Parents expressed distress and confusion after a digital flyer prompted concern over the future state of Winifred Pifer Elementary School.
“If you thought school closure in Paso Robles was off the table—think again!” Laura Parker said in a Dec. 11 letter to the editor published in the Paso Robles Daily News.
Changing Winifred Pifer, the letter said, was being discussed by the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District committee tasked with finding a solution to Georgia Brown Elementary School’s issues.
“A year ago, Bauer Speck [Elementary] was the site that was going to be displaced and broken up … some have now suggested Winifred Pifer,” Parker wrote in her letter. “If any elementary school closes, all schools will be affected.”
The Georgia Brown campus currently houses the Spanish-English dual immersion program for some of the district’s low-income elementary students. Winifred Pifer also has a high enrollment of low-income students, but it doesn’t have a dual-immersion program.
“Both of these school communities have some of the highest percentages of ‘unduplicated’ students in the district,” Parker wrote, adding that the term “unduplicated” referred to students who may be low-income, English learners, foster youth, or homeless. “Is it fair that the most stressed families will be the most disrupted?”
In 2021, a different committee recommended that the district close Georgia Brown after years of neglect and budget constraints. Following several years of debate and a commitment to renovating the campus, a “seismic anomaly” discovered beneath the campus halted the district’s path forward, putting the school in limbo again.
On Aug. 22, with Superintendent Curt Dubost’s urging, the board voted to appoint people to a district advisory committee to research enrollment numbers and recommend a place for them to potentially move the school’s dual immersion program.
While the committee was still studying enrollment numbers heading into its Dec. 14 meeting, the digital flyer—which was posted to several local Facebook pages, including Everything Atascadero—said the committee had already made its recommendation to close Georgia Brown and move the dual immersion program to Winifred Pifer. It encouraged concerned parents to show up to the Dec. 14 meeting to voice their opinions.
The district released a statement ahead of the meeting attempting to dispel the allegations.
“Rumors are running rampant that the district advisory committee … has already made a recommendation and that a school is closing,” the statement read. “This is not true, nor is the committee planning this evening to make a decision as to the site they will be recommending. …. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
In the statement, Dubost said that the committee’s job was only to recommend options based on the conclusions of the data it studies. The final decision is up to the district’s school board once the committee submits its findings and recommendations.
“Moving [the dual immersion program] to the current site of Winifred Pifer is one of the many options that have been recommended for consideration,” he said. “No decision has been made nor is to be made until the committee concludes its study next month.” Δ
This article appears in Dec 21-31, 2023.