City Government

Vallejo Community Members Appeal Major Use Permit for ELITE Charter School Expansion

Vallejo community members, former Solano County judge Paul Beeman and his wife Donna Beeman, filed an appeal against the approval of the Major Use Permit for the expansion of ELITE Public Schools into downtown less than two weeks after the Planning Commission approved the permit with a 6-1 vote.

Published

11 months ago

April 22, 2024

Oakland Post

Vallejo community members have appealed the Major Use Permit for the ELITE Public Schools Charter high school expansion in the downtown area. Photo by Kinyon and Kim Architects, Inc.

By Magaly Muñoz

ELITE Charter School has been attempting to move into the downtown Vallejo area at 241-255 Georgia Street for two years, aiming to increase its capacity for high school students. However, a small group of residents and business owners, most notably the Beeman’s, have opposed the move.

The former county judge and his wife’s appeal alleges inaccuracies in the city’s staff report and presentation, and concerns about the project’s exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

The Beeman’s stress that their opposition is not based on the charter or the people associated with it but solely on land use issues and potential impact on their business, which is located directly next to the proposed school location.

The couple have been vocal in their opposition to the expansion charter school with records of this going back to spring of last year, stating that the arrival of the 400 students in downtown will create a nuisance to those in the area.

During the Planning Commission meeting, Mr. Beeman asked Commissioner Cohen-Thompson to recuse herself from voting citing a possible conflict of interest because she had voted to approve the school’s expansion as trustee of the Solano County Board of Education. However, Cohen-Thompson and City Attorney Laura Zagaroli maintained that her positions did not create a conflict.

“I feel 100% that the attorney’s opinion is wrong,” Beeman told the Post.

He believes that Cohen-Thompson has a vested interest in upholding her earlier vote as a trustee and is advocating for people to ratify her opinion.

Cohen-Thompson declined to comment on the Post’s story and Zagaroli did not respond for comment.

The Beeman’s further argue that the school’s presence in the commercial district could deter future businesses, including those who sell alcohol due to proximity to schools.

According to Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC), the department can deny any retail license located within 600 feet of a school. Only one alcohol selling business is located within that range, which is Bambino’s Italian restaurant at 300 feet from the proposed location.

The project’s proponents argue that the school would not affect current or future liquor-selling establishments as long as they follow the ABC agency’s guidelines.

The Beeman’s also referenced Vallejo’s General Plan 2040, stating that the proposed expansion does not align with the plan’s revitalization efforts or arts and entertainment use. They argue that such a development should focus on vacant and underutilized areas, in accordance with the plan.

The proposed location, 241 Georgia Street aligns with this plan and is a two minute walk from the Vallejo Transit Center.

The General Plan emphasizes activating the downtown with, “Workers, residents, and students activate the downtown area seven days a week, providing a critical mass to support a ‘cafe culture’ and technology access, sparking innovation and entrepreneurship.”

City staff recommended exempting the project from CEQA, citing negligible impacts. However, Beeman raised concerns about increased foot traffic potentially exacerbating existing issues like theft and the lack of police presence downtown. He shared that he’s had a few encounters with kids running around his office building and disturbing his work.

Tara Beasley-Stansberry, a Planning Commissioner and owner of Noonie’s Place, told the Post that the arrival of students in downtown can mean not only opportunities for surrounding businesses, but can allow for students to find their first jobs and continue to give back to the community in revitalization efforts.

Beasley-Stansberry had advocated for the students at the March Commission meeting, sharing disappointment in the way that community members spoke negatively of the teens.

“To characterize these children as criminals before they’ve even graduated from high school, that’s when I had to really take a look and I was kind of lost as to where we were as a city and as a community to where I couldn’t understand how we were viewing these children,” Beasley-Stansberry told the Post.

She added that the commissioners who voted yes on the project location have to do what is right for the community and that the city’s purpose is not all about generating businesses.

ELITE CEO Dr. Ramona Bishop, told the Post that they have worked with the city and responded to all questions and concerns from the appropriate departments. She claimed ELITE has one of the fastest growing schools in the county with mostly Vallejo residents.

“We have motivated college-bound high school students who deserve this downtown location designed just for them,” Bishop said. “We look forward to occupying our new [location] in the fall of 2024 and ask the Vallejo City Council to uphold their Planning Commission vote without delay.”

The Vallejo City Council will make the final decision about the project location and Major Use Permit on April 23.

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Oakland Post: Week of March 28 – April 1, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 28 – April 1, 2025

Published

19 hours ago

March 28, 2025

Oakland Post

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Five Years After COVID-19 Began, a Struggling Child Care Workforce Faces New Threats

Five years ago, as COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures began, most early educators continued to work in person, risking their own health and that of their families. “Early educators were called essential, but they weren’t provided with the personal protective equipment they needed to stay safe,” said CSCCE Executive Director Lea Austin. “There were no special shopping hours or ways for them to access safety materials in those early and scary months of the pandemic, leaving them to compete with other shoppers. One state even advised them to wear trash bags if they couldn’t find PPE.”

Published

5 days ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

UC Berkeley photo.

UC Berkeley News

In the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic alone, 166,000 childcare jobs were lost across the nation. Significant recovery didn’t begin until the advent of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Child Care Stabilization funds in April 2021.

Today, child care employment is back to slightly above pre-pandemic levels, but job growth has remained sluggish at 1.4% since ARPA funding allocations ended in October 2023, according to analysis by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at UC Berkeley. In the last six months, childcare employment has hovered around 1.1 million.

Yet more than two million American parents report job changes due to problems accessing child care. Why does the childcare sector continue to face a workforce crisis that has predated the pandemic? Inadequate compensation drives high turnover rates and workforce shortages that predate the pandemic. Early childhood educators are skilled professionals; many have more than 15 years of experience and a college degree, but their compensation does not reflect their expertise. The national median hourly wage is $13.07, and only a small proportion of early educators receive benefits.

And now a new round of challenges is about to hit childcare. The low wages paid in early care and education result in 43% of early educator families depending on at least one public support program, such as Medicaid or food stamps, both of which are threatened by potential federal funding cuts. Job numbers will likely fall as many early childhood educators need to find jobs with healthcare benefits or better pay.

In addition, one in five child care workers are immigrants, and executive orders driving deportation and ICE raids will further devastate the entire early care and education system. These stresses are part of the historical lack of respect the workforce faces, despite all they contribute to children, families, and the economy.

The economic impact was equally dire. Even as many providers tried to remain open to ensure their financial security, the combination of higher costs to meet safety protocols and lower revenue from fewer children enrolled led to job losses, increased debt, and program closures.

Eventually, the federal government responded with historic short-term investments through ARPA, which stabilized childcare programs. These funds provided money to increase pay or provide financial relief to early educators to improve their income and well-being. The childcare sector began to slowly recover. Larger job gains were made in 2022 and 2023, and as of November 2023, national job numbers had slightly surpassed pre-pandemic levels, though state and metro areas continued to fluctuate.

Many states have continued to support the workforce after ARPA funding expired in late 2024. In Maine, a salary supplement initiative has provided monthly stipends of $240-$540 to educators working in licensed home- or center-based care, based on education and experience, making it one of the nation’s leaders in its support of early educators. Early educators say the program has enabled them to raise wages, which has improved staff retention. Yet now, Governor Janet Mills is considering cutting the stipend program in half.

“History shows that once an emergency is perceived to have passed, public funding that supports the early care and education workforce is pulled,” says Austin. “You can’t build a stable childcare workforce and system without consistent public investment and respect for all that early educators contribute.”

The Center for the Study of Childcare Employment is the source of this story.

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We Fought on Opposite Sides of the Sheng Thao Recall. Here’s Why We’re Uniting Behind Barbara Lee for Oakland Mayor

Today, we are coming together to do all we can to make sure Barbara Lee is elected Mayor in the April 15 Oakland special election. Here’s why. Now more than ever, Oakland needs a respected, hands-on leader who will unite residents behind a clear vision for change. The next mayor will have to hit the ground running with leaders and stakeholders across our political divide to get to work solving the problems standing in the way of Oakland’s progress. Job No. 1: improving public safety. Everyone agrees that all Oaklanders deserve to feel safe in their neighborhoods. But sadly, too many of us do not.

Published

5 days ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

Robert Harris (left) is a retired attorney at PG&E and former legal counsel for NAACP. Richard Fuentes is co-owner of FLUID510 and chair of the Political Action Committee, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 57. Courtesy photos.

By Robert Harris and Richard Fuentes
Special to The Post

The City of Oakland is facing a number of urgent challenges, from housing and public safety to a pressing need for jobs and economic development. One of us, Robert Harris, supported the November recall vote that removed Mayor Sheng Thao from office. Meanwhile, Richard Fuentes believed the recall was the wrong strategy to tackle Oakland’s challenges.

Today, we are coming together to do all we can to make sure Barbara Lee is elected Mayor in the April 15 Oakland special election. Here’s why.

Now more than ever, Oakland needs a respected, hands-on leader who will unite residents behind a clear vision for change.

The next mayor will have to hit the ground running with leaders and stakeholders across our political divide to get to work solving the problems standing in the way of Oakland’s progress.

Job No. 1: improving public safety. Everyone agrees that all Oaklanders deserve to feel safe in their neighborhoods. But sadly, too many of us do not.

During her three decades in the state Legislature and Congress, Lee made public safety a priority, securing funding for police and firefighters in Oakland, delivering $15.8 million in community safety funding, and more. Today, she has a plan for making Oakland safer. It starts with making sure police are resourced, ready, and on patrol to stop the most dangerous criminals on our streets.

Oakland residents and business owners are feeling the impact of too many assaults, smash/grabs, retail thefts, and home robberies. Lee will increase the number of police on the streets, make sure they are focused on the biggest threats, and invest in violence prevention and proven alternatives that prevent crime and violence in the first place.

In addition, on day one, Barbara Lee will focus on Oakland’s business community, creating an advisory cabinet of business owners and pushing to ensure Oakland can attract and keep businesses of all sizes.

The other top issue facing Oakland is housing and homelessness. As of May 2024, over 5,500 people were unhoused in the city. Oaklanders are just 25% of the population of Alameda County, but the city has 57% of the unhoused population.

Unhoused people include seniors, veterans, single women, women with children, people who suffer physical and mental illness, unemployed and undereducated people, and individuals addicted to drugs. Some are students under 18 living on the streets without their parents or a guardian. Research shows that 53% of Oakland’s homeless population is Black.

Starting on her first day in office, Lee will use her national profile and experience to bring new resources to the city to reduce homelessness and expand affordable housing. And she will forge new public/private partnerships and collaboration between the City, Alameda County, other public agencies, and local nonprofits to ensure that Oakland gets its fair share of resources for everything from supportive services to affordable housing.

Besides a public safety and housing crisis, Oakland has a reputational crisis at hand. Too many people locally and nationally believe Oakland does not have the ability to tackle its problems.

Lee has the national reputation and the relationships she can use to assert a new narrative about our beloved Oakland – a vibrant, diverse, and culturally rich city with a deep history of activism and innovation.

Everyone remembers how Lee stood up for Oakland values as the only member of Congress not to authorize the disastrous Iraq War in 2001. She has led the fight in Congress for ethics reform and changes to the nation’s pay-to-play campaign finance laws.

Lee stands alone among the candidates for mayor as a longtime champion of honest, transparent, and accountable government—and she has the reputation and the skills to lead an Oakland transformation that puts people first.

The past few years have been a trying period for our hometown.

Robert Harris supported the recall because of Thao’s decision to fire LeRonne Armstrong; her refusal to meet with certain organizations, such as the Oakland Branch of the NAACP; and the city missing the deadline for filing for a state grant to deal with serious retail thefts in Oakland.

Richard Fuentes opposed the recall, believing that Oakland was making progress in reducing crime. The voters have had their say; now, it is time for us to move forward together and turn the page to a new era.

The two of us don’t agree on everything, but we agree on this: the next few years will be safer, stronger, and more prosperous if Oaklanders elect Barbara Lee as our next mayor on April 15.

Robert Harris is a retired attorney at PG&E and former legal counsel for NAACP.

Richard Fuentes is co-owner of FLUID510 and chair of the Political Action Committee, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 57.