El Cerrito, CA – Several staff members of Stege Elementary School protested the conditions that they and their students are facing at the West Contra Costa Unified School District Board of Education meeting earlier this month.

 Stege Elementary, located in Richmond, was pronounced closed this July for up to three years for repairs and renovations. The announcement came after the discovery of asbestos and lead in the building, materials that have been banned due to their harmful effects on health.

 Following the school’s closure, buses have been provided to transport Stege’s 250 students, in grades kindergarten through sixth, to and from DeJean Middle School where they will attend school until Stege reopens.

 In addition to parents’ ongoing concerns over how the change will affect their children, teachers recently expressed frustration with the situation, claiming that students are not receiving a proper education in the new location. Teachers have been unable to reclaim items that were left at Stege over the summer that they believe are necessary for a comfortable and successful learning environment.

 “It is frustrating to see that we do not have access to materials that are essential to our curriculum,” said Sonia Perez, a first grade teacher at Stege, at the November school board meeting. “We cannot be at our best if we do not have what we need to teach.”

Reached on Thursday afternoon, District superintendent Chris Hurst said no one from the administration could comment by this publication’s Friday evening deadline about the parents and teachers’ complaints aired at the meeting, which took place on Nov. 6th. Protests over the district’s handling of the situation have occurred over multiple monthly school board meetings following the school’s closure.

 Many Stege staff and community members are advocating for better treatment of themselves and their classrooms after failed attempts to retrieve supplies and personal items from the old campus.

 “Currently, years worth of dedication and hardwork is sitting in our closets while we are at a different school site, attempting to make it a functional classroom,” Perez said. “We are on day 55 of our school year and I don’t think we have finished putting our classrooms together.”

The relocated Stege teachers have received desks and chairs and other miscellaneous materials from DeJean, as well as donations from third party charities and community members, but many feel that students are suffering from a lack of other supplies.

 “The desks that were provided are not conducive to learning. My students don’t even have desks where they can put all of their materials,” said Theresa Griffin, who teaches sixth grade at Stege. 

 Griffin said during the meeting that the school’s closing in August was the first that the staff had heard about asbestos and lead in the school, which was built before such materials had been banned. When teachers left the Stege Campus for the summer last June, they believed they would be returning in August to all of their personal items and teaching materials left in the classroom.  

 Sam Cleare, a third grade teacher on release from Stege who is currently serving as the organizing chair for United Teachers of Richmond expressed disappointment with how the school board has handled the situation.

 “This treatment is inexcusable and oppressive as well as yet another Williams violation by WCCUSD, which is causing real harm and educational loss to Stege students,” Cleare said in reference to the lack of support and supplies that Stege has received this school year. “Instead of students getting to engage in hands-on learning activities with the supplies our curriculum requires, they are stuck on computers, which is not consistent with our curriculum.” 

 Tangynekia Jules had been a secretary at Stege for over 10 years, and says that it is not just classrooms that are suffering from the relocation. 

“Office furniture plays a critical role in creating a productive comfortable work environment” Jules explained. “ It is more than just functional, and can have a great effect on efficiency and well being. Right now in the office we are using other school’s trash as furniture.”

 The items currently in the temporary office were donated from other schools in the district, but Jules says that they are not enough to create a welcoming space for students, staff, and parents. Items that she requests be retrieved from the Stege site include health records, radios for staff communication, refrigerators for staff, coats and shoes that the school received in donation from Subaru for students from low income families who cannot afford winter clothes, and office machines like poster makers and laminators.

 Jules said that gaining access to these items and more that are trapped at the old location will allow “students, staff and our community to feel like this is a school and not a prison camp, where students are bussed in and bussed out every day.”