I have been asked about my position on the proposed Catholic High school at Murphy and Tennant Avenues several times so felt it deserved a written response.
I am on the record as supporting the Catholic High school.
In coming to this conclusion I removed the label “Catholic” and just considered it as a quality high school. I took into account the large number of students (reported to be in the vicinity of 1,600 at full enrollment) who reportedly now travel a combined mileage of 24,000 miles a day. With those miles come thousands of hours of lost productivity in driving the students to existing private schools, most of them to the north. I also calculated that we would be burning almost 1,000 gallons of fuel in the effort every day.
This became an issue of education, environmental concern, and social toll.
With Morgan Hill’s existing population of young families rapidly growing to school age we need to look ahead to our educational needs and I believe we have an opportunity with this school.
I am not particular about public versus private schools or charter schools. I just support good schools. If a school is not serving its students properly then it should be taken to task as we need to focus on our future, so much of our future is based upon the education we provide the children of planet earth, all of them.
I am a product of the public school system and feel we need to start our evaluations of educational needs there. We have good schools in Morgan Hill but if they aren’t what a parent wants then I believe they deserve choices. I just hope that the first choice is a public school.
I support the Catholic High School as a good option in educational choice making.
Also at the center of this issue is the conversion of agricultural lands into use for the proposed high school. BTW: this is not more than 100 yards from land the MHUSD was trying to purchase for a future school site on similar agricultural lands.
I will go on the record, again, as saying that I am against conversion of agricultural lands except in special circumstances like a school site or when we get a large area of agricultural land protected in trade for a small area of development. There is much more to this conversation which I will address in the future!
I believe we need educational options and this is one of them and this is an acceptable trade for me considering all of the items mentioned above.
It seems there is an attempt to equate this project with the SEQ which was a hot topic three years ago and is a rallying cry for some. This is not the same as the SEQ, it happens to be in the area that defined the SEQ though.
My opinion, hopefully as valid as other’s, is that the SEQ application to LAFCO and the opponent’s approach were two different approaches to saving agricultural land. One an active approach and one an approach of wait and see what develops. Houses and farm land being developed into residential estates is what happened. But again, more on that in the near future.
I did not support the annexation of the three adjacent parcels included in the urban service area request but since it was included by council vote I did support lowering the intensity of their use if they were to be included.
So there is my position on the urban service area adjustment to allow for annexation of lands for the Catholic High School. LAFCO application is next and we’ll see how that goes.
Nothing is as simple as it looks is it?
Thank you for joining in and reading.
