Manteca will have the equivalent of a new high school before 2030.
All three existing high schools within Manteca’s city limits will be expanded to the point they can each handle 2,200 students in terms of each campus’s designed capacity for education programming.
New construction projects made possible by passage of the statewide $10 billion Proposition 2 school bonds coupled with Manteca Unified community facilities will add capacity for 1,519 more students.
That’s just 14 less students than currently enrolled at East Union High.
“There is no need on the 10-year horizon for another high school,” noted MUSD Superintendent Clark Burke.
The additional space would represent a 30 percent growth in high school enrollment with Manteca’s city limit.
The district would need for enrollment feeding into the three high schools to grow by 150 students annually to exhaust the additional capacity over the next decade.
That’s plausible, but not likely.
But given enrollment projections can be dicey, acreage the district owns on Tinnin Road south of the 120 Bypass is an ace that they hold.
One of two new elementary schools within Manteca that will be built with state bond money wedded with CFD bonds is going on the Tinnin site. The other is Tara in southwest Manteca.
The 56 acres is being developed so that a high school campus could be added in the future.
The flexibility goes as far as designing the elementary school to the point it could be turned into addition classroom space for the high school in the future and elementary students shifted elsewhere.
Standard classrooms need to be 960 square feet under state guidelines. Kindergarten and transitional kindergarten classrooms must be 1,360 square feet with space for restrooms, storage and teacher preparation.
The space footprint of the TK-K classrooms would be designed to potentially accommodate high school science classrooms that require a teacher prep area, storage, and plumbing for water.
The current enrollment of the three high schools within the city are 1,870 at Manteca High, 1,677 at Sierra High, and 1,534 at East Union High.
Based on targeted enrollment of 2,200 students for the district’s comprehensive high schools, Lathrop with 1,517 students currently and Weston Ranch at 1,185 students have space for expansion.
The district is now building two-story classroom buildings at both East Union and Manteca High.
The two-story 26 classroom building at East Union will be anchored with a modern and expansive media center that will dominate the view of the campus from the busy Union Road thoroughfare.
The classrooms are being built with the ability to make as much of the space as possible a learning tool such as walls that double as white boards to walls that can be collapsed to combine classroom spaces.
The building is designed to enable the most efficient use and deployment of audio visual equipment and electronic devices.
At Manteca High, work is underway building 20 classrooms in a two-story structure along Mikesell Street.
That is where a cluster of 10 classrooms were built more than two years ago with Measure G bond proceeds. The project also includes a new woodshop
Once the 2-story classroom is completed, older classrooms in the central part of the campus will be torn down to make way for a second two-story classroom building.
That structure will be built along Sherman Avenue with 32 classrooms connected with a new media center via a student quad. It will be somewhat of a mirror of the 2-story classroom structure now under construction at East Union High on the west side of the campus along Union Road.
The two budlings now under construction should be ready just in time for the current sophomore classes to begin their senior year using the new classroom complex.
They are being built with the $260 million Measure A bond voters approved in 2020.
When all three two-story buildings are completed, there will no longer be portable classrooms at either Manteca High or East Union High.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
