Like many districts in the Bay Area, San Jose’s East Side Union High School District is struggling to retain its teachers and staff members.
As housing costs skyrocket and non-affluent members of the Bay Area continue to get pushed to the fringes, teachers and district employees are forced to live farther away from the schools they work in, endure longer commutes or find jobs elsewhere where housing is more affordable.
In an effort to change that reality for some of its employees, the East Side Union High School District Board of Trustees has unanimously agreed to put a $60 million bond measure on the March 3, 2020, ballot to help build teacher and staff housing. The bond measure would warrant an annual tax rate increase of about $2.70 per $100,000 of assessed valuation — or around $20 a year for most East San Jose homeowners, according to the district.
If more than 55 percent of voters approve the measure, the district would build a 100-unit rental housing development on approximately 4.5 acres on the site of its district office, located at 830 N. Capitol Ave. in San Jose.
“Our goal is to give individuals five to seven years to get higher on the salary schedule, put some money away and pay off student loans so that they’ll have a better opportunity to move up in their housing situations,” Superintendent Chris D. Funk said.
With a starting pay of about $61,000 for teachers and even lower for classified district staff — like cafeteria workers, attendance clerks and maintenance personnel — it is extremely difficult to live within the district boundaries, where an average single-family home sold for about $714,000 in August, according to the district.
“Teaching is a very hard profession, and if you’re spending an hour or two commuting every day, that takes away time from preparing for classes and participating in extracurricular activities on campus, such as running clubs or coaching,” Funk said. “So proximity really does matter in this case.”
Dalia Borrego, a parent and community specialist at Yerba Buena High School, was fortunate enough over the past decade to rent an affordable apartment near school. But when her landlord recently informed her that she was going to sell the house and Borrego needed to find a new place to live, she realized just how expensive and limited the rental market had become.
“It’s either give up the comforts you are used to or kill your savings and struggle month-to-month to pay rent to have a little bit of privacy,” said Borrego, a single woman whose adult children no longer live with her. “If I want to stay here and continue the job that I love to do at a place I love, I have to make some sort of sacrifice to where I’m living.”
Borrego, who now is deciding between renting a room in a shared house or moving to a more affordable area, said workforce housing like the one proposed in the bond measure would be “life-changing” for many of her colleagues.
“When these opportunities come to your door, you can start thinking about things like finishing your work without worrying about traffic or owning your own home and having family stay to visit,” she said. “It would be so comforting for so many people.”
The school board’s move makes East Side Union part of a growing number of Bay Area districts pursuing the construction of workforce housing options as a way to recruit and retain high-quality teachers and staff.
San Jose Unified is currently choosing a site for a potential teaching housing complex. Santa Clara University, Bellarmine College Prep and Cristo Rey Jesuit High School recently partnered on a proposal to build housing for their employees in San Jose. And Facebook announced earlier this week that it would contribute $25 million to build up to 120 apartments for Peninsula teachers in Palo Alto.
Although the district would own the land and the apartment complex as well as set the rental rates, it would contract with a third-party property management company to handle the maintenance, upkeep and enrolling of tenants, according to Funk.
A study recently completed by the real estate company DCG Strategies suggested that the district offer a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units at affordable levels for those earning up to 70 percent of the area’s median income, which would be about $2,300 a month for a two-bedroom unit. The district will determine those specifics at a later date.
In the past 11 years, voters have passed four separate bond measures by East Side Union High School District to fund various technology and school facility improvements. The district hopes that trend continues in March.
“(Voters) know that having quality schools improves their property values,” Funk said. “And the same goes for having a strong, quality workforce, so we hope the community sees that benefit and continues to support this particular bond measure.”
