ASJ bond ill considered
Faced with the one-two punch of stagnant to declining enrollment
and the governor’s looming budget cuts, public school districts
across San Benito County are reeling. None is in more dire straits
than Aromas-San Juan, which forecasts a deficit for the current
school year.
ASJ bond ill considered
Faced with the one-two punch of stagnant to declining enrollment and the governor’s looming budget cuts, public school districts across San Benito County are reeling. None is in more dire straits than Aromas-San Juan, which forecasts a deficit for the current school year.
The district’s response is to consider going to voters for a construction bond to replace what it describes as aging facilities and to pay off the debt for Anzar High School. But even the smallest bond proposal submitted to the board included more than $12 million in spending beyond the $1.6 million it will take to retire the debt on Anzar High. The preferred alternative would be to beg voters to approve an $18.3 million bond, one that would allow construction of a cafeteria and six new classrooms at Anzar High, three classrooms at Aromas Elementary, and the modernization of some facilities at San Juan Elementary.
That’s the wrong approach, strategically and morally.
District voters endorsed a bond issue in 2002, but the district, aware of the need to replace aging portable classrooms in Aromas, elected instead to build a gymnasium there. When the district came back asking for more funds in 2006, voters said “no.” With the economy in an even worse condition than it was two years ago, now is an ill-considered time to ask voters to pay the freight on items like a cafeteria that were deemed optional when Anzar was built, just 12 years ago.
Voters could be convinced of the wisdom of retiring the $1.6 million Anzar debt, but with the rest of the district hurting, now is not the time to do more.
It’s also time for district staff and trustees to recognize a historic reality. Anzar High is the love child of a contentious district consolidation vote. The consolidation took Aromas Elementary out of troubled Pajaro Valley Unified School District and grafted it onto the tiny San Juan School District. That move meant that Aromas students were not being fed into Watsonville High, a place many regarded in a negative light.
But the move was not popular among San Juan voters, an opinion many of them have not seen fit to change. If anything, the rivalry between the school communities of Aromas and San Juan has only grown. With performance at San Juan School slipping, gatherings of parents and even school staff are increasingly becoming complaint sessions.
Schools are being asked by the state to guide themselves through troubled waters. The intent was not to ease the pain by increased taxing of local families.
