The Dublin School Board and City Council are working on an agreement whereby the Dublin School Board receives a 9-acre piece of land in Dublin Crossings (now called The Boulevard) to build a new school, most likely an elementary school.

With a need for middle and high for existing enrolled students in the school district, district always wants to build elementary to help builders sell their homes. 

In June 2, 2015 City Council meeting due to lack of funding by DUSD, City reached a deal with Suncal the developer of Dublin crossings and did an  Dublin Crossing Plan Amendment  to include several land use changes that will financially benefit the Developer and allow them to transfer the school site to the City at no cost, including:

  1. Modifying the designation of the 12- acre School site to allow both school and park uses. This will allow the playground( s), recreational field( s), and other amenities to be used by both the school community as well as the residential neighborhood.
  2. Incorporating the 1.5 acre Chabot Creek into the Community Park and increase the acreage devoted to Medium Density Residential by 1.5 acres. Although this will allow the Developer more flexibility in where the residential development takes place, the Specific Plan limit of 1 , 995 residential units will not be exceeded;
  3. Re-designating the 13- acre ” Mixed Use” site on the corner of Arnold and Dublin Boulevard to ” General Commercial/ DC High-Density Residential”, thereby removing the requirement for both the 5-acre Neighborhood Park site and a minimum of 75, 000 square feet of commercial development on this parcel within the site.
  4. Remove the requirement to provide construction funding for a 5-acre Neighborhood Park  ($2.143 million);
  5. Remove requirement for the final Community Benefit Payment ($1 .2 million)

In Feb 7, 2017 City provided an update on the timeline from Initial MOU till date.Item 7.2 – 1309 Overview of Dublin Crossing School Site.  After deliberations the Council decides to form a 4 member committee  2 from the city (Don Biddle – Vice Mayor, Abe Gupta – CC Member) and 2 from School Board (Dan Cunnigham, Joe G) to discuss and negotiate about the Dublin Crossings school site.

Now, In May 2017, in a proposed agreement which is not public yet, City will provide the 9 acres out of 12 acres which were given by developer to the city earlier in 2015 to the school for free.
In turn, City will sell the 3 acres of the remaining 12 acres to the developer which adds revenue to the city.

With the lack of funding available to construct the school, the Dublin School Board’s only option to fund the new school would be to use Measure H bond money.

When Measure H was floated, the following priorities were assigned.

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After Community outcry, this resolution was changed to this  

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Note the 2nd resolution was changed from money allocation to Partial Build out.  

Again, after community outcry regarding the amount of money allocated to the Dublin Crossing school project, the resolution was changed for the 3rd time to fund a design only.  See below.

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If the Dublin School Board is moving forward with a plan to use a significant portion of the Measure H bond money to build out the Dublin Crossing school, it is a deception and betrayal to the community about commitments and priorities.  

The Dublin School Board has access to $60 Million from round 1 of the Measure H funding and will be able to access another $90 Million from round 2 (which was accelerated by the School Board) by August or September of this year.  That is a total of $150 Million available for the next few years.  

The Dublin School Board has already obligated approximately $21.2 Million out of Measure H on 2nd level priority items, which are as follows:  

  1. Jordan Ranch (newly named Cottonwood Creek School, K-8) was allocated $15 Million
  2. The Dublin High School new 3-story flexible classroom/athletics/maintenance building was allocated approximately $6.2 Million.

That leaves the Dublin School Board with approximately $124M of unobligated/untouched Measure H funds that are accessible over the next few years.     

If 109M was planned for Zeiss which was voted down on May 23rd and 70m can be redirected to use fo Dublin crossing schools and 32M for Engineering and Science building in existing DHS.. it gets a total of 211M. Can’t this money be used to build a 2nd high school at Promenade or Chen and build it earlier?

If elementary needs are there for incoming students from Dublin crossings, why can’t Neilsen be renovated and used for it ? 

Related : East Bay times article

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