It’s official: Santa Maria-Bonita School District held a dedication ceremony for the Roberto and Dr. Francisco Jiménez Elementary School on July 29. The school’s ready for its new students on Aug. 11.
Francisco and the Jiménez family were present at the ceremony, which was held in both English and Spanish.
“Roberto and Francisco Jiménez are the two oldest children of migrant farmworker parents. They spent their early, formative years working in agricultural fields, moving from town to town following available work, changing schools frequently, and even being deported back to Mexico. Despite these challenges, and in many cases, because of them, the two brothers applied themselves with dedication to work, family, and education,” according to a statement from the district.
The brothers attended schools in Santa Maria, and Roberto started working for the district before he graduated from high school. He retired as the purchasing supervisor in 1995 and passed away in 2014. He’s the first school district classified employee to have a school named after him.
Francisco is an acclaimed writer and author of best-selling books, including The Circuit, Breaking Through, and Reaching Out, about his family’s struggles as Mexican immigrants working in the fields of California. He’s a professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Santa Clara University.
The school sits on 10 acres near Blosser Road. It will house close to 800 kindergarten-through-sixth-grade students when it opens at the start of the school year. There are 30 regular classrooms and three kindergarten classrooms. The 11,000-square-foot multi-purpose building includes a full-service kitchen, which will provide meals for Jiménez students as well as students at El Camino, Fesler, and Tommy Kunst junior high schools.
Opening the $20-million (land purchase plus cost of construction) elementary school brings the district’s total number of schools to 20.
This article appears in Aug 6-13, 2015.
