Manteca Unified School District is having triplets.

And like any newborn, it’s going to cost to bring them into the world — $150 million to be exact.

The district is preparing to build three elementary schools that will have the same design, with slight variations unique to their specific sites.

Sharing designs will help keep the lid on costs.

The fact the school district obtained all three sites more than two decades ago including one indirectly with a land swap with developers that switched the original location easily saved taxpayers in excess of $25 million.

The projected completion date for the three schools, if all goes well, is August 2027.

Environmental studies are now in progress at the three locations.

*The northern portion of the 56-acre Tinnin Road site in south Manteca roughly a quarter mile south of Woodward Avenue midway between Union Road and Main Street.

*The site in southwest Manteca just to the northwest of where McKinley Avenue intersects with Atherton Drive.

*The Ethel Allen School at Barbara Terry Boulevard and McKee Boulevard in the Mossdale Landing area of Lathrop.

The Ethen Allen and southwest Manteca schools will be designed to accommodate 1,000 students.

The Tinnin site will be designed to accommodate an additional 200 students. That means classrooms will be built to handle a design enrollment of 1,000 with buried infrastructure put in place and stubbed off to allow an additional cluster of classrooms to be out in place in the future.

Between potential expansion at Nile Garden and Sequoia schools plus the three new campuses, the district is positioning itself to add classroom space for upwards of 4,000 elementary students.

Ethel Allen and the Tinnin site will have additional early education compliant — transitional kindergarten and kindergarten classrooms.

They will have a protected and secured early learning play are between the buildings.

It’s a far cry from the 1950s through 1990s when school designs in California had kindergarten playgrounds basically by the front entrance to campuses.

Changes in state requirements means the three new elementary schools will open with:

*solar panels to generate electricity most likely in a manner where the infrastructure to support them double as canopies in the parking lot.

*battery storage to store excess solar power for use on cloudy days or after the sun goes down.

*EV charging stations in the parking lot.

*more robust shade tree planting to reduce the creation of urban heat islands to create heather playground conditions for students and help reduce the need to cool down classrooms.

*additional single occupancy bathrooms.

The new construction is being funded in part  with the proceeds on bonds issued for community facility districts south of the 120 Bypass and in Lathrop west of Interstate 5.

The rest is being covered by growth fees for schools and state bond funds for new school construction.

The current $50 million estimate per campus will be fine-tuned as the pre-construction process proceeds.

Once the Department of State Architect submittal documents are completed, contractors will adjust their estimates to develop a guaranteed maximum piece for each school.

The last new school built in Manteca Unified was Mossdale. It opened in 2007.

As of last week, Manteca Unified has 25,749 students enrolled.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com