“When one door closes another one opens.” The saying has definite staying power in the Orcutt Union School District. As Orcutt Academy’s kindergarten-through-eighth-grade teachers make the switch from Casmalia to Los Alamos, the Casmalia campus will open up for the charter school’s K-8 independent study program.
In April, the district’s school board voted to move the K-8 academy onto the Olga Reed Elementary School campus. In June, the board opted to move the independent study program from two classrooms at Alice Shaw Elementary School to the newly vacated campus in Casmalia.
Joe Dana, Olga Reed’s principal and director of the district’s charter school program, said everything just worked out for next year. He said each program needed more space to grow, and that the district was able to find the space.
“Alice Shaw is growing and needed classrooms. They needed to reclaim the classrooms that independent study had,” he explained.
Orcutt’s independent study program is a mix of home study with a parent and classroom instruction from a teacher. Around 60 of independent study’s 85 students take part in a blended program and are in the classroom for a portion of the day.
Dana said not all of the parents were happy about the move, but that many changed their minds once they visited the Casmalia school site. Students were cramped into two classrooms on Alice Shaw’s campus, but now have three classrooms in Casmalia, as well as a garden, multi-use room, playground, and library.
Crowded classrooms were also the reason Orcutt Academy’s K-8 program relocated to Olga Reed. The school’s 81 students will have bigger classrooms at the new site, as well as a science and computer lab, access to a gymnasium, a dedicated library, and a bigger campus.
The academy’s three teachers have moved all of the school’s stuff over to Olga Reed and are setting up their classrooms this summer. Dana said the two schools’ staffs have been working to make the transition as smooth as possible.
“This move is not just a physical move, it’s a matter of having two schools side by side and ready to share a school,” Dana said. “I feel good about it.”
In addition to the new students and teachers who will settle into Olga Reed, the school’s gym is also getting a much-needed facelift. The district held a special meeting at the beginning of July at which officials agreed to a contract with J & P Construction, according to Marysia Ochej, the district’s assistant superintendent of business services.
She said construction paperwork is still being drawn up, but that the cost will be a little more than $408,000, and the gym will get a new roof, windows, and ceiling, wall finishes, and more energy-efficient lighting.
The gym is due for an upgrade because it’s more than 50 years old. Dana said construction should be completed by October.
“The only downside is that the work will continue for the first couple months of the school year,” he said. “But we’re prepared for that because we know we’ll be getting a new gymnasium at the end of it.”
This article appears in Jul 10-17, 2014.