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What is the practical lower limit for the size of a plot of land needed for a high school?
The reason I ask is because the city I live in failed to purchase land ahead of the city's rapid growth. Since there is no money in the budget, they are planning to construct a 125 classroom (approx. 3750 students) high school behind an existing elementary school (750 students). The combined plot of land for both schools is only 40 acres. On top of this, the land is bordered on 3 sides by single family houses so the two schools would need to share and entrance and exit onto a one lane (in each direction) road.
If you have any examples of any high schools that have campuses under 40 acres (and 2500+ students) please share name of the school and city. I'd like to see how these super compact high-schools are arranged and the surrounding road setups. I'm having a lot of trouble envisioning how this is going to work.
40 acres sounds like plenty of land for the school, with enough left over for future growth. The real issue it would seem to me from what you described is road access. Can the transportation infrastructure in the area handle the massive surge morning and afternoon? There've been some built in our area that connect to a single 2 lane road and the road becomes impassible right when everyone is trying to get to work. In those cases there are no alternate routes around for those who live in the area. If you're looking to fight the location, transportation infrastructure is probably the route, not acreage.
Agree. If you take out sports fields the campus size can be much less also. Your opposition (?) would be more likely be more effective targeting access.
Having said that, I can't imagine any jurisdiction building a school and totally ignoring road access. The feeder road might have to be upgraded (adding turn lanes for example) or signalized at the school. Since it sounds like the surrounding area is already developed you might not have to take future residential growth into account.
It's possible that since the school is surrounded by residences that plans include a lot of walkers. It may also be that the school system originally built the existing school, and acquired the property, with long term plans to do exactly what's being done.
My daughter went to an urban/suburban HS that filled a city block, had its playing field in a city park across the street, and no parking for students. Faculty parked on local streets. It worked fine, and there was NO incentive for kids to get driver's licenses, so many didn't until near graduation. And yes, many kids were far enough away that they were bused to school. The town had about 1800 students for 4 years.
The town had ample park spaces that doubled as school athletic fields. Town tennis courts for the tennis team. Soccer on a multi-purpose field. Football, which wasn't big, mostly using other town's fields.
Seems to me parking lots and playing fields are the big space users.
Our top local high school, Brentwood High School, was built in 1982 next to an existing middle school.
The two parcels are 39 acres and 12 acres, so close to what you're talking about. They are surrounded on three sides by single family homes and adjacent to a city park, where there are some ballfields.
Traffic is an issue during rush hours, but overall it works great. Hopefully your schools stagger start and end times. In the afternoon, with student drivers leaving the high school, there will be challenges.
Our middle school has 1,330 students, high school has about 1,700.
What if land is worth 50 million per acre? A skyscraper can be built on 1/3 of an acre. I know of a 5000 student k12 that is in an area like that, since 1902, and is about 6 acres.
Bigger problem is likely the traffic issue as others have noted. Assuming as most districts do that they will stagger start/release times, having all traffic forced to exit onto one 2-lane road... will cause major backups.
Things that will help--if the school is surrounded by neighborhood, quite a few kids could walk--the question is will they or will everyone want to drive? Some schools limit drivers to only seniors, or (that may not even help as the school you're talking about is HUGE and not only would the traffic impact of so many extra cars be extreme, that's a lot of extra parking lots needed) only a certain number of driving permits granted for students with extenuating circumstances. More bus riders will help as well... but we just had another thread yesterday about the nightmare traffic at another elementary school during morning/afternoon dropoff on a similar 2-lane road with no other way in/out of the school and everyone driving their kid. A high school with 3750 students? Yikes. I don't even want to try to imagine, especially when you consider teacher cars, kids who want to drive, parents who want to drive their kids, buses needing to pull into the school.
The problem here isn't the closeness to the elementary school (staggered start times will fix that), and it isn't acreage. It's going to be road access.
Last edited by kitkatbar; 09-07-2019 at 01:01 PM..
I was curious and looked ours up. Our local HS has about 2200 students and sits on 39 acres.
That made me curious, too. Our local HS has 1,200 students on 47 acres. And, they had to increase the parking just a few years after the new school was built.
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