Although the construction will not be completely finished,
Tuesday
’s opening of the new Ann Sobrato High School represents an end
and a beginning, a milestone for the Morgan Hill community in many
ways.
Although the construction will not be completely finished, Tuesday’s opening of the new Ann Sobrato High School represents an end and a beginning, a milestone for the Morgan Hill community in many ways.
The opening represents the coming to fruition of years of work, on the part of the Morgan Hill School Board, the School District Staff, volunteers and community members who were united in the belief the district needed a second high school. It is the beginning of an era many in the community have waited for, when 9th graders return to the high school.
The remaining construction work – on the gymnasium, library and other classroom buildings – is scheduled to be completed in December. The administrative building and two classroom buildings will be open Aug. 24, the first day of school in the school district. A grand opening celebration is scheduled Sept. 18.
Sobrato, built at an approximate cost of $80 million, opens this year with 9th and 10th grade students. By the 2006-2007 school year, it will be a 9-12 grade high school.
Ninth grade students return to Live Oak High this year, for the first time in a quarter century.
“It began for me as simply addressing something I saw as a problem, having been there when the problem started,” said School Board Trustee Del Foster, first elected in 1996. “I was there the opening day (of the new Live Oak), my dad was on the School Board; four years later we were on double sessions …
“When we started this process (building a second high school), my oldest daughter was in preschool, now she’s entering sixth grade. When we started, I had two children; I now have four. When we started, I had darker hair than I do now.”
Live Oak High will celebrate its 100th birthday this year. There has been no date set yet for the celebration, but Superintendent Carolyn McKennan said it will likely be mid-October. It opened on what is now the Britton Middle School campus at Central Avenue and Monterey Road, first in a two-story wooden building, then moved into the present Britton buildings in 1950; the current campus on East Main Avenue opened in 1975.
Plans for Sobrato High were scaled back to 173,902 square-feet to accommodate 1,500 students at an estimated cost of $78 million instead of the 2,500 originally intended. The school was originally designed at 186,000 square-feet. Funding was to come mainly from the $72 million bond issue, Measure B, passed in June 1999. The bond issue also included money to build Barrett Elementary and renovate the aging Live Oak.
Once the bond was passed, after the third try, the challenges facing proponents of the new school had only begun. After a prolonged search for an appropriate site, School Board selected the current site in October 2000. At the time, then Board President Foster said the site selection process created “many a hole in the board room as we bashed our heads against the wall.”
McKennan agreed with Foster, but said the end result would be worth the struggles.
“The important business, to me, is that each year we don’t have a new high school, a group of students is denied their rightful opportunity,” McKennan said.
The site selection may have been influenced by the donation of a large piece of property, approximately 124 acres, to the district by the Sobrato family. The only stipulation was that the district name the school after family matriarch Ann Sobrato.
But the donation was filled with complications, including the fact that a large piece of the property was located in a greenbelt area, and the remaining portion was actually within San Jose city limits. San Jose then filed a lawsuit against the district and the City of Morgan Hill over development in the greenbelt.
The lawsuit also claimed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the city of Morgan Hill and the school district to provide water and sewer services to the site is illegal.
The lawsuit was settled out of court Aug. 31, 2001, one day before a court hearing. The major points in the settlement included a trade-off: since the district will builds the high school buildings, parking lots and walkways outside the designated greenbelt area, the district will need to purchase additional land, an adjacent 75 acres. The city of San Jose would give the district $3.5 million to help with this purchase.
The campus is just north of Morgan Hill on approximately 124 acres on the east side of Monterey Road, north of Burnett Avenue.
Once the settlement was ratified by all three parties involved – the district, San Jose City Council and Morgan Hill City Council, the district began to move forward with plans for the new school.
Again, controversy erupted. Jacobs Facilities, Inc., which had built Barrett Elementary, was remodeling Live Oak and slated to build Sobrato, was ousted in December 2002, shortly after the election of new members Shellé Thomas, Amina Khemici and Mike Hickey. The decision to remove Jacobs was based in part on an audit of the Barrett Elementary construction costs overruns and processes.
Ground was finally broken at the site in October 2002, before Turner Construction was hired by the district. Projected opening by the district in August 2004 was greeted with skepticism by much of the community. The budget for construction and an operating budget for the school were also under scrutiny by trustees and the community.
Then the district hired Al Solis as director of construction and modernization, with a focus on the Sobrato project. Solis immediately began looking at ways to cut the budget. He also had to ask the board in April to spend $256,000 to speed up construction. The money came from a construction contingency fund. Solis told trustees the acceleration was necessary to open the school on time.
Now, with just finishing touches left to complete the first phase of construction in time for Tuesday’s opening, it would seem the years of controversy could end. But for some in the community, it is important to keep the spotlight shining on the school, because some believe Sobrato will succeed while Live Oak will be left to fall into more disrepair, both facility-wise and in academic excellence.
“It has been ups and downs, quite a few of them, right from the start,” Foster said. “I don’t think anybody realizes how hard it is to build a school, so much harder than a commercial property or a home. There are so many factors, including emotional ones.
“And I also don’t think anyone realizes how much effort it is to change a system. I certainly didn’t. It is easy to stand on one side of the podium and criticize; it is a whole different ballgame to change things, whether physical space or the way things are done in a bureaucracy. That is probably the biggest challenge that I don’t think I understood at the beginning of the process.”
Marilyn Dubil covers education and law enforcement for The Times. She can be reached by e-mail at md****@mo*************.com or phoning (408) 779-4106 Ext. 202
