Well-funded public schools are the best tool to teach children and young adults. I know this, so it is hard to argue with the merits behind supporting another bond measure for the schools. (I have never not voted for a school bond or tax measure.) However, it does no good to continue bailing out a school district that is incapable of delivering on the promise of quality education in Hercules, and that is the position we find ourselves with the West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD).

The future success of Hercules is inherently tied to the city’s ability to break-away from the gargantuan school district that blindly casts aside the needs of Hercules students, and either join with John Swett or start its own district, and have the control necessary to ensure quality education across Hercules. It may require an executive order by the governor — or even the president — to make it happen, but pretending the issue isn’t real, or that conditions will improve over time, is to fool oneself of the true, weakened position that Hercules finds itself mired in.

You can learn a lot from recent history. The Times reports that “voters in the district passed a $400 million bond measure in 2005 to rebuild and improve many schools.” This may sound familiar to some. The bond was supposed to rebuild Ohlone Elementary, but the district later pulled funding to tend to other, deemed more important schools, in Richmond.

Even if the new bond does finally renovate Ohlone Elementary — er, build Ohlone, since the school was never actually built; it is a series of portables — what is the status of the future elementary school in the Waterfront? The City has set aside the property for the school (currently used as the Corporation Yard), and every homebuyer in the Waterfront has paid into the district’s fund for new school construction. The impact fee is currently $3.92 per square foot — or $7800 for a 2000 sq. ft. home — which adds up to approximately $5m that purchasers of homes in Promenade, Baywood and Bayside have set aside for a new school.

Where is this money? Where on the list of priorities for WCCUSD is a new school in Hercules? And will another bond measure, however necessary to sustain even current underfunded programs, change the unfortunate dynamic between the district formerly known as the Richmond Unified School District (before it went bankrupt) and the underrepresented residents of Hercules?