BUSD issues contract for Gird Road property appraisal

Keith Jameson has been given the contract to appraise the Bonsall Unified School District's (BUSD) Gird Road property.

A 4-0 BUSD board vote April 22, with Erin English absent, authorized the $5,000 appraisal services contract with Jameson. The appraisal will allow the Gird Road property to be considered as collateral for other Bonsall Unified School District borrowing.

"We had to have someone who was qualified to deal with public and semi-public zoned property," said BUSD superintendent Justin Cunningham.

Jameson is also based in Bonsall.

In 1967, the Fallbrook Union High School District acquired 50 acres off of Gird Road. The plan was to build a second high school in the district once enrollment reached 1,800 students, but the high school district never constructed the second school. In December 2011, the high school board deemed the Gird Road property to be surplus, or not necessary for the district's current or future needs.

In November 2012, the voters of the Fallbrook Union High School District approved changing the K-8 Bonsall Union School District to a K-12 Bonsall Unified School District and removing that area from the Fallbrook Union High School District. Had the unification failed, the high school district likely would have sold the Gird Road property, but under the state Education Code a school district reorganization automatically transfers real property to the location's new district.

Bonsall High School opened in August 2014 with ninth-graders only and will expand by a grade a year until it has all four grades for 2017-18. The Sullivan Middle School site is currently being used for the high school, but the Gird Road property is available to the Bonsall Unified School District for a potential future school.

Bonsall High School had a 2014-15 enrollment of 64 students. The school's enrollment is expected to reach 400 students in 2017-18. Because of growth in the area, an enrollment of 600 students is predicted for 2019-20. A two-story building which will be built on the Sullivan campus will initially be used for the high school and, after the school district builds a high school on its Gird Road property, the new building would be used to accommodate the expected middle school enrollment growth.

The appraisal services contract did not include a timeline. "I'm hoping that we can get that before summer," Cunningham said.