Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Benicia Unified School District trustees on Thursday approved Benicia High School Principal Damon Wright’s proposal to close the school campus during lunch hours. What that means for the school, the students and the surrounding community remains to be seen.

In the short term, Wright told trustees last week, the school will need to consider the logistics of accommodating so many more students at lunch time. It will need to purchase additional tables, for starters, as well as a food warmer and an awning to keep students dry as they line up in inclement weather.

But there will also be greater staffing needs, Wright said.

“In terms of staffing, we are looking at probably a four-hour custodial position, and four additional part-time food service workers for the lines,” he said, costs estimated by BUSD Chief Business Official Tim Rahill to be around $30,000 for equipment a little less than $30,000 for custodial time.

“I understand that change is difficult, and this will be a cultural change, but I do believe that it is in the best interests of our students and our school community,” Wright said.

He was supported in that view by parent Karen LaRiviere, who nonetheless urged fully closing the campus at the beginning of the school year.

LaRiviere said during public comment that she had concerns with the current plan to phase in the closing of the campus, with some students initially still allowed to leave campus in what Wright called “a merit-based system that considers grade level, attendance records, discipline records and academic records.”

LaRiviere said it was counterproductive to continue to let the juniors and seniors off campus, even with the proposed use of scannable ID cards, because “they will still be racing to wherever and back in the same 38-minute lunch period, now after losing the time it takes to be scanned,” she said.

“There’s still that sticky issue of drivers taking other students in their cars with provisional licenses,” she said.

LaRiviere added that keeping freshmen on campus would be a challenge made even harder by the task of keeping an additional 400 students on campus (the sophomores) while the juniors and seniors are allowed to leave.

“There’s been a lot of talk about where to put everyone during lunch, but all four classes currently remain on campus for snack time, and so far no one has melted when it rained,” she said.

“Our facilities are far superior to some of the schools that many of us tilt toward. Those other schools have the same number of students, one lunch period, and much smaller facilities.

“Every other school that has had a closed campus for years has been able to do it without making the six o’clock news with reports of riots and starving children,” LaRiviere said.

Trustee Steve Messina strongly supported closing the campus. “It is the thing we should and need to do,” he said.

“In terms of the vote we take tonight, I’d like to make sure that we are well and truly clear to the community that it is the desire of the board to close the campus.”

He said the decision to phase in the change belonged to the principal or superintendent, and while he preferred a complete closure, “if we decide to advance that time table, I would be OK with it,” he said.

Messina motioned to give direction to close the campus as soon as practically and feasibly possible, and to give staff direction to implement the changes necessary to accommodate that closure — and provide sufficient funding.

“Obviously the funding has to come back for budget approval,” he said.

Trustee Gary Wing seconded the motion. “Some of the structural things that need to happen probably already need to happen for school safety anyway,” Wing said.

Superintendent Janice Adams added, “The speed of the implementation is relative to the amount of money that we spend,” and looked to Rahill to clarify the source of some of the closure funding.

“The four-hour part-time cafeteria workers would be funded through the cafeteria fund,” Rahill said. “It’s our goal to fund the equipment and possibly some custodial time out of the cafeteria fund as well, with a minimal impact on the general fund.”

“If we added a condition that we would approve funding not to exceed $90,000, that gives you some latitude, would that be sufficient?” Messina asked.

“That would be sufficient,” Rahill said.

Messina added that to his motion, and Wing seconded it.

The motion was unanimously approved by the three board members in attendance; Dana Dean and André Stewart were absent.

In other business, the board heard a report by Adams on changing the date of board elections from odd- to even-numbered years.

“The city of Benicia is considering to moving to even-numbered years, and that will impact on Benicia Unified,” Adams said. “Right now we spend about $67,000 for an election when we have our board election. If we stay that cost will either maintain the same, or will go up by about $30,000,” she said.

The BUSD is eligible to change election dates from November of this year to the following November, which would extend trustees’ term of office by 12 months.

The last day to submit a resolution to make the change to the Solano County Board of Supervisors is March 10, or 240 days prior to the election, Adams said.

“In terms of cost, there’s not much argument. It makes sense to switch no matter what,” Messina said.

“Even though the city has been just recently discussed the switch, the county has been suggesting the switch to even-numbered years for several years,” board Chair Rosie Switzer said. “Every time I go for poll worker training, they’re always pushing people to switch their elections so that it streamlines the Registrar of Voters Office and makes elections easier and streamlines their process.”

The election change will be an action item at the board’s March 7 meeting.