By Clarence Cromwell
A $9 million private school proposed on a ranch along Hicks Road could mean a grand total of nearly 800 new students dropped off in the vicinity daily.
Challenger School plans a 560-student campus at the 45-acre rural site. Next door, Los Gatos Christian Church has already announced plans to make room for 230 more students at its own academy.
Challenger plans to open the doors to what will be its 15th school for the 1997-98 school year, said Challenger Vice President Dustin Baker. Students from Los Gatos and San Jose, particularly Almaden Valley, would attend.
The Challenger schools are nonsectarian.
The corrals and stables that now occupy 35 acres of the property would be replaced by four school buildings: a round administrative hub building and three spokelike wings of classrooms branching from it. Basketball courts and soccer fields would be nearby.
The school would teach preschoolers and students in kindergarten through eighth grade. A house on the rear 10 acres of the property may house a school administrator.
The Los Gatos Planning Commission is expected to discuss the project May 22. The school needs to move a lot line, acquire a conditional use permit and gain approval of the plans to build the school. The environmental review of the project must be completed before the commission hearing.
The school seeks to have the land, currently in an unincorporated area of Santa Clara County, annexed by Los Gatos so it can receive town sewer and water service. One edge of the property lies along the Los Gatos town border. The county declined to provide sewer or water service to the school, and the town requires that property become a part of the town before it can receive the services.
One neighbor expressed concern that the schools would flood Hicks Road with traffic. The church submitted plans in February to the town for a 17,500-square-foot multipurpose building, portable classrooms and outdoor 200-seat bleachers. Church officials want to expand enrollment at the church's elementary school from 540 students to 770.
Challenger teaches 5,500 students at 14 preschools and elementary schools; seven of them are in the Bay Area, the rest in Salt Lake City.
Challenger is in the process of buying the property from Charles Kring, who used to breed Angus beef cattle there. The land is currently rented by a boarding stable, Whispering Hope Ranch.
Kring, a structural engineer who worked on the Golden Gate Bridge, bought what was a 60-acre orchard in 1958 and uprooted prune, apricot and almond trees to create pasture, irrigating it with water from Guadalupe Creek.
The Kring ranch eventually was home to more than 40 quarter horses that Kring entered in shows and sometimes raced. Later he switched to Angus beef cattle and renamed the place Kaydell Angus Farm. Kring sold his prizewinning bulls and cows for as much as $80,000 to commercial breeders as far away as Japan who wanted to improve their herds. In the mid-1970s, the operation outgrew the ranch and he moved to a larger spread in Monterey County. About 10 years ago, Kring sold that ranch. He now lives in San Jose.
Kring gave 15 acres of the Los Gatos property to Los Gatos Christian Church in 1977.
Challenger School plans a meeting with neighborhood residents May 13 at 7:30 p.m. at the Neighborhood Center, 208 E. Main Street.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, April 17, 1996
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