Selling the approximately $29 million in bonds remaining from Measure C was a no-brainer for the high school district’s board during its last meeting. Voters approved $79 million worth of bonds for the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District when they passed the measure in 2004, and the board voted 5-0 to authorize sale the remaining bonds on Dec. 10.
The funds will be used to construct a 14-unit classroom building at Ernest Righetti High School, make improvements at Delta High School, build a performing arts center at Pioneer Valley High School, and for a 25-acre plot of land that will be shared by the district’s schools for agricultural and vocational education purposes, according to district spokesperson Kenny Klein.
Gary Wuitschick, the district’s director of support services, told the Sun that the bond funds are there for the district to use when needed.
“We sell them at the point when we actually need them, that way we don’t incur the debt unless we need to,” he said.
Building classrooms at Righetti and making other improvements throughout the district is part of a comprehensive effort to balance out the district’s school sites. The district is also in the process of redrawing its boundaries to equalize student populations at each school site. That process is at the committee level right now. Committees are made up primarily of parents and students.
Wuitschick said the way things are right now are out of balance. On school sites originally built for approximately 1,700 students, Santa Maria High and Righetti, there are 2,600 and 2,000 respectively. And Pioneer is at 2,800 students. The district’s goal is to bring each school to roughly 2,500 students and outfit each school to accommodate its population.
He said the way students have fed into the schools has changed in the years since the campuses were built, and the high school district is also preparing for the influx of students that’s currently making its way through the Santa Maria-Bonita School District.
The 26,000-square foot classroom building nearing completion at Santa Maria High School is a good example of how the district is adding to its schools to catch up with change, and sale of the bonds coupled with new construction and redrawing school boundaries should get the district the rest of the way there.
“The idea: Equalize it out, get it to a stable size at each of the sites,” Wuitschick said. “But it really comes down to the sites themselves [and] how can we best utilize the resources.”
This article appears in Dec 18-25, 2014.