Add center to South San board agenda
The South San Antonio Independent School District board can ill afford to ignore the city of San Antonio’s offer to invest upward of $10 million for a community center in its backyard. It makes no sense, especially when it would come at no cost to the district.
Most communities would be overjoyed to be considered for a partnership that would make use of one its mothballed campuses and provide district residents a multipurpose facility. Regrettably — as is usually the case when it comes to South San ISD — politics are taking center stage and the district residents will be the loser yet one more time.
District 4 City Councilman Rey Saldaña has been making a futile attempt to engage the South San board in a dialogue about a community center since late last year. He is seeking to include the project on the city’s 2022 bond proposal, but the plans have to be developed by 2020. He can’t do it alone.
The councilman has offered to take the first steps toward seeking an engineering report on Kazen Middle School, at no cost to the school district, to investigate the possibilities for redevelopment of the property.
“With assets like a gymnasium, cafeteria, classroom space, athletic fields and access off Highway 16, together we can breathe life back into his publicly-owned facility and envision a multi-generational destination for the South Side,” he wrote in a letter sent to the trustees in January.
The city has partnered with South Side school districts in the past. It’s most recent partnership is with Southwest ISD for a $21.2 million natatorium, which will be built off Loop 410 near Old Pearsall Road.
The South San board’s lack of interest in the community center has Saldaña considering other partners, including Palo Alto community college and Texas A&M-San Antonio.
It is unfortunate the South San board refuses to confer with the city on this proposal and is instead forging ahead with plans to expedite the reopening of several closed schools to keep campaign promises made last fall.
The school district is losing students and does not have the cash to adequately fund three additional schools next fall. Even under the best of circumstances, it is not advisable to fast-track the reopening of schools without adequate planning. The school district’s administration has advised trustees about the dangers of doing that. Dysfunction on this school board has dramatically increased since a new majority was elected in November and longtime trustee Connie Prado was installed as board president. The last time Prado served in that position, allegations that she was micromanaging prompted Texas Education Agency intervention and the assignment of a conservator to monitor board activities.
Prado refused a request by trustee Louis Ybarra Jr., a member of the board’s minority, to place the city’s proposal for the reuse of the Kazen campus on the board’s special meeting agenda earlier this month. He plans to make another pitch for the board’s regular meeting agenda on March 27. We urge the item be placed on the board agenda.
The board owes it to the community to have a public discussion on this. Shutting down the offer without public input is a disservice to South San residents.