Palm Springs Best Site for West Valley Campus

Today’s Data Proves Palm Springs Remains Best Location for COD’s West Valley Campus [Opinion]

PALM SPRINGS — The West Valley Campus for College of the Desert (COD) is being built for everyone who wants to learn, whether that be for traditional and non-traditional students or workers attempting to get certified in their vocation. The West Valley Campus must be ideally located mainly for Desert Hot Springs, Cathedral City and Palm Springs.

In 2004, Coachella Valley voters passed Measure B, a $346.5 million education bond to help expand COD’s presence beyond the main campus in Palm Desert. Two years later (2006), the cities of Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs began the process of advocating for the college’s West Valley Campus to be located in their respective cities. Former mayor and now College of the Desert Trustee Ron Oden and I served on the City of Palm Springs’ subcommittee to prove that Palm Springs was the best location. Our evidence showed then that Palm Springs was closer in proximity for most of the traditional college aged students in the west valley (Cathedral City, Desert Hot Springs, and Palm Springs) and offered the best opportunities for workforce development as Palm Springs held the highest number of jobs within the four educational pillars of the west valley campus (hospitality & culinary arts, media & the arts, allied health, and sustainable technologies). When you factor in that traditional college students go to classes during the day while non-traditional students, who worked in Palm Springs, generally go to classes in the evenings, Palm Springs was the perfect location.

On September 21, 2007, after the formation of a blue-ribbon commission and intense debates between the cities of Desert Hot Springs and Palm Springs, the COD Board of Trustees made a unanimous decision to select Palm Springs as the preferred location for its West Valley Campus based on several categories of data. That data was presented in a report entitled, “Campus Site Evaluation for the West Coachella Valley.” It looked at the advantages of each of the two cities based on population and future growth by 2030, employment locations, high school enrollment projections, environmental conditions, and site locations.

It’s now twenty years later and voters have since approved two education bond measures, Measure B in 2004 ($346.5 million) and Measure CC in 2016 ($577 million) totaling nearly $1 billion to complete the West Valley Campus and provide higher educational opportunities across the Coachella Valley. Hundreds of millions of dollars have already been spent to develop the Mecca/Thermal Campus, the East Valley Campus in Indio, and classrooms and a student services center in the city of Coachella – all for the eastern side of the Valley; as well as a lengthy list of major improvements at the Main Campus in Palm Desert. On the contrary, the West Valley has only seen the installation of a few classrooms in Desert Hot Springs and Cathedral City, and a small, temporary campus in Palm Springs – nothing of a permanent campus.

Following is a peek at the campus: https://codbond.maasco.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PSDP_animation_20230613.mp4

At least one of COD’s board members, who is seeking re-election in November, has brought the topic back to the surface, claiming that “new data” shows that Desert Hot Springs should be the preferred location over Palm Springs for the West Valley Campus due to a greater need for the number of low-income, Latino students residing in Desert Hot Springs. However, that same need is found throughout other areas of the PSUSD’s district and at much higher levels. In fact, if you look at today’s data, it is nearly identical to the 2007’s report’s future projections for which the 2007 Board of Trustees used to choose Palm Springs as their final location.

The first category of the 2007 report was population. It predicted that Desert Hot Springs would be the fastest-growing city in the West Valley, but even so, Cathedral City and Palm Springs would still represent 74% of the total population by 2030. That 2007 prediction remains true. In 2024, Cathedral City with its 52,494 residents and Palm Springs with 45,223 residents represent 75% of the total West Valley population as Desert Hot Springs has only 25% with 33,091 residents.

The second category was employment locations as community colleges often train or retrain workers for workforce development. The 2007 report predicted that in 2030, Cathedral City and Palms Springs would have 90% of the employment of the three western cities. According to CVEP’s 2022 Greater Palm Springs Economic Report entitled, “Emergence,” it shows that 91% of the employment remains in Palm Springs (26,918 jobs) and Cathedral City (9,913 jobs) in comparison to Desert Hot Springs (3,632 jobs). That 2007 prediction remains true today, too.

The third category was school enrollments. The 2007 report predicted that Desert Hot Springs would be the fastest growing number of students in PSUSD by 2012 with 40% of the students. That prediction did not hold true in 2024. In addition, when you look at ethnicity and socioeconomic status for all PSUSD high school students, they are nearly identical.  PSUSD serves a higher proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged children than every other midsize or large school district in the state of California. Nearly 20,500 of the district’s 21,000 students (97.5%) qualify as socioeconomically disadvantaged, according to state data, and about 10% of the students (close to 2,000) are considered homeless. When you look at 2023 PSUSD school enrollment data, Desert Hot Springs High School has 1,724 enrolled students with nearly 81% identified as Latino students. Palm Springs High School has 1,510 students with nearly 71% identified as Latino, but Palm Springs High School also has the highest percentage of black students at 6.36%. Cathedral City High School has 1,370 students with nearly 90% identified as Latino and Mount San Jacinto High in Cathedral City has 356 students with nearly 91% identified as Latino. Because Rancho Mirage High School boundaries cover a large portion of Cathedral City, we must also include their enrollments at 1,464 students with 82.5% identified as Latino.  Of all the Palm Springs Unified School District high school students, 73% percent go to a high school south of Interstate 10 and only 27% percent attend north of Interstate 10. In other words, if you built COD’s West Valley Campus next to Desert Hot Springs High School, 73% of the PSUSD high school students would have to travel approximately 14 miles to get to class.  Whereas building COD’s West Valley Campus next to Palm Springs High School as is planned, 73% of the students would only need to travel less than 6 miles to class.

Let’s also remember that community colleges are for all learners, not just the “traditional” students coming out of high school. COD is for everyone! That’s why it’s called a “community college” to offer lifelong learning. For example, a “non-traditional” student may be someone who is 40 years old and wants to change occupations by learning a new trade or skill; or someone in their 60s or 70s who may want to learn how to better use a computer, cook like a celebrity chef, play golf, or start a new business. These “non-traditional” students make up 28% of COD’s enrollments according to its COD’s Institutional Research Data on COD’s official website.

A fourth category of the 2007 report was environmental factors.  It found that out of 11 environmental factors, Palm Springs had the advantage in every category; whereas Desert Hot Springs scored in only 3 out of the 11 categories. Those factors have not changed in 17 years. If anything, the relocation of COD’s West Valley Campus from the North Palm Springs Tramview site to the old Palm Springs Mall site, with its close proximity to Palm Springs High School, has only improved its scoring in those 11 environmental factors, not dampened them.

Today’s data shows that the 2007 report was accurate in its future predictions. Nothing has significantly changed to cause the COD Board of Trustees to alter its 2007 decision to place the West Valley Campus in Palm Springs. The rhetoric you might hear today is simply a case of a politician attempting to score political points in an election year, and one not looking out for the best interest of the students or district. Palm Spring remains the best location for COD’s West Valley Campus; and not once has the COD Board of Trustees pivoted from that 2007 unanimous decision.