On December 4, the San Jose City Council unanimously approved the use of 4525 Union Avenue as a new campus for our school.

“The acquisition of the Union Avenue campus is an historic opportunity for The Harker School as we prepare to unwind from the Blackford Campus in the near term and place the school on Harker-owned property for future generations,” Head of School Christopher Nikoloff said.

Currently, only the Bucknall and Saratoga campuses are owned by the school, and the Blackford campus is leased. Because it is leased, there is a possibility of a potential loss of use down the line, so a new campus was needed, according to Assistant Head of School of Academic Affairs Jennifer Gargano.

“Essentially, the entire fourth campus is really about securing a new facility once we no longer have Blackford,” Gargano said. “We could lease it for longer, and in 12 years they can say we can’t lease it again, and that’s not a good position for us to be in.”

Since the Blackford campus contains the school’s theater and field used for many productions and home games respectively, plans for the creation of similar facilities on the Upper School are being made for the near future.

Until construction is finished on the Upper School, the school will use the one on Union Avenue as a preschool, but once everything is finished being built, the Bucknall campus will be used as the middle school, while the new campus will be transformed into the lower school. According to Gargano, if the preschool program continues, then a new campus may have to be found for the preschool.

One of the major obstacles regarding the approval of the permit stemmed from the complaints of many residents living in Cambrian, the neighborhood within the vicinity of the new campus. Some Cambrians feared that the addition of a new school in their neighborhood would cause a traffic problem, so they created a Facebook group “Say No to Harker,” later renamed “Keep Cambrian Safe,” to voice their discontent.

“We clog up the whole road, and I think I would get annoyed too, especially [since] it’s a residential area,” Renu Singh (11) said.

According to Assistant Head of School of Student Affairs Greg Lawson, after meeting with the school’s representatives at the city council, the residents of Cambrian eventually came to the conclusion that the school would be the best owner of the property as opposed to another entity. Despite the change of heart, the city council still decided to set limits on how many vehicles could be in the area at a time during the peak traffic hours of the morning.

“Harker’s purchase of the facility was only able to come into fruition because [Nikoloff] and a lot of folks at the school have spent a good deal of time with [the Facebook] group,” Lawson said. “Although [“Say No to Harker”] was the name they used in the beginning, by the end, […] the same members of [that group] were there in front of the city council saying “yes” to Harker.”

Possible plans to reduce the flow of traffic around the area include working with the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), to utilize the bus stops in front of the campus, and to provide shuttles to deliver students to and from school.

The new preschool on Union Avenue is planned to open this coming fall for the 2013-2014 school year, open to children three to five years old.