I just heard back from John Lee Evans, one of the members of the San Diego Unified school board, about the city requesting that the schools pony up most of the money to study the feasibility of putting a middle or high school in the downtown library.
Evans was the sole school board member to vote against spending any money on the study in the first place in light of the budget crisis. So it’s not a huge surprise that he’s not keen on spending more on the same study two weeks later.
“To me, we really shouldn’t be doing this when I haven’t even decided that this is a worthy project,” Evans said. He added that creating a new, small school seems strange when the district is weighing whether to close small elementary schools. Nor has he seen strong evidence that student numbers justify a new secondary school in the city center.
“The question I would ask is, is there a need for it?” Evans asked.
For those of you keeping score at home, Evans and John de Beck have said they are against spending more, Katherine Nakamura declined to comment because the schoobrary has largely been discussed in closed session, and I haven’t heard back from Richard Barrera and Shelia Jackson yet.