New high school needed in San Benito County to help with enrollment boom

HOLLISTER, Calif. (KION-TV)- A new high school is in the works in the San Benito High School District after the rapidly growing population of students over the years.

Hollister High School is one of two public high schools in San Benito County; with 93% of high schoolers in the county attending the school, according to the superintendent of the San Benito High School District. School officials tell KION it could be built in the next four years.

In the last five years, the high school has seen over 500 more students enroll. This calls for new classrooms to be built to match capacity. A new high school will be built to keep up with the growing population.

"The district has seen incredible growth in the last five years and we are one of the fastest-growing counties in the state of California," said Superintendent Shawn Tennenbaum.

Over three thousand students attend Hollister High School. That number is expected to increase in the coming years.

"There's a lot of kids, the staff and administration work really hard to keep everyone in their classrooms and out of trouble," said current substitute teacher Venissa Archibeque.

To keep up with the growing population of students the school built portable classrooms but that was not enough.

"It's not going to stop growing the area is not going to stop growing so we need a new high school," said current substitute teacher Venissa Archibeque.

"There's a lot of students here, but the campus is big," said Hollister High School student Ivan Huerta.

Over the years school officials have been working on a master plan for a new high school in the district. That plan is now coming to fruition.

"In August, we're going to launch the next part of the process, phase two, which will be looking at educational programming in the learning environment," said Superintendent Shawn Tennenbaum. "And so our goal was to gather input on what a classroom would look like, and what type of classrooms. How should we have collaborative spaces?"

The superintendent says the new classrooms won't be too different from the old but they may need to be share facilities.

"Our goal is to make sure that we have the basic foundation, all the classrooms necessary, So it's equity of facilities. So we may not have the exact same amenities," said Tennenbaum. "For example, we wouldn't have two aquatics centers for both physical education and our sporting events. We would have a district aquatic center."

It is still unknown where the school will be built but the superintendent says it's going to be big. Planning to educate over 12 hundred students.

"We are looking in all areas of the city, in the county to make sure because we're looking at a 50-acre parcel and or parcels that we may have to combine," said Tennenbaum.

When phase two starts in August the school says they will be looking for community feedback.

"It's one vision, one community building that second high school. And we really want to accentuate the possibilities here for the next generation," said Tennenbaum.

Parents tell me off-camera that there are too many students in one school and are in favor of a new school being built. The financial advisor for hollister high school says it would cost about $200 million to build the new school which would include about 45 classrooms.