The San Francisco Planning Commission has approved a plan to install new cellphone antennas on the roof of the Bureau of Jewish Education, despite loud objections from the Jewish day school next door.
After the Dec. 8 unanimous vote, opponents of the plan, including staff and parents of the Lisa Kampner Hebrew Academy, vowed to appeal to the Board of Supervisors.
Parents at the pre-K–12 academy, which has 96 students, began their protests when they learned in the fall that AT&T Wireless planned to install more cellphone antennas within a few dozen yards of the school, located at 645 14th Ave.
The BJE has had rooftop antennas for 14 years, renting the space to AT&T for $24,000 per year. The new plan would increase that amount to $60,000.
Concerned about possible radiation hazards, some parents have threatened to pull their children out of the academy, San Francisco’s only Orthodox Jewish day school, should the antennas go up.
Rabbi Pinchas Lipner, head of school, said, “Parents want to [appeal] to the Board of Supervisors because they have children from [ages] 3 to 7, and they have seen [studies] that claim radiation within 350 meters from antennas increases as much as four times the chance of giving cancer to kids.”
The 2010 Israeli study found a 40 percent higher incidence of certain brain cancers among adults who use cellphones for 30 minutes a day. The study did not examine exposure to cellphone antennas such as those planned at the BJE.
The Planning Commission first took up the issue at a meeting last month. Representatives from the BJE and the Hebrew Academy spoke, and then commissioners asked both sides to work on a compromise.
“Rabbi Lipner and I had been meeting and talking a fair amount to work something out,” David Waksberg, executive director of the BJE, said Dec. 12. “Both sides made good-faith efforts.”
To ease parents’ anxieties, the BJE asked AT&T to scale back its original plan from six to four antennas and point them away from the school. According to Hammett & Edison, an independent mechanical engineering firm hired by AT&T to assess the project, the revised configuration would result in a radiation output 20,000 times below the FCC limit for what is considered safe.
William Hammett, president of the Sonoma-based firm, explained that cellphone antennas use nonionizing radio frequency waves (lower on the electromagnetic spectrum than infrared or visible light) and use the bands formerly taken up by UHF television stations before the digital conversion in 2009.
“Given that the projected levels are so much lower than what the standards allow, and the standards have within them a safety factor considered prudent for all people, the conclusion is that there is no danger,” Hammett said in an interview.
The BJE also offered to conduct annual on-site radiation testing, something AT&T normally does every other year. But a compromise between the academy and the BJE could not be worked out prior to the Dec. 8 Planning Commission meeting.
At that meeting, Lipner and several parents addressed the commission, imploring members to reject the plan. One parent characterized the school as David fighting the AT&T Goliath.
Waksberg addressed the commission as well, saying, “We have no intention of harming the school. We have, with AT&T’s support, significantly changed our proposal in a way that we believe is not going to harm anyone at the school, and is supporting of the view that there is really no radiation going to be beamed toward the school.”
Now that the plan has been approved, the school has 30 days to file an appeal.
Lipner noted that in the past, parents thwarted antenna installation plans at other local schools. For example, at Drew School in Pacific Heights, a planned antenna installation was dropped in 2000 before the Planning Commission ruled, due to parental pressure.
Lipner is not optimistic about the outcome this time, however. “If [parents] lose, they will have to give up. What else can they do? They might take their kids out of the school and I might lose tuition.”
Waksberg said installation would not take place until after the Board of Supervisors rules on the appeal. A hearing date will be set once the formal appeal is filed.
Should the supervisors shoot down the plan, Waksberg worries the BJE could lose its existing antennas as well, which he said would inflict serious fiscal harm on the agency.
If the plan goes forward, Lipner worries about an equally dire loss of income.
Waksberg said that whatever the final outcome, “I want to help the school to educate parents that there is nothing to fear. This will require everyone moving from a confrontational mode to a collaborative one. Both of us are about Jewish learning. We should be working together.”