While there are thousands of empty seats in San Francisco schools, school officials are going forward with a plan to build a $95 million elementary school to open in three years, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
If that makes no sense, the details don’t make it any clearer.
The school board insists it will need this school in the future despite the 3,000-student enrollment decline is has seen recently, because there will be more school-age children when 80,000 new housing units citywide open by 2030.
But even that plan isn’t set in stone, the Chronicle reported. Only about 4,600 of those units were completed last year and with a slow-down in residential building, there could be fewer than that this year. That’s compared to the 10,000 units built in a year in 2016 and 2017.
The new $95 million school in the Mission Bay community will be needed, school officials argue. There are already more than 500 public school students living in the Mission Bay community, with another 200 expected to move in when the rest of the development is finished.
“When we’re talking about construction, I think it would be a mistake to be looking at school enrollment over the next two or three years when we’re really talking about the next 20 to 30 years,” said Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who represents the Mission Bay area. “For what we’re going to be talking about over the next decade or two, there is going to be a lot of growth coming.”
Why not wait until there’s an actual need for it, or when enrollment starts to climb? Why spend $95 million now on something that may not end up being necessary?
“This project is forward thinking,” said school board President Jenny Lam. “It helps to build long-term assets for the district, such as linked learning hubs, professional development spaces in partnership with community in service of our students and educators.”
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