GILROY
– Students enrolled in Gilroy’s charter high school could be
housed in a new, permanent building as early as next fall. In a
plan that Gilroy Unified School District officials call
”
ambitious,
”
El Portal Leadership Academy will likely begin construction next
spring and complete the project during the summer months.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Students enrolled in Gilroy’s charter high school could be housed in a new, permanent building as early as next fall. In a plan that Gilroy Unified School District officials call “ambitious,” El Portal Leadership Academy will likely begin construction next spring and complete the project during the summer months.
“We were a little bit surprised to see how quickly they were moving to make the improvements, but we’re glad that they’re doing it,” said Jaime Rosso, GUSD trustee and board liaison to El Portal. “They’re pretty excited about getting their project off the ground.”
The school, presently located at 240 Swanston Lane on the north end of the South Valley Middle School campus, will construct a permanent building on a 2.5-acre parcel of GUSD land adjacent to Community Day School, at 275 I.O.O.F. Ave.
In passing Measure I under Proposition 39, GUSD is legally required to provide facilities for El Portal, which is run by the Mexican-American Community Services Agency. The district has already allocated bond funds for the project, Superintendent Edwin Diaz said. In its 25-year Facilities Master Plan, GUSD budgeted $1.5 million over three years to expand El Portal in 2004-06.
“I think it’s costing them a little bit more than that, so they’re going to have to supplement the construction costs,” Diaz said.
Diaz did not know the actual cost of the modular building.
El Portal Principal Noemi Garcia Reyes refused to comment for this story. Other MACSA officials did not return phone calls by deadline.
The 133 freshman and junior classes now occupy five permanent classrooms and four portables moved to the site from Eliot Elementary School. The new permanent facility will be a two-story modular building that is largely prefabricated and assembled on site, said Charlie Van Meter, GUSD’s director of facilities and maintenance operations.
The two-story building would have an initial capacity of 260 students with a final capacity of about 330 following the addition of two more classrooms. If the school fills each of its three class levels to capacity next year, it could have 240 students enrolled and a maximum of 320 students in 2006-07.
“We’re providing them the district grounds to be able to build the facility, being that it’s servicing students from our community,” Rosso said.
GUSD is focusing on providing the classroom space because most future El Portal students are currently enrolled in Gilroy schools and are already housed by the district.
“The question is, ‘What if down the road El Portal no longer exists as a charter school?’ Then the class space we provided would have to refer back to the district,” Diaz said.
Representatives from El Portal will present their building plans to the school board during its facilities study session on Dec. 15., because the move will likely require GUSD to complete part of it’s facilities master plan sooner than anticipated.
“As we look at implementing our master plan, we can look at whether or not we would need to revise any of our current projects to accommodate their needs,” Diaz said.
The school is planning to break ground on the modular building in April and complete it by the start of school in late August.
“That’s why it’s a pretty ambitious time schedule, and that’s why we’re looking at it now,” Diaz said.
El Portal’s new location will require GUSD to build a new bus access road from the transportation depot at 8067 Swanston Lane to I.O.O.F. because it would block how buses currently access I.O.O.F.
District officials are working with city traffic engineers to develop a better way to route buses in and out of the depot.
“It’s just a disaster in there,” Van Meter said.
“And that will create a separation between the charter school and the rest of the South Valley campus,” Diaz said, which will make El Portal more independent.
Pushing forward the new bus access should not significantly impact the district’s master plan, Diaz said. Facilities staff are analyzing the impact of completing the project next year and will report during the facilities study session.
“It was in the master plan to do it all along, and what this will do is expedite it, and we will do it sooner,” Van Meter said.
