It may seem impossible in one of the least-affordable real estate markets in the country. Except for city charter schools.

For the past 10 years, the alternative public schools have paid a relative pittance to rent space from the school district.

At 95 cents per square foot annually, the district was nearly $2 below Oakland’s charter school rental rate, $5 shy of Los Angeles and nearly $8 less than Berkeley, which has only one charter school that rents space.

To rent on the retail market would cost a school around 15 times what San Francisco Unified charges charters.

San Francisco district officials, who hadn’t raised charter school rent in five years, realized this year that they could charge more under state law and decided to triple the rent to $2.79, phasing in the increase over two years.

Eight charter schools will be hit with the increase, generating an additional $500,000 a year for the district. But charter schools and their advocates say any rent increase will have an impact on what happens in the classroom.

“For example, a school with a 20,000-square-foot facility would incur an increase of $34,400 per year for facilities expenses,” said Hilary Harmssen, the Bay Area regional director for the state charter association. “California Charter Schools Association schools would likely need to divert funds that are currently invested in the classroom for teachers, books and other learning materials.”

Rent parameters

Districts are allowed to charge charter schools what they spend per square foot to maintain buildings and grounds, costs that include security, maintenance, trash removal, gardening and custodial services.

In 2011, the district surveyed other Bay Area districts and found the wide discrepancy. Most charged between $2 and $4 per square foot, said district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe.

“This decision was reached after carefully reviewing similar practices in other districts, many of which we learned charge higher rates based on a different methodology than SFUSD had previously been using,” Blythe said.

San Francisco school board members said they were surprised to learn the district, for years, has been charging charters far less than other cities, where land isn’t worth nearly as much.

Charter schools have until May 1 to let the districts know whether they will stay or go.

District officials, however, were largely unsympathetic to the impacts on the city’s charter schools.

Fiscal responsibility

“Our budget has been slashed every year,” said school board member Jill Wynns. “There’s a lot of political pressure to just be nice to (charter schools). There’s nice and there’s bordering on fiscally irresponsible.”

At Gateway Public Schools, which has operated a charter high school in the city for 15 years and a middle school, officials were trying to figure out how to cover a $100,000 rent increase each of the next two school years.

“On the one hand I understand (the district’s) perspective,” said Sharon Olken, the executive director of the schools, which serve about 600 students. “They have a financial responsibility just as we do.”

And it was a bit of a wake-up call when Olken went looking for space in the retail world and found that commercial space costs $1.25 per square foot – per month.

“It was a sobering statistic,” she said. At the same time, “no one expects their rent to triple in two years. We budget an increase each year to account for inflation. That’s obviously not 200 percent.”

The increase over two years is the equivalent of about three teachers, Olken said.

“What I said to the district is from our perspective what we assumed was a fixed cost tripled,” she said. “Regardless what it started at, we are talking about real dollars that affect every student in our school.”

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jtucker@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-district-raises-charter-school-rent-4283891.php

The San Francisco Law Library sued the city Wednesday, alleging that officials would be violating the City Charter if they fail to provide it with adequate space to house its 250,000 law books.

The issue has been simmering for years and is coming to a head as the city is preparing to close the War Memorial Veterans Building across from City Hall in May for renovations.

The Veterans Building has housed the law library since 1995, when the library was moved out of City Hall for renovations after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. It was supposed to be a temporary solution, but the law library has remained there ever since.

Now its board of directors fears it will be homeless, despite San Francisco’s charter mandating that the city provide adequate space for the law library near the courthouse.

“For nearly two decades, we have tried to work with city officials to identify the appropriate space and facilities for the San Francisco Law Library,” Kurt Melchior, a partner at Nossaman LLP and president of the law library’s board of directors, said in a statement. “In 2013, it is beyond belief that San Francisco – a city which routinely seeks to protect its most vulnerable populations – is set to abandon such a vital public benefit.”

Melchior in November warned of a lawsuit, saying: “I’m shocked at the way the city has behaved. It’s a plain violation of the City Charter. We need to find a place right now.”

City Attorney Dennis Herrera‘s office declined to comment on the pending litigation, its standard practice.

The library, established in 1865 as the first law library in the state, is allotted 14,310 square feet in a building where sunlight streaming through the skylights has warped some books, Melchior said, and buckets used to catch leaking rain are scattered throughout the stacks. Library officials say two-thirds of their collection is in storage because they don’t have enough space.

Their lawsuit contends the library needs at least 30,000 square feet of space, and it seeks a court order preventing the city from evicting the law library from the Veterans Building until it provides adequate space elsewhere.

- John Coté

An apolitical new job: Last we heard from Christina Olague, she was leaving the Board of Supervisors after losing her bid for a four-year term to London Breed. And frankly, she didn’t sound too devastated about it.

“I’m happy to be going back to a quieter life,” she said shortly after the bruising campaign, though she had no details on what that quieter life would entail. “I want something very low key. A very slip-under-the-radar kind of job. A not-be-noticed-by-anybody-in-the-media kind of job.”

Well, we couldn’t let her off the hook that easily – and when we found out she had a new job, we did take notice. It’s as program assistant at Arriba Juntos, a Mission District nonprofit that promotes economic self-sufficiency through job training.

“It’s been very eye opening, and I’m just learning a lot,” Olague said, sounding downright chatty and upbeat compared with her tenure as supervisor. “I’m happy to be back in the community.”

Olague was appointed by Mayor Ed Lee in January 2012 to fill the District Five seat vacated by Ross Mirkarimi when he became sheriff. But when Olague voted in October to reinstate Mirkarimi as sheriff after the mayor suspended him for pleading guilty to a domestic violence-related misdemeanor, Lee stopped talking to his appointee.

And it doesn’t sound as if making amends with Olague was on Lee’s list of New Year’s resolutions. Asked if they’ve talked since she left office, Olague said, “No. Uh-uh,” and burst out laughing.

After a tough year where she faced a lot of criticism from progressives and moderates alike, Olague doesn’t sound eager to run for political office again anytime soon.

“Who knows?” she said. “In 30 years, when I’m 80, maybe I’ll run for something.”

- Heather Knight

E-mail: cityinsider@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SFCityInsider

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Law-Library-sues-city-over-book-space-4257558.php