Sacramento City Council member Angelique Ashby and TRUSD officials held a town hall meeting on Monday night to address the lack of middle and high schools in the Natomas region with local families.
“When it’s time to go to junior high and they can’t get into one of the charter schools here in Natomas, then their options are pretty far outside the area,” Ashby said.
Norwood Junior High is the nearest middle school for Natomas. For high school, it’s Grant or Rio Linda.
Some parents felt the town hall left many questions unanswered, specifically when a new school will be built.
Twin Rivers is working with the City of Sacramento on potential school sites, including a K-8 school in the future 3,000-home, 600 acre Greenbrier development that is planned near the airport. No specific plans for any schools have school board approval.
Oddly enough, the decade-old, unfinished 300,000 square foot “East Natomas Education Complex” which sits in the open field between Regency Park and East Levee Road isn’t being discussed. The project was started in 2008 under the former Grant Union School district under Assembly Bill 1402. It would have included a 1,900-student high school, a 1,100-student junior high school, sports facilities and a performing arts facility and was set to open in 2010.
TRUSD spent $60M to stop this project while acknowledging that new high schools would be needed in the next 10 years.
“We really want to bring some options into our community,” Ashby said. “We want to work with Twin Rivers Unified on what that looks like and how do we pay for it moving forward.”
With the lack of options some parents are considering leaving the community.
Cover photo via YouTube/Drones by Riley
