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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
And Yer Out!: More than 500 Little Leaguers who use play fields on the John Muir campus may be displaced when the SJUSD moves the Broadway school to Muir.
Broadway's move could uproot Little Leagues and soccer teams
San Jose Unified's redesign of Muir play fields may leave kids with no room to run
By Jessica Lyons
It's a sunny Wednesday afternoon and the White Sox take the field. Nine black baseball uniforms scatter out onto the plush grass of the Branham Hills Little League field on the corner of Branham Lane and Speak Street. A teenager in a blue jersey steps up to the plate.
"C'mon, Timmy!" yell his teammates from the dugout. Timmy, whose Spartan jersey sports a gold block numeral 1, hits the ball to first, but is tagged out before he makes it to the base.
Timmy and his teammates count for nine of the more than 500 Little Leaguers who use the playing fields on John Muir Middle School's campus. About 1,700 Central Valley soccer kids use the fields as well. Volunteers--mostly baseball and soccer parents and coaches--have spent numerous dollars and hours maintaining and upgrading the open space, repairing sprinkler systems, hand-watering the grass and buying lawn mowers to cut it. Now they worry that they may get the boot.
As San Jose Unified School District prepares to move Broadway to John Muir's campus, soccer and baseball enthusiasts say the 25 portable classrooms threaten to overtake their valuable playing fields. And while concrete buildings continue to overrun the valley's open space, it's often the league sports that are bulldozed out of the way.
"We lost the game," says Richard Johnson, a soccer dad and coach for the Central Santa Clara Valley Youth Soccer League. "If we lose that field we have nowhere to go. I've been working on that field for seven years, I've been out there on my Saturdays and Sundays for eight hours a day and I do it for the community. I want the kids to have somewhere to play, somewhere to go and stay out of trouble. Someone did that for me, and I always said I was going to do it, too."
Broadway, the district's continuation school for students who drop out of other San Jose Unified high schools, is scheduled to move by spring. The move will put 25 portable classrooms at the far end of a field on the John Muir campus with fencing separating the two schools.
Broadway will front Speak Street; that much is certain, according to district officials. The portable classrooms will take up approximately three acres of John Muir's campus, which at 24 acres is one of the largest campuses in the district. But which three acres of Muir land has yet to be decided.
"The entrance to Broadway will be on Speak no matter what," says Ron Edwards, manager of community service and construction for the district. "But we're not exactly sure if we're going to put it towards the south end of campus, or closer to Branham."
Currently, the Branham Hills Little League field sits on the corner of Branham and Speak. Seven other baseball backstops and three soccer fields also occupy the land on the back of John Muir. So, relocating Broadway will also involve redesigning the sports fields.
"I can't say they're going to keep the exact same number of fields--obviously they're going to be three acres shorter than they are now--but we're going to design all those fields to maximize the open space," Edwards says.
"We know that there's not enough field space throughout San Jose, but as San Jose Unified School District, we're here to educate the children first and number two is to provide as much land and opportunity for the community.
"If we have to relocate it, we're going to make sure the new field is going to be in better condition than the current one is right now. It's a chance for us to put our collective heads together and come up with something that really works right for everyone."
That solution may be hard to come by, coaches say. Rebuilding the Little League baseball field to bring it up to code will cost the district hundreds of thousands of dollars, says Richard Ruiz, a member of the Branham Hills Little League board of directors.
"If they're going to spend that kind of money, why not put it into the Broadway program?" Ruiz says. "The Broadway students need their own complex; that school should have a permanent home, not portable buildings. They deserve their own campus."
But with San Jose real estate's current low availability and high cost, building a new campus for Broadway is not an option, says board president Carol Myers. Hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a new baseball field pales in comparison with the millions needed just to buy the land for a new school.
Teams, however, worry that as field space starts disappearing, so will the kids.
"We're losing all the green space we've got," says Des Knuckey, president of the Central Valley youth soccer league, adding that the John Muir fields are the primary practice and game location for the 1,700 kids in the league.
"We're losing a field at Ida Price Middle School as they put in a new gymnasium, and now I'm expecting to lose one field on John Muir," Knuckey says. "We're already moving to playing games on Sunday, which we don't like, but we are going to have to start turning kids away."
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
