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Manteca Unified nears milestone of 25,000 students
MUSD school bus
Various state mandates — including for COVID-19 — mean these 84-passenger buses will be carrying maximum of eight riders at a time to take special education students to and from school for learning groups.

Sometime in the next year or so Manteca will reach the 25,000-student milestone.

That shouldn’t be much of a surprise given the 113 square mile school district contains Manteca and Lathrop – two cities that have ranked among the 10 fastest growing in California for the past two years.

But what is unusual is the way the district has dialed in growth projections with almost a laser-like precision.

Manteca Unified, instead of relying on a demographics study every five years as most districts do, opted to switch to an annual update to zero in on where projects are in the approval process, what ones have been added, and where exactly home actually are being built.

That has allowed the district to avoid not only being caught flat-footed with enrollment gains but to plan with a fair amount of accuracy with what grade levels will be impacted.

It means the district can, with a high degree of certainty, pinpoint grade levels and not just schools where growth will hit. As a result they can readjust the number of classes per grade level and hire staffing in-advance accordingly.

And when wedded with the school board’s marching orders to maximum education space it has allowed the district to avoid building costly new schools that require expensive infrastructure and support facilities.

At the same time the board has decided to maximize established infrastructure and campuses to leverage the optimum educational setting by shooting for elementary schools to accommodate 1,100 students and high schools 2,200 students.
That has allowed the district to look at growth in a precision manner while constantly weighing all options. It has led to ongoing conversations with classroom teachers on what space is needed as well as rethinking how expensive space is being utilized.

It has led to the development of resource centers at elementary campuses for pull out programs such as English as a Second Language and reading recovery  that have freed up full-sized classroom to provide additional teaching space. The investments in resource centers, depending upon the campus, have resulted in new classroom space being created by freeing up existing classrooms used for programs with only a handful to 12 or so students at savings of between 30 and 50 percent of what a new standard classroom would cost to build.

 And by adding classrooms where possible that could take an elementary school with education program space for 800 students up to 1,100 it can accommodate growth without adding expensive support facilities such as a multipurpose room.

That is a critical strategy for Manteca Unified to stay ahead of growth — as well as stay nimble in addressing the needs of students — on a number of levels.

Elementary campuses for 800 students can now cost $30 million from scratch. A high school for 1,200 students can cost $120 million.

Even with growth fees collected on every new home built, community facility districts, and what state matching funds might be available the overall amount is not enough to cover the costs of new classroom space for student growth. The only way left to bridge the sizeable gap is from passing local bonds to fund new school construction.

The last bond dedicated to that purpose — the $66 million Measure M passed in 2004 — allowed funding for new schools. That money, augmented with growth fees and state contributions — made it possible to build Lathrop High and Mossdale Elementary School in Lathrop among other endeavors.

The $159 million Measure M passed in 2014 and the $260 million Measure A passed in 2020 were directed specifically toward modernizing existing campuses.

Using the “old school” way of responding to growth, nearly 20 years ago the district secured more than 60 acres on Tinnin Road just south of Manteca for a new high school. The rationale at the time was within 10 years or so the district would need to build a fourth high school within the city limits to accommodate Manteca growth.

As things stand now, the district likely won’t need to start thinking about building a fourth high school campus within the Manteca city limits for at least a decade.

Enrollment projections

close to being on the mark

That’s because the decision to expand Sierra, East Union and Manteca high school campuses to 2,200 students will for all practical purposes create the equivalent capacity of a fourth high school in Manteca.

And based on a 10-year projection made in 2020 when MUSD had 7,533 high school students, over all the district would need space for 482 more students in the grades 9 through 12. That is about 40 percent of the existing education program capacity of the existing three campuses along with the additional capacity created by adding classrooms to accommodate designed enrollments of 2,200.

That means even in 2030 — based on 2020 projects — a fourth high school would still not be justified.

The district has experienced growth throughout the pandemic.

The projection was for 23,994 students in October 2021. The actual enrollment was 24,291.

That means the additional 297 student bump combined with the projection made in 2020 for 24,844 students this year Manteca Unified could easily reach the 25,000-student milestone at the start of the 2022-2023 school year if not sooner.

 

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com