Valley schools endure growing pains
When it was time to put down roots and buy a home for their family, Bay Area residents Mandeep Kaur and Jimmy Singh decided it was time to leave their cramped apartment in Fremont and purchase a home in the San Joaquin Valley.
They landed in Patterson, a small but rapidly growing town of 24,000 off the Interstate 5 freeway. The development they moved into in February is so new that not all the homes on their street have been finished.
Their new home, which, with two stories and a backyard, has plenty of room for their 6-year-old and baby.
They like Patterson’s smalltown feel.
“There are better schools,” Singh said. “It’s a nice community, not as hectic.”
Patterson is 75 miles from Oakland, which puts it at the outer rim of Bay Area bedroom communities. Singh is freed from the daily commute as the owner of a trucking business who works from home — an increasing trend among recent transplants.
For decades, the San Joaquin Valley has been a destination for young families seeking affordable housing. Enrollment in the San Joaquin Valley grew 24.5 percent before the pandemic, and it dipped only 1.1 percent since 2019.
“We’re very lucky,” said George Bradley, director of research and planning at the Kern High School District. “The alternative is that you’re shrinking.”
The big questions about enrollment in the San Joaquin Valley have been about where new schools will be built, how they will be funded and what to do with the surge of students on campus in the meantime.
But these questions can be thorny. In Patterson, enrollment is spiking with the new developments already underway, and the city
is considering approving more. School officials are ringing the alarm, saying that the city is moving too fast and without any consideration for how quickly the district can construct new schools.
Phil Alfano, superintendent of the Patterson Joint Unified School District, told the board that he was “deeply concerned” about the pace of new development.
“I don’t understand the rush. I don’t understand the need to double the size of this community that rapidly,” he said. “It will come, but it doesn’t need to be overnight.”
AFFORDABLE HOUSING DRIVES GROWTH
Enrollment fell in the San Joaquin Valley in 2020-21 for the first time in over a decade. But the relocation of California residents priced out of the Bay Area and Southern California continued during the pandemic, pushing up housing prices and rent.
At the height of the pandemic, Michelle Saldana said it was nearly impossible to find an affordable rental. The eviction moratorium meant there were very few vacancies near Whittier, the Los Angeles suburb where her family was living, and the available ones were too expensive. That’s how her family ended up in Bakersfield after casting a wide net and looking at apartments in San Bernardino, Victorville and even Arizona.
“I was so desperate to find a place,” she said.
Valley educators suspected migration was not reflected in 2020-21 enrollment numbers, when many students remained in distance learning.
That was true for Saldana’s family: Her family moved to Bakersfield in February 2021, but her son finished out the year at his Whittier school remotely. This year, her 11-year-old is enrolled at Fremont Elementary in the Bakersfield City School District.
The pace of growth has been dizzying in schools located on the outer edges of San Joaquin Valley in cities where converted farmland is ripe for residential development.
Rapid development outside Fresno has fueled the growth in Clovis Unified, Central Unified and Sanger Unified in Fresno County. Development on Bakersfield’s periphery has made Kern County the Valley’s fastest-growing county. Enrollment has ballooned in the Kern High School District and the elementary school districts that feed into it: Panama-Buena Vista Union, Rosedale Union, Greenfield Union and even parts of Bakersfield City.
OVERCROWDED SCHOOL BUILDINGS
The greatest challenge in a growing district is facilities stretched past their limits. School administrators say they do everything they can to reduce the impact of overcrowding on students.
Until new schools or new wings are constructed, portable classrooms overtake basketball courts and athletic fields. Lunch hours are lengthened to accommodate all students. Some districts set up food service kiosks outside the cafeteria to prevent long lines inside crowded cafeterias.
Redrawing school boundary lines is another common strategy to ease the most overburdened campuses until another school is built. It can be a fraught process, but this has helped the Kern High School District accommodate its rapid growth.
“Because Kern High is such a large district, it has been able to be flexible and accommodate the growth,” Bradley said.
Last year, drawing boundaries for Del Oro High School turned into an extensive process that involved 13 other high schools and will ultimately affect almost 6,000 students.
“This boundary change took a little bit of pressure off, but capacity is still an issue,” Bradley said.
School construction in California has never been cheap, but the cost of school construction skyrocketed in 2021.
Sanger Unified is constructing a complex in Fresno that will house the district’s second middle school and high school.Pl ans for a new elementary school in Clovis are on hold due to construction costs.
“The cost of construction is out of control,” Jones said.
Rising construction costs were cited in Jefferson School District’s decision to delay the opening of its newest school in Tracy Hills for another year. Bids for the school in the northern San Joaquin Valley community came in at $54 million, far above the district’s $35 million budget.
When a community is growing, schools must stay ahead of the curve, said Jack Woody Colvard, a management consultant for the Kern County Superintendent of Schools. He helps districts plan their facilities. “I pay attention because I don’t want to see any of them get behind,” he said.
State funding for school construction may soon be available. The Legislature is expected to vote on bills to distribute the remaining $1.4 billion in state bonds and to add $4 billion from the general fund for K-12 facilities.