When Pacific Gas and Electric turned the power off in Marin last fall, schools were forced to close and instruction time was lost. With another round of planned public safety shutoffs anticipated next year, schools are building makeup days into their calendars and creating contingency plans to stay open.
Nicasio School reached an agreement with the owner of Rancho Nicasio to hold class there during an outage, Lagunitas and Bolinas-Stinson Schools are aiming to stay open with generators to power essential systems, and the five schools in Shoreline Unified School District will likely close unless a proposed microgrid in Tomales is built in time, according to superintendent Bob Raines.
When school days are missed, districts must file a J-13A form, which asks the California Department of Education to credit attendance due to emergency conditions. Local administrators believe the state will approve the forms this year but are unsure whether that will continue, given that outages are expected. State education code stipulates when schools may close without losing funding: “because of fire, flood, earthquake, or epidemic…an emergency created by war, or because of other extraordinary conditions.”
Without specific language about power outages, Mr. Raines is hopeful the shutoffs will be considered extraordinary. “There really isn’t a way most schools can stay open in a power outage,” he said. The septic systems at West Marin and Inverness Schools require electricity, and the wells at schools in Tomales and Bodega Bay require electricity for faucets to flow.
“We talked about generators, but the size is pretty prohibitive, and in terms of fuel, they don’t burn clean,” Mr. Raines said. “There’s a lot of drawbacks when you talk about a generator to run that large of a system.” Holding class off site is also not feasible, he said. In March, Shoreline’s board will hear back from CleanSpark, a microgrid company that is exploring building a microgrid in Tomales, which would keep schools open during an outage. If approved, the grid could go online as soon as this fall, and CleanSpark would begin another feasibility study for a microgrid at West Marin and Inverness Schools.
For the smaller districts in West Marin, staying open seems more likely. Nicasio School’s 40 students are served well by having Rancho Nicasio just a half-mile down the road. During last year’s outage, not much changed at the concert venue and restaurant. Its two generators power the kitchen, lights and internet; under a new agreement, classes can use the bathrooms, tables and chairs for $250 a day. Permission slips are being sent home and teachers are gathering ready-made tubs of supplies, lessons and activities. “If we forget anything, we can just come get it,” said Barbara Snekkevik, the principal. “It’s really exciting, and what an opportunity.”
At the Bolinas-Stinson Union School District, the board has encouraged superintendent John Carroll to request proposals from contractors to install industrial generators that power the entire Bolinas campus. Classrooms get natural sunlight and bathrooms have battery-powered lights, but the kitchen and office require electricity to function. The project is expected to cost less than $100,000.
“We’re going to bend over backwards to try to stay open next year,” Mr. Carroll said. “That’s a big project for us.” Plans for the Stinson Beach campus haven’t been made.
Mr. Carroll is also the superintendent at Lagunitas School, where powering all of campus is not yet a goal, but staying open is. The district bought a portable generator last year to run its septic system, but it was stolen out of a barn this month. Jeff Lippstreu, the chief business official, said insurance should cover the $3,500 needed to replace the equipment, and he is considering a second generator for the kitchen.
At the one-room schoolhouses in West Marin, Laguna School and Lincoln School, makeup days were already built into the school calendars. Students will be released three days later in June this year because of the October shutoffs.
Other districts are following suit for next year, in case their backup plans don’t work out. Nicasio’s 2020-2021 calendar includes teacher workdays that can become regular school days on the Monday after winter break and the Friday after school is set to end. Shoreline and Lagunitas added makeup days on the Fridays before spring break and Memorial Day weekend, and Bolinas-Stinson School added its makeup days at the end of the year, after graduation. If more than two days are missed, the schools will have to file a J-13A form.