Morgan Hill School Board trustees sank their teeth into the
Coyote Valley development Tuesday, while some local residents
nipped at San Jose officials proposing the plan that could force
the district to build and maintain as many as 13 new schools.
Morgan Hill School Board trustees sank their teeth into the Coyote Valley development Tuesday, while some local residents nipped at San Jose officials proposing the plan that could force the district to build and maintain as many as 13 new schools.
With 25,000 homes and 50,000 residents anticipated by full buildout in 30 years, Coyote Valley provides a unique challenge for the Morgan Hill Unified School District, which will be responsible for providing public education to children in that area of south San Jose. The area is within the Morgan Hill School District boundaries, which extend north to Bernal Road in south San Jose.
“I’m not saying that the Coyote Valley plan is wrong, but simply, is this what the Morgan Hill School Board wants to be responsible for?” Morgan Hill resident Robert Bennich said during the workshop. “Do the people of Morgan Hill want to be responsible for building 13 new schools in the city of San Jose, in a densely populated urban environment, whose residents will outnumber and outvote the people of Morgan Hill?”
The development plan, called the Coyote Valley Specific Plan, is currently being defined by a task force before the San Jose City Council decides to approve the controversial development just north of Morgan Hill. School board trustees invited San Jose planners to Morgan Hill for a workshop Tuesday night to address their concerns and give feedback to the task force charged with defining the details of large-scale development.
The task force has no Morgan Hill representation, other than former school board member Russ Danielson, who owns a business in Morgan Hill, but resides in San Jose. The 13 schools proposed in the specific plan would essentially double the number of schools in the MHUSD.
Sherri Duarte, a board member of the Charter School of Morgan Hill, cautioned trustees to keep a close eye on the development, if the area remains in the Morgan Hill School District.
“I recommend that you closely monitor the cost of the project,” she told trustees during the workshop, reminding them of the over-budget construction of Barrett Elementary. “You were elected on a platform of not repeating past mistakes, mistakes of past board members.… If it does go forward, you need to package it from a PR standpoint. This is not only a school board decision, but a community decision. You need to make certain it is packaged and provided to the community.”
Board President Shellé Thomas said she and the other board members do not want to put the onus of construction costs on Morgan Hill.
“It has been our position…for the past eight months or so, that we do not want to burden Morgan Hill taxpayers with construction of these schools,” she said. “From day one, we have been determined that the infrastructure costs would be paid for…. No way would they be on the backs of our property owners.”
The Dahlin Group, consultants who are working with the CVSP task force to develop the plan, was represented at the workshop by Doug Dahlin, who explained many of the concepts of the plan to trustees. One topic everyone wanted to know more about is the plan for a high school or two high schools for the development.
In their plan, Dahlin said, students would attend a 3,000 student high school, but in response to district objections to one large high school, the design calls for more of a “collegiate design.”
“We thought to create something like what many of us experienced in our college years, with colleges all a part of one university,” he said. “Each school would deal with 1,000-1,500 students instead of 3,000. Each would have their own quad area, their own cafeteria or cafetorium, and specific buildings they would share among each other.”
Trustees also worried about keeping students safe on a university-styled campus.
“One (concern) is security,” Trustee Kathy Sullivan said. “That would be a huge campus. It would be difficult to have line-of-sight of all the students. How could you be sure they stayed on campus? How could you know who came on campus?”
The trustees argued parking availability and affordability would be a major concern for the district in the plan. Regardless of Coyote’s pedestrian-friendly and transit-oriented design, trustees said students would still rely on their own vehicles to get to school each day.
Superintendent Alan Nishino, who appeared to be in agreement with much of the plan, although extremely concerned about traffic and funding for construction of the schools, said he was torn when it came to the high school plan.
“I am conflicted because I like to have good things for the kids, and I would like for them to have a ‘world-class science facilities,’ a ‘world-class performing arts center,’” Nishino said, referring to Dahlin’s description of the shared facilities. “But I’m traditional, I like schools with about 1,500 students. I’m not really in favor of a large school.”
Trustee Peter Mandel said once he considered the plan, he saw how it could work.
“I simplified it in my mind,” he said. “We know we don’t want a 3,000 student school, but there’s not enough land in the plan to have two schools … (This plan would be) space efficient for the land available. We could have normal size high schools. We would have the same cost for administrators if we had two completely separate facilities. It seems viable to me. I see why it is practical.”
Morgan Hill Mayor Dennis Kennedy suggested the district pursue swapping land with Gavilan College, which is trying to purchase land across from IBM on Bailey road to build a Coyote Valley Campus. Trading spaces with the community college would satisfy the plan’s desire to use a school as an element of “civic pride” in the heart of the development and provide the protection and space for parking the district wants at the high school.
Gavilan Trustee Mark Dover had not heard about the mayor’s suggestion, adding, “It’s kind of out of left field.”
“Gavilan College should be concerned about what’s best for Gavilan College – not the Morgan Hill school district,” Dover said. “We are looking for the ideal site for Gavilan College … and if that’s the ideal site for us …”
