TURN TO PROTEST ON

VALLEY SENIOR VILLAGE in downtown Escondido will provide 50 units of housing for low-income seniors and those who are homeless. Courtesy rendering

Escondido affordable housing project underway

By Stephen Wyer

ESCONDIDO — An affordable housing complex expected to provide 50 units of housing for low-income and homeless seniors in Escondido continues to make progress after breaking ground last month.

The County of San Diego announced on Jan. 10 construction was officially underway for the Valley Senior Village project in downtown Escondido. The project, which will provide affordable housing for adults 62 and older, is a collaborative effort between the county, City of Escondido, National CORE and San Diego Community Housing Corporation.

According to Ted Miyahara, president and CEO of San Diego Community Housing Corporation, construction efforts for the affordable housing complex have made significant progress in the last month.

“We’ve done all of our grading already and a lot of the underground utility work, and we should be pouring the foundation within perhaps the next 30 days,” Miyahara said. “Things are going as planned.”

The Valley Senior Village complex is expected to be completed by May 2023.

Of the project’s 50 units, 49 will be studios. Twenty-five apartments will be reserved for individuals who have been experiencing homelessness, 19 of the units will be reserved for seniors making 50% of area median income (AMI) and the other five units will be for residents at 60% AMI, according to Escondido Housing & Neighborhood Services Manager Holly Nelson.

The San Diego-based public housing agency originally pitched the concept to the county and Escondido in 2019, based on the city’s growing homelessness crisis especially amongst senior citizens, Miyahara said.

“Our bread and butter is affordable housing and as you know this region as a whole has been experiencing issues around homelessness,” Miyahara said. “At the time we saw that the city of Escondido didn’t have any housing specifically for the homeless individuals so we saw this as a huge need.

“Then, paired with the silver tsunami that’s coming with people starting to age and those people needing affordable housing, (we) came up with this project for seniors right in the downtown corridor of Escondido and saw this project as a great candidate.”

While the project has been spearheaded by the county, the Valley Senior Village proposal specifically meets the needs of the Escondido community, which has the largest homeless population of the North County cities, according to Nelson.

“When you look at the vulnerabilities of people falling into homelessness, you see our population is very vulnerable,” she said. “With our consolidated plan, which is done every five years, we wanted to help people who are rent-burdened and at risk, so the more housing we can add into communities the better that is for everybody.”

Residents at Valley Senior Village will also be able to enjoy a variety of amenities offered by the complex. A community center put on by San Ysidro Health will offer outdoor gathering spaces and a variety of services, including programs for those experiencing mental illness and on-site case management for seniors experiencing homelessness.

Residents will also be within walking distance of a host of shops, stores, and services offered in downtown Escondido, while also having access to a variety of transportation options, Miyahara said.

“This project was a great candidate because it’s transit-oriented right there on Valley Parkway with the main artery going straight to the transportation depot,” he said. “And it’s also within walking distance of a lot of amenities, like parks, libraries, grocery stores and the downtown strip.”

The Village project will cost $24 million, and is being funded through a variety of sectors, including over $10 million from the county’s Innovative Housing Trust Fund and the No Place Like Home program, which provides capital and operating expense funds to developments providing housing for homeless and/or mentally ill residents.

An additional $4 million for the development is coming directly from the city of Escondido, and $9.825 million is being provided in the way of federal tax credits via the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. For construction purposes only, the project also received an $8.2 million loan from Chase bank, according to Miyahara.

By partnering with the City and County, the project’s developers were able to secure loans at below-market mortgage fees as well as with more favorable retainment provisions, Miyahara said, which in turn allows Valley Senior Village to offer affordable rent prices to tenants.

“The city and county measure this by looking at what public benefits are you getting in exchange for providing below market rate loans in exchange for provisions that are soft … like is the public getting a benefit from this project?” Miyahara said. “That’s really the measure.”

The complex is deed-restricted to affordable housing units, meaning that the project’s apartments must remain affordable in Escondido for at least the next 99 years.

Vista park reopens after renovations

By Staff

VISTA — Bub Williamson Park, one of Vista's oldest city parks, was reopened to the public Feb. 11 after an 18-month renovation.

In July 2020, construction began on the park at 530 Grapevine Lane, built in the 1980s, and the fully restored park is planned to create more of an active use for the community.

“We expect this space will become a place of community where children play, neighbors catch up and relax, and families can spend a sunny afternoon together,” said Mayor Judy Ritter.

Public art was included in the park and Devon Harrah, who created and painted the “Yura Anura” mural along the 100-foot wall on the north side of the park said the mural “reflects the life cycles of frogs and small children wearing frog costumes.”

Harrah created the artwork to display the qualities of youthful exploration and wonder. Later this year, a new Kites Over Vista sculpture will be installed.

The city's Public Arts Commission currently has a call out to artists seeking design submittals for consideration. Both of these public art displays will add to the park’s identity and will create a sense of belonging to the community space.

The finished improvements include a children's sensory playground, picnic areas with shade sails, remodeled restrooms, and a loop trail with fitness stations. New drought tolerant landscaping, irrigation, signage, and fencing were also installed.

Tables, benches, water fountains and other park furnishings were installed in the northern park area. The park facilities and sidewalks were also upgraded to meet current Americans with Disability Act standards.

PROTEST

CONTINUED FROM 1 before all of this with omicron and now it’s so much lower because of this contract offer.”

With salaries for teachers in the rest of San Diego County having gone up by an average of 3.62% between 2021 and 2022, the district’s current offer would make San Marcos last place in the county in terms of teacher pay, Pluciennik said.

Recent surges in inflation, coupled with California’s already steep cost of living, make increasing salaries a must if teachers are to maintain a livable wage, said Brandon Maze, an AP US History teacher at San Marcos High School who attended the rally. Because the state’s cost of living is projected to increase by 6% in 2022, a 1.25% pay increase between the two

ABOUT 300 MEMBERS of the San Marcos Educators’ Association rallied at the San Marcos Unified School District offices on Feb. 15. Teachers are working this school year without a formal contract. Photo via Twitter/SMEA

school years is essentially a salary cut for teachers, he added.

“There’s a COLA (cost of living adjustment) this year of 5.07% based on inflation…and the COLA for next year is projected to be upwards of 6%, so that’s a total of 11% for two years and they’re offering us just 1.25% in that time frame,” Maze said. “That equates to a pay cut for teachers and it’s going to result in hardship.”

Maze said that the SMEA has been disappointed with the district’s intransigence in negotiations thus far, expressing that the 0% offer reflects an administration that isn’t serious about accommodating its educators.

“With these negotiations, the 0% number is a pretty strong message, particularly when we’re the majority of the way through this school year without a contract,” he said. “Unfortunately, while the district has said that they value our work, they haven’t shown it, and that’s where we’re here. … We would like a fair contract now, we would appreciate a contract that reflects the realities of the situation we’re in.”

Pluciennik agreed, expressing disappointment with what he called mixed messaging coming from district officials during negotiations.

“We’re essentially being offered last place in the county per dollars, and at the same time they tell us that you guys are the best teachers in North County, the county, and the state, and then after all of that they come up with a 0 so it’s

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www. coast news group .com It’s time to come together

By Jim Desmond

The COVID-19 twoyear anniversary is upon us, now what?

With over 900,000 Americans and over 4,800 people locally who died with COVID, it brought tragedy and hopelessness that left a hole in our lives that will never be filled.

We’ve seen challenges with child development as kids lag with two years of modified or hybrid school. Behavioral health issues increased dramatically while drug overdoses spiked.

It’s very important we take a step back and learn from this historically difficult time.

From this tragic, frontof-mind pandemic, there is a cumulative impact that touches so many of us. The responsible precautions we exercised, due to COVID, separated us. And for the better part of two years, families, friends and neighbors have been both physically and emotionally separated.

Social media only exacerbates distancing. In many social online circles tensions were at an alltime high. If you spend five minutes on social media you’ll see a chasm of divisiveness. Debates between former friends, colleagues, and fellow Americans spin out of control, further driving separation.

Our San Diego County Board of Supervisors meetings have been quite the spectacle. At times they are comical (making late night shows throughout the world), and at other times, completely out of line with racial abuse and personal threats.

Learning from the recent past, I propose we move forward with a healthy respect. A healthy respect for the virus and its variants; And, most importantly, a healthy respect for each other.

As a blueprint for living with the virus evolves, it is time for us to put physical and emotional distances behind us and come together, on the path of civility.

Earlier this week, the Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to request the State’s Department of Public Health for a “safe and responsible path'' toward phasing out pandemic-related mask requirements for school children from kindergarten through 12th grade. And while in the recent past we board members have not always seen eye to eye, this is a day and a goal we all wanted.

As we reach across the divide, there will still be differing thoughts on the approach to our changed world. Vigorous, respectful discussion and debate is fundamental to the success of our region. Collaboration and compromise are too often lost in local, state, and federal politics.

In San Diego County, as in America, we need to encourage and reinforce that civil discourse, and accept that others will not always agree are good things.

At this point, the separation that has occurred these past two years is what concerns me more than anything. Vaccinated versus unvaccinated, masked versus maskless, widespread isolation — it’s time for common decency to prevail, and for us to come together, safely, responsibly and respectfully as Americans.

Jim Desmond represents District 5 on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.

Heart Month: Knowledge saves lives

By Marie Waldron

February is American Heart Month, and this year Feb. 4 was National Wear Red Day, encouraging people to wear red to help raise awareness about cardiovascular diseases.

Cardiovascular diseases are a leading cause of death for men and women, accounting for approximately one out of every three deaths nationwide.

Among women, cardiovascular diseases are the No. 1 killer, with one death almost every 80 seconds. An estimated 44 million women in the United States are affected by cardiovascular disease each year.

In California, nearly one-third of women’s deaths are also the result of cardiovascular disease, with Hispanic and African-American women at higher-risk.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared February National Heart Health Month, nine years after his own heart attack. Since then, National Wear Red Day, supported by the American Heart Association, has been commemorated throughout the United States to raise awareness about heart disease, strokes and their prevention.

Fortunately, it is believed that 87% of all heart health-related issues are preventable.

That’s why I was so happy to join the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women movement to motivate women to learn their family histories and to meet with their health care providers to determine their risks for heart attack and stroke.

Women are encouraged to take control of their heart health by knowing and managing their total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, body mass index and other factors.

So many deaths from heart attack and stroke are preventable. American Heart Month and National Wear Red Day are small attempts to raise awareness and save lives.

Assemblymember Marie Waldron, R-Valley Center, represents the 75th Assembly District in the California Legislature, which includes Escondido, San Marcos and Vista.

Zoom learning gets its grade: F for flop

The official results of more than a year of full- and part-time Zoom learning are in, and the practice that became almost universal for schoolchildren in 2020 has gotten its final grade: F for flop.

Here are a few of the most salient facts that emerge from state data on student performance in the 2020-21 school year that ended last June:

Less than 25% of California students took standardized tests in 2021, one result of the disengagement brought on by scarcity of in-person teaching. Graduation rates dropped by 1%, with Latinos almost doubling the overall drop and Black student graduation rates falling four times that much.

By the end of the last school year, only 83.6% of students who started high school four years earlier were able to get diplomas. And the younger students were, the worse they fared with Zoom.

Some realities of Zoom learning, mostly done via laptop computers passed

out by schools, were obvious long before the figures were in.

Students were less involved than when taught in person. They could simply walk away from their computers and not participate in classes, and in millions of cases there would be no one present to steer them back.

Kids could eat all they wanted during class and phones would ring, too, distracting them further.

The results of all this were seen in student performances on standardized tests. After five years of steady improvement, test scores declined for the least privileged groups of students, mainly Blacks and Latinos.

These were the conclusions of the Smarter Balanced assessment test scores, even though so many fewer students actually took the tests in 2021. They were canceled in 2020. The small turnout for the tests probably indicates that only the most involved pupils were included — and scores dropped even for them.

English language arts results fell by 4% from 2019 to 2021, with just 48% meeting or exceeding national standards (another term for passing the test), and by 5% in math, with just 33% meeting or exceeding standards, compared with 38% two years earlier — already a lousy performance.

Pass rates fell by 12% in math and 6% in English language arts testing. The drops were much sharper for Latinos (22% in math, 10% in English) and almost as bad for Blacks (down 9% in math and 7% in English).

In short, Zoom — or distance — learning proved disastrous to the students it was aimed to keep involved through the worst times of the pandemic.

So California’s public schools, already considered a disgrace by many parents and others, grew far worse when students couldn’t attend them in person.

And that was just for kids who can speak English proficiently.

For the state’s approximately 1.1 million English learners, matters went from bad to worse. Their performance drops were even greater than the overall results for ethnic minorities overall.

All this appalls adults who work to improve the futures of today’s schoolkids. “(This) has the potential to have life-altering impacts, especially for our youngest (students),” Samantha Tran, managing director for education policy for the Children Now advocacy group, told a reporter.

State officials tried to downplay the disastrous results. The kids taking the tests, they said, might not have been representative of all California students. In a normal year, they pointed out, 95% of all students must take these tests, but only about one-fourth that number actually did last year.

But this reality indicates the real scores, had the usual number of students been tested, would have been far worse than what was recorded.

For by their very presence, those participating were selecting themselves as more interested than others. And the more interested kids are in school, the better they usually test.

The bottom line is that despite legitimate worries about contagion, schools must stay open if at all possible, or the future of their students — and all California — will be seriously at risk.

Pass rates fell by 12% in math and 6% in English language arts testing.

california focus

tom elias