Stolen Emergency Supplies Leave Bancroft Middle School Vulnerable

Raleigh McLemore’s mother always said he was a two-legged disaster. So the soon-to-retire  teacher has an acute concern for disaster preparedness, especially when it comes to making sure his school — which, like all San Leandro schools, — is prepared to shelter and care for its students in case of an emergency. 

But McLemore, who’s a member of the school’s emergency preparedness team, says the school and the district have put students’ and staff members’ lives at risk by failing to replace emergency equipment and supplies that were reported stolen from Bancroft three months ago. 

“It’s a fool’s game to play,” McLemore told school administrators and trustees at a recent meeting of the ’s Board of Education. 

“The school is no longer prepared to care for and shelter kids in an emergency.” 

McLemore, aka Mr. Mac, has repeated the warning numerous times in emails to Bancroft administrators and district officials since he discovered the supplies were gone on March 14. 

Missing items include four emergency kits stocked with first aid supplies for 50 people each; shovels and other search and rescue tools; three 100-ft. rolls of plastic sheeting for shelter in case buildings are destroyed or too precarious for refuge; a small generator; and emergency lights. 

“All the first aid equipment of significance was stolen,” McLemore said. 

What’s left amounts to little more than one case of eye patches, a case of sanitary napkins and a “hodgepodge of Band-Aids,” according to McLemore. 

The thieves also passed over the school’s supply of emergency food rations — enough for about 300 people for two days — and its supply of nutrition bars and individual drinking water packets. The bars and water are set to expire in August. 

The emergency “ark,” as it’s called, is stored in a 40-foot steel storage container across the street from the middle school. It’s one of seven arks scattered throughout San Leandro — mostly at sites designated as potential community shelters — that the City used to maintain as part of its emergency readiness program. 

However, that program was gutted two years ago under budget constraints, and responsibility for most of the arks was handed off to the schools and churches where they’re located. (The City still maintains two arks on its property.) 

Kathy Ornelas, who serves as the city’s de facto emergency services coordinator, said it had cost about $30,000 per year to maintain the arks. A City employee would check them every two months to make sure they hadn’t been burglarized, and to check expiration dates on products and restock them when necessary, according to Ornelas. 

Besides funding concerns, the ark program was discontinued because the City determined that it was more practical to rely on the Red Cross to provide supplies in an emergency, since the arks could only provide for a tiny percentage of the city’s residents, Ornelas said. 

The San Leandro Unified School District was given control over two arks, one at Bancroft and one at . According to school district Superintendent Cindy Cathey, the arks were given by the city with the understanding that the supplies within might not be maintained. 

While the school district has designated funding for emergency plans and equipment at each of its schools, the arks appear to exist in a sort of no-man’s land between the city’s two most important, and financially crippled, public agencies. 

Cathey said the district hadn’t yet determined whether it could afford to replace the stolen supplies. “We’re still assessing it,” she said, adding that one estimate put the price tag for replenishing the ark at up to $10,000. (McLemore said he thought everything but the generator, which he doesn’t consider vital, could be replaced for about $3,000.) 

Cathey said she hoped the school district’s “revitalized” partnerships with the city and county would allow them to find common resources to maintain the two arks. She also said that, given an improved outlook for the district’s budget, a line item could potentially be added for replacing lost emergency supplies and building them up.

But an emergency like the “big one” might not wait for good intentions to play out, McLemore warns. 

“The earthquake could happen right now,” he said, “…and people will be hurt for lack of very small things.” 

A string of emails from McLemore to Bancroft administrators and district officials illustrate the teacher’s concerted effort to get the stolen emergency supplies replaced as quickly as possible, or at the very least, to get one emergency kit on loan from another school until replacements could be purchased. 

The emails also suggest bureaucratic foot-dragging, as Bancroft administrators continually put off purchasing the supplies while awaiting a response from the district.   

“My experience is delay and failure to realize how important it is to have these [supplies] in there,” McLemore said. 

He added that responsibility for keeping the arks stocked and maintained should fall to the district, he believes, not to individual schools. Several calls made by Patch to Bancroft administrators on Thursday and Friday were not returned. 

Frustrated by the inaction, McLemore took the ark case directly to the school board last week. He also planned to speak at a San Leandro Lions Club meeting this week about the problem, and was in contact with other potential benefactors. 

“I’m going to do everything I can to get this by begging, but that’s not the way to do it,” he said. 

In one of his emails to colleagues, McLemore, who’s retiring this month, wrote that his goal “was always to leave Bancroft more prepared than when I arrived and I'm feeling like I screwed up.” 

Besides replenishing the ark, McLemore says teachers should receive first aid and search and rescue training, and that the school should immediately inventory the emergency supply buckets that all teachers keep in their classrooms. He opened his bucket in the wake of the ark theft only to find that a cold pack had broken open and ruined most of the supplies. 

Bancroft’s ark has served as more than just an emergency supply store for the school and the community. McLemore, who up until his last year taught earth science to sixth graders, said he used to take his students to the ark to learn what to include in a home earthquake emergency kit. 

“We made a field trip out of it,” he said. “It was a teachable place.” 

Plus, he said, seeing the safety equipment dedicated to potentially saving students’ lives “made them feel happy,” and, presumably, more secure. Now, he said, he doesn’t feel that security for himself, let alone for the kids. 

“I think most parents have an expectation that if they leave their kids here, we’ll take care of them,” he said. “And we can’t now.”