When Day Road resident Debbie Timms looks out her kitchen
window, what used to be a sprawling vista of wide open spaces and
the mountains surrounding Pacheco Pass is now dominated by the
looming structure of what will be a state of the art high
school.
When Day Road resident Debbie Timms looks out her kitchen window, what used to be a sprawling vista of wide open spaces and the mountains surrounding Pacheco Pass is now dominated by the looming structure of what will be a state of the art high school.
“My whole thing when I moved to the country was that I never wanted to live near a school,” she said, leaning against her kitchen sink.
After seven years at her Day Road address, Timms has acclimated to life in the country, holding her patience when she gets stuck driving behind the occasional tractor or trailer towing barnyard animals. But the thought of hundreds of teenagers swarming around her property is not what she had in mind when she moved her family and her horses to the country.
When Christopher High School opens its doors to about 600 ninth and 10th graders in August, neighbors are preparing themselves for the hassle and headache of maneuvering through student traffic in the coming years, a process they never thought they would have to experience in their bucolic neighborhood.
The Gilroy Unified School District is making about $5 million worth of traffic improvements to facilitate traffic safety and circulation around CHS. Three new traffic lights will be installed in time for the first day of school at Santa Teresa Boulevard and West Day Road, Santa Teresa Boulevard and East Day Road, and West Day Road and Cougar Court – a new road that will connect West Day Road with a footbridge to Tapestry Drive in the neighborhood off Sunrise Drive. A traffic bridge was originally planned instead of a pedestrian footbridge but was scaled back when concerned neighbors spoke out, said Rob Mendiola, facilities director for the school district.
“There was a lot of concern but things have been done by the district to address this concern,” Mendiola said.
Currently a two-lane road, West Day Road will be widened to include a center left turn lane, Mendiola said. To complete the loop around the school, the district will build Cougar Court between West Day Road and the footbridge and a driveway connecting Cougar Court to Santa Teresa Boulevard. The entrance to the school faces south toward the two-lane driveway that will run along Lion’s Creek to the north and will be an extension of East Day Road. Santa Teresa Boulevard will also be widened to four lanes near the school, Mendiola said.
The first parking lot and a loop for student drop off and pick up sits near the intersection of the school’s driveway and Cougar Court. The parking lot included in phase two is planned near the intersection of Cougar Court and West Day Road, according to the district’s plans.
Traffic flow will move in a clockwise direction around the school, with cars entering at the driveway and leaving from West Day Road.
According to traffic studies, Day Road carries an existing average daily traffic of 1,940 vehicles and Santa Teresa Boulevard carries an average of 11,290. The study estimated that traffic generated by the school will eventually increase the average daily traffic by over 3,000 vehicles on both Day and Santa Teresa, resulting in significant increases in delays at the beginning and end of the school day. However, the three traffic signals will reduce the expected delays, according to a mitigation report.
The school will have 350 parking spaces when the it opens in August and will add an additional 250 spaces in phase two of the high school, set to start soon after the school opens. In total, the spaces will accommodate 1,800 students, according to district figures. This means more than 600 student and faculty cars – in addition to an unspecified number of buses and cars driven by parents – could be on the road headed to and from the school early in the morning and in the early afternoon.
CHS Principal John Perales expected the initial spaces to be more than enough to accommodate the school’s ninth and 10 grade population this fall, the majority of which won’t be driving anyway, he pointed out. The spaces will only fill up after the school expands to the upper grades. The gradual population increase at the school will give residents some time to get used to the idea of more traffic, he said.
Still, the end result will be traffic residents of northwest Gilroy didn’t gamble for when they bought their homes, said Heidi Luna.
With five sons and about twice as many car trips every day to and from St. Mary School, the grocery store and various appointments, Luna thought the traffic generated by the school’s construction was bad.
“There are already holdups with the trucks now,” she said, bouncing her wailing infant son in her lap. “How’s it going to be with a bunch of kids? My concern is getting my kids to school. We’re already paying taxes to build this school and now we’re going to get stuck in the traffic from it.”
When she and her husband bought their house on Day Road four years ago, they had no idea the town’s second high school would be going up in their backyard, they said.
To keep residents abreast of developing plans, Perales encouraged concerned citizens to contact him.
“Call me, I will work with you,” he said.
As a former administrator at Gilroy High School and Mount Madonna High School, Perales met with students to share his expectations and didn’t hesitate to stop students who weren’t representing their schools favorably.
“It makes a huge difference, looking them in the eye and telling them that they will be held to a higher standard,” Perales said. “My experience has been that no matter what type of kid you’re dealing with, they will rise.”
Perales also plans to encourage students who live nearby to walk or ride their bicycles. He plans to make the two-mile bike ride from his home to CHS as often as possible, he said, and hopes to see his students do the same.
For more information about CHS, visit the school’s Web site at http://chs.gusd.ca.schoolloop.com or call John Perales at 848-7171.
View Larger Map
