Save Lake Forest - Save the Kids

There are many reasons to support the SAVE LAKE FOREST movement, not the least of which is to fight the corruption of our elected city officials (Voigts, Robinson, and Nick) who were put in office thanks to nearly $100,000 spent by the developers and their friends and associates. But one of the issues that has been relatively ignored up until now is the impact of the projects on our schools.

According to the Mitigated Negative Declarations for Trumark (page 113) and Brookfield (page 118), filed with the City and available at the City’s website, these two projects will add 41 students to the Foothill Ranch Elementary School, a school that is already strained to handle the existing workload.

Beyond elementary school, Trumark estimates that they will increase the K-12 population by 44 children and Brookfield estimates 37. The total is 81 students. BTW - Doesn’t it seem strange that Trumark, with about half the number of units, estimates that they’ll have more students than Brookfield?

What’s worse, Brookfield signed an agreement with SVUSD (see Item 7, Page 92, of the agreement which is on the City’s website) that says

"District shall use reasonable efforts to insure that all K-12 Project Students have the option to attend the applicable school closest to their neighborhood that is not overburdened..."

In other words, Brookfield’s students (called "Project Students" above) get special treatment. Moreover, who is to say what is and what isn't "overburdened"?

Brookfield, of course, can use this special treatment clause in the agreement to market heavily to families with children, so the result will probably be even more people choosing to move into the Brookfield project. Given that Brookfield has done a poor job in squeezing in homes, offering tandem parking, etc., all of which was designed specifically to provide what they call “affordable housing”, one can only anticipate a tsunami of Brookfield children overflowing onto the existing schools and forcing existing students to seek their schooling elsewhere. Thus will begin a leap frogging as students from one area displace other students until eventually, the once vacant schools in distant places for SVUSD are filled once more. That works, of course, for SVUSD who refused to build more schools in the areas where 4,200+ new homes are coming, but it doesn’t work out well for the children who are going to be dislodged, the parents who are going to have to bus their kids or else drive them, etc.

Not only will the lives of the parents and children be disrupted, think of the additional traffic caused by the leap frogging. Now add that to the 32,000 additional vehicle trips per day caused by the 4,200 new homes, and we have a city nearly paralyzed. Let me simply hint here (more to come soon) that the new Waste Management contract is going to fill our streets with more garbage trucks than can ever be imagined, and this too will turn Lake Forest into one enormous parking lot.

Back to the kids. Traffic is important, but everyone knows that kids are the future. When Brookfield and Trumark argued to allow their project to go forward, they both claimed that the impact on the kids and the schools would be “Less than significant”. I suppose that conclusion depends on whose kids you’re talking about. It’s certainly going to be significant for the 80+ families who will see their lives disrupted if their kids are forced to change schools or can't enter schools  because the new kids occupy their seats.

“Save Lake Forest” should probably be subtitled “Save the Kids”. That may sound a little corny, or even melodramatic, but it may also be accurate.  

You can help. E-mail MaryAltoff@msn.com to get started gathering signatures for a referendum that will force the developers to put the issue on the ballot. For more information, visit our Facebook page Save Lake Forest. Please like us. More than 120 people already do. And spread the word. Upload this article to your Facebook page and share with others.