Council Backs District’s Push to Build Schools on Tustin Marine Base

The City Council has joined the ranks of other local and state officials calling on Tustin to allow the Santa Ana Unified School District to build three schools on the former Tustin Marine base.

The council voted Monday to support the school district’s request to build the schools, which has been denied by Tustin, the lead agency responsible for planning the base’s post-military use.

“I don’t know how we could not support this in a city with so little undeveloped land [for schools],” Councilwoman Lisa Bist said.

Although Tustin repeatedly denied the school district’s request for the land, the school district is still planning to build an elementary school, an intermediate school and a high school on 75 acres in the base’s southwest corner, which fall within district boundaries.

In recent months, Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Anaheim) and Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) have attached their names to the school district’s campaign to acquire the land.

The base land would help the school district alleviate crowding in some of the state’s most impacted schools, officials said.

Tustin has granted land on the base to the Tustin and Irvine unified school districts.

The Santa Ana Unified School District has twice as many students in portable classrooms as Tustin Unified has students, school board President John Palacio said. And the total number of students in Irvine Unified about equals the number of students in portables in Santa Ana Unified, he said.

Tustin officials have maintained that the land would be better used for commercial development.

“It only seems right that if they’re giving land to other school districts, they should give some to Santa Ana,” school board member Rosemarie Avila said.

*

Alex Katz can be reached at (714) 966-5977.