Count Councilwoman Regina Lackey among those she calls the Manteca “hybrids.”
It has nothing to do with the car she drives.
Instead, it is where Regina and her husband Steve bought a home back in the mid-2010s a few blocks from Woodward School.
The home is within the City of Manteca.
But instead of being in the Manteca Unified School District, it is located with Ripon Unified School District.
The Lackeys are one of roughly 100 households in the southeast portion of the City of Manteca that are within the Ripon Unified School District.
The closest Ripon Unified elementary school is seven miles away as the drone flies while the nearest Manteca Unified elementary school — Woodward — is two blocks away for the closest household.
The Manteca neighborhoods involved are now almost all a decade old or approaching that mark.
In the past decade or so, interdistrict transfers between the two districts have stayed fairly consistent.
The current school year numbers show 15 students residing in Ripon Unified have transferred in to Manteca Unified while 79 students residing in Manteca Unified have completed an interdistrict agreement to attend Ripon Unified.
In the coming two to five years, there is a good chance the number of “hybrid” households in Manteca could grow by 1,250 homes.
The first would be the 738-home Hat Ranch project that is now in the process of applying for state financing to construct infrastructure.
The project is in the annexation pipeline as area two other proposed housing projects — 310 homes on 58.9 acres abutting the western most curve on Sedan Avenue between Alice Road and Austin Road as well as 202 homes envisioned on land immediately north of the Sedan Avenue/Alice Road T-intersection.
It will be the responsibility of Ripon Unified to house those students.
The replacement of the Austin Road overcrossing of Highway 99 targeted to be completed later this year, is likely to get the ball rolling on additional “hybrid” housing projects.
The 1,080-acre Austin Road Business Park annexation completed more than a decade ago saddles Austin Road.
While there are no active development maps, zoning has been adopted that would allow 4,198 housing units projected to add 10,200 residents to the city’s population.
The environmental documents for the Austin Business Park project, that also includes commercial and a large business park, projected at build-out the area in question would add nearly 2,000 students to the Ripon Unified student enrollment.
To put that in perspective, the current Ripon Unified enrollment is 3,306.
The Austin Road area homes are not on the near horizon unlike the Hat Ranch and two Sedan Avenue projects.
But even with an additional 1,250 homes from the three projects added to the current attendance from homes within Manteca’s city limits that are also in the Ripon Unified School District, building a RUSD elementary campus in Manteca will not be in the cards anytime soon.
That means the four existing Ripon Unified elementary schools will continue to absorb future “hybrid” students.
The Hat Ranch development does have a site set aside for an elementary campus.
Manteca Unified has a similar situation with Weston Ranch.
The neighborhood is within the southwest boundaries of the City of Stockton.
Parts of Stockton are served by four different school districts — Manteca Unified, Stockton Unified, Lincoln Unified, and Lodi Unified.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
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