A dream for decades, the Guadalupe Union School District’s new junior high school and early learning center moved a step closer to reality on Wednesday.

More than 50 people gathered at the site on Arroyo Seco Road in the Pasadera housing development to celebrate the groundbreaking with current and former board members and retired superintendents joining with staff, Guadalupe City Council members and community leaders for the ceremony.

“Getting to this day has been a very long and very complicated and tedious process,” Superintendent Emilio Handall said. “This project started as a vision almost 30 years ago. Having long outgrown our two schools on Peralta (Street) and Main Street, these new schools and gymnasium are the result of that vision, commitment, collaboration and hard work of not only our current administration but a lot of folks before us.”

In addition to the current staff, he noted the roles of retired superintendents Hugo Lara and Ed Cora in making the new schools possible for the district with an enrollment of approximately 1,300 students.

Puddles dotted the construction site on Wednesday morning, but blue skies remained overhead after downpours just hours earlier had threatened to wash out the celebration, which was already delayed once because of weather.

Guadalupe school board members along with the current and two former superintendents armed themselves with shovels for the ceremonial shoveling of a dirt. Edwards Construction Group project manager Eric Marlow presented a keepsake golden shovel with the district logo and a display stand.

The junior high school, sitting on 12.5 acres and costing roughly $35 million, will accommodate 480 students for seventh and eighth grades and feature 16 new classrooms, a gymnasium and a library. 

The project’s first phase will involve construction of the multipurpose room that also will serve as a gymnasium. 

The early learning center, with the capacity to support 192 students for preschool and transitional kindergarten, will be housed on 5.1 acres and cost about $10 million.

Both institutions are expected to open during the fall 2025, joining Mary Buren Elementary School and Kermit McKenzie Intermediate School.

The new campuses will count as three projects with funding coming from five funding sources, Handall said.

Money for the construction will come from bond measures previously approved by Guadalupe voters along with state and federal funding. 

Handall acknowledged the community’s approval of those 2016 and 2022 bond measures amounting to roughly $30 million plus state and federal sources adding another $30 million for the purchase of the land, design and construction of the campuses. 

In her remarks during the ceremony, board member Lourdes Ramirez also noted the community’s support. 

“We live in an awesome community. We have great people who care about their kids,” she said.

Raul Rodriguez Jr., a father and a former Guadalupe school district board member, attended the ceremony with his children, who will be future students at the junior high school. His daughter, Natalia, is expected to be among the first graduating class.

“It’s going to be really exciting,” said Rodriguez, a lifelong Guadalupe resident. “We’ve been waiting so long. I couldn’t miss something like this. Our kids are our future, and this is what we need for our students.”

Brand-new school campuses remain rare beyond the Santa Maria Valley. Before Guadalupe’s new facilities, only the Santa Maria-Bonita and Santa Maria Joint Union High School districts have added campuses with similar projects non-existent in the rest of the county.

“I don’t think folks completely understand or can appreciate the amount of effort, collaboration and coordination it takes to build a brand-new facility,” Handall said. “When you look down the street at Santa Maria-Bonita and you look at the high school district, they seem to just throw up facilities — no problem.”

A new school requires available land, funding, a design approved by multiple state agencies and regularly updated plans if delayed. Once all of those factors were in place, the COVID-19 pandemic also contributed to delays for Guadalupe’s projects. 

“While today’s groundbreaking event will be brief, the impacts of what we will build here will last for generations to come,” Handall added.