This morning, at 7:50 a.m., a group of parents will participate in a "test drive" of the new route that their children will be asked to navigate to get to their new location at next August.
The drive, however, won't be done happily, as the parents will be protesting by trustees to discontinue investing in Lexington's reconstruction project.
According to parent Jeff Herr, the group will leave Lexington to come down Highway 17 and enter Los Gatos at the Highway 9 exit. From there, they will turn right to Los Gatos Boulevard, then left and head to Roberts Road where they will turn left and drive to the district office parking lot, which is next to Fisher.
"We want to get a sense for what's going to change in our daily commute," Herr said, adding that he wasn't sure how many would participate, but said the number could be a "couple of hundred."
Herr said he drives his daughter from his home on Summit Road to Lexington every morning, a task that takes him between 15 and 30 minutes, depending on traffic. However, he said, once the students move to Fisher at the start of the 2012-13 school year, his anticipated commute time to the middle school will double.
The other challenge for many families, however, is that while they can take alternate roads to get to Fisher without using Highway 17—such as traveling Mountain Charley Road—if those are closed, they'll be forced to take a freeway they consider extremely dangerous due to recent crashes and deaths reported further south.
"It [the test drive Tuesday morning] will help us to get a grasp of what it's going to be," he said about the exercise, which he said will also double the amount of cars on the road.
The LGUSD trustees were planning to meet at 6:30 p.m. tonight, Tuesday, April 24, inside the Fisher Middle School cafeteria, 19195 Fisher Ave., to continue to discuss the controversial issue, which is mortifying Lexington parents.
LGUSD attorney Glenn Gould, with the Dannis Woliver Kelley statewide education law firm, was on the trustees' agenda scheduled to provide information on the Lexington site issues, including implications of the controversial California Geological Survey reports, which led to the trustees halting the school reconstruction project.
Gould was to also speak about risk assessment, fiscal impacts and expenditure of taxpayers' money for school construction, liability, and interim housing solutions for Lexington students.
Leslie Paulides, the district's assistant superintendent of business services, was also going to discuss scheduling of meetings with CGS.
Two weeks ago, trustees voted to discontinue the Lexington project after the CGS communicated via letter that more information was needed about the site's stability, which would have required more tests and additional spending of between $25,000 and $75,000.
Lexington's current enrollment is about 170 students in grades K-5, Herr said, but the new school would have allowed the enrollment to grow to 240 students.
"We moved here—to the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Lexington district specifically—for a very specific reason: we wanted our daughter to experience Lexington's excellence. And she has. This has been the most amazing experience for her and us, her parents," Herr said. "And now comes the threat that this miraculous school will be shut down and the kids shuttled up and down Highway 17, one of the most dangerous roads in the state."
