Features

Berkeley High School will take a step towards building its small schools program Wednesday night when the Board of Education considers a proposal for the new BHS School of Social Justice and Ecology. 

The meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. at Old City Hall on Martin Luther King Jr. Way downtown. 

If approved, the School of Social Justice and Ecology would be scheduled to open in fall 2005 with 56 freshman and growing to a 250-student program by the fall of 2007. It will join the Communications Arts and Science and Community Partnership Academy, small schools already in place at Berkeley High. The board will consider the Arts and Humanities Academy at its Feb. 2 meeting. 

BHS Principal Jim Slemp said that it will “probably take one or two more” small schools beyond those four to reach the board’s goal of half the school’s students attending small schools. 

In other action at Wednesday’s meeting, the board will consider approval of a Surplus Facilities Committee to look into the sale or long-term lease of the former Hillside School, closed in 1983. In 1990 the district determined that the property was unsafe for reopening because it sits on a portion of the Hayward fault. 

The board will also hear a report on the district’s special education program, scheduled for 8 p.m.?