A few weeks back I told the story of my high school in Orange County, which was in the path of the Interstate 5 widening project in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The freeway was widened and a large concrete structure, complete with soundwalls, was erected right next to the campus, which lost a significant piece of its land to the freeway, which now comes within a hundred feet of classrooms where I spent four years of my life.

As I said in that post, it wasn’t a problem. Hell, it was hardly noticeable. It didn’t affect my education one bit.

So when people complained about the effects of HSR on Burlingame or Palo Alto High Schools, I was not at all receptive, especially since those schools are already next to an existing rail corridor. The schools and their students would actually be made safer by a fully grade-separated railroad, as parents of students near Gunn High School in Palo Alto are all too aware of the dangers of the current situation.

Nor am I receptive to similar concerns expressed about Bakersfield High School. In a recent Bakersfield Californian column, Robert Price claims that HSR “could be the end of BHS as we know it”:

But established pieces of the city will have to go in order to clear a path — and one of the pieces HSR planners have in mind, if the “blue line” option endorsed by the Bakersfield Planning Commission is ultimately selected, will upset many. The “blue line” will take California’s bullet train right through the north side of the 117-year-old Bakersfield High School campus, taking out the Industrial Arts building and coming within 100 feet of historic Harvey Auditorium. How a school is supposed to function literally in the shadow of such a colossus defies credulity. In fact, for a school that already has the fewest acres of the city’s 15 comprehensive high schools, it may prove impossible.

Let me get this straight: An overhead structure makes it hard for students learn?! Is he serious? Again, I point to Tustin High School, which functions perfectly fine in the shadow of the 12-lane colossus that is Interstate 5. In fact, the school was named a “California Distinguished School” during my tenure there in the mid-1990s, while we were learning in the shadow of the freeway.

Further, as with Tustin, Burlingame, Palo Alto, and Gunn High Schools, it’s not like an entirely new corridor would be built next to Bakersfield High. BHS already exists next to a railyard in downtown Bakersfield:

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I don’t know how long BHS has been coexisting with the railyard; I’m going to guess it’s at least 75 years. But that reality appears to have been tossed out the window by some in Bakersfield, including Kern High School District Superintendent Don Carter, quoted in Price’s column as saying the following:

“The state does not allow schools to be built near freeways, near airports,” he said. “So it raises the question: If you can’t build a school near a transportation corridor, why can you build a transportation corridor near a school?”

Well, Don, the transportation corridor already exists next to the school. The corridor is merely being upgraded and as a result train noise may actually be reduced.

The other claim being made by those who posit a false choice between HSR and BHS is that historic buildings would be demolished. Again from Price’s column:

The kids found evidence that both Industrial Technology buildings were designed by preeminent regional architect Charles Biggar, who also designed both wings of similarly endangered Spindt Hall (1924 and 1938), iconic Griffith Stadium (1923) and the initial design of the Harvey, completed after his death in 1946. (Biggar also designed Bakersfield Fire Station 1, The Californian building and the Haberfelde.)

So? Not every old building has to be preserved. And it would be simply foolish to let one or two old buildings stand in the way of HSR’s completion – especially when one possible mitigation measure might be to simply put the Industrial Technology buildings on blocks and move them to another part of the campus. (I don’t know how feasible that is, since I’ve never been to the campus; perhaps it’s an impossibility.)

Here again we see the fundamental conflict in California – not between right and left, not between past and future, not between old and young, but between those who believe the status quo is just fine and should never be changed, and those who realize that the status quo has failed and that change is inevitable and necessary.

There are many ways for BHS and HSR to coexist. Just as BHS has thrived for decades next to the existing transportation corridor, there are certainly many ways for it to thrive for the decades to come next to a newer version of that same transportation corridor. It’s too bad that some people seem to think it’s either HSR or BHS, or that HSR is something we can just push aside because it might be inconvenient.

The real inconvenience is our dependence on oil, which is destroying our economy and our standard of living. Bakersfield’s children will benefit immensely from HSR, just as they will from an education at BHS. Let’s make sure both serve the needs of our future, instead of starving funds and blocking improvements to both to satisfy the whims of some people here in the present.