Oakland ~ It's been more than 10 years since community leaders began the monumental task of building a state-of-the-art school from the ground up in an inner-city Oakland neighborhood.

That work was officially done Thursday, when hundreds of students and adults celebrated in the gymnasium of the new Cesar E. Chavez Education Center, the first new school built in Oakland in 30 years.

"It was a long road," said Bea Bernstine, co-chair of the grassroots group Oakland Community Organizations, which spearheaded the effort to build the campus on the site of an abandoned Montgomery Ward building.

"I don't think any school has been built like this, with the community driving it," Bernstine said.

Backers of the plan to build the school spent countless hours holding meetings, writing petitions, lobbying politicians and fighting lawsuits all the way to the state Supreme Court.

Bernstine said the project was born out of residents' complaints about the historic building that once housed a Montgomery Ward department store, which they said was becoming an eyesore.

Residents who wanted to preserve the building sued, but ultimately did not stop the school district's wrecking ball.

City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente (San Antonio-Fruitvale) was another leader of the effort to build the school.

"This project is the thing I'm most proud of in my 12 years on the City Council," he told the crowd in Spanish. "This is an example for all of us who have come from other countries. If you desire something, you can do it."

Schools have been operating in portable classrooms on the modern, spacious campus on International Boulevard for some time. But the schools recently moved into permanent, modern buildings, and portables will be torn down to build a soccer field and other projects.

The center is now home to three schools: Urban Promise Academy, International Community School, and most recently Think College Now elementary school.

Urban Promise Academy will eventually move to its own campus, but the district has yet to find a site for the school.

Oakland schools State Administrator Randolph Ward addressed the crowd in English, and then repeated his remarks in fluent Spanish.

"It's good to be here with a friendly crowd," said Ward, who had listened to hours of angry criticism the previous night during a hearing on his plan to close five schools with declining enrollment.

"Obviously, many of these plans occurred many years before I was here," Ward said. "This building is beautiful, yes, but what is more important is the quality of education in the building."

Students sang songs and played drums at Thursday's event.

City Councilmember Jean Quan (Montclair-Laurel) noted that the life of the project was older than students now enrolled in the finished buildings.

"When Mr. De La Fuente and I started working to get this land, these children were not born yet," said Quan, a former school board member.

But overcrowding, which has been a problem in Oakland schools for years, still exists at campuses just down the street from the site, she said.

"That means kids who grew up in East Oakland during the last 10 years did not get an equal education," Quan said.

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