Cabello Elementary School portable classrooms moving to local parks

Union City City Council decided last Tuesday to allocate $94,901 to move classroom trailers from soon to be demolished Cabello Elementary for use in afterschool programs at three local community parks because of the need for the parks to have new classrooms for the students who attend their afterschool program.

The project is set to be completed on Jan. 31, 2015. However, this is just the first phase of the project, “once the trailers are relocated, utilities to the trailers still need to be provided and the trailers will be refurbished,” Union City’s City Engineer Thomas Ruark explained.

The trailers will be taken from Cabello, and relocated to Old Alvarado, William Cann Memorial, and Charles F. Kennedy Parks where they will serve as classrooms for homework and activities for students in the afterschool programs.

“The funding was available as an incentive to all agencies that have affordable housing units built in their city,” according to the Director of Public Works in Union City, Mintze Cheng. The state’s Department of Housing-Related Program  has footed the bill through the grant assigned for the development of any of the city’s park and recreation facilities, she added.

Some students in Union City are among the estimated 15 million children nationwide who are left unsupervised between the time they get out of school and the time their parents get home, according to the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies in 2011.  Afterschool programs fill the gap by offering adequate supervision and homework assistance.

The funds were awarded to Union City because of its efforts to provide affordable housing to residents through Mid-Peninsula Housing, a non-profit firm that develops, owns, and manages over 86 properties in Northern California, including two housing units in Union City, close to all three parks, Cheng explained.

Impact Construction Services Inc. will implement the project for the total amount of $94,901.00, according to the Office of the City Engineer report. The final date of completion is set for June 2015, just in time for the parks summer camps to put them to good use.