With nearly 3,000 students already crowded onto its campus, San
Benito High School doesn’t have room for many more.
With nearly 3,000 students already crowded onto its campus, San Benito High School doesn’t have room for many more.
But school administrators know that more high school-age kids – maybe a lot more – will be living in Hollister after the state lifts the moratorium on sewer hookups and home construction starts up again.
Nearly 1,200 residential units have already been pre-approved and now are lined up in the development pipeline, with builders waiting to get to work on meeting what many say is a pent-up demand for new houses, condominiums and apartments. More development projects will likely be added to the backlog before the end of the building ban late next year.
School administrators have counted their classrooms and counted all those new homes on the drawing board. And they’ve come to the obvious conclusion that within just four or five years San Benito High simply won’t be able to hold any more students.
Hollister is either going to have to build a second high school or we’re going to have to make our existing high school even bigger. A decision on which direction to proceed hasn’t yet been made, but given the looming issue of enrollment capacity and the time it would take to either get that second high school built or to expand San Benito High, the choice will have to be made soon.
This is going to be a difficult decision for our community. The sooner we start really thinking and talking about it, and honestly weighing the pros and cons of large school vs. smaller school, the better prepared we’ll be to do the right thing by our young people.
In Hollister, San Benito High is a focal point of community pride, identity and tradition. A lot of people simply aren’t going to want to give that up, even if it means that our high school grows to 5,000 or more students.
Yet there is a lot of research that shows that smaller high schools offer students a better environment for learning. A study commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation concluded that smaller is better. The study found that average academic achievement is higher in smaller schools, that students in smaller schools are more likely to pass core courses and go on to college than students in large schools and that the effects of school size are greatest for low-income and minority students.
But there are also many studies that have found that high schools with 4,000 or more students offer excellent academic settings. Such schools can offer a wider range of courses and learning programs better reflecting the interests and needs of a diverse student population. They can also provide more clubs and organizations for students and more specialized vocational programs.
Would our young people be best served by one even bigger high school or by two smaller schools? It’s a decision we’ll be making soon. Let’s get the community conversation started.
