Dear Editor:
Both Wendy Spohr and my mother, Diane Petro, have written in
about the issue of where the new high school will be located. Now
it’s my turn.
Dear Editor:
Both Wendy Spohr and my mother, Diane Petro, have written in about the issue of where the new high school will be located. Now it’s my turn.
I have also read an article by Chris Messmer who is opposed to building the high school at the Day Road location … but why exactly? I understand his issues about the traffic and citizens, but what about the people around the Kern Avenue site? What, because we aren’t on Day Road we don’t matter? Only you? That doesn’t seem fair to me and fairness is what you supposedly care about, Mr. Messmer, it’s all about what’s fair to the people wouldn’t you say?
Now the traffic issue for Day Road has been addressed, but I don’t see why Kern is a much better area for a traffic jam. Mr. Messmer said it would be expensive to add traffic lights and turn lanes on the Day Road/Santa Teresa intersection, but Kern would have to be redone to be suitable to hold all of the traffic from the elementary schools and the high school.
Our street is still very narrow, even after it was slightly widened to hold the increased traffic after the South County Housing tract went up next door. It wasn’t meant for high school traffic. I’ll ask the same question Mr. Messmer asked, have you seen the high school when school is let out? Or how about when there is a football game or any other event for that matter?
Now onto the safety issue … Mr. Messmer talks about the safety of the children. I am confused because I don’t know whether he means the safety of the younger children or that of the high school students. If he means the younger children, I have a feeling that the students of Luigi Aprea will be just fine, the same as ever in fact. On the other hand, think of the children from Rod Kelley and Del Buono. Some of them live in the area and walk home in a group or just by themselves. What’s to say that some high school student isn’t going to race out of the high school parking lot, not thinking, and hit and maybe kill a small child? Sure that can happen anywhere, but look at the way the students drive at the high school, it’s a raceway of teens that are just learning how to drive!
Another safety issue is the distance between Rod Kelley, Del Buono, Las Animas and the new high school. Here is a thought for all of you that don’t care about the fact that small children are going to be running around mingled in with high school students – there will most likely be an increase in drug sales because there will be a whole new group of children to corrupt. Children that still aren’t really ready to make their own big decisions in life. If they see the “big, cool high school students” smoking, drinking, swearing and acting rowdy, what is there to stop them from imitating this behavior? That’s what will seem “adult” to them and they want to be “cool” grown-ups.
The main reason the school board is considering the Kern lot is because it is a central location. Is our city blind? “Oh, this looks central, lets kick all of these people out of their homes onto the street, I mean its their fault that they decided to live in this perfect central area. Who cares what happens to them, its not our home!”
Is that what they say? I’d like to see what our mayor would think of our “perfect central area” if he was going to be forced out of his home so that a high school could be built.
Jim and Wendy Spohr have lived in their home for 24 years, the town wasn’t this overpopulated then, so how is it their fault they chose to live in a perfect central site? They didn’t purposely reside there just so that they could save the land for a school that is about six years overdue.
Gilroy High School is overpopulated by at least 1,000 people. That doesn’t happen in the period of a year. Our city is so worried about building houses, houses and more houses, that they forget about the things that need to go along with the houses, like umm, schools? What a concept!
They figure, oh look, these people we built houses for have small children, let’s build another elementary school. Well, the children grow up. They filter in from nine elementary schools, into two, but soon to be three, junior highs, into one high school. Shouldn’t this problem have been spotted sooner?
Maybe our mayor and school board will realize that these peoples’ homes are very important to them. Have a heart and some common sense and maybe you’ll have a chance of being re-elected.
Corinne Petro,
sophomore at Gilroy High
Submitted Tuesday, June 17
