Morgan Hill School District can choose to create a new district,
transfer to another or remain and create trustee areas
Morgan Hill – School Board trustees learned that there are several possibilities for dealing with the Coyote Valley development area, including creating a new district, transferring the area to another school district or keeping the area within the district and creating trustee areas.
A Coyote Valley School District is one of the options trustees learned about during their regular school board meeting last week, but Board President Mike Hickey said he doesn’t think the creation of a new district is going to happen any time soon.
Though trustees know more now about the process of reorganizing the district, last week’s discussion on the issue did not focus on trustees; individual positions about the Coyote Valley Specific Plan.
The plan, which has been in the works for several years, is the blueprint for the development of the Coyote Valley area north of Morgan Hill. The area is contained in the Morgan Hill Unified School District boundaries, which extend north to Bernal Road in south San Jose.
“I think this is the kind of information we need to get out,” Trustee Shelle Thomas said.
Trustee Don Moody said he would like the community to have access to the information.
“That was very informative, one of the better presentations that we’ve had,” he said. “I think that we need to get that kind of information out to the community. The whole concept of Coyote Valley is such a huge decision, we need to get the greater MHUSD community, the families involved.”
The Coyote Valley Specific Plan Task Force is creating a development blueprint for the San Jose City Council to consider for the area just north of Morgan Hill and west of Highway 101. The plan is to create a densely populated transit community with 80,000 residents, 50,000 jobs and 25,000 homes over the next 30 or so years.
Though the board has conducted a workshop and held a discussion or two about abandoning Coyote Valley and forcing the area to create its own school district, no formal decisions have been made by the board.
“There are some people (on the board) who feel some urgency to have more discussion, and there are people who feel we don’t have to rush into this, that we won’t see anything happening any time soon,” Moody said.
Thirteen new schools would have to be built in the area to house the students, and some trustees have expressed a concern about the district’s ability to build the schools, which would double the size of the district.
Suzanne Carrig and Porter Sexton of the Santa Clara County Office of Education Center for Educational Planning explained to trustees the options they could consider.
Coyote Valley will remain in the MHUSD unless some action is taken. Trustees – or a registered voter, property owner or local agency – can initiate a reorganization of the district.
Carrig told trustees there are several possibilities: a transfer of the territory to another district; the creation of an elementary, or K-8, district, with students feeding into East Side Union High School District; the creation of a new K-12 district for that area; or to do nothing, keeping the Coyote Valley in MHUSD but creating trustee areas.
If a voter or property owner wanted to start the process to either create a new school district for Coyote Valley or to transfer the area to another district, Carrig said they would need a petition signed by 25 percent of voters.
Once the petition has been submitted, the County Committee on School District Organization must validate the petition, then hold public hearings.
Committee members then complete a study of the request to determine of the request meets the nine criteria mandated by state Education Code.
Hickey said the process to create a new district or transfer the Coyote Valley area to another district seemed to him like and “astronomical” amount of work.
“I really can’t see anyone taking this on right now,” he said.
