The Goleta Union School Board is calling on city leaders to block firearm retailers from opening near schools and daycare centers.
The board voted 5-0 Wednesday to pass a resolution requiring a minimum of 1,000 feet between gun stores and schools. The decision comes on the heels of Goodland Guns opening next to Here We Grow Learning Center, a preschool and daycare located at 7433 Hollister Ave.
Many community members, even school board members, felt blindsided.
“It’s shocking that not only could this be located next to a preschool, and down the street from Ellwood Elementary School, and along the walk to the school,” said Ethan Bertrand, president of the school board. “It was also unnerving that this process would be going on for so long without the public knowing.”
The resolution also requires that public notice should be given whenever a gun store is proposed to open, the board argued.
School board members also want the city of Goleta to work with Goodland Guns to consider moving to a new location. Board member Emily Zacarias noted that there are state laws around minimum distance between cannabis and alcohol businesses and schools, but only 34 local jurisdictions in California with minimum distance regulations between gun stores and schools.
Zacarias, whose daughter went to the preschool neighboring the gun store, worries that it might suffer because “parents don’t want to send their kid to a preschool next to a gun store.”
Board members acknowledged the impact that shootings have had on the Goleta community, such as the 2014 mass shooting in Isla Vista that killed six people.
“This is like, right next door,” said board member Vicki Ben-Yaacov. “It is traumatizing for the kids to have a playground having the same fence as a firearm retailer.”
No one from Goodland Guns spoke at Wednesday’s meeting.
Over the past two weeks, the Santa Barbara chapter of the gun-sense advocacy organization Moms Demand Action and other community members have been outspoken against the opening of firearm retailer Goodland Guns. They’re particularly concerned that it shares a fence with Here We Grow Early Learning Center and is located just down the road from Ellwood Elementary School, which is in the Goleta Union School District.
Despite the backlash, the gun store has signed a long-term lease with the landowner and has all of the required permits to operate.
The Goleta City Council, at its most recent board meeting, said it will hold meetings to review staff suggestions on how it could amend its land use ordinance, after dozens of public comments decried the city’s current zoning laws that allowed the firearm store to be built near the preschool.
Goleta Union Superintendent Mary Kahn said the school board has since received a flurry of emails from families in the school district about actions the school board can take with the city to address their concerns.
“One thing that our board can do is approve the resolution that would identify, what is the challenge to this,” Kahn said. “One of the reasons this is a topic for us is because it is our responsibility to look out for the safety of students as they get to and go home from school. And so therefore, this is under our purview to be concerned about.”
