Prestigious Sacramento private school wants to add more students. Neighbors are fighting it
Every summer, Sacramento Country Day School parents come knocking on the doors of Sierra Oaks homes with a question: Can I rent a parking space in your driveway for my kid?
Now the prestigious private school is planning to add 54 students. And neighbors – tired of all the traffic – are fighting back.
“Before COVID, the traffic was horrendous,” said Ann Evans, a homeowner near the school. “You really could not leave. You could not go to Monroe (Street) or Latham (Drive).”
Adding students, bringing the total enrollment cap to 598, would require a conditional use permit from the city. The city’s zoning administrator approved the school’s request last month. Four days later, neighbors filed an appeal.
The appeal was set to be heard by the city’s Planning and Design Commission on Thursday. But that hearing was delayed to Oct. 22 while the school and neighbors try to work out their differences.
“We hope to find a solution that works for everyone,” Head of School Lee Thomsen said in a statement. “We regularly remind our community and visitors not to park in the neighborhood and we employ a security firm to help with enforcement. No matter what happens, we will keep taking these steps to ensure we continue to be respectful neighbors.”
The new student enrollments would be phased in over five to 10 years or longer, said school spokeswoman Emily Allshouse.
A traffic study conducted in February found that adding the students would have limited impact.
“From a traffic operations perspective, increasing the school cap ... will not cause significant impacts to intersection delay on the local street system, with the provision that on-site traffic is managed to reduce or eliminate off-site queue spillbacks,” the study said.
However, the study also found that traffic conditions at the intersection of Monroe Street and Latham Drive already have an “F” rating, even before the new students are added. That’s concerning to the neighbors, especially seniors, Evans said.
“It tells us the city doesn’t care to improve the level of service even though we’re boxed in here and there are a number of elderly people still living here,” said Evans, one of 82 neighbors who signed a petition against the expansion. “It could be life or death if an emergency vehicle could not come in here.”
If the neighbors decide to drop the appeal, the expansion can move forward. However, the school does not plan to reduce the number of new students it plans to add, Allshouse said.
That could make it unlikely that the neighborhood would drop its appeal. Of the 54 new students, 36 would be in high school – old enough to drive to campus and look for parking.
The neighbors are also concerned that the expansion plan violates a 1996 agreement between the school and the homeowners that capped enrollment at 544 total students and capped high school students at 144, unless the school took certain steps to relocate the high school to a new off-site location.
The school is not planning to open another location, Allshouse said.
The school currently has 505 students enrolled, including 144 high school students, Allshouse said. If the expansion is approved, the school would be allowed to have a total of 598 students, including 180 high school students.
The decision made regarding the conditional use permit will not supplant or override the 1996 agreement, Allshouse said.
The plan would also include parking changes, including getting rid of an off-site parking lot, adding bicycle parking and shared bicycles, and other adjustments, according to a city staff report.
Evans said she is skeptical the bicycles would be used, because many of the students live outside the area.
The neighborhood is also home to Sierra Oaks Elementary, which makes the traffic situation even worse, although many students at that school live in the area and walk, unlike Country Day, Evans said. Latham Drive, a residential street, is sandwiched between the two schools.
The school has been doing distance learning due to the coronavirus pandemic, but kindergarten through fifth grade students are returning for in-person instruction over the next two weeks, Allshouse said.
This story was originally published September 26, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
