Bonsall Sponsor Group tables Willow Tree enrichment center until June 1 meeting

The Bonsall Community Sponsor Group tabled a possible recommendation on the proposed Willow Tree academic enrichment center.

Concerns about the size of the proposed buildings and about increasing traffic congestion including if an evacuation is necessary caused the sponsor group to delay a decision until at least the June 1 meeting. The item was tabled without a sponsor group vote.

"It's a balance between the learning environment and the neighborhood environment," said Bonsall Sponsor Group Chair Steve Norris. "I am personally concerned with the overall bulk and scale."

An entity called Friends of Willow Tree has submitted an application to the county for a Major Use Permit to build a school in the 6800 block of West Lilac Road. The school would encompass 6.41 acres of a 14-acre site just west of Sullivan Middle School. "The rest of it we want to leave open," said Friends of Willow Tree Director Bethany Chaffin.

The campus would educate students from transitional kindergarten through eighth grade. The application specifies a maximum of 216 students, and nine buildings totaling 41,000 square feet would be constructed. The school grounds would also have 85 parking stalls.

The sponsor group was asked to review the application for completeness and adequacy of the project description and voted 6-0 Feb. 1 to defer a recommendation pending receipt of additional information. On March 1, the sponsor group voted unanimously to defer a recommendation for a Major Use Permit until a traffic study can be provided and until input from the Bonsall Unified School District addresses traffic coordination between the public schools and Willow Tree. The April 6 meeting was cancelled due to the lack of a quorum.

Willow Tree is neither a charter school nor a private school. Chaffin notes that Willow Tree is an enrichment center which works with eight different charter schools and with homeschooling parents. "We don't have an overarching charter telling us what we have to do for another school," she said.

The class size would be approximately 14 students, although 24 students would be enrolled in each of the nine class grades. "Our whole program is the same size as typically one grade at a typical elementary school," said Chaffin, who taught in the Escondido Union Elementary School District before becoming part of the Willow Tree staff.

Most of the instruction involves the students being at remote locations rather than on the school site. About 40% of the Willow Tree students are from military families. "We need to be able to have those kiddos stay with our program," Chaffin said.

Performing and vocational arts instruction and physical education would take place at the school. The Bonsall campus would include a two-story building 30 feet tall. Half of the space would be used for a theater encompassing both stories, one-quarter of the facility would be a library on the second story, and one-quarter of the building would have a kitchen area.

"It just seems like an awfully large building that's close to the road," said Bonsall Planning Group Member Dawn Apsley.

The approximate student to instructor ratio at Willow Tree is 2:1. "They want a lot of that personalized instruction," Chaffin said. "One of our main tenets is that we have small class sizes."

Willow Tree was initially Pathways Academy and was chartered by the Bonsall Unified School District. "We're not really competing against them," Chaffin said.

A change in state law required a charter school to be within the geographical area of the district which approved the charter, so Pathways Academy became the independent Willow Tree enrichment center. "I saw that there was really a niche for this kind of program," Chaffin said.

Initially Willow Tree was located at the former St. Stephen's church on East Mission Road but, when the Fallbrook Regional Health District took over that facility, Willow Tree relocated and the school is currently using the Living Waters church building. "We've reached capacity and have waiting lists for each of our grades," Chaffin said.

Willow Tree had 134 students during 2019-20.

The proximity to Rawhide Ranch made the West Lilac Road site ideal for Willow Tree. That would also place Willow Tree near Sullivan Middle School, which currently is also the site of Bonsall High School. "I hope to work with and be a good neighbor to them," Chaffin said.

"It sounds very well thought out. It just seems to be very close to the road," Apsley said.

For Sullivan faculty, the problem is the vehicles from school traffic being on the road. Julie Anguiano has taught at Sullivan Middle School for 15 years. "If anything we should be looking at ways to remove traffic," she said.

Any Sullivan Middle School or Bonsall High School teacher who has taught there for at least four years experienced the evacuation during the December 2017 Lilac Fire. "Having a third school would be detrimental to the safety of students and staff members," Anguiano said.

"People have real world experience during an evacuation, and it didn't go well," Norris said. "It is a concern, and it's a concern being echoed by members of the community."

Larissa Anderson is a member of the Bonsall Sponsor Group, and she is also the president of the Bonsall Unified School District board. "We have a lot of concerns already," she said. "I just have extreme concerns as a board member of a school district that's getting complaints."

Chaffin desires that Willow Tree and the Bonsall Unified School District work together to stagger starting times. "We are very flexible in adjusting our start time," she said.

The educational model itself likely reduces the possibility of all Willow Tree students being transported at once. "The students are not all arriving at the same time and they're also not departing at the same time," Chaffin said.

Students would be on campus Monday through Thursday and would be homeschooled on Friday. The planned student hours for the four on-campus days are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The anticipated hours for faculty and other staff are 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The 216 students who normally would not be on campus at the same time would be complemented by 16 staff members for a total of 232 occupants.

Willow Tree plans three after-hours events. The annual Autumn Soiree would take place in November either at the school or at a local winery. The Autumn Soiree would be an adults-only event with an anticipated ending time of 9 p.m. The fall Lantern Festival and Winter Spiral would be for all ages and have a 6:30 p.m. ending time, and the Art and Garden Festival in May would also be for all ages and end by 6:30 p.m.

The county's Planning Commission can approve a Major Use Permit in the absence of a rezone or general plan amendment, and a Major Use Permit decision can be appealed to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. The Planning Commission may place conditions on a Major Use Permit including occupancy limits and a prohibition against renting facilities to outside groups.

Circle areas and the possibility of a health order requiring six feet of separation between each student has led to the design of classrooms larger than what might be considered normal for the number of students. Other than the two-story building and the kindergarten room, each of the other seven classrooms would be 3,797 square feet. That could accommodate 800 to 1,000 students, so a condition on the Major Use Permit would prevent any school on that site from expanding to that enrollment in the future.

Apsley also took issue with the traffic study which indicated that 15% of the students would be using Camino Del Cielo. "There is a private gate," she said. "They won't be able to use that road. They'll have to use another road."

A representative from the county's Department of Public Works is expected to address questions and other concerns during the June 1 sponsor group meeting.