San Benito High is pushing 3,000 kids, but plans for another
campus are fledgling
With more than 2,900 students bustling around campus at San
Benito High School, it may come as a surprise that there no real
plans for a second high school anytime soon.
San Benito High is pushing 3,000 kids, but plans for another campus are fledgling
With more than 2,900 students bustling around campus at San Benito High School, it may come as a surprise that there no real plans for a second high school anytime soon.
Then again, the sewer moratorium is likely to keep the school’s population stagnant for the next few years, giving the district some breathing room. School officials say the campus could hold another 300 students.
“I’ve been told that building a new high school would have a five-year timeline. So, if I were told to start planning today, we could have a new school by 2011,” said Director for Financing and Operations for San Benito High School District Jim Koenig. The timeline would likely be reduced a little, since the district already owns the land where they would likely build a new high school.
But plans aren’t in the works. In fact, the district isn’t sure when a new high school may come to fruition. Koenig says that growth projections over the next few years are not severe enough to require the district to build one.
“We have a model to predict attendance based on the schools that feed San Benito High School. According to the models, growth is stagnant for a while, especially since the city isn’t allowing any new developments until after the sewer moratorium is lifted. That was initially supposed to be January of 2007, but now they’re thinking it will be a few more years,” Koenig said.
Additionally, one of the concerns some people have is how having two campuses in Hollister won’t create socioeconomic opposites, that is, a “good” high school and a “bad” one. Koenig said that in terms of drawing district lines, San Benito High School District hasn’t even started looking at this, but that he is currently putting together a longer-range facilities plan.
“As we see it, we won’t need to meet the needs until the growth dictates we examine them and that hasn’t happened yet,” Koenig said.
The site the district currently has, located at Best Road and Highway 25 is 70 acres, the same size as the main campus of SBHS.
As far as Koenig knows, this is the only location that the high school has ever examined. He said that if you look at the way growth has developed in Hollister, the district’s choice of that location makes perfect sense.
The district has gone over empty classrooms with the state representatives and it has 11 empty rooms, which equates to space for 300 more students.
Contrary to Hollister’s lack of high school growth, Gilroy Unified School District is preparing to start construction on a second campus, Christopher High School, since the current campus has swelled to roughly 2,300 students.
The first part of construction is expected to be finished in 2009, said GUSD Facilities Director Rob Mendiola.
Gilroy passed a bond measure in 2002 to fund the new high school. Gilroy’s new campus will be 40 acres initially and the district is in the process of acquiring additional land through eminent domain.
The district evaluated several sites before deciding on the east Gilroy location. However, with the size of the Gilroy High School the administrators wanted to make sure that the initial campus didn’t get too over-crowded too quickly.
The district has a policy in place to create equality between the schools. That way, all the schools have the same amenities. The policy was adopted with the Master Plan back in 2002, according to Mendiola and the district has taken great strides to make sure things stay that way.
In creating the new campus, Mendiola said that the ultimate goal is to create a new campus capable of housing 1800 students, but during the first phase of the campus they will only attempt to house 900 students, then later reduce the number of students at Gilroy High School down to 1800, so that Gilroy will have two high schools with 1800 students each.
Senator Jeff Denham is hopeful that schools will have an easier time financing new campuses for the students. He’s been working on an initiative that would make it easier for schools to acquire and keep bond money.
Denham said that currently there is bond money available to schools, but the problem is that bond money isn’t allocated the way it is supposed to be. He said that it’s supposed to be a 50/50 matching grant, but that often the schools have to end up raising more than 50 percent of the match.
“Right now, it’s closer to 70-30 than 50-50. So, through developer fees the state is only matching 30 percent and leaving the school districts to pick up the other 70 percent. I’m continuing to fight for more of the match. We’ve changed the language so that it reflects more of a true match, but the legislature hasn’t gone through yet,” Denham said. Despite the fact that the bill is attached to a transportation bill he was confident that the bill would be passed.
