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OAKLAND — Despite a rigid format, compact updates from experts and elected officials and administrators’ best efforts, unanswered questions continue to linger after an environmental health town hall Wednesday night to address the ongoing closure of West Oakland’s McClymonds High School.
In the wake of gatherings last Thursday at a West Oakland church and Monday at a middle-school campus that featured vigorous, pointed exchanges between community members, Oakland City Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney greeted attendees at the West Oakland Senior Center with a shared whole-room salute and laid down the ground rules, including respect for speakers, being solutions-oriented and asking hard questions.
“Tonight is a beginning of a conversation about something that was discovered a week ago,” McElhaney said.
“Together, we’re going to figure out how we’re going to uncover more of what we need to know. But we have to honor some semblance of a process so that we can move together as a community.”
Dilan Roe, chief of Alameda County Healthcare Services Agency’s land water division, and Cheryl Prowell, a state Department of Toxic Substances Control engineer, gave brief presentations updating weekend testing that relied in part on handed-out maps that “tell the story of the industrialized nature of our society and the residential neighborhoods that are in the middle,” Roe said.
After outlining testing efforts since the Feb. 14 discussions that led to last week’s announcement of the McClymonds closure, Prowell talked about collaborative efforts between Oakland Unified staff and outside agencies.
“The school district is the one that’s hiring the contractors right now. Our role as the state is to work with the school district to help them understand the process,” Prowell said. “If something is unsafe, we can step in and require them to do more work than they’re doing right now. Right now, we’re in a cooperative mode. They’ve been very helpful, very forthcoming. It’s been a delight to work with them.”
Brian Beveridge, co-director of the resident-led West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, spoke about seeing social-media discussions last Friday about the closure.
“People were very concerned about that and what would happen to the students,” Beveridge said. “But within about an hour, the posts turned into the sites around McClymonds, the toxic legacy, environmental injustice. You know, this deeper story was beginning to rise up very quickly, percolate very quickly to the surface. That is a just and righteous indignation. Many people, for many years, have been angry about that story.”
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf spoke briefly, describing government as “hella frustrating,” before calling for installation of air-quality filters into campuses.
“I’ve been on the phone over the last week, and I have learned more about particular chemical substances and testing processes,” Schaaf said. “That does not make me feel satisfied at all, because I don’t care if the poison is in the water or the soil, or the air or the pipes or the paint, it needs to go.”
But some residents worried not only about McClymonds students temporarily displaced by toxin testing, but about other kinds of displacement.
Paula Brown, a West Oakland resident who takes pride in the school’s history of producing impactful citizens like Curt Flood, said she wanted to hear about gentrification and health issues.
“I was wondering if this may be a tactic to close down the school, because McClymonds alumni have been trying to keep it open for a while and it’s been a struggle,” Brown said. “And a lot of people who are dying of cancer were living in that area over there.”
But Brown’s focus was on the children. “I’m concerned that McClymonds should stay open because there is no high school other than that in that area,” she said. “The children that live around that area, they should be able to go to a school that’s close enough nearby, so they won’t be left all over town.”
Jason Romero, a West Oakland resident for the last 15 years, also expressed deep concern about McClymonds’ future, citing what he believed were failures of governmental and regulatory process that displaced former warehouse residents near a development on Market Street.
“They basically streamline the process of setting up apartments as they are right now, which are for wealthy tech workers dorm-style living,” said Romero, who owns a gym and volunteers as a strength and conditioning coach for the school’s football team.
“I think it’s a process. It’s going to happen throughout all of Oakland. This is the last, like, real public school in West Oakland. It’s the last sort of stand against the gentrification.”
“I am truly sorry for the worry and anxiety that McClymonds’ students and families have felt and the disruption to their lives and routines,” Oakland Unified Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell said in part in a statement e-mailed Thursday. “We are doing everything we can to ensure a safe and healthy school environment for our students that we reopen as soon as possible.”
The statement added that district staff expects to share updates about temporary housing for students by week’s end, and to receive test results and recommendations back from the state by the week of March 9.
A school district mini-site updating community members on McClymonds’ closure is available at https://www.ousd.org/mcclymondstce. An active listing for the campus is available at the state government’s Department of Toxic Substances Control EnviroStor database by visiting https://www.envirostor.dtsc.ca.gov/public/ and entering “McClymonds” into a search field.
Contact George Kelly at 408-859-5180.
