Just in time.

The passage of Measure Y has Hope Elementary School District officials optimistic about the future.

All of the district’s schools — Hope Elementary, Monte Vista School and Vieja Valley School — were built in the 1960s, and many buildings have roofing and sewage problems and need to be brought up to code. 

The district, in Santa Barbara, also is expecting a wave of new students. The district currently has about 850 students, but that number is expected to significantly increase. A 642-housing project is proposed at La Cumbre Plaza, and the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara is developing a 48-unit low-income housing project.

The Hope Elementary School District’s funding comes from property taxes, not the state. With new residents moving into the area, the district could see a large influx of new students, without the influx of additional revenue.

“It’s going to be a huge impact to our district to see how it changes, because these are apartment buildings, for the most part, and rentals. They don’t provide the same level of property taxes,” Superintendent Anne Hubbard said. “What we do know is that students are coming.”

At the most recent count, 59% of voters in November approved Measure Y, a $40.3 million bond that will add $18.26 per $100,000 assessed value to property taxes.

Many of the school’s improvements were paid by Measure J, a $47 million bond that voters approved in March 2020, but the new housing projects mean that the district now needs more space for students.

“When we started working on Measure J, the housing developments were not coming to fruition,” Hubbard said. “We knew they had been rezoned, but I kept being told that’s decades down the line. So, we were not looking at the impact of the housing developments. We were looking at current existing needs for aging facilities.”

Now, with Measure Y, the district is focusing on adding space for the new students. Projects they would like to tackle include upgrading five classrooms at Hope Elementary and constructing two to four new classrooms at Vieja Valley.

“We need to get classrooms ready, and we never intended that to be part of Measure J,” Hubbard said. “Measure J was great. It did everything we wanted it to do. Since that time of planning for Measure J, we now have this other need that we know is coming that we didn’t know was coming when we were in planning for Measure J, so that’s what we’re focusing on with Measure Y.”

Hubbard said they were originally considering turning the five classrooms at Hope Elementary into space for staff but because they’re expecting incoming students, they realized they needed to use the Measure Y funding to fix the classrooms for students. 

One of the classrooms has a black tarp across part of the ceiling because of the leaky roof, water spots can be seen on the ceiling, and the skylight on the roof is constantly breaking when construction workers are fixing leaks, Hubbard said.

“That would likely be one of our projects. We would actually upgrade it to be classrooms that aren’t leaking and that have dual-pane windows and safety upgrades,” Hubbard said. 

Taryn O’Flaherty, a physical education specialist and PTA member at Vieja Valley Elementary School, said she’s happy to see the measure going through.

“It hasn’t been quite verified yet, but I certainly would be excited for it to go through with our aging infrastructure and a lot of improvements that still need to be done in the district,” said O’Flaherty. 

O’Flaherty said she’d like to see Measure Y funding going toward classroom improvements such as new furniture and flooring and upgraded restrooms. She would also like to see more outdoor spaces for students. 

“If new buildings are built as part of Measure Y, then the blacktop is going to be displaced,” O’Flaherty said. “So there’s going to be some sort of plan that needs to be put in place to have more play areas for the kids.”

Because of an unidentified fault line at Vieja Valley School, the district is only going to be allowed to build the new classrooms they need right in the middle of the existing playground. 

“I think the real immediate need would be being able to house students and teachers in more spaces. If we have more students that are going to be coming to campus, that’s probably priority No. 1,” O’Flaherty said.