Following last week’s tied vote by the Reno City Council, the future of Mater Academy’s proposed expansion into the North Valleys returned before the council at Wednesday’s meeting.
After hours of public comment and discussion — in a meeting so long its recording was cut off on YouTube — the permit approval for the school was ultimately upheld.
While council and community members discussed school choice and the ethics of charter schools, the main point of conflict came up again and again: traffic.
Mayor Hillary Schieve asked for discussions and public comment not to be about charter schools themselves or whether Mater was a good school, saying those discussions could offend teachers and families of the school.
Despite traffic concerns in the North Valleys, Council member Megan Ebert said the school would be worth any additional traffic. She said the issue falls not with Mater, but with a planning issue and a lack of enforcement.
“This is a failure of planning and traffic laws,” Ebert said. “We need more patrol around our school zones. We shouldn’t have teachers and crossing guards dodging cars with children. Regardless of the outcome of this vote tonight, I’m just so upset to hear so many of the same stories and to be dismissed when I bring up issues about traffic.”
In response to several community members calling on the school to “build somewhere else,” Ebert said no matter where the school was built in the North Valleys, traffic issues will remain.
“We will have a very difficult time finding any location that doesn’t have these issues,” Ebert said. “This is a ward that is overflowing with traffic, continually, that doesn’t have the patrol it needs and I’m faced with the challenge of providing the educational resources our children deserve up against having a place to put it. I’m very disappointed in the lack of support my community has gotten overall.”
Brekhus, who ended up being the tie-breaker vote, apologized for missing the meeting last week before questioning staff. She also confirmed that council members were not deciding on approval of the school but rather, if the administrator erred in their approval of the project.
Brekhus eventually voted to break the tie and uphold the approval of the use permit, denying the appeal against it. With her in favor of the permit were Council members Miguel Martinez, Ebert and Schieve, while Council members Naomi Duerr, Kathleen Taylor and Devon Reese voted against it.
The approval was given with two conditions. Council members said Mater would need to add a stoplight at the intersection of Beckwourth Drive and North Valleys Boulevard and increase the number of bike stalls at the campus.
