ALBA partners with community groups to clean up park

By Cecilia Buckner

On any given weekday morning, you’ll find Vernon Moore walking the streets that border North Park Community Park, but not for exercise.  Moore’s motivation  — monitoring the more than two dozen high school students who make their way onto the community day school campus on Oregon Street from bus stops on adjacent streets.
David Surwilo, community relations officer with the San Diego Police Department, says this kind of “tight ship” attitude by Moore has likely influenced the students desire to change their behavior.
ALBA, the Alternative Learning for Behavior and Attitude Community Day School, is a program for students in the San Diego Unified School District who violate their school’s zero tolerance policies. It’s a last-chance stop for students to get their act together, short of attending a court summit school.
Some of the teens got in fights, others used drugs or cussed out their teacher, but a lot of the students just made “a mistake,” Moore says.
During the 18-week program, ALBA staff work with the teens to get them to the level they should be academically and socially so they can be successfully reinstated in regular classrooms.
Moore says about 70 to 80 percent of students who complete the program at ALBA are successfully integrated back into traditional schools.
Prior to last fall, ALBA students were confined to close quarters across the street from Crawford High School, in the Mid-City area of San Diego, in bungalows more than four decades old. They were in such poor shape that they have since been torn down.
The Board of Education made the decision in May 2009 to relocate the 123 students enrolled at North Park Elementary School and move the ALBA students onto the site.
Surwilo says his division received a fair amount of complaints from people active in the community before the ALBA students moved in last fall.  They were concerned, he says, because these students who were having problems of their own were being placed next to a park that has a history of crime.
Former Balboa Park Task Group Chair Vicki Granowitz, who has been active in many community groups, also was concerned about the move because of what she says was the school board’s “lack of transparency” in its communications about the move. She says the district acted without filling everyone in because it knew the community would have a problem with it.
Would it have made a difference? “I don’t think so,” Granowitz says, but “maybe the community would trust the board better.” she says.
Richard Barrera, president of the Board of Education, says the district went above and  beyond its responsibilities in its communications with everyone affected.
As soon as the move was approved by the board, volunteers from ALBA, the North Park Community Association, and Barrera knocked on doors in the area in an effort to inform residents about ALBA moving onto the former elementary school site. Town hall meetings also were held to provide the community with information. Surwilo was present at those meetings and says he feels everyone walked away feeling good about the move.
Moore says most of the concerns he was made aware of were not about the school, but about the negative things already going on at the park. He says this is what opened the doors for ALBA to partner with the North Park Action Team and the Vitality San Diego project.

Vitality San Diego is a project created in 2001 by the Institute for Public Strategies (IPS), a private nonprofit organization under contract with the county to address safety and quality of life issues in North Park. Vitality San Diego focuses on alcohol and drug prevention in Downtown and Uptown San Diego and the Balboa Park and North Park regions. The North Park Action Team is a grass-roots community group.
Alexandra Jacobo-Mares, operations coordinator for IPS,  began working with a group of ALBA students in November 2009 in a project to assess drug and alcohol use in North Park Community Park. The students, their teacher, Stephanie Lo, and Mares took note of the park’s physical attributes that made it conducive to crime and also observed daily activities in the park. They recommended changes that could be made to deter crime and presented them at the annual North Park Community Association meeting in April.
ALBA students recommended making physical changes in the park to enhance visibility, holding social events such as summer movie nights, planting a garden and decorating picnic tables. ALBA students talked about making it apparent to park visitors that the park belongs to the community, according to Mares.
Surwilo says no one in the community has contacted him about ALBA since the move. “I think this was a very good transition,“ he says.  “A positive thing for North Park.”
As a result of the Alba’s move to North Park, the school district has allocated funds for improvement that will benefit both the park and the school, including fencing and security cameras.
In a discussion with three Alba students this month, all three say they made a bad decision – - they got in fights – - one was under the influence of drugs on campus, but they all say they want to go to on to college.  One of the students says, she wants a job “helping the community.”
“I never knew visiting North Park would be good,” says the 16-year-old Alba student from San Carlos, Calif.  “ . . .seeing bad stuff and that we can make a change.”
People have the wrong idea about Alba she says, “ . . . everyone gets along with everybody here.”
The North Park Action Team meets every fourth Thursday in the North Park Adult Center at North Park Community Park (excluding November and December).  Anyone who is interested in improving community conditions related to the impact of alcohol and drugs is welcome to attend.  For information email Vitality San Diego at: vitality@publicstrategies.org.