Closed Salinas elementary school to re-open aiding overcrowding

On Monday night, the Salinas City Elementary School District voted unanimously to reopen Boronda Community School in the fall.

For the last10 years the campus has been used for storage and office space. Parents living nearby said it’s time to take back the school.

“When it closed down everybody was so sad,” said Carina Ramos.

Ramos lives down the street from Boronda Community School. Now a mother, she’s happy her daughter won’t have to walk far for class.

“If something happens to her I could just run across the street and she’ll be safe,” said Ramos.

The school board decided to create a dual immersion academy.

“We would take a pre-kinder, a transitional kindergarten and three kinder classes of 25 each. And have a bona fide dual immersion academy in Spanish and English,” said Jerry Stratton with the Salinas City Elementary School District.

Stratton said there will be no redistricting. First, the campus will start small with only kindergarten classes, a total of 125 students and then grow each year to a K-6 school.

“The beauty of that is that we are going to keep those classes low as they move from kinder through 6th grade. So we’re never going to have those 32 and 33 kids in the class that we’ve had at many of our other schools from the overcrowding,” said Stratton.

The school district said opening up a new school will costabout $18 million and renovating the existing school would be about $1.5 million.