No news is good news.
That was the message from the Manteca Unified Measure G Bond oversight committee last week at the Board of Education’s January meeting. They noted that a recent audit revealed no findings and that all of the money that was supposed to be appropriated for school site modernizations was determined to be used only for those purposes.
Voters in 2014 approved a $159 million bond measure to allow the district to modernize aging campuses and make much needed safety repairs – from fire alarms at East Union High School that weren’t active to air conditioning units that failed during the hot summer months.
Now that the emergency repairs are completed, the district is modernizing elementary schools based on need and will move onto high school campuses once those are completed.
Manteca High School, which is approaching its 100th anniversary, has been determined to have more needs that can be met by just the Measure G money that is being allocated to it – a gap that will grow even wider if the district is forced to boost its enrollment to more than 2,500 students because of all of the growth that is planned for within its boundaries.
Daryl Carpenter, the President of the Measure G Oversight Committee, told the board that there were no findings after performing the audit and going through the expenditures that were made with Measure G money over the course of the last fiscal year.
The board unanimously accepted the audit with Trustee Nancy Teicheira absent for health reasons.
And the audit wasn’t the only time during the relatively light meeting that Measure G was discussed.
When Karen Pearsall, who was a member of the Measure G steering committee that helped usher in the bond, told the board that she was concerned that Measure G money might be used to replace stadium fields at some high schools while others would receive district money, Superintendent Jason Messer informed Pearsall and the board that the field renovations would initially be paid for through district funds, but added that additions like all-weather track surfaces could be paid for with Measure G funds if the individual school sites chose to use the money for that.
The board is expected to decide in February whether they want to move forward with the expenses for rubberized running surfaces for all high school campuses, or come up with a cheaper alternative that won’t have the same drainage capacity that their synthetic counterparts have – with track flooding one of the main reasons why the discussion was had in the first place.

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.