The Abridged version:
- The Rocklin City Council voted Tuesday to advance Sierra Wilds, a controversial 120-unit affordable housing development that has drawn backlash for its scale and proximity to a local Montessori school.
- Parents and educators at Maria Montessori Charter Academy have protested the development for years, raising concerns about air quality, student health and safety, learning disruptions, and the loss of school facilities like a community garden classroom.
- If the public charter school loses a significant number of students and existing utility infrastructure located on the development parcel, it may close in the future.
A proposed affordable housing development in Rocklin just cleared its latest hurdle, and local parents and educators worry their Montessori school could close because of it.
After months of contentious public hearings, the Rocklin City Council on Tuesday voted 3-2 to grant the 120-unit Sierra Wilds Apartments a design review and California Environmental Quality Act exemption, moving the project forward.
Parts of the housing development and construction site would sit on land currently occupied by Maria Montessori Charter Academy, a public school serving preschoolers through eighth graders living across the region.
School staff said if construction proceeds, they will lose multiple facilities and much of their student population. Several parents told Abridged by PBS KVIE they would likely pull their children out of the school, fearing exposure to pollutants and class distractions from construction, new traffic into the school’s parking and roadway entrances, and potential safety issues.
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As a public charter school, Maria Montessori receives state funding that depends on enrollment and attendance, which in turn depends on parents choosing to send their children to the Montessori school instead of other public or private school options. If the school loses a significant number of its students, it risks closure.
“Going to MMCA, we have aspirations of college. I don’t know if that’s the case without it,” said David McClain, a parent of four Maria Montessori students, including one with special needs.
After City Council members voted to move forward with project considerations, some Maria Montessori parents and educators walked away in tears.
Church, state and school
The three-story Sierra Wilds development would consist of a community center and four apartment buildings on a parcel of land between Maria Montessori and St. Augustine of Canterbury Episcopal Church.
The school’s community garden classroom, high and low voltage utilities infrastructure and about a third of the preschool’s playground are currently on the parcel that would be developed.
St. Augustine, which claims ownership of the entire parcel, entered into a sale agreement with development company Pacific West Communities.
Pacific West representative Lauren Alexander said the parcel was chosen because it scores highly in the competitive state system used to determine which housing projects receive tax credits.
“It’s a competitive market in California, so we’re looking for off-market land deals often,” Alexander said. “We think that this is a really good location for housing. It’s a nice place for people to live, and I think it’ll be a beautiful project when it’s done.”
In April, Rocklin city officials received a letter from California’s Housing and Community Development agency ordering the city to approve affordable housing development on the site, and threatening legal action if the city blocks the plans. State law limits a city’s ability to reject or scale down affordable housing developments that do not violate general plans or pose a probable risk to the surrounding community.
Despite reservations, some City Council members voted to move forward after developers agreed to add an additional lane from the main roadway into the development parcel.
“We are being punished for cities that tried to stop housing,” councilmember Jill Gayaldo said before voting to approve the design review and CEQA exemption. “This isn’t where I wanted it, but I don’t get to tell (the developer) to say, ‘this is a great project, we’ll build it somewhere else.'”
‘We 1,000% disagree’
The vote to proceed surprised many parents and educators who expected the City Council to continue discussion at a later meeting.
Whether the church or school owns parts of the parcel is currently in dispute. While the church claims the entire parcel is its to sell, school administrators say that old easement and purchase agreements give them property rights to their facilities on the land.
On Maria Montessori’s campus, dashes of orange spray paint cut through a narrow driveway between school facilities to mark the church’s version of the property boundaries. School administrators call the marking inaccurate.
“We 1,000% disagree with it and think they have mislabeled the property,” Maria Montessori principal Brent Boothby said. “If we end up in litigation work, that’ll be one of the contentions.”
Current plans would turn the community garden, voltage facilities and disputed portion of the playground into an elevated parking lot, which would require over a dozen feet of grading above the school.
Alexander said that the school could relocate its facilities: the developer has instructed the school to move its utilities infrastructure onto its property, and Pacific West has offered to pay for the garden’s relocation to a city park next to the school.
Boothby contended that the school’s remaining property lacks the space to take on the utilities. And Rocklin city manager Aly Zimmerman clarified that the ongoing drafts of the city’s master plan for parks lack provisions for any new garden at that park.
Parent concerns
Maria Montessori educators and parents have protested development plans for years. They say their opposition to Sierra Wilds has nothing to do with its status as an affordable housing development. Rather, they believe the complex’s scale and proximity to the school threatens student health and education.
“There’s construction going on, and we’re dealing with hard materials that need to get dug up by heavy machinery,” Maria Montessori parent Syd Fong told Abridged. “There’s going to be air issues, there’s going to be noise, there’s going to be vibration. A lot going on that would affect the kids.”
Fong is a founding member of the Coalition for Urban Ethics, a parent group created earlier this year in opposition to Sierra Wilds. Members said they aren’t telling developers they shouldn’t build on the parcel, but that the current plans must change to protect students.
Pacific West modified plans for Sierra Wilds multiple time since first applying for city review, including significantly rearranging its layout. Scaling back the existing design to accommodate the school and parents would render the project infeasible, Alexander said.
Parents and developers disagree heavily on the degree to which construction and the development itself would affect students. Pacific West contracted a study by FirstCarbon Solutions, an environmental compliance consulting firm, that determined there would be no significant health and safety affects associated with the project.
But the coalition and its allies dispute the report’s validity, arguing that the type of soil the study is based on differs significantly from the terrain of the project site. Coalition members are calling for a new independent study that would be more site-specific, which they say could result in project mitigation reducing children’s exposure to dust and other particles in the air.
To Pacific West, there’s nothing to mitigate.
“I understand parents’ concern for their children’s safety, and there are a multitude of studies that we’re required to do that depend on the type of project and where the project is located,” Alexander said. “We’ve studied everything that needs to be studied.”
Parents and educators haven’t been assuaged by those reassurances. Beyond health concerns, they worry that noise and the presence of large machinery close to classrooms will disrupt learning.
“Children simply cannot tune out construction noises when they are learning to read, solving a difficult math problem, taking a test or listening to their teacher explain a new concept,” Maria Montessori parent Heidi Pojda said.
Because land will be graded for construction, the apartment building located adjacent to school property will look out directly over the children’s outdoor cafeteria, playground and outdoor bathroom facilities, another aspect of the project with which parents have expressed discomfort.
What’s next?
As a public charter school, Maria Montessori receives state funding based on enrollment counts and student attendance rates. Some families have already left the school in expectation of the project, Boothby said, and if it continues forward, others will follow suit.
Maria Montessori parent and Urban Ethics Coalition member Brandi Armstrong said her children are thriving at the school. But without stronger reassurance that development won’t harm her kids, she wouldn’t feel comfortable sending them to school if the city approves final project plans.
“I feel like I’d be failing them as their parent, because I’m allowing them to possibly get health effects and be harmed,” she said. “It’s insane that we have to be put in this situation. I feel like we’re living in the Twilight Zone.”
Parents and teachers said the school’s Montessori style makes it a more nurturing learning environment for students with special needs or challenging early childhood circumstances. That environment may not last if the school closes due to declining enrollment or failing to find space to relocate its utility infrastructure.
Aside from his role as principal, Boothby coaches girls’ basketball at the school. Prior to the announcement of development plans, he’d never imagined the school would be in its current position.
“We’re the only school in this region that’s got California distinguished school status the last two cycles in a row,” Boothby said. “I’d love to talk about that and our students and their success, but I’m instead talking about how this potential apartment complex could shut down my school.”
