1 year ago
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FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) - The Fresno County Committee connected School District Organization ruled this period against a petition that would determination implicit 600 acres of onshore from Sierra Unified School District to the Clovis Unified School District.
Centered astir the petition was the Granville Homes' assemblage of Ventana Hills, a 200-acre improvement featuring luxury homes and two-acre lots. It tin beryllium seen disconnected Auberry Road betwixt Clovis and Prather and has nether 20 homes built successful the gated complex.
The assemblage features homes good implicit $1 million, according to Zillow. Current and aboriginal homes and residents would yet transportation taxation dollars and aboriginal students for the Sierra Unified School District. They factors from the Ventana Hills community, and the different 430-acre country westbound of it, the Sierra Unified superintendent says could beryllium captious for the territory moving forward.
"I deliberation that it truly secures the aboriginal of Sierra Unified for each of our existing students and community, that invests truthful heavy successful our schoolhouse territory for years to come," said Superintendent Dr. Lori Grace of the Sierra Unified School District.
Dr. Grace says without that onshore and its existent and aboriginal developments, the territory would person faced the astir consequences.
"It could person been precise detrimental," she said. "We would person relied connected a considerably little country successful our existing schoolhouse territory and I judge it would person opened the doorway astatine much territory being chipped distant at."
In summation to the nonaccomplishment of taxation dollars, developments, and students, she believes it could person acceptable a unsafe precedent for some Sierra Unified and different tiny districts astir the authorities erstwhile it comes to the imaginable of losing much territory successful the future.
Following the board's denial of the petition, arsenic they deemed the petition failed to conscionable 7 of the 9 required criteria, Dr. Grace shares she feels assured that the hard roadworthy tin beryllium avoided.
"That territory is simply a ample territory of our district, and arsenic it develops it means that we tin proceed to supply prime facilities for aboriginal students to come," she said.
The petition came from Ventana Hills nonmigratory Marc Thurston, with enactment from the Assemi Group and developer Granville Homes. They argued successful the petition, the 5th to beryllium denied by the region since 2020, that the main reasons for it were the "substantial assemblage identity" tying much to the Clovis Unified School District, and "student information and entree to co-curricular activities." Thurston and others astatine erstwhile meetings had besides discussed the agelong commute from the Fresno-Clovis country successful the lawsuit a pupil had to beryllium picked up, oregon successful the lawsuit of an emergency.
However, successful its unit study and recommendations regarding the projected transfer, the Fresno County Committee connected School District Organization alternatively reported "a important summation successful spot values appears to beryllium the superior intended intent of the proposal."
Those with the Assemi Group and Granville Homes denied that was the case, and alternatively stated they wanted what was champion for residents, including the "freedom to choose" for residents wherever they tin nonstop their kids to school.
In a connection responding to the ruling, Granville Homes CEO Darius Assemi said:
I anticipation present that they’ve got everything they got, including the enslaved that conscionable passed, that the Fresno County Office of Education is going to beryllium watching their world performance. We request to spot a turnaround successful world show from Sierra Unified that benefits each the kids that be that district.
Darius Assemi.
