May Grisham’s fate still up in the air?

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Orcutt Union School District (OUSD) board member Rob Buchanan made a motion that caused an angry walkout at the Dec. 8 school board meeting: He suggested tabling the decision whether to redistribute May Grisham School students to other schools so Orcutt Academy can take over the facility.

Buchanan said the matter was being moved to the last minute—Dec. 15— to allow parents and teachers a chance to ask questions of the board.

“In [earlier] study sessions, they had asked [us] to give them that opportunity,” he said after the meeting.

One attendee, Nancy Thornton, was upset about the placement of the May Grisham topic on the agenda.

“It was incredibly rude to have us sit there and waste our time,” she said.

Members of Save May Grisham, an advocacy group, were also present at the meeting, and later spoke out against the recommendation to close the school and move students to Patterson and Pine Grove schools.

“Many of us had bought our house so we could send our kids there,” said Hayley Kelman, who has one child attending the school, and two others who would attend in a few years.

For the past few years, the state-funded Orcutt Academy has been housed in the back of Orcutt Junior High School, where there’s a biology lab and a few restrooms. The academy’s incoming freshman class will crowd the school’s facilities beyond capacity.

Superintendent Bob Bush does see a potential positive effect of May Grisham students moving to surrounding schools: The academy would pay rent to the district. He estimated the change would bring in about $300,000.

But most of all, “the academy wants peace,” Bush said.

The move would also prevent the district from having to shutter other schools, impose furloughs, or make any additional employee layoffs—all of which have happened elsewhere on the Central Coast.

According to district officials, May Grisham was targeted because of its accessibility.

“There are four entrances to the school,” Bush said. The access points would ease traffic at Orcutt Academy.

May Grisham has also been evaluated as the third largest school in the district acreage wise, and has the second largest parking lot.

The academy was going to take over the district office, which is near May Grisham and Orcutt Junior High schools, but officials determined the rooms wouldn’t comply with American Disability Act specifications.

If the board doesn’t follow through with the proposition, the district estimates the cost to move elsewhere would be astounding. Pine Grove School was also targeted during the planning phase, and, if the academy were to move there, the district said it would cost about $1.6 million to compensate for science materials.

If the board does decide to stick with the May Grisham proposal, the effort will cost $388,000. The money would go toward retrofitting, pathways, and converting classrooms into science labs.

Though there’s been a lot of outrage from parents of May Grisham students, Bush doesn’t condemn them for it.

“I’d be disappointed if they didn’t speak up,” he said.

Ed. note: Intern Henry Houston added the following as a web update after attending the school board meeting:

Dec. 15 was an emotional night for students, parents, and teachers of May Grisham School: The Orcutt Union School District board unanimously approved to close Old Orcutt’s only elementary school to give Orcutt Academy a home.

As each board member gave a reason for voting for the recommendation, audience members jeered and booed.

Though parents and teachers were distraught by the motion, the board saw the closure as a step toward financial solvency.

By moving Orcutt Academy to May Grisham, the district will receive rent payments totaling about $300,000 a year. And, while the students, faculty, and teachers of May Grisham would move to other campuses, the monetary gain would benefit the majority of the district in the face of looming budget cuts.

“I’ve been on the board for a long time, and this was an emotional decision,” board member Jan Zilli said. “Both of my kids went to May Grisham. We have tried to look at every scenario, and the bottom line is that there isn’t enough kids for six [elementary] schools.”

She added that the extra income could be used to restore what schools had lost due to extreme budget cuts. She and Kathy Meissner both agreed that the money from Orcutt Academy provides a chance to combat the problem of crowded classrooms, hire more librarians, and restore other losses.

During public comment, Hayley Kelman, who is a part of the Save May Grisham group, approached the board with a giant poster that had photos of all of the May Grisham students. She recommended building more temporary rooms, and, when the district gets more money, building the academy its own high school. She gave a grim prediction: If May Grisham closes, she said, “[the district] will lose kids to private or home school.”

Karen O’Neil, legal representation for Save May Grisham, recommended Orcutt Academy be sent to the Los Alamos school.

Despite a seemingly universal distaste for Orcutt Academy among speakers—one Grisham parent claimed all the problems stemmed from the academy’s presence—board president Bob Hatch cleared up the financial importance of the high school.

“Without [the academy], we would be meeting to close one or two schools tonight,” he told the audience after public comment.

Nonetheless, parents criticized the board for not approaching them about the closure until so late in the process. But Hatch said this idea had been mentioned many times in the past, and that in the future, they should attend more school board meetings. ∆

—Henry Houston

This article appears in Dec 16-23, 2010.