DANVILLE: District officials say John Baldwin Elementary is being renovated and will be getting new items
By Jeanine Benca
Hundreds of appendages jutted from the mound behind John Baldwin Elementary School in Danville.
Danville parent David Struck saw a Dumpster overflowing with shiny blue and metal legs and moved in for closer inspection. He found hundreds of plastic classroom chairs and desks, bookcases and even a piano in the large collection of furniture stacked in a Dumpster and on the ground between two rows of portable classrooms.
Some pieces appeared newer, while others were decidedly worse for the wear.
“I said, ‘That doesn’t look right,'” said Struck, who had been overseeing some children playing in the nearby field when he noticed the heap Thursday. He called the school district looking for answers.
Although the disposal has some parents upset, San Ramon Valley Unified officials say the stacks of discarded items are to be replaced as part of John Baldwin’s ongoing reconstruction and expansion. The $5.6 million project, as well as two other major elementary school reconstruction projects, at Bollinger Canyon in San Ramon and Greenbrook in Danville, are on schedule to be completed by the first day of school.
About a half-dozen additional school modernizations funded by the district’s voter-approved $260 million school bond measure have been completed or are under way.
All the new work has spawned “stuff” — mostly desks, chairs and bookshelves in varying conditions that district officials say the schools can no longer use.
“A big part of it is transporting it and storing it,” said district spokesman Terry Koehne. Portable classrooms that had been set up during the school year now must be cleared away to make way for new construction, leaving their contents homeless.
John Baldwin was built in 1968 and many of its desks are 20 years old, said Koehne. Although most desks and chairs were discarded, some were saved, Koehne said.
In similar situations in the past, the school district has posted auctions on eBay or called other Bay Area school districts to see whether they were interested in the items. Those efforts yielded few takers, said Koehne.
The district cannot just give the furniture away to parents or other private individuals because the items were purchased using public money, he said.
“There’s only so much we can do. It’s kind of a sad reality that since we legally can’t give it away we have to discard it,” Koehne said.
In response to the handful of complaints they have received, school officials will be making contact with churches and other area charitable organizations in the upcoming week to see whether anyone is interested in the items.
If no one comes forward, the furniture will be thrown out as planned.
“I understand their side of the story,” Struck said. “But it hurts seeing all that stuff being (discarded). If they knew they had to get rid of this stuff, why didn’t they contact (charities) earlier? They had all these months to plan.”
