The school district would be about $40,000 richer had an effort
to place a cell phone tower on Luigi Aprea Elementary School
grounds not been squashed by outspoken parents. Four years later,
parents are questioning whether killing the project was a sage
idea.
Gilroy – The school district would be about $40,000 richer had an effort to place a cell phone tower on Luigi Aprea Elementary School grounds not been squashed by outspoken parents. Four years later, parents are questioning whether killing the project was a sage idea.
In 2003, Gilroy Unified School District staff contracted with Cingular Wireless, since merged into AT&T, to construct a flagpole in Luigi Aprea’s yard that doubled as a microwave transmitter and receiver. The company was going to pay the district $900 per month to use the flagpole, with proceeds going to the school, then-superintendent Edwin Diaz said.
Citing perceived health risks the tower could cause in children, a vocal group of parents stopped the project and successfully lobbied Cingular to remove the transmitter equipment from inside the flagpole. District trustees, spurred by the controversy surrounding the health risks of cellular radiation, unanimously passed a resolution to ban cell towers from being built on school land. Only two trustees now on the board served when the ban was put into effect.
Given that a cell tower went up a mile away from the school about a year after the controversy, on private property, the decision to kill the cell tower might not have been a good idea, said Monica Chipman, vice president of Luigi Aprea Parent Club and mother of kindergarten and fourth-grade students.
“If you’re going to put it in my backyard, you might as well put it in my front yard,” she said.
Whether she would have approved the cell tower at the school, and whether she would revisit the matter now, would be where the money goes, Chipman said. If the $10,800 in annual revenue went to the parent club, easing the $30,000 parents must generate to meet their annual budget, she would support the project. If the money went to the district, which was split among schools – inequitably in favor of lower-performing schools, she said – she would not support the project.
One of the original opponents to the tower still stands against the project.
“I have not yet read a decisive medical opinion one way or another about the possible risk of microwaves,” then-Luigi Aprea parent Robyn Houts said. “It is a reasonably safe procedure to keep cell towers away from our children.”
Houts also said that she never saw evidence that the money was to be given specifically to either the parent club or the school.
Gilroy has 11 cell phone towers within the city limits, including one near Saint Louise Regional Hospital and another feet from the South Valley Middle School campus, which also houses El Portal Leadership Academy and will soon house a state preschool facility.
The city reviews all plans for cell towers and more closely inspects plans in residential areas, city planner Laura McIntyre said.
“We really try to discourage them going into private residential or public areas,” she said.
In addition, the city requires companies using the towers to keep radiation under federally mandated levels, McIntyre said. This is done when companies renew their permits with the city, though five companies have overdue paperwork, according to city documents.
The time might have come to revisit the district ban on cell towers at schools, given that they often go up near schools anyway, Chipman said.
“In hindsight do I say that decision was done without being educated?” she asked. “I do think so. I’m kind of on the fence now. I’d like more information and I wish I had been there when it was presented to the board.”
But whether to revisit the issue or not could be moot: To date there are no service providers inquiring about the feasibility of erecting a cell tower on any campus in Gilroy, school officials said.
