WATSONVILLE, Calif. — Dan Hernandez stands on a bluff overlooking the site of a proposed high school in this Latino farming community and grits his teeth.
He points to an old Army trash dump and county jail that sit just down the hill. He motions to the planes that drone overhead after taking off from a small airport less than a mile away. And he winces at the mixture of odors from a nearby cattle feedlot, an adjacent solid waste landfill and the chemicals sprayed on surrounding strawberry fields.
But what Hernandez and others resent most about Harkins Slough, the marshy expanse along which officials plan to build a new school for mainly low-income students, is the distinct whiff of "dirty politics."
"Do you smell that?" the 44-year-old father of two asks, gesturing toward a clutch of cows in the distance. "It's bad, really bad. How could they approve this? Would you want your kids to go to any school built here?"
The question of where to build the district's third high school has divided this community of 44,000 located 100 miles south of San Francisco--prompting petition drives, accusations of racism and tension among school officials.
Officials say the New Millennium high school is critically needed to ease overcrowding on the district's two aging campuses, which handle nearly double their combined capacity of 3,200 students.
They say there are no alternative sites in the two-county, 156-square-mile district dominated by agricultural fields and new housing tracts. Facing a looming deadline to use $48 million in state school construction funds, they already have spent eight years and $9 million just to find this site. Officials say they have nowhere else to turn.
Most important, they say, despite the qualms voiced by a few activists, the Harkins Slough project enjoys strong support among residents--who are 75% Latino--and has passed rigorous state tests designed to weed out inappropriate school locations.
"We've done everything right by the book," said Terry McHenry, an associate superintendent of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District. "We're not some big developer trying to do something we're not supposed to do. All we want to do is look after our kids. And nobody in the know will tell you that this is a bad site for a school."
But in approving the site, some officials admit problems remain, with one backhandedly saying the location "didn't stink too bad." New Millennium also is listed on a national report of toxic school sites compiled by a nonprofit environmental group.
