Manteca High after the dawn of its second century could become a linchpin of a joint city-school district effort to get maximum education and community amenities using limited tax dollars.
Manteca Unified and City of Manteca elected leaders and top management are batting around conceptual ideas to transform the 97-year-old campus so that it can be a 21st century school while returning to its roots as a community center. 
In the latest 2x2 meeting — so called as it involves two elected leaders from each agency —  ideas were floated regarding where Manteca High is headed as the district gears up to spend $15 million on the campus in its second wave of Measure G modernization projects. While not a cent of bond money will go toward accommodating growth, how it is spent to address infrastructure for a variety of health and safety issues will create a footprint to allow for the adding of new classrooms and new support facilities.
“Everything is on the table,” Manteca Mayor Steve DeBrum said. “We’re looking at all possibilities to see what makes sense.”
DeBrum cautioned, however, just because options are being looked at doesn’t mean everything will happen.
“We need to find ways to get the most out of tax dollars,” DeBrum said.
It’s a position shared by Manteca Unified Superintendent Jason Messer.
With the school board moving toward making all high school campuses being able to cap out comfortably with 2,200 students, Manteca High with under 1,600 students currently will be the first to be targeted for additions. It is also the campus that currently has inadequately sized support facilities such as the big gym.
The two agencies are looking at Manteca High not simply within its current campus confines but how it could impact and trigger changes in the surrounding area. Since Manteca High, Lincoln Park, and Lincoln School adjoin  each other, the entire area is being looked at as a whole in terms of possibilities.

Permanent closure of
section of Garfield
Avenue essential for safety, growth
Topping the list for safety reasons with the current campus configuration and for the future expansion is the permanent closure of Garfield Avenue where it slices through the campus just north of Moffat Boulevard to Mikesell Street near the big gym.
Messer noted the district is looking at additional property to expand the campus as well as removing the old bus garage and relocating the day school that is on the campus near the tennis courts.
Re-orientating the front of the school to Moffat Boulevard near Sherman Avenue has gained considerable traction. The district already bought a former motel at that corner.
Other concepts being looked at:
uBuilding a new large gym. Manteca High is the only campus where the entire student body can not fit into the gym at one time for assemblies. Instead they need to have two to three assemblies instead of just one.
uA new school office near Moffat Boulevard.
uBuilding two-story classroom wings.
uUpgrading the performing arts center.
uA new swimming pool.
uShared parking use with the city at times parking lots aren’t being utilized during school hours.
uSecuring the entire campus with appropriate fencing.

Securing campus from
homeless and others
wandering thru it
Messer noted for years the homeless and others have been cutting holes in the fencing between Lincoln Park and near the school football stadium so they can take short cuts through the Manteca High campus at all hours of the day and night. The district a few years ago installed a gate that they lock when needed such as during events and when school is in session and unlock at other times. It’s a pragmatic concession that if they don’t do they will keep having the fence cut.
Wrought iron fencing such as along Sherman Avenue may come into play to secure the campus at such locations. Messer said in terms of campus security and other uses the conceptual discussions are going as far as the edge of Powers Avenue where Lincoln School and Lincoln Park front.
Messer and DeBrum both zeroed in on the same issue — long-term maintainence costs.
“The cheapest thing to do is to build a swimming pool,” Messer said. “The real expense is the ongoing cost.”
A joint use swimming pool — or aquatics complex — somewhere in the mix between the Manteca High, Lincoln Park, and Lincoln School campus is one thing being pondered.
The Manteca High swimming pool is aging and inadequately sized. Lincoln Pool is over 60 years old and needs modernization. The community desires an aquatics center.
“If you look at the times when the school would use a swimming pool and the community would, they don’t overlap,” Messer said.
He added one of the biggest expenses the city would have in building an aquatics center besides securing land would be developing a parking lot. The school would have parking available that it would not be using when an aquatics center is used by the community.
The same joint use approach is being explored with an upgraded performing arts center and even the proposed big gym.
Both DeBrum and Messer said when joint use and shared expenses are looked at before projects go forward it can be much more effective and cheaper in how it is operated.
A joint use performing arts center would benefit the city as that is one of the things on its 20-year capital improvement plan.

Aim is to avoid costs
while getting more
bang for tax dollars
The bottom line, of course, is cost avoidance. Besides maintaining separate facilities that would set unused when the other would be using their own same exact facility, the two agencies could pool funds to build an aquatics center and to enhance the performing arts center. It would cut costs for both and free up money each agency needs for other facilities to accommodate growth.
The current performing arts center — the Dorothy Muhlvill Theatre — fronts Yosemite Avenue and is within four blocks of the heart of downtown at Main and Yosemite. Toss in school parking and it becomes an ideal location for community theater production, concerts, and other such events that would also be close to current and future downtown restaurants and other businesses that would complement as vibrant community arts program.
Messer said the location of a high school campus with joint use facilities near downtown and the transit station could lead to other scenarios. Besides providing entertainment venues for concerts and such when the school isn’t using them, it could also set the stage for a transformation of the area around the campus especially west toward the transit center.
The superintendent noted as Manteca grows and its demographics change, the appeal of housing developments aimed at single parent families or families that eschew homes with yards where one or two parents commute to the Bay Area via rail could bring in private sector investors to create a transit village of sorts.
From 1920 when the first version of Manteca High was built up to the early 1960s the campus was the main draw that brought people downtown. That’s because it was the only high school in town. In the 1950s Manteca High, as an example, would have three back-to-back nights of community concerts featuring its band as the demand for people to attend overwhelmed facilities.
Even today, the campus between football and basketball games as well as school sessions bring more people into the central district as a destination than anything else.
This time around the goal would be to create a community-based draw for concerts and such investing in joint use facilities that eliminate duplicate costs plus also puts those facilities in the downtown core.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com