Closed since 2001, Los Osos’s Sunnyside School is the latest campus that residents are hoping can be converted to boost outdoor recreation access.
“I’ve lived in Los Osos for a very long time. With my young family back in the ’90s and early 2000s, we used the school a lot for playing soccer or playing basketball,” Los Osos Community Services District (CSD) General Manager Ron Munds said. “So, it’s been used for public use for all these years, even though the school’s been closed. The school district’s been very good about keeping it open to public use.”
Now, the CSD is in the running to own the San Luis Coastal Unified School District site.
Funding reductions in 2001 prompted the school district to close Sunnyside, Morro Elementary School, and its Grand Avenue site in San Luis Obispo that now hosts Teach Elementary and a beauty school.
San Luis Coastal Assistant Superintendent Ryan Pinkerton told New Times that Sunnyside also faced major enrollment losses and there wasn’t a need to reopen when funding was restored.
“Enrollment continues to decline at our remaining coastal schools,” he said. “We are in negotiations with the Los Osos CSD for Sunnyside and the city of Morro Bay for Morro [Elementary].”
While locals still enjoy a part of the 12-acre Sunnyside property, the school district also leased out a portion of the building to Cal Fire for its training facility. Cal Fire chose not to renew the lease at the end of June, relocating and splitting between Cal Poly and Cuesta College campuses.
Central Coast Waldorf School also rents a part of the Sunnyside site from the school district. After the school district declared the site as surplus property, the Waldorf school entered an extended and renewable year-long lease, which will expire at the end of June 2026.
Kim Wishon, who founded the local Waldorf school, said that parents supported keeping on the school at a town hall meeting earlier this year about the CSD potentially buying the Sunnyside site.
“Everybody has a lot of ideas for the site, maybe a dog park, maybe more park space, more field space for softball or youth sports,” Wishon said. “It’s such a treasure for the community that really making this purchase is a legacy decision for the community of Los Osos. My vision for our Waldorf school is that we are able to stay here, grow, expand into the space, increase our enrollment.”
According to CSD General Manager Munds, Sunnyside’s fields and the large blacktop area used for basketball courts need work. While the CSD has conceptual ideas, he said, it needs community input to build a master plan.
Munds told New Times that Los Osos and the school district anticipated San Luis Obispo County might be interested in acquiring Sunnyside and converting it into a park.
“The CSD was notified in January of this year that the county was not going to pursue acquisition because of their budget constraints and other reasons,” he said. “So, the CSD board decided that it would try to see if we could put together a framework for an agreement to acquire that started back in February.”
The school district also faces budget constraints.
In January, San Luis Coastal proposed budget cuts to close a total structural deficit of almost $8 million created by increasing staff and programs post-pandemic, a continued rise in salaries and benefits, PG&E reducing unitary taxes paid on Diablo Canyon Power Plant assets, and the escalating cost of goods and services.
Parents convinced the school district to keep the TK program after it was placed on the chopping block because of lack of continued state funding. Parents and teachers also convinced the school board to save school counselors from proposed staffing reductions.
Los Osos residents are now pivotal for the future ownership of Sunnyside. In August, they participated in a survey gauging support for a ballot initiative to turn Sunnyside into a park and creating a recreation property tax to pay for it.
Sixty-three percent of 354 interviewees voted yes, 29 percent voted against the idea, while 8 percent of participants remained undecided. Most participants also leaned toward being willing to pay a $15 monthly parcel tax per household to fund the CSD’s purchase.
Following negotiations with the school district, which wants $6 million for the site, Sunnyside’s future could depend on a June 2026 primary ballot measure. The Sunnyside Park Citizen Coalition will handle advocacy for the measure.
According to its website, if the CSD fails to own Sunnyside, the site could be sold for private developments like residential housing and commercial uses.
“But there is strong community concern that a sale to non-public buyers would mean the loss of a unique place for a community park,” the CSD website said.
The Sunnyside negotiations parallels what’s happening over Morro Elementary School.
The 1930s-era building holds historical, cultural, open space, and recreational value to the city, and the Friends of Morro Elementary citizen’s group has been helping raise funds for purchase. The elementary school site was appraised at $10.2 million.
“We want to make sure that the property stays in the direction or control of the city, but it does not necessarily go to a developer. If it goes to a developer, we lose control,” former Morro Bay Councilmember and Friends of Morro Elementary member Betty Winholtz said. “They can follow state laws and just put in hundreds of housing units, whereas we see it as a community resource that can be used for a number of community center activities, from athletics to fine arts to maybe a city hall.”
In May, Morro Bay officially entered community efforts to buy the elementary school site after the City Council unanimously appointed Councilmembers Zara Landrum and Bill Luffee to a two-member subcommittee. The subcommittee worked with the the Friends group and the city community development director to negotiate with the school district.
In a closed session meeting in August, the City Council authorized an offer to buy 2.9 acres of the Morro Elementary property’s grass sports field for a little more than $630,000 per the Naylor Act.
The Naylor Act requires a school district that proposes to sell or lease land used for outdoor recreation to offer a portion of that land at discounted sale or lease to a city or county that has jurisdiction. Morro Bay could acquire up to 30 percent of the elementary school site that’s surplus property for 25 percent of the fair market value.
“This sports field has been used extensively by the community for recreational and open space purposes for decades and is essential to meet the city’s existing and future recreational and open space needs,” city Community Development Director Airlin Singewald wrote in a letter to the school district.
Friends of Morro Elementary is also finishing a commissioned historic resource assessment report.
“We’re at a very good point to ascertain that the building is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places,” Friends board member Christi VanCleve said. “It could qualify for grants once it’s registered and a short tax credit program that’s available. It can qualify for historic building code, which grants some exceptions for an existing historic resource.” ∆
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 9-19, 2025.
Enrollment continues to decline at local schools because wealthy retirees are flocking to the central coast in droves and running up home prices to the point that younger locals with kids can’t afford to live there. This problem is only going get worse as more Baby Boomers and Gen Xers retire in the coming years.
LOS OSOS should not have to increase their taxes to pay for this. Make a deal like Morro Bay has with the school district. LOS OSOS raised 750.000 to buy cuesta inlet do the same for this property.
We have enough Ball fields for kids ! I would love to see more Recreation opportunities for Adults and Seniors like they first mentioned; a Community center with various low cost Art classes , Cooking , Old Movie afternoons, Day trips,
holiday crafts sales , musicians …more . The Social Life for those people not in college , or the retired, is virtually Non existant. Other towns have had these things in the past. We need More to do than just go to Starbucks to pass the day… and why not also a Dog park area ? Have a couple of the Better Food Trucks and the Ice Cream Truck come out. What’s sadly needed these days is more ol fashioned (affordable) everyday fun..WithOut Alcohol.
This idea can easily be incorporated with a park, community garden, ball fields, and more. Without Cal Fire renewing their lease, there are plenty of spaces for these types of activities. I know the Waldorf school would help in enhancing these spaces as well. How about a pool!!??
Why is the conversation always dominated by “Gen X or other” moving to Los Osos or Morro Bay” when the greater SLO area is fundamentally unbalanced? It’s a joke here!
The true crisis lies in:
* A severe lack of senior services.
* Inadequate quality healthcare for every generation.
Los Osos is an urgent case study: the water supply outlook is bleak, development is still encouraged, and fire risk is dangerously high. Compounding this, the CSD lacks leadership—there’s no Fire Chief, and the 71-year-old General Manager, Ron Munds, remains in position. The budget should cover essential fire services without raising taxes, yet we’re debating the cost of municipal parks and connection to state water which should have happened long before the green light in building more homes.
Los Osos isn’t just unbalanced; it’s in crisis.
You better want some older generations moving in to the area to welfare and subsidize government services for younger families who honestly should be looking to exist in better run/managed economies.
Supervisor Bruce Gibson has run his district disastrously!