Ripon is going to go through some painful growth.
And it will be inflicted by Manteca growth.
Richland Communities is rolling out the latest proposed new neighborhood that will impact what many Ripon area residents hold near and dear— small elementary school campuses as well as a tight-knit community feel.
The firm wants to build 703 single family homes on 184 acres more than four miles northwest of downtown Ripon just blocks away from Woodward Elementary School in Manteca. It is where the monument to excessiveness was never completed — the 30,000-square-foot Hat Mansion — rises above the growing sea of rooftops in the southern part of the City of Manteca.
When built, the housing will yield 500 to 600 K-12 students.
If their parents follow the rules, they will not be going to nearby Woodward School or to Manteca High. They will be flooding into classrooms at Colony Oak, Ripona, Weston, Park View, Ripon, and Park View elementary schools as well as Ripon High.
They will join a number of students already living in the City of Manteca who are attending Ripon Unified School District campuses even though their neighbors across the street walk two blocks to Woodward School. That’s because dozens of homes have already built plus the 703 planned by Richland Communities are located within the Ripon Unified School District.
Richland intends to set aside a site in their project for a future elementary school that — if Ripon Unified wants it — the district would have to pay to secure. That’s only the start. Ripon Unified will have to come up with a way to finance the school construction. It’s a difficult task made even dicey by RUSD’s lack of Mello-Roos districts that help raise some of the funds to build schools.
Regardless, an elementary school won’t be built by RUSD in the area for a long-time, if ever.
Meanwhile those 500 to 600 students — plus future students from land zoning within the City of Manteca that’s also within the RUSD boundaries that could yield another 1,200 students. That’s more than 1,800 students. Keep in mind the current enrollment in Ripon Unified schools is now at 3,235 students.
The only way Ripon Unified will eventually be able to handle the crush of Manteca growth that is happening at a much faster pace and in greater annual numbers than within the City of Ripon is by adding portables to all of its campuses.
The expense of building new schools — or even more classrooms at existing schools — will be a challenge given Ripon Unified was unable to secure needed voter support this past November to address a list of health, safety and modernization needs at Ripon High, Ripona, and Ripon Elementary that carried a price tag of $38.6 million.
Manteca Unified — faced with the real prospect of its 24,000 student enrollment doubling over the next 30 to 40 years by identified project and land zoning just in the cities of Manteca and Lathrop alone and the expense as well as difficulty in securing funding for new campuses while facing a backlog modernization tab closing in on $1 billion for its existing campuses — has taken the cap off of what an ideal elementary school in MUSD would top off at in terms of students.
Instead of enrollment stopping around 800 students, the game plan now calls for elementary schools — including Nile Garden that still is somewhat of a rural school — to cap off at between 1,000 and 1,100 students.
Compare that to Ripon Unified where the enrollment for an elementary school hoovers around 400 to 500.
The reason for super-sized schools has nothing to do with considerations for educational programs although MUSD did determine anything north of 1,000 or so students would start making it impossible to assure an ideal elementary education environment. It has everything to do with financial reality.
Site development including parking lots, playing field, and purchase of the land along with support facilities such as a multipurpose room are the lion’s share of the cost of a new elementary school that for 700 to 800 students is now pushing $30 million.
Adding classrooms — permanent or temporary — are much more cost effective given they can take advantage of existing infrastructure and support facilities. MUSD’s elected school board opted to go that route as it was the best chance the district has of maintaining the quality of what goes on in a classroom while building needed facilities.
Given the lead time and cost of building new schools plus the need to have enrollment to fill the seats, the short- to medium-range impact would be the addition of 100 City of Manteca students at each of the six existing RUSD elementary campuses before enough enrollment exits in Manteca to build at least the first elementary school serving 600 students in the area. And that doesn’t include accommodating student growth from new housing developments within the City of Ripon.
That assumes, of course, the school district can come up with money to build a school. The state in recent years hasn’t been forthcoming with help in new school construction thanks in a large part to coastal areas in California where `the overwhelming majority of the population that also holds the majority of power in Sacramento have public school systems that aren’t in rapid growth mode.
In such a situation the best case scenario will be for existing Ripon families to eventually send their children to elementary schools that aren’t capped at 400 or so students but have 600 students thanks to portable classrooms.
After that, the next less offensive solution — although if it is run right it can offer advantages — is year round education. The default soliton would be double sessions.
If you listen to people whose kids went to school back in the 1970s when Manteca had roughly a third of its current population or about 10,000 more residents than the City of Ripon does today, double sessions degraded the educational experience of their children.
Then there is the issue of children in an urban setting instead of walking to nearby schools in Manteca being bused into another community to go to school. It will make parent participation problematic, make extra-curricular participation tougher for kids, and keep them from enjoying the tie-in with the community that City of Ripon students have today going to Ripon Unified schools and City of Manteca students have today going to Manteca Unified schools.
None of this has to happen. Ripon Unified parents and residents could have a discussion with their elected school board members.
If the consensus is that Ripon doesn’t want to deal with the heavy growth of the City of Manteca in its classrooms, the RUSD school board could direct Superintendent Ziggy Robeson to contact Clark Burke, her MUSD counterpart, to start the ball rolling on boundary change talks.
One thing you can absolutely without a doubt take to the bank is that if such an option was desired it would need to be pursued fairly quick as once growth in the RUSD portion of the City of Manteca reaches a certain point it would be difficult if not impossible for MUSD to agree to a shift due to the sheer number of honest-to-goodness students that would exist at that point.
This column is the opinion of executive editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Bulletin or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA. He can be contacted at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com or 209.249.3519.
