I have trouble sympathizing with either side here. I’m not dialed into the issue, but I imagine that the homeowners in the area are property-tax paying members of the community with just as much voice as anyone else in the community.
It’s also not like there’s nowhere else on earth to put a school campus either. They’d hardly be the first school with multiple campuses that are separated if they didn’t insist on building it where they currently are.
“Insist on building it where they currently are” - telling them they can’t doesn’t mean “oh go build it somewhere else”. It means they have to sell that land, go buy other land (which could take decades), and then have the same fight.
Telling people what they could use their land for (within building code) is only legal in the US because the SCOTUS said it was legal to in order to keep Black people out of neighborhoods. It should be unconstitutional, and would be if not for racism!
It’s also not like there’s nowhere else on earth to put a school campus either. They’d hardly be the first school with multiple campuses that are separated if they didn’t insist on building it where they currently are.