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| Tracy Press, Thursday, June 20, 2002 |
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| LAMMERSVILLE BEGINS GROWTH PROCESS |
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The earthmovers leveling ground outside Lammersville School on Tuesday will become a ubiquitous sight, if they haven’t already in your time in Tracy. Over the next 20 years, the Lammersville School District plans to construct a dozen 800-student kindergarten through eighth-grade schools and a 2,500- to 2,700-student high school.
The district now has one K–8 six-room schoolhouse and about 300 students. This prodigious growth will be fueled by the 15,000-unit Mountain House development. Construction has begun, and the district is planning how to keep up. "We’re doing the very best we can to stay ahead of the curve," Lammersville Superintendent Bill Lebo said.
Mountain House’s developer, Trimark Communities Inc., is planning the titanic development 12 stages, called neighborhoods. The first of these, Neighborhood F, also called Wicklund Crossing, will be finished in three to four years. However, the first residents will move in as early as spring 2003.
For the district, the first step keeping up is constructing temporary housing for the first Mountain House students. According to the district’s facilities planner, Lynette Craven, Tuesday’s work will level the field outside the small Lammersville schoolhouse, lay asphalt over the lot and add utility connections for nine portables to be installed September.
Next on the district’s list is the first K–8 school, Wicklund School. According to Lebo, the district will accept bids July 9, and hopes to begin construction in August. The district expects the school to be completed in the fall of 2003.
The district will pay for new schools using funding from three sources. Developer mitigation fees will pay costs such as permitting and design. Trimark’s builder will also complete basic site work such as adding utility connections. This has already begun at the future Wicklund School site. Actual school construction costs will be covered by Mello-Roos bonds.
Finally, both the Mello-Roos agreement and agreements with Trimark require the district to pursue all available state school construction funding. Lebo said that the district has two grant applications pending, one to repair the older portions of the school and one to pay for the new school. The district also plans to unify, or become a full K–12 school district, in 2003. "I think we’re going to move rather quickly to put the issue on the ballot in the next primary," Lebo said.
Right now, Lammersville sends its high school students to Tracy Unified. However, the Mountain House development plan calls for a high school. The Lammersville School District met with Tracy Unified last year to discuss unification. Lebo said that his district will meet with Tracy Unified again to discuss the change. He also said that Tracy Unified does not oppose his district’s unification. "All of the players involved have been working under the assumption that unification will occur," Craven said. Voters determining Lammersville’s unification will include current Lammersville residents and the first tide of Mountain House residents who move in next spring. Lebo said that there is "good, strong" support for unification within his district.
If Lammersville School District residents do vote to unify their district next spring, then by law the district must build a high school within five years. Once the high school is built, Lammersville’s task is keeping up with Mountain House’s growth. Craven is working under the assumption that each home will generate 0.667 students for her district. This rate works out to the district having around 10,000 students in 20 years. But Craven said that this is just an estimate. "We may not get that rate," she said. "It depends on who moves into Mountain House. It could be full of older, empty nesters, or it could be young families."
Regardless of how many children come or what their ages are, the Mountain House plan calls for one K–8 school in each neighborhood. The district will build schools regularly for the next 15 to 20 years. Craven said that the process will be similar to a conveyor belt. The district will plan one school while another is being built.
The biggest problem for the district will be finding staff for all of these new schools. After a rough calculation, Craven estimated that, with a student population of 10,000, the district would need more than 400 teachers and a similar number of support staff. "Staffing will be the most difficult problem we have," Lebo said. "The buildings will come, the houses will come, the students will come, but finding qualified teachers will be difficult." To gather teachers that districts throughout California are competing for, Lammersville will look into working with colleges and universities and court student teachers. Craven also hopes that many teachers will move into the Mountain House development. "Luckily we won’t have to hire all 900 at once," Lebo said.
San Joaquin Delta College is planning a 15,000-student Mountain House campus in the southwest corner of the Lammersville School District. The college has already purchased a 200-acre site, and a facility there might see students as early as 2007. Lebo said that he hopes his district can work closely with Delta to allow advanced high school students to take classes there and to possibly share facilities.
While the district has been working hard to meet its growth needs, Craven is still surprised by the pace. "Things were moving slowly, and all of a sudden things kind of broke," she said. "Once they (Trimark) had a builder interested, things just moved really quickly."
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