What Can the City Council Do For Our Schools?

By Vinnie Bacon

When considering changes to the General Plan or when approving new development, our City Council must consider the impact to our schools.

Much residential development, up to 3,500 units, is being planned for the area near the Warm Springs BART station. I will not vote for further residential development in the Warm Springs area, or elsewhere, unless we are assured that we can fund the schools needed to accommodate such development.

We should be able to plan development such that people can buy homes in one school district and be assured that their children will be able to go to the schools in that district. The current situation involving waiting lists and people having to put their children in far away schools can and should be avoided.

History

The Mission District of south Fremont has long been a desired area largely because of the Mission San Jose school district, which places near the top in state rankings. As one would expect, developers have been very interested in building new homes in this area since the schools are such a strong selling point. This process continued to the point where Mission San Jose became very overcrowded. As a result, the Fremont Unified School District needed to redistrict many of the homes in this area to accommodate the housing growth. Many residents were very upset about this and understandably so. Homebuyers usually consider the school district one of the most important factors when buying a home. With proper planning, redistricting could have been avoided.

Another area of Fremont with high-ranking schools has been the Ardenwood area. Not surprisingly, developers have recently targeted this area resulting in overcrowding. Despite this overcrowding, Council continues to allow more homes to be built there as discussed below.

The Hackamore development is another, more recent, example of Council unanimously approving new residential development where there is no room in the nearby elementary school, requiring students to go to another school further away.

Patterson Ranch

The development at Patterson Ranch is a recent, clear example of Council's activities contributing to school overcrowding. In October of 2010 (only two weeks before the Council election), Council approved a General Plan amendment to increase the number of allowed homes on the site from about 200 to nearly 600. There were NO provisions for an additional elementary school nor a new junior high school. (The junior high and high school for this area are located miles away on the other side of the freeway from Ardenwood.)

Before this development, Ardenwood schools were already overcrowded. The situation was so bad that the Superintendent of Schools himself spoke at both the Planning Commission and City Council meetings on this subject. He spoke eloquently and warned that students from these developments may have to attend schools in the far away Warm Springs or Niles districts. He warned that he couldn't even guarantee that siblings would be in the same schools. I joke that I had a hard time with my son getting him ready in the morning when his elementary school was across the street from our house. I could only imagine what it would be like trying to get two children ready for school and then to have to take them across town to entirely different schools before going into work myself.

There is already a partially completed development in Ardenwood called Villa de Este. Students from the new homes in this development need to go to Warwick elementary, miles away on the other side of Interstate 880.

Not surprisingly, the subject of schools came up a lot during the Planning Commission and City Council meetings on Patterson Ranch. The developer mentioned some possible ways the schools could be funded in the future while providing nothing concrete. Of course, funding for education in general at the state level is in very bad shape making this a very unlikely source of funding. Despite the need for an additional elementary school in this area (largely from this development), there is no money available at this point to build a new elementary school.

The developer also said that any builder would not build these homes unless the school issue was resolved. In saying this he clearly overlooked the fact that homes have ALREADY been built in this area to the point that schools are overcrowded by several hundred students.

Despite the existing overcrowding in the area, the General Plan amendment to increase the number of homes allowed in the 'arrowhead' section of Patterson Ranch (bordered by Ardenwood, Paseo Padre, Crandall Creek and the railroad line) was approved unanimously by both the Planning Commission (7-0) and the City Council (5-0). The School District now has to consider these homes as "unassigned" to any particular school.

How can the School District provide adequate school facilities to our children when the Council makes decisions like this?

Senate Bill (SB) 50

Many elected officials and others have tried to hide behind Senate Bill (SB) 50 as a way of saying that cities and other local agencies can not control the level of development allowed, even if it leads to an adverse impact on schools. This is simply not true.

SB 50 was enacted in 1998. It's main aspect was that it prevented cities from specifying what would be required in the way of school infrastructure as a condition of approval. For example, prior to SB 50 a city could have said "We will approve this development, but only if you build a school as a part of the project." Instead, there is a standard set of impact fees that would have to be paid for any new development.

SB 50 was supported by developers since they would usually have to pay less in fees than the actual amount needed to provide adequate school facilities. If a given development had a significant, negative impact on the local schools, even with the payment of the impact fees, the developer could still go ahead with the project. SB 50 does specifically state that a project can't be denied because there would be significant impact on the school system.

However, SB 50 in no way forces cities to increase the number of homes allowed on a particular piece of land. If a specific area is zoned for say, 100 allowed homes, the local jurisdiction can not use the impact on schools to deny this development. The impact fees to be paid on these homes is set by SB 50. The city could not insist that the developer pay more. But what if the developer says they want to amend the General Plan to allow for say, 200 homes to be built on this parcel? The city is in no way obligated to provide this increase. All they would need to say is that we don't see a need to change the General Plan. This example is the same as what happened with the Patterson Ranch development.

Warm Springs

The most significant residential development in Fremont's short-term future will be near the Warm Springs BART station. The schools in the Warm Springs area are already some of the most overcrowded in Fremont. There are many small developments already being planned in this area. Some of the plans for future development near the BART station includes as many as 3,500 new homes.

As a Council member who does not take campaign contributions from developers, I will represent the residents of Fremont and make sure that developers are not allowed to come in and quickly build a large number of homes without a concrete plan in place to provide nearby school capacity for the students these new homes will generate.

I believe that we need at least a new elementary school to accommodate the growth planned near the Warm Springs BART station. The plans that I've seen to date do not incorporate this. Ideally, we would also build a new junior high and high school in the area. Such a school could become a tech magnet associated with the large amount of high-tech we have here in the South Bay.

What Can Be Done?

The first thing that Council could do is to acknowledge that we need to consider the impacts on schools when approving new development, as opposed to hiding behind SB 50 and approving amendments to the General Plan that will ultimately harm our schools.

Schools are one of the most important aspects of our society. As the parent of a public school child, I personally understand how these issues effect Fremont residents. I will fight to make sure that we retain the high quality schools that we have and to make them even better.