Hollister
– After years of being shortchanged by state funds, tiny Spring
Grove School will be getting a $3 million facelift that will
install 15 new trailer classrooms, a new fire alarm and telephone
system and up-to-date laboratory equipment.
Hollister – After years of being shortchanged by state funds, tiny Spring Grove School will be getting a $3 million facelift that will install 15 new trailer classrooms, a new fire alarm and telephone system and up-to-date laboratory equipment.
The modernization project will start in April and be completed by the start of the 2005 school year, which will be pushed back by three weeks.
The renovation of the Kindergarten through Eight grade school will be funded by a combination of state and North County Joint Union District money. The money will upgrade 70 percent of the campus, where resources are so limited that students eat in an outdoor cafeteria and the school did not have a playground until last year. The trailers that are used as classrooms for the school’s 537 students are 20 years old and in such a bad state they were described by one parent as “sinking into the ground.”
Spring Grove consists of more than two dozen trailer classrooms surrounded by trees and carefully manicured shrubbery. It is small, but has a computer lab, library, gym as well as basketball and volleyball courts and a baseball field. Some of the planned improvements include a new science wing, a new kindergarten classroom and renovated bathrooms – long-awaited projects the school simply didn’t have money for until now.
“The students will be coming to a brand new facility,” said Superintendent and Principal Howard Chase, who is new to the district this year. “We are all excited about it.”
However generous the $3 million, it’s still not enough, said Chase, who oversaw the construction and modernization of two schools in the Kelseyville Unified School District, where he was employed for 17 years before coming to the North County Joint School District.
The school wants to wire each classroom for the Internet, but does not have enough money to cover it. Instead, the school is looking for donations of fiber optic cables to make the dream a reality.
Parents are helping as much as they can and have begun donating simple items like paper towels and toilet paper so that the district could use its money on more important things, said Eileen Wilson, whose daughter Savanna is a student at the school and who is part of Spring Grove’s site council.
“The project is a long time in coming,” said Wilson. “We tend to get lost in the shuffle (of school funding).”
The district has one of the highest numbers of English language learners in the Hollister area, with 21 percent of students enrolled in English as a Second Language and other language learning programs, a reason Wilson attributes to lack of money for things like construction. Only San Juan School in San Juan Bautista has a higher number of students in ESL, with 34 percent enrolled in the program.
Despite the lack of funds readily available to the district, Wilson is not discouraged and has never considered moving her children to another school. “The teachers are the most loving and most dedicated people ever,” she said.
Karina Ioffee covers education for the Free Lance. Reach her at (831)637-5566 ext. 335 or [email protected]
