OAKLAND (KPIX) — It was an emotional night for many students in the Oakland Unified School District Monday as they faced the possibility of losing their schools. Hundreds of community members showed up for the school board meeting to oppose the campus closures and consolidations proposed for the next two school years.

In 2006, Oakland embraced a small-school model to better serve impoverished neighborhoods. But there are those on the school board who think that was a financial mistake and they’re looking to change it. And they’re not wasting any time doing it.

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The proposed closure list was released to the public on Sunday. Six schools — Brookfield, Carl Munck, Prescott, Grass Valley, Parker, Community Day School — are recommended for closure at the end of this academic year. Two other schools — Horace Mann Elementary and Korematsu Discovery Academy — would close after next year, with their students then being reassigned to other schools.

Additionally, three schools would merge onto other campuses after this school year with Manzanita Community School moving to join Fruitvale Elementary the following year. The community just found out about the possible closure last Friday and it has organized quickly to try to save this school.

The Manzanita Community School held a Monday night viewing party, as parents, teachers and students united to fight the possible school closure. On Zoom, roughly 1600 people raised their hand for a chance to speak during the board meeting.

“Teachers have really helped me to get my children to the right path of education,” said Manzanita parent Tania Chi.

“You’re looking for family involvement but your also looking for that personal touch, said Pablo Pitcher Deproto. “When you have a smaller school, you just have more of an ability to reach those students.”

OUSD says it has too many small schools which makes it difficult to upkeep facilities and drives down salaries for teachers.

“Part of the narrative is we can’t give the teachers raises unless we close schools is incredibly offensive to pit us and our salaries against our school communities,” says Carrie Anderson, a teacher at Manzanita Community School.

Chi thinks the closure would have a huge impact on the largely low-income families at the school.

“I think parents would have to get up and move,” she said. “They would have to make a lot of schedule re-arranging throughout their day, and we don’t have a lot of help throughout the day.”

Oakland Unified officials said they are seeking community engagement by holding the special meeting Monday night. However, that meeting comes just one day after the list was released.

“How are we going to engage?” said Regina Morones, a Manzanita staff employee since 2006 when the school was founded. “How are we going to say anything? How are we going to show up at the board meeting if it’s on Zoom? So, to me, it’s all a strategy to make sure there’s as little push back as possible.”

Board President Gary Yee said OUSD has too many small, under-enrolled schools and it’s a financial burden preventing the district from providing adequate service to the community. He said larger, more regional schools would save money that could be put toward higher teacher salaries and a more effective operation.

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Though the district is not currently in a financial crisis, Yee said there’s no use waiting for things to get worse.

When he was asked if it was reasonable to take a vote only eight days after the closure list was released to the public, Yee replied, “Ummm…I understand the anger and the worries and the concern. I believe the process is one that is comprehensive and sufficiently detailed for us to consider.”

As for holding the public meeting the day after the list was revealed, Yee added he didn’t expect that anyone’s minds would be changed anyway.

“It’s super hard for people to consider something other than what they’re familiar with,” he said.

District 5 Director Mike Hutchinson alerted the community about the 6 schools on the closure list.

“We have no financial crisis,” sats Hutchinson. “We have a mismanagement crisis.”

Hutchinson is outraged that some of his fellow school board members are trying to push through school closures, especially during a pandemic.

Hutchinson adds, “There’s been no engagement, no process, they gave a ten day timeline to close schools permanently. The biggest issue is we don’t have an emergency going on right now that says we have to make these decisions in the next few days.”

But what the community gets from Manzanita seems pretty important. The school keeps a storeroom stocked with food, clothing and school supplies for families that can’t afford them. But they also have everyday staples like toilet paper and toothbrushes.

Afterschool program director Angela Phung said that could change if they had to move to a regional school.

“They wouldn’t be able to get what they need for their families,” she said.

OUSD’s mission statement says it strives to be a “full-service community district.” Parents with children at the schools being impacted by the proposal are left wondering how far they will have to travel to access it.

Board members say they plan to vote on the proposal eight days later at another special meeting scheduled for February 8th.

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Andrea Nakano contributed to this report.

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Nick Shoman has been with Charlie’s Pharmacy since he was 12 when his parents bought the storefront on Fillmore Street and Golden Gate Avenue. He started helping out on the floor and quickly got to know the names of the customers.

Almost 35 years later, Shoman now runs the business with his brother, and the family-owned drugstore has become an integral part of the neighborhood.

Shoman knows his regular customers and their families and calls his pharmacist Hank Chen the “best in San Francisco” because he takes time for each customer to look after and advise them individually. Charlie’s Pharmacy works with nearby nonprofits to offer delivery and bulk orders. Shoman will occasionally agree to refill prescriptions on credit for customers in financial distress.

Shoman says that’s a far cry from Walgreens, which recently announced plans to close five San Francisco locations.

“In a chain of stores, customers are just numbers,” he said.

Walgreens blamed uncontrolled retail theft for the recent wave of closings.

A Walgreens at 300 Gough St. is among San Francisco stores that are closing due to ongoing retail theft. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

Yet even San Francisco – which is known to be particularly tough on retail chains – has relatively little leverage over Walgreens or other corporate retailers when it comes to closing stores. This reality has left officials vying for recourse and struggling to find a way forward to prevent something similar from happening again.

Independent drugstores could be a way to fill the void left by corporate outlets in some communities.

Owners can live well, and the stores offer customers bespoke services and attention that they may not find in chain competitors, according to David Valencia, manager at Reliable Rexall Sunset Pharmacy.

“I think you will see more independents emerge,” he said.

Rexall Drugs in the Inner Sunset pharmacist David Valencia says his store offers specialty products that most chains don’t have. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

Any control the city has over the flow of business in and out of the market is done through the permitting process overseen by the planning commission.

For example, San Francisco’s formula retail ban prevents businesses with more than 11 locations from opening in certain business districts such as Hayes Valley, North Beach, and Chinatown, although exemptions may be granted.

Chains like Walgreens are required to obtain conditional use permits to operate in most other locations – which requires a thorough review by the planning committee to determine the impact on the surrounding neighborhood – and sometimes the applicant requires mitigating measures.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin even proposed legislation in July that would make it difficult for a new business to replace a laundromat. The aim is to protect laundromat owners from predatory landlords and to prevent these dwindling businesses from closing further.

However, none of these measures force a company to stay open or to encourage a certain type of storefront – like a pharmacy – to take up a vacancy.

Valencia, who has over 40 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including his time with several large chains, wants to make it known that independent drugstores can compete with their chain counterparts.

Rexall was once a widespread national chain, but it was phased out in the 1970s after being sold to private investors. Some franchise locations, such as the one on Ninth Avenue and Irving Street, were allowed to continue using the name but have no connection with the former Behometh and are now independently operated.

At Rexall, Valencia offers personalized customer advice, supplies products to elderly residents in the neighborhood, carries special health products and promotes wellness coaching opportunities. He says the store has established itself in the community by developing meaningful, lasting relationships with returning customers.

“Walgreens isn’t really a competition,” he said. “We can offer special products that most chains don’t have, and we’re more agile.”

From left, pharmacist David Valencia worked with pharmacy technicians Adam Le and Marc Adriano at Rexall Drugs on October 19. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

However, these outstanding qualities can only be offered when business is up and running. This is an expensive and time consuming process that has historically given many larger retailers an advantage over smaller ones.

In the wake of the pandemic, San Francisco has already taken steps to relieve local traders: Proposition H streamlines the approval process and increases flexibility for new small businesses. Shared spaces enable companies to operate more easily in parts of public space. And Mayor London Breed backed a bill that provides $ 5 million in fee waivers, reliefs and deferrals.

Valencia and Shoman would like more support. In addition to helping individual traders, they say it reinvigorates entire trade corridors by preventing vacancies and increasing pedestrian traffic – which itself could act as a deterrent to the type of retail crime that Walgreens cited as the reason for its departure.

“There are a lot of stores that have closed during the pandemic and it affects me because I used to have some of that pedestrian traffic,” Shoman said. “If I have free business around me, it does not help me and is of no use to anyone.”

In the name of economic recovery, other potential solutions have focused more on enforcement.

Supervisor Ahsha Safai, whose district is about to close one of five Walgreens locations in Excelsior, passed a law in September that allows sheriff’s deputies to work off-duty as security guards in private companies.

This option is already made available to officers in the San Francisco Police Department, so the program would only extend the option to law enforcement in the sheriff’s office.

“If we don’t take care … we’re not going to make people feel safe going back to The City,” said Safai. “We have to take care of it. I definitely don’t want to go back to the time of over-incarceration, but this has to stop. “

As for the fixes, however, doubling enforcement isn’t seen as the best way forward by everyone, even those who acknowledge that organized retail theft continues to haunt the city.

“That’s why it’s so important to understand why they’re actually closing, and not just take their representations at face value,” said District Five Supervisor Dean Preston. “It’s hard to come up with a solution to this or other stores closing without information on why they are closing.”

Residents and elected officials alike expressed frustration with Walgreens over the wave of closings. They phrased the decision as a decision for the drugstore to leave the community and leave seniors, families and other individuals who rely on pharmacies near their homes without warning.

“It’s a neighborhood where residents, especially the elderly and other vulnerable community members, depend on having a pharmacy nearby,” Preston said of the 300 Gough St site closure Local community.”

In contrast, independent drug stores are typically close partners in the community.

“We don’t care about the lower dollar,” Shoman said. “We’re pretty empathetic when it comes to our customers.”

cgraf@sfexaminer.com

Rexall Drugs in the Sunset is operated independently. (Kevin N. Hume / The Examiner)

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In response to the unflattering tale, the elected leaders and progressive activists of San Francisco questioned the legitimacy of Walgreen’s statement for the store closings.

“They say that’s the main reason, but I also think when a place is not generating revenue and when it’s saturated – SF has a lot of Walgreens locations across the city – so I think there are other factors that are ins Game coming, ”Mayor London Breed told reporters on Wednesday.

Supervisor Dean Preston then wrote a Twitter thread complaining that “media reports without analysis have accepted Walgreens’ claim that it will be closed for retail theft,” and shared a 2019 SEC filing in which Walgreens announced plans to close 200 stores.

“So is Walgreens closing stores for theft or because of a pre-existing business plan to reduce costs and increase profits by consolidating stores and moving customers to online purchases?” asked Preston.

The city’s leaders and critics alike seem highly motivated to preserve their respective narratives, and the online discourse about the Walgreens closings is as polarized as one would expect when it comes to San Francisco crime.

To understand if Walgreens is telling the truth, let’s start with the SEC filing of August 2019, which Preston and other city progressives largely share. It states that the company plans to close “around 200 locations in the US” as part of a “cost management program” announced in December 2018.

For reference, the closings made up about 3% of Walgreens’ nearly 10,000 locations in the United States, CNBC reported, and Walgreens has closed 10 San Francisco locations since early 2019.

A Walgreens spokesperson told SFGATE in an email that the cost-cutting program to shut down locations in San Francisco was “pre-completed” before it was announced on Wednesday that five more stores would be closing.

When SFGATE asked Walgreens to respond directly to Preston and others’ allegations that the chain was considering considerations other than retail theft, the spokesman stopped returning emails.

Theft theft is up nearly 8% year-over-year, according to the San Francisco Crime Dashboard, although crime stats are skewed downwards in 2020 as the early days of the pandemic nearly brought life to a halt and forced temporary store closings.

If you compare the thefts of 2021 with the numbers before the pandemic of 2019, you will find that the number of thefts has actually decreased. From January 1, 2021 to October 10, 2021, there were 21,842 reports of theft, and over the same period in 2019 there were 31,958 reports, a decrease of 31.6%.

There were 33,312 reports of theft in the same period in 2018 and 35,483 reports in that period in 2017, so the number of theft reports has actually decreased in recent years.

Analyzing San Francisco’s crime statistics without external reference doesn’t tell the whole story, however, as the city has a higher than average rate of property crime. FBI data from 2017 showed that San Francisco had the highest property crime rate per capita of the 20 largest cities in the United States, and SF had the highest property crime rate in the state of California in 2019.

However, the data does not support the assumption that theft has increased significantly in recent years – although there has been an increase in viral videos depicting brazen thefts. Walgreens could argue that San Francisco retail theft rates are still so high that year-over-year declines don’t move the needle and the San Francisco operations remain unprofitable, but the company hasn’t opened its books – and will probably not doing it for perusal.

It’s also worth noting that theft encompasses a broader range of crimes than just retail theft, including theft of bicycles, automotive parts and accessories. San Francisco does not report isolated statistics on retail theft, let alone isolated drugstore theft.

Regardless, the Walgreens and San Francisco crime-related situation is a little more complex than the prevailing narratives suggest.

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