Opposition Mobilizing To Proposed Lum School Closure

ALAMEDA, CA — A recommendation will be made this evening at an emergency school board meeting to close Lum Elementary School at the end of this school year. The move follows an engineering report that the soil beneath the school is subject to liquifaction, meaning that it will become unstable, in the event of a major earthquake.

Not so fast, says an opposition group that has sprung-up to stop the proposed closure. A petition has been started on change.org titled "Save Lum Elementary" that reads, in part, "We urge the Board of Education to slow down this process and to take the time to make plans that allow our students to remain at Lum. Take the time to make a plan that isn’t just a knee-jerk reaction, but allows for flexible and creative solutions. Take the next 6 months to send professionals to the drawing board so they can come up with an approach that will not tear apart and destroy our community, and addresses structural issues over time rather than all at once."

The petition has more than 500 signatures at the moment.

The school district has seen the petition and responded, “We understand why people are upset. Families and staff become deeply connected to both their campuses and their school communities. We also hope that community members will listen carefully and openly to the engineers and architects tonight before dismissing the concerns they have raised based on testing and analysis. We are listening to the community, and we have a lot of empathy, but we want to be clear that based on expert analysis, we believe this is a matter of student and employee safety.”

See the petition

The school district has created a web page explaining the problem with Lum soil.

Tonight's special meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. at Wood Middle School.

-Top photo via Google Street View

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• Meeting Friday on Future of Lum Elementary
• School Closure: Lum Elementary Expected To Be Shuttered