After 22 years of planning and perseverance, a brand-new school will welcome its first junior high students when the new year kicks off Thursday in Guadalupe.

On Wednesday, officials gathered to celebrate the completion — although some finishing touches still need to be completed — of Guadalupe Junior High School, the first new campus in six decades for the small city.

Sixteen classrooms, administration offices and a gymnasium for roughly 300 seventh- and eighth-graders make up the campus at 351 Arroyo Seco Road. Community leaders had gathered in January 2024 for the project’s groundbreaking.

“We’re just incredibly excited because this is a truly historic event in Guadalupe,” Superintendent Emilio Handall told Noozhawk.

Longtime Guadalupe Union School District board member Diana Arriola recalled former board members, school leaders and city officials making the decisions that served as the foundation to make the school a reality.

“It is their hard work, dedication and forward thinking that set us on this path,” she said. “For many of you here today, this is a moment that has been very long in coming.”

The late afternoon ribbon-cutting ceremony occurred as teachers finished prepping classrooms ahead of the students’ arrival Thursday for the start of the 2025-26 school year. School maintenance workers also were busy completing various projects.

English teacher Rosie Garcia paused readying her classroom to talk to visitors. 

The new campus opens as she starts her 30th year teaching in Guadalupe — 31 if she counts her year as a student teacher in the city.

She recalled hearing talk of a new school in Guadalupe when she began her job — in 1996.

“I’m excited, of course. It’s all brand new and shiny,” she said. “But I think what I’m most excited about is that the seventh- and eighth-grade students actually get a secondary school. They don’t have to share with elementary students.

“Their needs are much different, social and emotional needs are much different, so I’m excited that they’re going to have an opportunity to be able to experience this.”

The new junior high school sits in the Pasadera housing development (formerly DJ Farms) and has been envisioned since the early 1990s. It’s been adding in phases dozens of homes with the total planned expected to top 800.

In anticipation of the school-related vehicle and pedestrian traffic, a series of speed bumps have been added throughout the Pasadena area to slow traffic. 

Mayor Ariston Julian presented a proclamation noted the lengthy planning and perseverance required to reach the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the school considered very important to the city.

Julian noted the role of the current superintendent and his predecessors — Hugo Lara and Ed Cora.

“If it wasn’t for you folks carrying the torch for so many years this wouldn’t be here,” Julian said.

The mayor said he attended a reunion for classes of 1960 to 1990 recently. The new junior high school’s first graduates in 2026 will mark their 60th reunion in 2085, he said. 

“So we look forward to that,” he said as the audience laughed.

Handall recounted the Guadalupe community’s history, including the first school built in 1873, another campus in what today is City Hall in 1930 and last new school in 1965. 

“The community itself recognized that education was incredibly important so they came together and they built these two schools,” Handall said. “They recognized the importance of education and committed to ensuring that their children, mostly immigrants, were provided the facilities they needed to receive a high quality education.”

In 2016 and 2022, voters approved bond measures to fund the new facilities.

“The new Guadalupe Junior High School also has a gymnasium that will serve as a symbol of this community’s historical commitment to ensuring our children have the opportunity to achieve their goals and dreams,” Handall told the crowd, thanking voters. 

The project cost roughly $50 million and tapped out the district resources, so they are seeking ways to finish some aspects such as landscaping.

A second new school, the Early Learning Center for preschoolers and transitional kindergartners, south of the junior high campus, should be done by the end of this year. 

That campus will house 150 to 180 students who, in keeping with Guadalupe’s Bobcat theme, will be known as Bobkittens.

The Guadalupe Union School District has about 1,300 students in total through eighth grade.