) within the broader, long-term CCL plan.

Superintendent Tony Smith had outlined three major district priorities for

2007. They were facilities, communication, and funding the district annual priorities were intended to support the three pillars of EUSD’s educational vision. These were:

1) EUSD’s designation as an arts-learning district within Alameda County; 2) EUSD’s adoption of a Wellness Plan to support the healthy development and learning of students and their families; and 3) continued and expanded partnership with

Emeryville’s thriving business community.

Facilities: Anna Yates Redesign and the Emery Secondary Wellness Center

The district’s facilities priorities that I focused on were the Anna Yates

Elementary School redesign and the planning for the Emery Secondary Wellness

175 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Center. EUSD was in the initial processes of implementing facility upgrades at Anna

Yates Elementary, specifically the replacement of portable classrooms at Anna Yates to allow for more recreational space, and much needed facility upgrades of existing portables. Projected costs for this project (which also include major landscaping of the campus) are estimated at $1.7 million – with all of the funding already accounted for from a combination of public and private dollars. Construction began in April 2007 and was projected to be finalized by Fall 2009.

As plans for the future Center of Community Life include space for two elementary schools, the redesign was questioned as an unnecessary expenditure. The district however, saw the redesign as a “testing ground” for some of the ideas that are part of the CCL – e.g. Astroturf for the playing field – as well as, in Tony Smith’s words, “honoring the commitment to provide quality facilities for current students and their families.” In addition, considerable community input – school board, teachers, and students – was part of the redesign, and provided insight into the district’s community engagement processes and practices.

The second priority was the renovation of the portables at Emery Secondary, as part of the first stage in creating a school-based “Wellness Center,” a core part of the district’s Wellness Plan. Intended to house social work interns, plans included renovating a former shop classroom to make an appropriate facility for private client sessions.

Facilities considerations for the district also required attention to broader city development contexts. During my field work, the dominant policy context for discussing Emeryville current and future development needs was within the General

176 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Plan Update Committee, who were charged with recommending a twenty-year development plan for City Council approval.

Communications: Board Adoption of District Vision and School Board Elections

The communications priority for the district was to articulate a coherent vision and identity for the district – what EUSD is “known for.” This was intended to help structure the priorities of the district, as well as serve as the basis for district marketing, and engaging public support for the Center of Community Life. One principal concern was around maintaining district enrollment, particularly in ensuring that Emeryville residents saw the district as a high quality educational option. A communications strategy was also a vital component to engaging Emeryville residents who may not have school-aged children, but whose votes were crucial in supporting school funding opportunities, such as the parcel tax, school bond measures, etc. The communications strategy highlighted the three district priorities of arts learning, wellness, and business partnership. I also paid close attention to the local 2007 elections, in which two of the five school board members were up for re-election.

Funding: The Parcel Tax and the City’s $25M Contribution for the Center of Community Life

Funding concerns included potential support for the Center of Community Life initiative through the June 2007 parcel tax proposal. Also, the city had earmarked a

$25 million set-aside specifically for the CCL.

177 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Throughout my nearly two years of fieldwork, I attended various public meetings held by either the Emery Unified School District or City of Emeryville, and their respective sets of partners (See Table A.2, list of meetings and events). Aside from the School Board, City Council, City/Schools committee, and General Plan

Update meetings that I attended regularly, I would often be casually invited to other meetings, often by sitting around the school district office, or in conversations with city officials. For example, the district office building was an interesting place of activity. Sitting directly adjacent to Emery Secondary School, teachers and other district staff often came in to the district for meetings or to socialize. Informal conversations provided examples of the interactions and perceptions amongst key

EUSD and Emeryville stakeholders.

Almost all of the meetings and events that I attended were open to the public, to varying degrees of effectiveness, as some were not widely publicized. I was invited to others, like the high school social studies class of Youth – Plan, Learn, Act, Now

(Y-PLAN), a program in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Center for Cites and

Schools. There, in addition to observing young people in schools talking about urban planning and development, I also had informal conversations with students and UCB volunteers about their experiences in Emeryville.

Table A.2 Observations

Organization Date Location Notes

EUSD

178 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.2 Observations

Organization Date Location Notes

Emery Secondary School Board Meetings 12/6/2006 Theater

Emery Secondary 1/3/2007 Theater

EUSD District Board 1/4/2007 Board Retreat Room

Emery Secondary 1/17/2007 Theater

Board and Community Meeting; Emery Secondary 2/7/2007 study session facilitated by Theater BayCES on the achievement gap

Emery Secondary 3/7/2007 Theater

Emery Secondary 3/21/2007 Theater

4/4/2007 Anna Yates Elementary

Emery Secondary 4/18/2007 Theater

EUSD District Board 4/27/2007 Room

179 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.2 Observations

Organization Date Location Notes

Emery Secondary 5/1/2007 Theater

Emery Secondary 5/16/2007 Library

Emery Secondary 6/20/2007 Theater

Emery Secondary 8/8/2007 Theater

Emery Secondary 8/10/2007 Board Retreat Theater

Emery Secondary 9/5/2007 Theater

Emery Secondary 9/19/2007 Theater

EUSD

Emery Secondary School Board Meetings 10/17/2007 Theater

Emery Secondary 11/7/2007 Theater

Emery Secondary 12/5/2007 Theater

180 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.2 Observations

Organization Date Location Notes

Emery District Board 1/8/2008 Board Retreat Room

District Arts Leadership Team 1/17/2007 Anna Yates Elementary

EUSD District Board 2/12/2007 Room

EUSD District Board 4/23/2007 Room

Emery Secondary Multi- Wellness Meeting 1/12/2007 Purpose room

Emery Secondary Multi- 3/28//2007 Purpose room

Emery Secondary Multi- 5/9/2007 Purpose room

EUSD District Board MISC 3/29/2007 EUSD Facilities Committee Room

EUSD District Board 4/16/2007 EUSD Facilities Committee Room

EUSD District Board 5/3/2007 EUSD Facilities Committee Room

Ex'pression College for 4/18/2007 Emery Arts Fundraiser Digital Arts

181 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.2 Observations

Organization Date Location Notes

EUSD District Board EUSD Real Estate Advisory 7-11 10/24/2007 Room Committee

Emery Middle School EUSD Real Estate Advisory 7-11 9/12/2007 Academy Site Committee

City of Emeryville

City Hall, Council City Council 3/20/2007 Chambers

City Hall, Council YPLAN student presentation to 5/1/2007 Chambers Council

City Hall, Council 10/16/2007 Chambers

General Plan Update City Hall, Council 1/23/2007 Steering Committee Committee Chambers

City Hall, Council 2/27/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

City Hall, Council 3/2/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

City Hall, Council 3/13/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

City Hall, Council 3/27/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

182 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.2 Observations

Organization Date Location Notes

City Hall, Council 4/9/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

Emery Middle School General Plan Update Community 4/23/2007 Academy Meeting

General Plan Update Community 4/25/2007 Anna Yates Elementary Meeting

General Plan Update Community 4/28/2007 Emeryville Police Station Meeting

City Hall, Council 5/22/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

City Hall, Council 6/26/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

City Hall, Council 7/24/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

City Hall, Council 8/16/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

City Hall, Council 9/11/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

City Hall, Council 9/25/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

City of Emeryville

183 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.2 Observations

Organization Date Location Notes

General Plan Update City Hall, Council 10/9/2007 Steering Committee Committee Chambers

EUSD District Board Select members of committee to 10/12/2007 Room talk about youth participation

City Hall, Council 10/23/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

City Hall, Council 11/27/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

City Hall, Council 12/29/2007 Steering Committee Chambers

City/Schools Committee

12/7/2006 Anna Yates Elementary Meeting

1/4/2007 Emeryville Rec Center Meeting

2/1/2007 Emeryville Rec Center Meeting

4/5/2007 Emeryville Rec Center Meeting

5/3/2007 Emeryville Rec Center Meeting

6/7/2007 Emeryville Rec Center Meeting

8/2/2007 Emeryville Rec Center Meeting

9/6/2007 Emeryville Rec Center Meeting

184 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.2 Observations

Organization Date Location Notes

10/4/2007 Emeryville Rec Center Meeting

1/17/2008 Emeryville Rec Center Meeting

Emeryville Youth Services Advisory Committee

11/30/2006 Anna Yates Elementary EYSAC Meeting

1/11/2007 Anna Yates Elementary EYSAC Meeting

Emeryville Recreation 5/3/2007 EYSAC Meeting Center

8/1/2007 Emeryville Rec Center EYSAC Meeting

Miscellaneous

Arts is Education Emeryville 3/6/2007 EUSD to City Hall Parade

Assemblywoman Loni Ruth Mathis 9th and 10th grade 3/7/2007 Hancock visit to ESS Social Studies Class, ESS

Assemblywoman Loni Hancock 3/16/2007 Y-PLAN class at ESS visit to ESS

Adult Ally Development: Youth

8/7/2007 Emeryville City Hall Engagement in Planning and

Policy-Making

Table A.2 Observations

185 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

DOCUMENTS

In an age of websites and email, virtual spaces of community are sometimes just as relevant as communities bounded by organization, affiliation, or geography. In

Emeryville, this was very true, particularly across the city’s residential community.

Thus, while capturing community perspectives and dialogues was difficult in light of the fairly small number of active residents in either EYSAC or other arenas of city politics, there were several active online venues for community members. Early in my fieldwork, I requested an invitation to join a few of the online communities that were suggested to me by school board member Josh Simon. Over the course of the study, the neighborhood listservs and blogs provided concrete and largely informal illustrations of community perceptions, concerns, tensions, and interests. Although it is difficult to determine other attributes of the individuals active in online communities

– in terms of race, class, gender, location – I looked to these documents as general indicators and gauges of community concerns and public sentiment.

In addition, email updates were a frequent formal communications tools for various city and school district committees. The distribution lists for these email listservs were usually generated from event and meeting sign-ups, and highlighted important community activities that were sponsored by either the school district or the city, such as General Plan community workshops, school district fundraisers, or open house events. These announcements provided an “official” public-facing perspective of the city and the schools, and the ways in which they announced or described their various initiatives. Local news websites and-blogs offered varying perspectives and opinions about events and concerns within the community. Since the beginning of my

186 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis data collection, there have been three or four additional web-blogs active within the

Emeryville community.

I also used more traditional types of documents as data sources. Local Bay

Area and even national newspaper articles that highlighted Emeryville were useful in understanding the broader social, political, and economic context of the city, and how community members perceived themselves in light of these depictions.

In addition, I collected and reviewed formal policy documents from the city and the school district primarily as related to the Center of Community Life. These documents included meeting agendas and minutes from City Council, school district and various subcommittees, program documentation, outreach materials, campaign materials, budget allocations, city and district data analyses, community workshop products, and planning materials as related to the General Plan Update.

Meeting rosters and minutes of advisory or steering committees, and proceedings from city council, school board and school district community meetings provided examples of how and when concepts and ideas of community and education were engaged, by whom, and to what end. Program-specific documents, such as those associated with the General Plan Update, suggested policy rationales and outcomes – e.g. what decisions that the policymakers had come to, and their means of legitimization and implementation. Document analysis also illustrated what concerns

(as identified through interviews and observations) were not engaged or discussed in formal city and school venues.

Lastly, archival records served as important contextual data in describing the history of the CCL initiative. Archival records include public records of relevant

187 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis school board and city council meetings, census information of community demographics and changes over the past several years, school district and performance assessments disaggregated by subgroup, and other historical documentation of the services available to community residents – e.g. presence of youth serving organizations, community centers, etc. Table A.3 provides a summary of the documents and archival records that I consulted as part of the study.

Table A.3 Documents

Document Type or

Organizational Title Date Notes

Affiliation

Newspapers/Emeryville News Scan

The Emeryville Connection is a monthly

newspaper published by the Emeryville Emeryville Connection, formerly Chamber of Commerce for the city of Emeryville News Emeryville extending into the greater Bay

Area.

SF Chronicle

LA Times

Education Week

East Bay Express

Oakland Tribune

Oakland-Berkeley-Alameda "A reliable voice of the community,

County GLOBE www.theglobenewspapers.com"

188 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.3 Documents

Document Type or

Organizational Title Date Notes

Affiliation

Berkeley Daily Planet

SF Business Times

General Plan Update

General Plan Update Email 12 Listserv

Community Workshop Save the 3/21007 Date Flyer

Report on Community 6/1/2005 Prepared by Dyett and Bhatia Workshop 1

Report on Stakeholder 6/1/2005 Prepared by Dyett and Bhatia Interviews

Emeryville…Alternatives for the Flyer/Mailer Glossy on the 6/1/2006 Future General Plan Update

Center for Community Life Passed out at GP Update 4/23/06 Overview Community Meetings

Published synthesis of Spring "Imagine Emeryville" general plan community 2007 issues

189 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.3 Documents

Document Type or

Organizational Title Date Notes

Affiliation

Spring Community Workshop Report City of Emeryville 2007

Alternative Concepts Report 11/1/06 Prepared by Dyett and Bhatia

General Plan Update Steering

Committee Develops Guiding *2005

Principles

General Plan/Zoning Update Itinerary and mapping of the Steering Committee Bus Tour 7/21/07 city Map

Emeryville General Plan/Zoning Graphics and narrative about Update Steering Committee: 7/21/07 change areas in Emeryville IDEA BOOK

Emery Unified School District

Emery Ed Fund, E-Blast email 12 updates

EUSD Communications 6 Director email updates

Art is Education Email Update 1

190 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.3 Documents

Document Type or

Organizational Title Date Notes

Affiliation

District Arts Leadership Team:

Emery Arts Education Plan 2/1/2007

Framework

EUSD Team Wellness

Distribution List

EUSD Wellness Advisory

Council

EUSD, "The Wellness Advisor," 3/1/2007 Vol. 1, Issue 1

EUSD Board Policy re: Student

Wellness

EUSD Brochure

Arts Education and Integration Distributed at EUSD Board 8/1/2007 Plan, 2007-2001 Meeting

Real Estate Advisory 9/1/2007 Committee Application

Inter-district Transfers Allen Bill 2007-2008 Prepared by EUSD Statistics

191 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.3 Documents

Document Type or

Organizational Title Date Notes

Affiliation

Memo from Superintendent Progress on 90-90-90 8/2/2009 John Sugiyama

Emeryville Listservs/Blogs

Emeryville Live is your official source for

Emeryville Live Blog keeping up to date with what's new in

Emeryville.

Emeryville Uncovered: The Place, the

People, and the Politicians (warts & all):

THE SECRET NEWS is a platform for The Secret News voices often unheard or unheeded, and for

news many Emeryville city officials would

rather keep secret.

Emery_Schools Yahoo Group

Triangle_Neighbors Yahoo

Group

192 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.3 Documents

Document Type or

Organizational Title Date Notes

Affiliation

The purpose of PANA is to promote and

improve the livability of the Park Avenue

district by: 1) Creating neighborhood

cohesiveness through information-sharing,

social interactions and community-building PANA_Emeryville Yahoo activities; 2) Providing a residential voice & Group community input into the political and city Park Avenue Neighborhood decision-making process; 3) Advocating for Association (PANA) the positive resolution of issues impacting

the residential community; 4) Encouraging

civic pride through enhancing the livability

and desirability of the neighborhood and of

Emeryville as a whole.

'The objectives of SPAGGIA are to help Spaggia Yahoo Group revitalize and upgrade the San Pablo San Pablo Golden Gate Avenue business district, and the adjacent Improvement Association residential areas, through crime prevention (SPAGGIA) and the elimination of blight.'

City Of Emeryville

Planning and Building

Department: Major 5/1/2007

Development Projects

193 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.3 Documents

Document Type or

Organizational Title Date Notes

Affiliation

Planning and Building

Department: Major 5/1/2007 Development Projects, Status

Report

City of Emeryville

Planning and Building

Department: Major 10/1/07

Development Projects

Planning and Building

Department: Major 10/1/07 Development Projects, Status

Report

Emeryville City Manager's

Office; City Manager Email 21

Updates, City of Emeryville

Housing Element 10/26/06 Implementation Report

City of Emeryville City Council,

Boards, Commissions, 11/1/06 Committees and Community

Meetings Calendar

194 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.3 Documents

Document Type or

Organizational Title Date Notes

Affiliation

City of Emeryville Community

Services Department, Program 2005-2007

Activity Guides

Emeryville brochure, Chamber 6/28/05 of Commerce

Down payment Assistance for

Market Rate Units, First Time Revised Homebuyers Program, City of April 2006 Emeryville Redevelopment

Agency Brochure

Emeryville: A Great Place to do City brochure Business

Emeryville: A Center for City brochure Shopping and Dining

Emeryville: A Unique City brochure Community

Affordable Housing Set-Aside

Program Ordinance, from From City Manager's office

Emeryville Municipal Code

City of Emeryville

195 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.3 Documents

Document Type or

Organizational Title Date Notes

Affiliation

City of Emeryville Economic Emeryville 2002 Employment 7/21/03 Development and Housing Cluster Analysis Department

Emeryville Industry Analysis *2004 From City Manager's office 2001-2004

Analysis: Emeryville Housing

Production Compared to ABAG Fall 2006 From City Manager's office

Fair-Share Housing Goals

City/Schools Committee (2006 to present)

City/Schools Committee Email 20 updates

City/Schools Committee 25 Agenda Packets/Minutes

CCL District Plan - Prepared by Field Paoli (hired Opportunities/Constraints Draft 7/23/08 by City) Study

RFP for Programmatic

Refinement and Schematic 9/7/2007

Designs for the ECCL

YPLAN, UC Berkeley

196 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.3 Documents

Document Type or

Organizational Title Date Notes

Affiliation

Social Studies Curriculum Plan

for grades 9-10, ESS

Emeryville Community Mapping

Youth Planners at PN2007

Youth Conference, New

Orleans, LA

Designing Emeryville as a

Livable and Walkable City:

Shaping the Public Realm, Fall 2005

Urban Design Studio, College

of Environmental Design

Emeryville Youth Services Advisory Committee (EYSAC)/Partners for

Community Life

Education and Youth Services Emery Secondary School Advisory Committee Meeting 10/3/09 Library Notes

As distributed by Emeryville Taskforce Meeting Minutes Community Services

Emeryville Education and 8/12/02 Youth Services Master Plan

197 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.3 Documents

Document Type or

Organizational Title Date Notes

Affiliation

Adult Survey Data 8/12/02

Youth Survey Data 8/12/02

Staff Survey Data 8/12/02

Emeryville Youth Services Advisory Committee

(EYSAC)/Partners for Community Life

Emeryville Center of Berkeley Center for Cities and Community Life: City and 10/1/05 Schools School District Collaboration

Center for Community Life www.emerycenter.org Program Elements

EYSAC/PCL Email Updates 4

EYSAC EUSD Teacher Survey 2/1/2003

Websites

Information on the Emeryville Center for

www.emerycenter.org Community Life; City of Emeryville and

EUSD

http://www.ci.emeryville.ca.us/ Official website, City of Emeryville

http://www.emeryusd.k12.ca.us Emery Unified School District

198 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

Table A.3 Documents

Document Type or

Organizational Title Date Notes

Affiliation

http://www.trulia.com/school-

district/CA- "The best place to start your

Alameda_County/Emery_Unifie real estate search"

d_School_District/

www.Greatschools.net "The Parents' guide to k-12 success"

Misc

Re-elect Nora Davis Emeryville 10/1/07 Campaign literature City Council

Ruth Atkin: Champion for

Emeryville's Families and 10/1/07 Campaign literature

Neighborhoods

Emeryville Election News: Ken

Bukowski seeks Re-election to 10/1/07 Campaign literature

the Emeryville City Council

Shilen Patel has a plan for 10/1/07 Campaign literature Public Safety

Table A.3 Documents

DATA ANALYSIS

The conceptual framework that guided this study presented a theoretical process model of how ideas, values and beliefs eventually influence policy outcomes.

199 Appendix A: Methodology and Data Analysis

As a result, there were two major analytical tasks of the study. The first focused on gathering evidence of repeated and connected practices and themes that illustrated particular idea types – programs, frames, paradigms, public sentiments. The second looked to determine patterns and relationships (or lack thereof) amongst types of ideas, and consequent policy outcomes.

I transcribed all of the interviews. Relevant transcripts, documents and field notes were coded using NVivo qualitative analysis software. At first, I categorized responses and documents by overarching themes and topic areas of education and schools, community, and the Center of Community Life. I then assigned additional codes according to distinction of programs, frames, paradigms, and public sentiments.

By running cross-coding queries on the first level of codes, themes of particular programs, frames, paradigms, and public sentiment emerged, which structured the next level of coding. These themes included: communications, resources and funding, services and programs, connections and relationships, development, diversity and race, principles and values, politics and civic involvement, perception and buy-in, safety and comfort, and individual interests and priorities.

The themes that emerged from the interview coding helped me to further focus my analysis of relevant documents and field notes that I had gathered over the data collection period. These additional sources served to triangulate the data around my proposed framework of programs, frames, paradigms, and public sentiments.

200 Appendix B Interview Protocol

General Background Information re: Emeryville

There are many ways that a city can be described – in terms of its history, its geography, or the multiple and intersecting communities that occupy it.

- With that in mind, how would you describe Emeryville? For example, tell me about the various communities that exist in Emeryville. Has this changed over time? - As a resident, what is your vision for Emeryville? For instance, how would you want outsiders to know or describe Emeryville as a city? How might Emeryville be set apart from other Bay Area cities? - In consideration of this vision, what do you believe are the major objectives that are currently most pressing for Emeryville? Emeryville and Change

Many urban communities, especially in California, have faced dramatic changes in their populations over the past several years. Shifts in racial, ethnic, and economic demographics, call for cities (and their leaders) to be responsive to their varied communities and constituents.

- What does “diversity” mean in the context of Emeryville? - How has this affected your experience of Emeryville? Emeryville and EUSD

Public schools are sometimes described as reflections of the community, playing an important role socially, politically and economically.

- Broadly speaking then, how would you describe the purpose or goals of public schooling?

201 Appendix B: Interview Protocol

- In what ways, do you think, EUSD currently fulfill that role? How would you describe the district? - What can you tell me about the history of the Emery School District? What do you think the district might look like in the future? Emeryville Center of Community Life

- Describe the CCL initiative to the best of your knowledge. - If the ECCL is successful, what do you envision it to be like in five years? - OR what will Emeryville be like in five years? Miscellaneous

- Tell me about how you came to Emeryville. Why? When? - How have you been involved in public service in Emeryville? What brought you to this work?

202 Appendix C Map of Emeryville

Emery Middle School Academy, Anna Yates NEW RESIDENTIAL: Watergate Condominiums, Elementary School, Emery Secondary School Pacific Park Plaza, Bay Street Village, Avenue 64, Bakery Lofts, Bridgecourt Apartments, Hollis City Hall Street live/work, Green City Lofts, Artists Cooperative, City Limits, Elevation 22, Emeryville Warehouse, Liquid Sugar Lofts and IKEA, Emeryville Market Place, Bay Street Apartments, Oliver Lofts, Terraces at Emery Station, Besler Building Lofts, Andante I, Vue46, Emeryville Senior Center, Emeryville Sr Artisan Walk, The Courtyards, The Icon at Park, Apartments, Avalon Sr Housing Icon at Doyle

City Community Services and Recreation Triangle Neighborhood: 40th St - 47th St, bounded by San Pablo Avenue & Adeline; a mix of single family, duplexes, small and medium AC Transit Bus Depot size apartment buildings, and new residential developments along Adeline and 40th St.

Amtrak Pixar

Novartis/Chiron

Emeryville City Boundaries

94608

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