Petition for Not Eliminating the Option to Build School #8 in PHR

We strongly urge the Solana Beach School District not to eliminate the option of building School #8 in Pacific Highlands Ranch (PHR).

With the rapid building of new homes and influx of students, a decision to eliminate the option of building a new school in the area will have profound and long-term detrimental impacts on the PHR community and the school district. We are particularly concerned of the following consequences of not building School #8 as already planned:
1. Overcrowded Solana Ranch School that would not be able to adequately address education needs of individual students. With the current enrollment of 572 students and 95% utilization, Solana Ranch is already the largest and busiest school in the Solana Beach District. To "right-size" Solana Ranch for more students would overwhelm the school, create an environment not suitable for the learning of young children, and affect education quality for enrolled students.
2. Diminished appeal of PHR and the Solana Beach School District to education-minded families due to inconvenient and insufficient neighborhood schools. Many families in PHR and this school district have been attracted to live in this area because of easy accessibility to high quality community schools. Without School #8, many current and future PHR students would have to be assigned to outside schools far away from their residence. The long traveling to and from school would be very inconvenient to the students and their families. Meanwhile, reputation of the Solana Beach School District would be tainted by the inability to allocate adequate resources to fully address school facility needs.
3. Worsened over-development issues that affect the quality of life for all PHR residents. As a result of aggressive development in the area, PHR residents are already facing many challenges, including road traffic and stretched public resources. Transportation to attend outside schools by PHR students would exacerbate the already grave rush-hour traffic congestion in the area. To make things worse, giving up the 10-acre site already allocated for School #8 could open the possibility for residential development in the land, and further burden public facilities.

We firmly believe that there are better options than eliminating School #8 for the benefits of the PHR community and the school district. The financial challenges in building School #8 should be addressed by other means; for example, one option could be to adapt the initial design or size of School #8 to currently available funding, with the possibility to expand in the future upon availability of additional funding.

We appeal to the Solana Beach School District to take into consideration long-term interests of PHR and the school district, and not eliminate the option to build School #8.