District Scraps School Plans on Site Officials Want Protected

After months of feuding with city officials and environmentalists, the fast-growing Lancaster School District has backed away from a controversial plan to build a school in a desert woodlands area targeted by the city for preservation.

Frustrated school officials this week agreed to seek alternate sites for a $13-million middle school they want to build on the west side of Lancaster.

But even though they appear to have given up the fight over the 20-acre Quailwood site, the officials challenged the ecological importance of the site and accused city officials of making the issue “a political football.”

“That area is nothing but junk. It’s had bums living there. It’s had off-road vehicles tearing up the place. It’s not at all prime desert woodlands,” said Rowland King, assistant superintendent of the 10,600-student school district.

But the city and others disagree. The Lancaster City Council in March designated the 72 acres of Joshua trees, junipers and sand dunes as prime desert woodlands. State and federal agencies also have supported its preservation.

Last Resort

Partly because of continued opposition from the city, school officials said they would try to buy the Quailwood site only as a last resort. “There has to be another site that’s acceptable for us to build on and within our price range,” said school board President Richard White.

The school district has had money in escrow since early this year to buy the 20-acre parcel for $1.12 million. It is in a largely undeveloped area of Lancaster at the northeast corner of 35th Street West and Avenue K-8. The school board tabled the purchase Monday.

School officials are scheduled to recommend a new course of action at the next school board meeting Oct. 16. King said officials will probably recommend that the district use the condemnation process to obtain a suitable alternate site.

He said the district could be forced to condemn the land because of the rising price of property in the area where the school would be located and because of developers’ plans to use the land for other purposes. If the property is condemned, it would be the first time the district has had to use its powers to force an owner to sell land to the school district.

The dispute over the Quailwood site is only the latest obstacle to slow the district’s efforts to build a new middle school, intended to serve about 750 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students. School officials said the earliest a campus could open would be in two years.

School officials originally had settled on a different site but had to drop that plan after they found that the ground would not be suitable. Then a land swap with developer David Waln collapsed, in part because of city obstructions, school officials claimed.

City officials, meanwhile, said they were just trying to uphold the city’s goal of preserving the 72-acre desert area. City officials also said the Quailwood site was a poor location for a school because it is remote and because the single street in the area makes it too inaccessible and possibly unsafe.

To encourage the district to build elsewhere, the City Council offered $300,000 this week to help pay for improvements at an alternate school site. City officials said the district’s purchase of the Quailwood site would have hampered the city’s plan to buy nearby land because it would raise the price.

The middle school, if built, would be the 16th school in the district, which is straining under enrollment increases of about 13% each year and chronic shortages of state funding for school construction.

The district opened two elementary schools this fall and will open a third soon. There also are two other new campuses in progress ahead of the proposed middle school. School officials are considering whether to ask voters for a tax increase to help pay for the expansion.