Paso Robles district decides future of 2 elementary schools — and its dual immersion program
The Paso Robles school board decided Tuesday to dramatically change the composition of two of its elementary campuses and move the location of the popular Spanish-English-language dual immersion program.
The decision appeared to be largely unpopular among the community that uses Georgia Brown and Glen Speck elementary schools on the west side of Paso Robles.
“Nobody won,” said Bernadette Boddington, a speech and language pathologist at Georgia Brown, after the board’s decision. “They tried to make everyone happy, but ended up making everyone unhappy.”
The board’s decision was made by a 4-3 vote, with trustees Dorian Baker, Frank Triggs and Chris Bausch dissenting.
The board’s decision will kick off a sequence of campus musical chairs later this year as the district moves students around to allow for construction at the two schools.
First, as early as September of this year, students now located at the temporary Glen Speck buildings will move into the soon-to-be-remodeled permanent Glen Speck campus on 17th and Vine streets.
Then, students at Georgia Brown Elementary will move into the temporary Glen Speck campus buildings on the George H. Flamson Middle School campus.
That would then kick off the remodel of the vacated Georgia Brown campus, which is located at 36th and Vine streets, about 1.5 miles down the road from the Glen Speck campus.
When the remodel of Georgia Brown is completed, perhaps as early as September 2023, the students at the remodeled Glen Speck buildings will move to the remodeled Georgia Brown campus on 36th street.
The Georgia Brown campus would be scaled down during the remodel, from an enrollment of 642 students down to 317, according to district projections.
Those who enroll in the Georgia Brown Spanish-English-language dual immersion program would then move from the temporary classrooms to the remodeled Glen Speck campus.
During its remodel, the Glen Speck campus is expanding and will increase from a capacity of 336 students to 642, district projections show. That will allow the campus to host the popular dual immersion program.
Finally, the names of the schools will flip-flop, with the campus on 36th and Vine streets taking the name Glen Speck Elementary School, and the campus on 17th and Vine streets becoming Georgia Brown Elementary School.
Decision was a ‘compromise,’ trustee says
The school board deliberated on the issue for more than an hour Tuesday evening. It comes more than a year after a district committee suggested that closing an elementary school campus, Georgia Brown, would help solve some of the district’s financial woes.
In that year, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into the district largely for its alleged discrimination against Latino and Spanish-speaking community members during the committee’s decision-making process.
Key to board members’ decisions was balancing fiscal responsibility with the pleas of the community to consider the impacts their decision will have, particularly on the low-income and historically disadvantaged communities served by Glen Speck and Georgia Brown.
“It’s a compromise, it’s a balance, and when we move Glen Speck to Georgia Brown — the new campus — they’re not getting a lesser of a campus. They’re getting a new campus that’s fitting of their population size,” said Trustee Nathan Williams during the Tuesday evening board meeting. “Then Georgia Brown moves into Glen Speck, which is fitting of what we need for the dual immersion program because we don’t want to compromise that program. It’s such an amazing program.”
“Those are wins. Those are victories,” Williams continued. “Not everything that we want, not everything we would love, but this gets us moving forward. This gets these hard decisions done.”
Trustee Lance Gannon made the motion for the board’s decision and said it was mainly based on the prospect of saving more voter-approved Measure M bond funds during the campus remodels while trying to get the school programs into the campuses that best fit them.
He also mentioned that building the long-awaited aquatics complex must be accomplished, and his motion perhaps leaves enough Measure M funds to construct a 39-meter pool at Paso Robles High School. The district has about $30 million total in Measure M funds available.
Board chose cost-saving option despite public’s concerns
District projections show that the board’s vote may end up saving up to $2 million in Measure M funds when compared to a second option the board had in front of them Tuesday evening, which trustee Bausch was particularly in favor of.
That option would have led to a larger remodel of Georgia Brown to keep it at its current capacity so the dual immersion program could remain on that campus. Similar to Gannon’s motion, the second option still would have meant Georgia Brown students would be moved into the temporary Glen Speck classrooms while their school’s remodel was completed.
Trustee Bausch said the board’s decision to move the Glen Speck program to the smaller remodel of the Georgia Brown campus comes “close to destroying the spirit” at Glen Speck.
He made his dissenting vote because “of the horrible optics this tells our families ... at Glen Speck, absolutely not.”
Community members unhappy with the board’s vote said they worried the temporary campus at Glen Speck was too small to host the Georgia Brown dual immersion program.
Brad Pawlowski later told The Tribune that the temporary campus has 31 classrooms, with another six available across the street at George H. Flamson Middle School. Georgia Brown Elementary currently uses 30 classrooms, he noted.
People were also concerned that the board’s vote changes the location of the dual immersion program, leaving many English-language learners to commute farther to a program with teachers who are guaranteed to speak Spanish.
Data gathered by Cooperative Strategies, a demographic analysis company, shows there appears to be a high concentration of Hispanic or Latino people in the neighborhood surrounding Georgia Brown Elementary School, while fewer are in the neighborhood around the current Glen Speck Elementary School.
The details of how each program will make the various transitions between the temporary, Glen Speck and Georgia Brown campuses is currently unclear, but details are expected in the coming months.
This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 10:25 AM.
