EDITOR: I have been reading about Sobrato high School
’s opening with growing apprehension. One question I have yet to
get an answer for is why the hurry to open the school this year? I
don’t object to opening a new high school. I object to the timing.
We have closed Machado and Encinal and are considering closing
Burnett.
EDITOR:
I have been reading about Sobrato high School’s opening with growing apprehension. One question I have yet to get an answer for is why the hurry to open the school this year?
I don’t object to opening a new high school. I object to the timing. We have closed Machado and Encinal and are considering closing Burnett.
Why don’t we wait until we have enough money to do it right? The residents of Morgan Hill voted for a new high school at a time when enrollment was on the upswing. Now things have totally changed.
It seems that once the ball was in motion, the board and superintendent threw common sense and logic to the wind. They took on the full-speed-ahead, damn-the-torpedoes approach. They chose a controversial site to put the school in San Jose despite San Jose’s objections, which triggered a lawsuit. They still they went forward.
They stated they would not use eminent domain and then they used it to take more than three properties. They picked a questionable contractor and spent thousands and thousands in litigation. It is $30 million over budget and still they move forward.
It is going to cost $750,000 to operate Sobrato for one year. Where is the money coming from and what happened to the money that was set aside for Live Oak? Live Oak needs desperately to be remodeled but it seems to have fallen in the shadow of a pipe dream high school.
I’m not sure why we have to go into hock to our eyeballs to hurry and have a school that we cannot afford to furnish, staff and turn on lights for. Our other high school should not suffer for this folly. We need to open this school when our community needs it and can afford it. If we continue to spend frivolously, Principal Rich Knapp may need to change Sobrato’s mascot from the bulldog to the albatross.
Pina Stanley, Morgan Hill
