Our View: City should provide GUSD with building permits,
too
The Gilroy Unified School District is facing a nearly $7 million deficit between projects promised in Measure I and the price tag that wish list carries.
Clearly, it’s time to prioritize. It’s never pleasant process, but increasing costs make it necessary for GUSD trustees to decide which items on the Measure I project list are most important, and which must be cut.
Already projects have been canceled, including a $3 million multipurpose room for Brownell Middle School and $10 million in modernization projects slated for Mt. Madonna High school. But it seems that’s not enough.
Identifying which projects stay and which projects go is a matter of setting priorities. We believe that building a second high school should be the district’s top priority. Relieving overcrowding at Gilroy High School is simply the most important facilities-related change to improve academic performance among Gilroy’s public high school students.
Leveling the facilities playing field is a nice goal. Building a second high school is an absolute necessity.
After dealing with that community demand, then school board members must look at the rest of the Measure I project list, prioritize the items and cut the lowest-priority projects until the $69 million bond revenues will cover the revised cost estimates.
The City of Gilroy could help the school district close the funding gap, too. Certainly our community’s schools should be far more important than Bonfante Gardens, which the city bent over backwards for when the park faced the very real prospect of a sheriff’s sale to satisfy bondholders.
The city should quickly rezone and provide housing allotments for the 10-acre Las Animas Elementary School site. Doing so would greatly increase the value of the property, thus increasing GUSD revenue from the sale of the school site. Doing so would benefit not only GUSD’s coffers, but residents and property owners in the community as well by improving their school facilities, students’ academic performance and city property values.
If the City Council dilly- dallys on this request, shame, shame! Would Gilroy really scrap development rules for a faltering amusement park, then deny the school district in its hour of need?
If so, the Council has a serious collective priority disorder.
But back to the main point: By setting priorities, committing to the critical importance of building a new high school, and with interagency cooperation, we can close the nearly $7 million facilities budget gap and achieve the best facilities that $69 million in Measure I bond money can buy.
If school officials are thinking of another bond measure prior to completing the second high school, they should think again. Build Christopher High School as the voters endorsed, then we’ll talk.
