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Briannon Fraley knows first-hand the physical, emotional and monetary toll Del Norte Unified School District’s dilapidated facilities can have on families.

Her son, who was a Pine Grove Elementary School student at the time, still has the scar, and she remembers the medical bill that was sent to collections.

“They had a bring-your-bike-to-school day and the facilities outside are in disrepair and he crashed because the cement was uneven and that resulted in having to go to the ER,” Fraley told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Friday. “We had to forcefully hold him down and he had to get a big needle in his face. Then the medical bill and expenses passed on to me.”

Fraley, a member of the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation and a parent leader in True North Organizing Network, told her family’s story at a news conference the non-profit civil rights law firm, Public Advocates and Goodwin Procter LLP hosted Wednesday.

After the event, the attorneys sent a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials urging them to change the way the state distributes school modernization dollars or face a legal challenge to a public education statewide bond measure slated for the Nov. 5 ballot.

The non-profit law firm states that the current school facilities funding mechanism often requires local school districts to pay for 40 percent of their modernization costs through general obligation bonds. It argues that this puts low-income districts at a disadvantage over wealthier districts, since they often have a smaller tax base. Wealthier districts can raise more money from their communities and have the resources to apply for grant dollars.

“We’re not saying there shouldn’t be local bonds, [we’re saying] the state shouldn’t give 60 percent to every district no matter what their local bonding capacity or ability to raise funds is,” Public Advocates deputy managing attorney Nicole Gon Ochi told the Outpost. “A district like Del Norte should get more and a district like Beverly Hills should get less.”

Public Advocates had already been partnering with grassroots organizations like True North, which is how Gon Ochi and her colleagues learned about Del Norte Unified School District.

According to Public Advocates’ demand letter, which was also sent to Attorney General Rob Bonta and Tony Thurmond, state superintendent of public instruction, the California School Facility Program allocates limited state dollars to local districts for facility modernization. Modernization applies to any modifications to a permanent school structure that is at least 25 years old or to portable classrooms that are at least 20 years old.

Repairs include lighting and electrical systems upgrades, plumbing and roofing improvements as well as technology updates. To obtain state modernization dollars, districts must apply to the Office of Public School Construction.

Public Advocates’ demand letter comes as the DNUSD Board of Trustees is considering placing a local facilities bond measure on the November ballot. According to district spokesman Michael Hawkins, the Board contracted with financial advisor Jon Isom to survey the community to see if they will support a bond measure.
Survey results are expected to come back to the Board of Trustees at its March 14 meeting, Hawkins said.

“We’ll have a better idea as to how the community feels about a bond moving forward,” he said.

In February 2022, Del Norte Unified trustees decided against putting a bond measure before voters during the November midterm election despite then-director of facilities and maintenance Steve Morgan in June 2021 telling them that a successful bond measure could help pay for eight modernization projects totaling $47 million roughly.

The most recent bond measure Del Norte voters approved was for $25 million in 2008. That bond measure paid for a new gym at Smith River School as well as renovations at Crescent Elk Middle School and Del Norte High School. DNUSD exhausted those bond dollars in 2021, according to Public Advocates’ demand letter.

Josh McCubbin, who has been DNUSD’s director of facilities and maintenance for about a year, said he’s working off a 100-page facilities master plan Morgan created in 2022. The plan outlines the exterior renovations needed at several schools including Gasquet Mountain School, Smith River, Redwood, Bess Maxwell and Pine Grove. DNUSD officials had been using it to set a priority list for pursuing state funding for those projects, McCubbin said.

McCubbin said his main goal as facilities and maintenance director is to keep the weather out. After 22 years of working in the department, he said he knows what a lot of the maintenance needs are.

“We have two or three schools that are kind of on that waiting list for exterior renovation, roof, dry rot repair [and] paint,” he said.

McCubbin said much of that work had been the focus of an exterior renovation project at Joe Hamilton Elementary School about three years ago. Plans for similar projects have been drawn up for Mountain, Redwood, Smith River, Bess Maxwell and Pine Grove schools, though they need to be refreshed because they’re about four years old now.

“One of the things my predecessor was good at was finding other moneys through other state funding,” he said, adding that Morgan was often able to obtain state facilities hardship dollars to reimburse up to 60 percent of the total project cost.

Morgan also used dollars DNUSD received through the 2008 GO bond along with state dollars to pay for those projects.

Public Advocates say the state’s “hardship funding solution” has been ineffective at making access to state facilities dollars easier for low-income school districts.

According to its demand letter, to obtain hardship dollars, districts must show that their outstanding indebtedness is at least 60 percent of its total bonding capacity; that its bonding capacity threshold is lower than $5 million; that it held a bonding election within two years for the maximum allowed through state law; that the superintendent performed a complete review of the district’s finances; or that it has made other “reasonable efforts” to match the state’s modernization dollars.

Public Advocates state that even Del Norte voters approved a bond measure in November, it would “only scratch the surface of the need for facilities modernization due to Del Norte’s extremely low bonding capacity per student.”

Though McCubbin’s goal is to keep the weather out of DNUSD’s buildings, Fraley said parents see another perspective. She said one parent told her that their child, a Crescent Elk Middle School student, had broken their foot and was unable to participate in her classes because they were upstairs.

Crescent Elk is old, Fraley said, and much of it is out of compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

For her own family, besides her now 13-year-old having a scar on his face from his bicycle accident, Fraley said her boys, three of whom still go to Pine Grove, beginning to realize that some schools have it better than they do. During the news conference on Wednesday, Fraley spoke about a trip her family took to Big Lagoon Elementary School for a Yurok traditional story shadow puppet show.

“When we got there, the kids saw this beautiful field and they ran out onto it and said, ‘Mom, can we go to school here?’” Fraley told the Outpost. “My kids go to Pine Grove and they’re not allowed to go into the field because it’s too dangerous. We are seriously considering taking them out of Del Norte County school district and bussing them down to Big Lagoon because we’re not getting our needs met.”

Del Norte parents often don’t realize the inequities that exist at their child’s school, Fraley said, which is why True North is trying to create a more welcome and inclusive space especially at Crescent Elk Middle School.

Other grassroots organizations participating in the demand for a more equitable school facilities funding in California include Building Healthy Communities — Monterey County, Inland Congregations United for Change in San Bernardino County, Gary Hardy Jr., member of the Lynwood Unified School District Board of Trustees in Los Angeles County.

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