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City looks to team with school district for youth services center
FAIRFIELD — The city will meet with school officials Tuesday to present its proposal to turn the vacant Sullivan Middle School into a youth services center, which could one day house the Matt Garcia PAL Center.
The Fairfield-Suisun School District will hold a joint meeting with city staff and police to discuss housing several services under one roof. The meeting takes place at 5:30 p.m. at the district office located at 2490 Hilborn Road.
Dubbed the Interagency Youth Services Center for now, City Manager Sean Quinn said he hopes it will become a place for troubled youth to get the resources they need to avoid suspension or expulsion. He also talked about a home for mentoring and tutoring for children.
“Kids have gone through the PAL Center and they want to give back, but there’s not a place to do that,” he said.
Sullivan Middle School was closed earlier this school year during budget cuts. Its location, 2195 Union Ave., is attractive for the center due to the space and because is where many of the people it serves live, Quinn said.
If approved, the site would also one day be the new home for the Matt Garcia PAL Center. Quinn said the lease for the current location on Travis Boulevard expires in 2017. Aside from saving money – the lease costs $152,000 a year – the center has become so successful that it is outgrowing its current location, Quinn said.
“We’ve always assumed that in 2017 we would be looking for more locations,” Quinn said.
Some of the proposed services to locate at the center include school resource officers, crime and violence prevention, truancy remediation, youth and family services center, probation, counseling and a food and clothing closet, among many others.
Fairfield Police Chief Walt Tibbet said intervening with children at a young age before they are drawn into crime is imperative. He said locating all those services on one campus would help centralize the various areas of help some children need.
“Once they fall through the cracks and hit the street, it’s hard to get them back,” Tibbet said.
He said Sullivan also has room for nonprofits that serve youth, both to meet and to provide services. He said many groups actively look for ways to help and somewhere to do it.
The plan already has strong support from school district staff. Superintendent Jacki Cottingim-Dias, who will retire at the end of the current school year, said she looks forward to the partnership.
“It’s the perfect project to end my career with,” she said.
Reach Danny Bernardini at 427-6935 or dbernardini@dailyrepublic.net. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/dbernardinidr.
Danny Bernardini
Discussion | 7 comments
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CD BrooksFebruary 10, 2013 - 6:25 am
Have you looked around lately? Our population is growing. The district will probably have to reopen that school again in the next five years or so. Would it not be a better idea to do that now, possibly creating a 6 thru 9 school or any option that might lessen the burden of overcrowding? Why not think about moving the Matt Garcia center into the old Sam Yeto location downtown?
Reply |WoodyFebruary 10, 2013 - 6:41 am
There are plans in place right now to alleviate overcrowding by making some elementary schools k-8, Laurel Creek, Suisun El., and some others. Now we're going to make a perfectly good, measure C improved site a city/school district collaboration? The tax money paid for a school, not a variety of other interagency entities.
Reply |WoodyFebruary 10, 2013 - 6:52 am
I recall the outpouring of parental objections to closing Sullivan, and Bransford in the same vicinity. Where are these parents now? Are their children being better served by adding to the overcrowding at their new schools? This is just what the end line of the article stated, a feather in the superintendents hat. I agree with CD's observation.
Reply |GwenFebruary 10, 2013 - 2:55 pm
I agree with all these sentiments, but in defense of the parents, this is the first I've heard of this. And this district's recent history shows they are deaf to input from the community. Jacki's vanity projects tend to be announced once they're a done deal (see:Matt Garcia Learning Center school, the PSA, the new adult school). Given her history of Brown Act violations in Woodland, I'd love to see her get busted here. What a narcissist she is; more concerned with her own legacy than actually educating these kids. It's not enough she's the highest paid superintendent in the state? (Bonus: her condescending remark about how much easier a teacher's job is than hers; she's like a "CEO", thank you very much) http://californiawatch.org/k-12/despite-budget-woes-superintendents-pay-rises-18791?utm_source=CaliforniaWatch&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=facebook
Reply |L.February 10, 2013 - 1:12 pm
Jail would be the perfect way to end her career. We don't have money to run it as a school and for some mystifying reason kids are falling through the cracks? Yet we do have the money to run it as the cops' vanity project? Heck NO!
Reply |Mr. PracticalFebruary 10, 2013 - 3:00 pm
L, I don't believe it would be at a cost to the school district. Just the opposite. It would bring in revenue.
Reply |L.February 10, 2013 - 8:42 pm
Now how do you get that? How much are we paying to service the debt on the Measure C structures and improvements at Sullivan? The peanuts the city might pay will not cover that cost. Also, how much more are we paying to service that debt since Jacki refinanced that debt a year or so ago? She did the exact same thing at Woodland and was chastised by their Grand Jury for not understanding what she was getting thiem into and for costing a significantly larger amount of money than they had been paying. We need Sullivan as a school and cramming kids into other schools is causing some families to pull their kids out of the district, thus losing ADA. I have several kids on my street alone who are going to private school now when they had been going to public school, because they closed our neighborhood schools.
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