28 Feb 2010
Noel VanDeviver and friend Laurie Green strap Christopher, 2, Noel and Derek VanDeviver's newly adopted son, into his car seat Sunday at Sacramento International Airport after picking him up at an adoption agency in South Florida. The Haitian quake sped up the adoption process.
Christopher, a Haitian orphan, has been through unknowable tragedy in the 2 years and 4 months he's been alive.
He's the size of a 1-year-old and hardly makes a peep, looking at the world with eyes wide open.
But his future is bright as can be.
Sunday, he arrived at Sacramento International Airport with his new parents, Natomas-area residents Derek and Noel VanDeviver.
Strapped securely to Noel's stomach, he was wearing khaki pants and socks with little cartoon monkeys on them.
The VanDevivers had been arranging his adoption with an orphanage in Port-au-Prince for the past year, and because of the earthquake, were able to bring Christopher home earlier than expected.
They said they wanted to adopt an international child, someone they could visit and send presents to at the orphanage. They visited Christopher in Haiti in July 2009 and thought they would not be able to take him home for another year or so.
"We were matched with Christopher because he and Derek look alike," said Noel.
Elated and exhausted, the couple said they hadn't slept since Thursday. They flew to south Florida on Friday to pick him up.
Although Christopher has not been formally adopted yet, the VanDevivers are confident the paperwork will be completed soon.
They got him out just as the Haitian government was cracking down on orphans leaving the country. The Associated Press reported that the government now requires Prime Minister Max Bellerive to personally authorize the departure of any child as a way to prevent child trafficking.
Christopher was one of 52 children from a Port-au-Prince orphanage flown to the United States aboard a chartered flight on Friday, Noel said.
Standing at the luggage claim, Noel said Christopher behaved well on the flight home. He threw up once, she said, probably because he was nervous.
The VanDevivers know he can walk, although they haven't seen him do it yet.
They haven't heard him speak either. But he seems to understand them, they said. When he started getting fussy on the flight home, Derek soothed him with a few Haitian Creole phrases.
"I was telling him it's going to be OK, and everything's fine," Derek said. "After that he seemed to understand and calm down."
Christopher is the second youngster from Haiti adopted after the earthquake by a family in the region. On Jan. 21, Marie Guerline Clerge, 7, arrived to join the family of Scott and Debbie Bryditzki of Lake of the Pines near Auburn.
Before the 6.9-magnitude quake on Jan. 12, Haiti was home to an estimated 380,000 youngsters living in orphanages or group homes, according the United Nations Children's Fund. Now, that number has probably increased by thousands, so many that officials won't venture a guess. Most of the other children at Christopher's orphanage were left behind, Noel said, tearing up.
Christopher is lucky. He's going home to parents who are already planning his education.
His biggest concern now is getting used to his new, suburban life. Noel will stay home for the next few months with him.
"The dogs will be the first obstacle," Noel said, laughing.
15 Feb 2010
Attorneys' fees are piling up for the Natomas Unified School District as it continues to battle two development firms that school officials allege charged too much for a 41-acre school site.
The bill so far: $454,878.03.
That includes all legal costs before and since the property's purchase in 2007, said Heidi Van Zant, school district spokeswoman.
And the tally is sure to continue. Natomas Unified sued both companies – AKT Investments Inc. and West Lakeside LLC, headed by developer Angelo K. Tsakopoulos – in September. Also named in the suit are Sacramento attorney Martin Steiner and the law firm where he works, Hefner, Stark & Marois, LLP; real estate broker Mark Skreden; and appraiser Christopher Ferguson and the firm Ferguson & Associates.
The district paid $13.3 million for the property – $10.4 million too much, said Teri Burns, school board president. District officials have contended that appraisals for the property were inflated.
District officials want to cancel the original contract and renegotiate the cost at current market value. If that isn't possible, they want to return the property in exchange for canceling the contract.
"We are ready to hand the property back, absolutely," Burns said.
The district has been planning to build a bioscience magnet school on the site once the residential housing market gains some steam, said interim Superintendent General Davie.
Burns said the district has some new options. District staff will look at the possibility of building a school at the Arco Arena site if it becomes available.
"This is a real valid alternative for us," Burns said.
But the district has some time to decide. It may be awhile before the court case is heard, said Michael Cannon, Natomas Unified assistant superintendent of facilities and planning. "We are a prisoner of the backlog in the courts," he said.
While district officials wait for the case to wend its way through the court system, they continue to try to resolve the problem through mediation, Burns said.
Davie said the district isn't likely to recover its attorneys' fees if it settles the matter in mediation, but may be able to get a judgment in court.
"I'm certain we are going to ask for them," Davie said.
The lawsuit follows two years of community outrage over reports about the purchase, initially reported in The Bee. The suit was filed after a grand jury report in May that alleged the district paid six times the value of the land and that then-Superintendent Steve Farrar didn't oversee the purchase properly. Farrar has since retired.
24 Jan 2010
The Sam's Club in Natomas will close this month along with nine others nationwide in a housecleaning move to eliminate underperforming stores, the parent company announced on Monday.
The Natomas store, which opened in 2007 in the midst of one of the region's most commercially saturated communities, will close Jan. 22 and the pharmacy will close Jan. 25, according to Sam's Club representatives.
Sam's Club, a division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is a membership warehouse club with five other locations in the region.
The 144 full- and part-time employees at the Natomas location were told about the closing on Sunday and are among 1,500 nationwide who will lose their jobs.
In a written statement, regional general manager and vice president of Sam's Club Paul Stone said: "Over the years, we have worked to improve this club's financial performance. Despite our efforts, the club continued to lose money, and we have decided to close it."
The company, which owns the 136,000-square-foot building and leases the land it's on, has no immediate plans for the property, according Kory Lundberg, a company spokesman.
Sam's Club was an anchor in the 663,000-square-foot lifestyle center, The Promenade at Natomas, that opened several years ago near the intersection of Interstate 80 and Truxel Road. Another anchor, Linens 'N Things closed in 2008, leaving Target, Barnes & Noble, Old Navy and other retailers.
The shopping center was the last major one to open in Natomas and might have come too late to the table, said Garrick Brown, research director at the Sacramento office of Colliers International real estate.
"It was banking on a lot of housing that didn't happen," he said.
After the center gathered a healthy collection of retail banner names, the housing market collapsed, hitting particularly hard in the sprawling, new suburb.
The nail in the coffin came in 2008 when the Federal Emergency Management Administration declared once-booming Natomas a hazardous floodplain. As a result, building stopped and won't restart until levees are fortified enough to reach the 100-year flood-protection level, which means they can withstand a flood that has a one in 100 chance of occurring in any given year. The moratorium could last until 2011.
When it comes to retail, "you really have an overbuilt market in Natomas," Brown said, given the expectations were based on another estimated 4,000 homes there.
The Promenade is across the street from another large center with a Walmart, Michael's and other shops and movie theaters. Kohl's department store anchors another large Natomas shopping center.
Because much of Natomas housing sold during a time when subprime loans were handed out, residents there could have taken a disproportionately bigger hit by the mortgage crises, Brown said, and could be struggling to cover mortgage payments that have adjusted to higher rates.
Wal-Mart's Sam's Club division is doing well overall, said Joel Bloomer, an analyst with Morningstar, an investment research firm based in Chicago. Most Sam's Clubs that close reopen in larger, newer locations, Bloomer said.
Certainly, the 10 stores closing this month doesn't signal a change in the company's commitment to grow the brand, he said.
"They haven't grown in the last couple years, but they're dedicated to the concept," he said.
Though Sam's is a discounter, a category that has weathered the recession better than others, it still needs a base population and traffic to succeed, Bloomer said.
Though the per-unit price of Sam's products might be lower or competitive with grocery stores or even its retail brother Walmart, shoppers must pay a higher upfront cost at discount warehouses, he said.
There are few individual servings for sale at warehouse discounters, which rely on families who can afford bulk purchasing, Bloomer said.
Another customer base is small businesses that buy in bulk, he said. A lack of small- business growth would cut into Sam's Club customer base, he said.
"If that didn't pan out for the community, the small retail that pops around a new population, then you don't have that customer base for a Sam's Club," he said.
Though memberships at Sam's Club can be used at any location, the company will give refunds to members who want them. Representatives will be at the store to answer questions or provide refunds.
25 Sep 2009
Natomas Unified School District officials received notice this week from the Sacramento County Office of Education that the district is at risk of being unable to meet its financial obligations. Wednesday night, Natomas trustees approved $15.2 million in budget cuts through 2013.
Among the cuts for this year:
• Immediate freeze on hiring and spending, with exceptions for items including bus fuel and school meals. (Savings to be determined.)
• Reduction of staff stipends for assistant sport coaches, yearbook, band, drama, journalism, senior project and drill team by $65,000.
• Leave an elementary counselor position vacant, $100,000
• Shorten the school year by five days. Savings to be determined, depending on whether the Natomas Teachers Association agrees to furloughs.
Cuts approved for 2010-11:
• Eliminate all counselors except two at each high school, $600,000.
• Increase kindergarten through third-grade class sizes to 30 students, $500,000.
• Reduce elementary prep periods, resulting in elimination of four positions, $232,000.
• Reductions in athletic costs, $50,000.
• Reduce ROP program costs, $50,000.
• Shorten school day of high school juniors and seniors, resulting in the layoff of four teachers, $232,000.
• Reduce district support staff by 20 percent and school support staff by 10 percent, $690,000.
• Eliminate five assistant principal positions at Heron School, the middle schools and high schools, leaving two assistant principals at each high school, $460,000.
• Shift funding for an assistant superintendent, $60,000; eliminate two classified director/supervisor positions, $200,000; reduce one administrative assistant, $85,000, for a total of $345,000.
• Postpone adoption of new textbooks, $915,000.
• Eliminate purchases of consumable books, $300,000
• End technology contracts for $120,000
• Change the number of lunch periods at Natomas High to two, expected to generate $45,000.
• Eliminate all home-to-school transportation except for mandatory special education busing, $480,000
• Carry over cuts for 2009-10, about $100,000
25 Sep 2009
Teachers, parents and students packed the Natomas Unified School District headquarters Wednesday night to beseech board members to save classes and special programs.
But bloodletting was unavoidable.
The County Office of Education had exhausted all warnings to the district and, as of Wednesday morning, had stepped in to right the district's finances. County education officials told Natomas trustees to cut $200,000 from this year's budget and $5 million from the budgets of each of the next three years.
Assistant Superintendent John Christ told The Bee Thursday that the district's financial trouble is due to a number of factors, including administrators being overly optimistic about incoming federal money and potential state budget cuts. He and other district leaders didn't want to upset the staff by sending out March 25 layoff notices, he said.
"We wanted to retain, support and maintain our highly motivated staff," Christ said. "We didn't want to go down that road."
By summer, that wasn't an option and the district sent out layoff notices.
"We knew we were in trouble then," Christ said. "We hadn't made the level of cuts needed. We went into this year knowing we would need some more cuts."
Natomas' financial situation got worse at the beginning of the school year when district officials realized enrollment was down. Children were moving out of the district, and 400 had migrated to charter schools. The enrollment reduction will result in a loss of $2.5 million in daily attendance funding by the end of the year.
On Wednesday night, Board President Teri Burns laid a share of the blame for the district's problems on the teachers union, which has yet to come to a contract agreement with the district.
She said some of the layoffs could have been avoided if teachers had agreed to take some cuts and let go of pay raises built into their contract.
Superintendent Steve Farrar said that while classified and unrepresented staff agreed to furlough days – 12 and eight respectively – and a salary freeze, teachers maintained their annual automatic raises, which total $2 million a year.
Natomas Teachers Association President Cynthia Connell could not be reached Thursday for comment.
Wednesday night, after five hours of testimony from 40 speakers, the school board voted to freeze hiring and spending for this year, cut stipends for assistant coaches and club advisers by $65,000 and remove senior projects as a graduation requirement. They shortened the school year by five days and will allow classes to grow to 30 students if needed.
"We've fought the fight, but this is where we have to be," said board member Bruce Roberts.
Terri Ryland, the financial adviser assigned by the County Office of Education to watch over Natomas, sat in the front row, pad and pen in hand, tallying up the cuts.
The board eliminated vice principals and counselors at all but the high schools, reduced elementary prep periods, cut funding to athletics and regional occupation classes, trimmed the school days of high school juniors and seniors by one class period, chopped district support staff by 20 percent and school support staff by 10 percent and cut 3.5 administrative positions.
They shaved another $1.4 million from the deficit by canceling technology contracts and voting not to adopt any new books.
Board members then turned to Ryland.
"That's $3.3 million so far," she said looking at her pad.
Trustees turned back to their list of proposed cuts. They voted to eliminate transportation except for that mandated for special education students. They eliminated stipends for advisors of clubs, cheer, journalism and sports for at least the next three years. And an assortment of odds and ends hit the cutting room floor.
Close enough, agreed the board. $4.936 million.
"No one likes it, but it's where we're at," said Burns, the school board president.
Christ, the assistant superintendent, said he's worried about the midyear cuts and other variables.
The district had already made $31.2 million in budget cuts this year, including $8 million in reductions to the 2009-10 budget that included increasing class sizes; laying off 74 employees; instituting furlough days; and reducing busing, athletics, physical education classes, summer school and the number of library technicians.
At the end of Wednesday's meeting, Ryland gave school board members their marching orders: Begin to identify every possible layoff for March 15. Make sure everyone knows about hiring and spending freezes. And prepare to pay class-size penalties – "They're cheaper than teachers," she said.
And she put down her pen.
24 Sep 2009
Sacramento County Office of Education officials have stepped in to ensure that the Natomas Unified School District balances its budget.
In a letter to Natomas Superintendent Steve Farrar dated Monday, County Superintendent of Schools David Gordon states: "It appears the district will not be able to meet its financial obligations for this year or next."
He said a review of budget and enrollment projections for Natomas Unified found that the district's financial situation had worsened since it submitted its 2009-10 budget in June. He said enrollment was overstated, savings had not materialized and there were unexpected expenditures.
The district also failed to meet a Sept. 15 deadline to turn in a revised budget and a report on its spending for 2008-09.
Gordon's decision to move Natomas into "negative status" allows him to appoint a financial adviser to assist the district with its budget revisions.
Terri Ryland, a former school business officer turned independent consultant, has been appointed as the adviser. Ryland will not tell the Natomas school board what to cut, Gordon said, just how much needs to be cut. She has the power, however, to deny expenditures unless other cuts have been made to balance the budget.
Ryland began working with the district several weeks ago, even though the negative status wasn't official until Wednesday.
"The relationship is that we are there to help them get back on track," Gordon said. "To make sure they don't go bankrupt and go into state receivership."
A district can go into state receivership if it runs out of money and must borrow it from the state. The state can set aside the school board's authority until the district can repay the loan, Gordon said.
Natomas Unified officials seem relieved to get the help.
"We have a close working relationship with the county office," board President Teri Burns said before a special meeting Wednesday night. "They are doing their job."
The meeting was scheduled so that the board could make the cuts necessary to get out of the negative status.
"Hopefully, we can be out of it (negative status) by the end of October," Burns said.
Among the cuts the board was considering for next year was elimination of school counselors, sports and all regional occupational classes. It was also going to consider enlarging class size.
County Office of Education officials will have 10 days to review the revisions and to determine whether or not to rescind the negative status.
The board had already cut $31.2 million from its 2009-10 budget by laying off 74 employees, instituting furlough days and reducing busing, athletics, physical education classes, summer school and the number of library technicians. Kindergarten through third-grade class sizes were increased from 20 to 25.
Gordon said district officials have received numerous letters from the county Office of Education since January apprising them of Natomas Unified's precarious status.
Just how the district got into the situation is subject to debate. Burns said state cuts were larger than expected and that failed negotiations with the teachers union caused layoffs.
Gordon said his office reviews school district budgets at least three times a year, more if they are faltering financially. Districts are deemed to be in positive, qualified or negative status.
The Natomas district had been in qualified status since January, before falling into negative status.
The last time a district fell into negative status is when the districts of North Sacramento, Del Paso, Grant and Rio Linda merged into the Twin Rivers Unified School District. He said the district was in a unique situation because it was under constraints from the education code in regard to staffing.
"It isn't unheard of," Gordon said. "The good news is you have to correct it. You have to make reductions."
Gordon said that it was once unusual for schools to be in qualified status, but more and more district have moved into that category as schools find themselves slashing budgets due to state cuts.
5 Jun 2009
At least 40 employees of the Natomas Unified School District will receive layoff notices in two weeks, something the district has tried to avert for the past year by cutting low-enrollment classes and other programs instead.
"Where do you want to shoot yourself – in the left foot or the right foot? We did our best to protect our people and have more adults on campus with our kids," said school board President Teri Burns. "All the research shows that having teachers, having counselors and having custodians, is what is important to kids."
The Natomas district received a letter from the Sacramento County Office of Education this week warning that it is in danger of being given a "negative" financial rating unless at least $5 million is cut immediately.
The district expects it will have to cut a total of $11 million from its $85 million budget by the end of the month.
The fiscal stability of school districts is rated by the viability of their budgets for the current school year as well as two years into the future, according to the county's Superintendent of Schools Dave Gordon. A "negative" opens the door to closer monitoring.
"You basically have me looking over your shoulder and able to cancel actions that could make your situation worse," Gordon said.
Natomas, which schools 10,000 students, was downgraded from a "positive" rating to "qualified" last year when the district prioritized saving jobs over cuts.
As recently as February, the district said a rainy-day reserve of more than $10 million meant that none of the 1,000 employees – about 600 of whom are certified teachers or administrators – would be let go. That money has now been spent.
"With the big cuts, we decided to wait and see what the state was going to do," said board President Burns. "No one expected there to be a 25 percent cut in funding. We didn't expect it to be anywhere near this deep."
At a meeting Wednesday, the board approved $2.9 million in cuts that include increasing second- and third-grade class sizes to 30 students, charging 50 cents more for student meals, scaling back on busing and canceling elementary-level summer school.
Next week, the board will consider closing schools, eliminating athletic programs, moving to a four-day school week, ending almost all busing and instituting furloughs.
Layoffs will be discussed during a June 17 meeting. Salaries constitute 90 percent of the district's budget.
"Instead of eliminating from the bottom, they should eliminate from the top because employees are the ones who keep the place going," said Tom Yee, who has two children in Natomas schools. "If major corporations are cutting from the top, why can't our school district?"
Yee questioned the soundness of the district's general judgment after the $13.3 million purchase in 2007 of 41 acres of farmland that may actually have been worth $2 million. The land was purchased from a different budget than is used for school operations.
"There are too many board members, too many managers," Lee said. "Eliminate those and keep the teachers."
Kim Hendricks agrees with preserving as many jobs as possible.
"Ideally, they need more adults in the classroom and more adults per child," said Hendricks, who has four children in Natomas schools. Three of them attend Bannon Creek Elementary, which is in danger of temporary closure.
"You don't want to see anything cut from the school systems," Hendricks said. "These kids are going to be the ones running the state and making the decisions in the future and I think their education should be more of a priority."
28 May 2009
After years of contentious debate, a financing plan for public projects in North Natomas was revised Tuesday to include funding for a new firehouse, a community center and traffic projects.
The updated North Natomas Financing Plan – approved unanimously by the City Council – includes $31.4 million in already-collected developers' fees for the projects.
While a building moratorium is in place in Natomas through 2011 as the area's levees are strengthened, both city and federal officials said they are confident that construction of the firehouse would begin soon and that the facility could be open within two years.
"This identifies a perfect (funding) mechanism in a very difficult economic time," said Councilman Ray Tretheway, who represents North Natomas.
As part of the new financing plan, the city also will raise fees that developers chip in for public projects by 15 percent.
The impact of that hike on future projects is unclear. According to the city, $18.3 million in public financing fees were collected from developers in North Natomas in the 2005-06 fiscal year. Last year, with the economy tanking, that figure fell to $850,133.
Still, supporters of the financing plan said it shows city officials recognize the needs of North Natomas.
"It provides the most important things that the community needs to get to where it wants to be," community activist and City Council candidate Angelique Ashby said at Tuesday's council meeting.
The most discussed of those needs was a new firehouse west of Interstate 5. The station had been removed from the finance plan in 1999 when city officials said they thought it could be paid for out of the city's general fund budget. It was returned to the mix last year.
The City Council voted to spend $9.6 million in developers' fees to bankroll the new station, which will be the second firehouse within city limits covering the vast suburban landscape north of Interstate 80. The new station would be built at El Centro Road and Arena Boulevard.
A third firehouse in the unincorporated county covers part of North Natomas, but a Bee investigation earlier this year found that fire protection for much of the area is spotty.
Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, is working on federal legislation that would provide an exemption to the building moratorium because of the public safety issue and allow construction of the new firehouse to begin before 2011.
"I am working closely with my colleagues in Congress to move this bill as quickly as possible," Matsui said in a statement.
City officials are likely to push the firehouse project along quickly by using blueprints similar to those used to build an existing station on Club Center Drive in North Natomas. Still undecided, however, is whether to include office space for the Police Department in the facility.
Also unclear is how the city's pending budget cuts will affect staffing at the station. Under the city's proposed budget, as many as 50 Fire Department jobs could be slashed if the fire union does not agree to salary concessions.
In addition to the firehouse project, an additional $6 million will be used to build a community center that likely will be constructed on Del Paso Road, between Town Center Drive and Inderkum High School. However, it is unlikely the building moratorium would be lifted for that project, according to Assistant City Manager John Dangberg.
Funding for signal work at the West El Camino Avenue interchange with I-80 and for an El Centro Road overcrossing at I-5 also is identified in the plan.
Future development fees will fund a new police substation in the area.
At the same time, the updated financing plan deletes funding for an I-5 overpass at Snowy Egret Boulevard – deemed unnecessary because plans for the crossing were designed to accommodate a baseball stadium near Arco Arena that was never built.
Also stripped from the plan is financing for a section of Natomas Crossing Drive west of Duckhorn Drive that was to lead into undeveloped land in unincorporated Sacramento County.
The updated plan removes funding for projects that would have been backed by future development in the Greenbriar and "panhandle" areas of Natomas.
Eliminating those elements was a key change in the updated plan, said Ashby, who worked with city staffers to revise the spending strategy.
"To rely upon those types of funding sources that are ambiguous at this point is not a truly balanced budget," she said.
27 May 2009
A Natomas Unified School District purchase of 41 acres of farmland for six times its value in 2007 should be investigated by the local, state and federal authorities, according to a Sacramento County grand jury report released Tuesday.
The report charges that Superintendent Steve Farrar failed to exercise proper oversight over the $13.3 million purchase of the school site, outside the city limits.
It also found that a lawyer representing the school district in the purchase did not reveal he had a conflict of interest until three months after escrow closed. The attorney, Martin Steiner, didn't return calls from The Bee.
The grand jury report followed a Bee investigation that found the district paid for the property based on an inflated appraisal.
The single appraisal of $24.6 million presented to the school board was based on property with houses that had sewer and water service and could be annexed to the city, said jury foreman Donald Prange Sr.
None of those conditions existed.
The appraisal purported to reflect fair market value of the property and failed to disclose it was based on a hypothetical situation of what the land might be worth if the city annexed it, according to the grand jury report.
In fact, the unimproved farmland sold by West Lakeside LLC, a partnership headed by developer Angelo K. Tsakopoulos, had environmental issues that prohibited building on much of it. City officials told The Bee last year that annexation of that property would be improbable.
"There's still a question whether they can get water out into that area," Prange said.
The district is planning to build a bio-science magnet school on the West Lakeside site that will focus on green technology, said Heidi Van Zant, district spokesman.
A senior property appraiser from the California Office of Real Estate Appraisers who testified before the grand jury said the property was actually worth $50,000 to $60,000 an acre in 2007, for a total value of about $2 million.
The property was originally appraised by Chris Ferguson, who was hired by Steiner, an attorney hired in turn by then- Assistant Superintendent Frank Harding, who handled the transaction for the district.
That arrangement meant the attorney was legally bound to keep his conversations with the appraiser confidential, making the district's actions protected instead of transparent, according to the report.
The Bee tried unsuccessfully to obtain a copy of the appraisal a month before the board approved the purchase in December 2006. Even then, the district refused to make public the appraisal for months afterward.
Ferguson's attorney, Greg Peterson, said Tuesday that the buyer and seller arrived at a price based on conditions that everyone knew. "Why they reached that deal or why they think it was a good deal is something they will have to answer to," Peterson said.
He said Ferguson appraised the land based on assumptions he was directed to use.
"What Chris did was reasonable," Peterson said. "He did not knowingly include anything false or misleading in his work."
Peterson said Ferguson was never questioned about his appraisal by the school district and wasn't asked to attend the meeting when it was presented.
In another matter, Harding, the Natomas official who was in charge of the land deal, was convicted last year of one felony count for directing contracts to a company in which he had a financial stake when he worked for the district. Before his conviction, Harding left Natomas for the same job in the Elk Grove Unified School District but was fired 13 weeks later.
Last year, district officials acknowledged they had spent too much for the land and hired a malpractice attorney to help bring the parties together to agree on a remedy.
"The district has been and is in sensitive ongoing negotiations with all the parties involved in the purchase of the site to hopefully resolve and remedy the problems associated with having relied on an erroneous appraisal for the West Lakeside site," the district said in a prepared statement.
On the advice of district officials, the superintendent and trustees declined to be interviewed for this story.
The district ultimately agreed to pay $325,000 an acre, or $13.3 million, for the property. The board hailed the purchase price as a bargain – based on the $24.6 million appraisal.
Because the selling price was below the appraised value or market value, Tsakopoulos could take a multimillion- dollar tax write-off. The developer has asked the school district for documents that would allow the tax break, said the grand jury's Prange. The district has yet to oblige.
The grand jury also questioned hundreds of thousands of dollars contributed to the Natomas School Foundation by a partner in West Lakeside LLC and Tsakopoulos' AKT Development firm during the property negotiations. The report said that Farrar, who established the foundation and sat on its board, actively solicited the donations.
The grand jury also expressed concern that Steiner waited until three months after the close of escrow to reveal that he had previously worked for West Lakeside LLC.
The board is expected to address the grand jury findings in the next 90 days.
City Councilman Ray Tretheway said he asked the board to investigate the purchase two years ago. He says some portions of the grand jury report "raise an eyebrow," but that he has faith in district officials.
"I have a lot of trust in the school board and their administration," Tretheway said. "I do have to believe the district will be able to achieve a resolution that will satisfy everybody."
20 Mar 2009
The little legume that could, born in Peru centuries ago, is making a heralded return to the lunch menu of the Natomas Unified School District.
Yes, the peanut – and more significantly, peanut butter – is back.
Natomas Unified removed all peanut products in late January, after tainted peanut butter produced by a Georgia plant was linked to a national salmonella outbreak, which sickened more than 670 people and led to nine deaths.
Though none of the district's menu items contained the plant's product, Nutrition Services Director Patricia Reeves removed every last peanutty thing she could.
"You can't be too cautionary when you're talking about salmonella and kids," Reeves said Thursday.
She also had experienced the beef recall 11 months earlier, which informed her reaction. That recall, she said, "started narrow and then expanded."
But enough months have passed since the peanut butter scare, she said, and come April 30, elementary kids can pick up a peanut butter and jelly or peanut butter and banana sandwich, among other entrees, when they visit the cafeteria line.
During Thursday's lunch hour at Bannon Creek Elementary, most kids said they were happy about the return.
Third-grader Francisco Prieto, for one, is ready.
"It's coming back in April," said Francisco. "I know, because our teacher told us. She likes peanut butter – eats it on celery – and we like peanut butter, too."
Kayla Green, 8, is also a fan.
"I like to eat it off my finger," she said.
But not everyone is excited.
"I don't really like peanut butter," said Maya Jackson, 9. "It should be sweet, but it's not."
Jaelene Diggs, 10, avoids the sticky paste at all costs.
"I'm allergic. I poof up if I eat peanut butter," Jaelene said, pointing to her face.
Dr. Suzanne Teuber, associate professor at the UC Davis Department of Internal Medicine, Rheumatology and Allergy, specializes in food allergies.
"The peanut is an incredibly wonderful food," Teuber said. "It has favorable lipids that can (help with) heart disease and inflammatory conditions and it's got great antioxidants, but, of course, it can be a hazard for people with severe food allergies."
Severe peanut allergy reactions can lead to difficulty breathing and even death, according to medical literature.
Reeves said the district does not serve peanuts or peanut butter in any schools with severely allergic children.
Other local districts, such as San Juan and Sacramento City Unified, don't serve any peanut products at all. Officials at both districts said allergic kids make it too risky.
Elk Grove Unified removed some peanut products during the recall but never stopped serving peanut butter sandwiches, as the source was determined to be safe, said Delois Davis-McDuffie, director of Food and Nutrition Services.
Linda Bacon, who's written the book, "Health at Every Size" and is an associate nutritionist at UC Davis, said the hullabaloo about peanut butter and food safety has maybe missed the point.
Peanut butter is an indicator, not the culprit.
"If we're really concerned about food safety issues, we should be less about recalls and what we have to keep away from the kids," said Bacon, "and more about why we use so many processed foods right now. We currently have a food system that values quantity over quality. And in the interest of maximizing profits and producing cheap foods, corners inevitably get cut."
The average American child will eat 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before graduating high school, according to the National Peanut Board, which of course, has an interest in promoting peanut products.
Anecdotal evidence – which can be gleaned from a trip to a school cafeteria – bears out the sense that American kids have a love affair with the stuff.
"When we took (peanut butter) off the menu, we thought the kids would miss it," said Reeves. "It's funny – they don't seem to miss cheese, but they love peanut butter."
