Between 250 and 300 new homes will fill with residents each year in Gilroy over the next few years as a result of a rebound in development. That expected increase in residents already has Gilroy Unified School District officials planning for a brand new elementary school—and wondering how to pay for a new middle and high school further down the road.
“What we’re going to see shortly is a spike in our growth in the district,” said GUSD Superintendent Debbie Flores, who pointed to a state law currently being phased in that mandates kindergarten through third grade classrooms have, at the most, 24 students. “That means we’ll need more classrooms because of the small class sizes. So we’re obviously starting to talk about a new elementary school.”
Not only will the district need more classrooms for elementary students to comply with the state law, but some schools are currently at capacity—and nearly 800 new students are expected by 2018, when thousands of new housing units will be constructed and occupied.
The district aims to have a new elementary school up and running within four to five years at the latest, Flores said.
“It takes us that long because just to get through the state process is a couple of years and construction is typically 18 months to two years,” she added. “We can accelerate that if we really had to but I think we have enough capacity to get us through the next few years, especially at Las Animas where the growth is most immediate.”
Currently, the district has approximately 12,000 students and Gilroy Unified will grow by between 30 and 40 students by the end of the year, based on district estimates. But for every two new single-family, detached homes that are built and occupied, the district will grow by one student, projections show.
By April 2015, contractors working between Santa Teresa Boulevard and the Uvas Creek Corridor are expected to complete the first phase of the largest development Gilroy has ever seen. In April, the Gilroy City Council approved the tentative map for the build-out of the first five neighborhoods—comprised of 369 single-family lots—within the 1,643-home Glen Loma Ranch project. Grading is currently underway for that first phase, Community Development Director Kristi Abrams confirmed.
Another new neighborhood will carpet 112 acres of property south of Hecker Pass Highway and the first phase of the project—186 single-family homes—is currently under construction. And that spells the need for more schools beyond a single elementary school, Flores stressed.
“A lot of the upcoming growth in the first few years is going to be at the high school level, and that’s because we have some very large middle school classes moving to the high school level,” she said. “The good news is we have a lot of capacity—or ability to have capacity—at Gilroy High.”
Gilroy Unified is slated to grow by 189 students by October 2015, with a majority of the growth occurring at the high school level, according to district projections. In 10 years, by October 2018, projections show an overall increase by 780 students—with a jump in elementary enrollments by 410 students and 316 high school students.
“If we have a 1,000 new homes, that’s 500 new students,” Flores said. “That’s a lot of growth for us to handle.”
When it comes to funding the creation of additional schools beyond the new elementary school, district officials are exploring all of their options.
The district is currently in the process of selling the former site of Las Animas Elementary School on Wren Avenue, in hopes of using the money to purchase a new piece of property that’s closer to where the brunt of development is taking place or put it towards building the school.
“Where that property is has yet to be determined,” Flores added.
The 2008 bond measure designed to fund facility improvements district-wide, Measure P, could potentially support part of what’s needed to build the elementary school, Flores said, but discussions are preliminary.
“We’re looking at every source of funding we can possibly find because we estimate a new (elementary) school will be about $25 million,” she added. “That’s the number we’ve been tossing around, and it’s not going to be a big one. We have briefly discussed a bond measure down the road, because with this kind of growth the district does not have the resources to build, first of all a new elementary school, but with this kind of growth potentially a middle and a high school. That would require a bond measure down the road. “
Las Animas Elementary, Ascension Solorsano Middle and Gilroy High schools will be most impacted by the upcoming growth, but Flores is confident adjustments can be made to accommodate new students.
“Fortunately, we built additional space at Las Animas so we have the capacity for what the demographer is projecting to be about 200 students over the next five years. So we have the capacity for that at Las Animas,” she added. “Solorsano used to have 1,200 students and they’re under 900 now, so we’ve got some capacity there. And when we built Christopher High, we moved a bunch of portables (from Gilroy High) and if necessary we’ll put them back at Gilroy High. The three schools most impacted by the immediate growth are in pretty good shape for the growth that’s coming.”
