The Lucia Mar Unified School District spent the 2023 calendar year upgrading its facilities with plans to continue construction into 2024 to provide permanent classrooms and updated, real-world learning experiences.
“We have a couple of projects that we’re excited about that are under construction right now,” Andy Stenson, the district’s executive director of facilities, maintenance, and operations, told New Times. “We have a brand new culinary facility that’s under construction at Arroyo Grande High School and four new classrooms being constructed at Judkins Middle School in Pismo Beach.”
The high school’s culinary facility has been under construction for about a year and is projected to be finished by April or May, just in time for the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, Stenson said.
“[The project] is going to put these students and teachers in a much better environment that replicates what students will see out there in the restaurant industry,” he said. “It has a teaching kitchen with multiple stoves, fridges, and other things to help students practice. It will also have an outdoor eating area where they can practice serving food—so all those things are all significant upgrades over what the program currently has.”
Stenson said although students in this program will have updated facilities to learn in, the school won’t be adding new classes.
To help fund the project, the school district applied for and won a competitive grant through the state, he said. The total cost of the new culinary facility is $4.9 million, but the state grant will match $1.8 million, making the district’s total cost around $3 million.
“There were only a handful of school districts up and down the state who actually received the grant, and we were fortunate enough to be one of those districts,” Stenson said. “If we hadn’t had one successful grant, we would not have built the classroom because it would have exceeded our budget.”
Along with the updated culinary facility, Stenson said Judkins Middle School students in Pismo Beach will be moving out of dated portable classrooms and into permanent buildings because the district now has the needed construction funding.
“Portable classrooms are put down generally as a sort of stopgap when enrollment’s growing and your district doesn’t necessarily have the funds to build a stick-built building, so now that we have funds through a general obligation bond that we passed in 2016, we’ve systematically gone through and replaced as many old portables as possible on actual permanent foundation,” he said. “Stick-built buildings last essentially 60 years as opposed to portables that generally have a lifespan of 20 to 25 years.”
To go along with the four new classrooms, Stenson said solar panels, new outdoor benches, updated landscaping, and a new single-occupant restroom are also in the works. The construction is estimated to be completed by June 2024. Δ
This article appears in Nov 30 – Dec 10, 2023.
