School desks no longer being dumped

By JILLIAN JONES
Register Staff Writer

One by one, custodians are removing desks and chairs from Dumpsters across Napa Valley Unified School District.

All week, school Dumpsters brimmed with desks, chairs and picnic tables to make room for a new shipment of furniture for Napa schools. Now, after a public outcry, the furniture will find a haven in storage facilities until school officials decide what to do with the mountains of unused desks and chairs.

In 2002, voters passed Measure M, the $95 million NVUSD school bond that budgets $1.5 million for the replacement of student furniture. The funds cover the replacement of up to half of NVUSD’s student furniture, said Don Evans, NVUSD director of school planning and construction.

With students on spring break, custodians busied themselves with the task of tossing old furniture into the garbage in time for the arrival of the new furniture this week.

Discarded furniture ranged from decades old to relatively new. Each principal was charged with determining which and how much furniture to throw away, said Evans.

At some schools, the number of discarded desks reached into hundreds.

Nearly all of the discarded desks and chairs are functional, said NVUSD custodians.

Some, said Evans, were clearly unusable.

It took no time at all for the community to respond with outrage. With districts across the state faced with potentially severe budget cuts, even custodians complained about throwing away perfectly good furniture.

Evans explained that the district is legally precluded from donating the furniture because it was purchased with public funds. Past attempts by the district to sell furniture proved unsuccessful, he said.

Some citizens took matters into their own hands, driving out to schools and filling the backs of their trucks with desks to donate to local organizations.

Evans said he was inundated with phone calls and e-mails complaining about the discarded furniture.

So on Wednesday — with about half of the Dumpsters already delivered to the local recycling facility — Evans put an immediate stop to the process because of what he called “some bad feelings in the community.”

“I have people right now going to every one of the schools to tell the head custodians to store the used furniture on campus,” he said.

“We thought we had a pretty good game plan,” said Evans, adding, “I just can’t afford to have the school district put in this light. We need to go back.”

“We need to make people feel that we do care, as we do,” he added.

Evans said he put a stop to the recycling “long enough for me to determine what plan will best meet the needs of providing a reuse of those furnishings that are reusable, and at the same time ensure that the furniture that aren’t get into a good, positive recycling situation.”

In the meantime, the Napa Recycling and Waste Services will do its best to donate the furniture it has already collected.

“The school district cannot give it away for free, but it’s now our property,” said Tim Dewey-Mattia, recycling public outreach coordinator. “We have control and try to recycle and give away as much as possible.”

“Any items we get from the school district or otherwise, we have a reuse center,” said Dewey-Mattia, noting that he is working with a local redistribution and salvage center called eco-Organize.

Toni Renee Vierra, owner of eco-Organize, said she is investigating the possibility of donating to local nonprofits and charter schools, as well as schools in neighboring districts.

“If anybody needs this material, we have it, we’d love to reuse it, and it’s the best way, as opposed to sending it to a landfill,” said Dewey-Mattia. For information about acquiring used furniture, contact Napa Recycling and Waste Services at 255-5200.

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