School Superintendent John Casey told the Pleasanton City Council this week that the district still plans to build Neal Elementary School in the Vineyard Corridor, a school planned in the 1990s for a 13-acre site the district owns mid-way between Montevino Drive and Ruby Hill.
His comments came in response to a question about Neal asked by Mayor Jennifer Hosterman at a joint meeting of the council and school board Monday March 20. Some had thought the school district had put Neal on the back-burner because of projected declines in elementary school enrollment over the next few years.
“We don’t have a date certain for building Neal but we are still managing it,” Casey said. “The dynamics over the next two to three years will help us make that decision.”
Casey said elementary school enrollment is just a little over 6,000, an important factor in determining the need for another school. The district prefers enrollment at its nine elementary schools to stay at 600 students with a differential of up to 10 percent. Because more students are enrolled at Walnut Grove Elementary, which offers a special Discovery teaching program, and at Valley View Elementary, home of the district’s popular dual immersion language program, those schools have more than 600 students, leaving fewer at the other seven.
But Casey said new proposals for class-size reduction for the district’s fourth and fifth grades would require more classroom space. Also, the current proposal to require school districts to provide pre-school education could also squeeze capacity, making Neal necessary.
Although Neal was planned in the 1990s, a state budget crisis that affected finances in school district like Pleasanton’s and throughout the state brought a halt to new school construction just as Casey was hired as superintendent in 2002.
Another factor has been ongoing litigation between the district and two developers, Signature Properties and Standard Pacific Homes, which had estimated the cost of building Neal at $8.5 million, a capital expense the school district budgeted for. When Casey joined the district, he learned that the actual cost of building Neal would be $13.5 million, $5 million more than the school could afford. He also learned that the city and school district believed they had a signed agreement with the two developers to pay any costs exceeding $8.5 million, which the developers disputed. The issue has been in court ever since with no resolution in sight.
Casey’s reaffirmation of his Neal School building plans may also have caught the council by surprise. The lawmakers recently ordered two roundabouts dismantled on Vineyard Avenue that are at the junctions of two streets that were built to serve the Neal School property. If Neal is built, as Casey said it might be, then new traffic control provisions would have to be built if the present roundabouts are torn out.
Casey also told the council that the district plans to hold onto an option it has to buy 20 acres of land zoned for educational uses that are located in the new Ironwood residential community at Busch Road and Valley Avenue, which Ponderosa Homes is developing. He said the district has another three years before making the purchase.
In both instances, whether building Neal or acquiring the 20-acre Ponderosa site for education purposes, Casey said the district now has funds available to finance the projects.
