School Board Criticized by City for Proposing a Resolution on Development
As mentioned in a previous Facebook post, when told about the City of Fremont’s plans for residential growth at our last joint meeting, all five of the School Board members expressed strong concerns as to how our schools would deal with all of this development.
At last night’s School Board meeting a resolution with the following title was on the agenda – “Support for Reducing the Negative Impacts of Unrestricted Land Development on Fremont Schools”.
The resolution begins:
“Whereas, Fremont Unified School District (FUSD) has been experiencing strong year-over-year enrollment increases as a direct result of the City of Fremont approving new housing developments that generate large numbers of new students to the school district, and … (lots more whereas statements)”
And ends:
“Now Therefore Be It Resolved, FUSD formally requests a full accounting of all available property owned or controlled by the City of Fremont, and is asking the City of Fremont to suspend further approval of all developments until the land and/or funds are provided to FUSD to build the new schools needed to house the students generated by the developments approved by the City of Fremont.”
In my opinion, this is a simple and reasonable request – don’t approve more and more development that hurts our schools. However, the City of Fremont, without consulting with its City Council, sent a notice to the School Board asking them to reject this motion!
The Fremont Chamber of Commerce also criticized the School Board for even considering to speak out against continued, unchecked development.
Unfortunately, the School Board did cave into this pressure and did not approve the resolution.
In short, if you’re the School District and you try to speak out against the rampant development that is causing huge problems for your schools, the local City government and the local Chamber of Commerce will criticize you and tell you to stop it. This is not right! Let the School District tell everybody what’s really going on in this City regarding development!
Click below for the full resolutions and replies from the City of Fremont and the Chamber of Commerce.