The Lathrop City Council isn’t ready to move forward with adding new homes to a community facilities district until they get a chance to talk to the two representatives of the Manteca Unified School District board at length about when the community might get a new elementary school.

What appeared to be a relatively routine item on the council’s August calendar turned into an issue between the City of Lathrop and the Manteca Unified School District on Monday during discussions over a 7-unit infill project on Warren Avenue behind Eagle’s Nest Harley Davidson.

The issue? The agreement that the developer made with Manteca Unified to enter into a community facilities district to help offset the impact that development has on the district’s operation.

The council voted 4-1 – with councilmember Diane Lazard opposed – to continue the discussion about the infill project to a future meeting and to request that representatives from Manteca Unified attend the September meeting to further discuss the situation.

“There are people in Mossdale that have been paying property tax into MUSD since almost 2006, and the district told us that they have no plans to build a new school – that overflow has to go wherever there is an opening,” Dhaliwal said. “Kids would have to go to Manteca or Weston Ranch, and that causes a huge problem.

“There are elderly grandparents that can’t drive that walk the kids to school, or siblings that walk their younger brother or sister to school. If they have to go to Manteca or Weston Ranch, somebody has to have a license and with most Lathropians working out of the city it’s just not fair to them or the wider community.”

But those fears about students being sent to other cities to attend school because it is full, Manteca Unified says, are unfounded.

While moving students to schools where capacity is available does occasionally happen, it hasn’t happened at Mossdale Elementary School, according to Victoria Brunn – Manteca Unified’s Director of Community Outreach.

“Based on our extensive annual review process including demographic studies, new construction at this time is not warranted,” Manteca Unified said in a statement about the issue over building a new school. “These planning efforts are similar to the practices when Lathrop High School and Mossdale Elementary School were constructed using taxpayer-approved dollars through Measure M.

“Ethel Allen – the future school site – is reviewed annually through our master facilities planning process and due to available capacity, it is not scheduled for design and construction.”

Brunn said that in a recent 2-by-2 meeting with district staff in attendance, Manteca Unified laid out its detailed plans and how it arrived at the decision not to move forward with constructing a new elementary school in the area at this time.

She also added that 454 homes in the Mossdale Area participated in CFD 4 and noted that specific CFD is now closed.

“We are not overflowing out of the area, and the CFD is not mitigating for growth – those are the absolutes,” Brunn said. “We have not exceeded capacity, and that’s the bottom line.

“But we continue to review and study every year – we pull demographic studies and growth projects. That’s why we have Ethel Allen – should we need to pull the trigger on that, we will.”

While Manteca Unified acknowledged that they don’t plan on building Ethel Allen – a school that has been in the pipeline for years – at this current time, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t investing those resources back into the community.

“Manteca Unified is a growing school district. We are thrilled to welcome our students to our modernized facilities,” Manteca Unified’s statement read. “We recently completed modernization with a new ten-classroom building at Lathrop Elementary School, a new student support center at Mossdale Elementary School, eight new classrooms for Manteca High School, and MUSD is beginning phase three at Joseph Widmer Elementary School to include student support centers.”

For additional information about Manteca Unified’s plans for growth visit www.mantecausd.net/growth.

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