The Santa Maria-Bonita School District planned to break ground on a new elementary school on Feb. 28, a first for the district since it started work on Roberto and Dr. Francisco Jiménez Elementary School in 2013.
The new school, a 10.76-acre campus that will sit on a portion of Enos Ranch property, is expected to offer relief to some of the district’s more crowded elementary schools on the south side of Santa Maria, according to Maggie White, public information officer for the district.
Nearly 17,000 students are currently enrolled in the Santa Maria-Bonita School District, White said, and that’s not including preschoolers. While schools in the Orcutt area typically enroll 500 students, some of the Santa Maria-Bonita’s elementary schools are host to more than 1,000 students.
“I mean that’s almost unheard of at elementary schools,” White said, “especially the ones in our county.”
Santa Maria-Bonita has 14 of the 15 most heavily populated elementary schools in Santa Barbara County, and the district has had difficulties keeping up with its growing enrollment.
For the past several years, White said Santa Maria-Bonita’s enrollment has grown between 250 and 350 students each year. This school year was the first that enrollment did not grow at such a fast rate, and the plateau is expected to last a few more years before another major increase.
The current slower rate will give the district time to build and open its new school, which White said will be able to house about 900 students and give schools such as Adam and Battles some much-needed breathing room.
New school boundaries will be decided upon mid-construction, and White said district officials will use the latest population density information available while making those decisions. The school will also be situated close to the many families who will eventually be living in about 300 soon-to-be-built Enos Ranch area homes.
The elementary school is expected to take a year and a half to build and is scheduled to open in August 2020. The land purchase, architectural designs, fees, and construction cost more than $48 million, according to the district, and desks, computers, books and other equipment will cost another $2.5 million.
About $30 million of the total cost will be paid for by the money from Measure T, a bond measure approved by local voters in November 2014. The district will fund the remainder of the cost through local developer fees, already-received matching state funds, and additional matching funds from the state’s recently passed bonds.
In late January, the district board of education awarded the new school’s construction project to AMG and Associates Inc., a Santa Clarita-based company that also built Jiménez Elementary School. Construction is slated to officially begin on March 4, according to Albert Giacomazzi, president of AMG and Associates. The school will be named sometime around January 2020, and students should be able to attend the school during the 2020-21 school year.
This article appears in Feb 28 – Mar 7, 2019.