When Irene Macias-Morriss started at Central High School nine years ago, the principal dreamed of one day providing a new, spacious campus with more resources and opportunities for her students, or “my babies” as she affectionately refers to them.
The wait was finally over Thursday when Central kicked off the 2013-14 school year in its new location at 85 Tilton Ave., which is still undergoing $7 million in renovations to convert the one-time elementary school into a full-fledged high school campus.
“This is the school my students deserved,” said Macias-Morriss, sporting a neon green construction vest and grabbing a quick bite to eat in between welcoming students, accommodating staff and coordinating with the construction crews.
“The main thing right now for me is to make sure the teachers and classrooms are ready,” she continued. “I didn’t want any of my students not to be able to start school on the first day like everybody else, like every other high school student.”
So, even with bulldozers and workers smoothing out the surface in the currently inaccessible front parking lot, which should be completed next week, followed by a new science lab, computer room and library, all is on schedule for completion by the Sept. 26 grand opening.
Macias-Morriss is already elated with her fresh surroundings.
“All students need these opportunities and this is something we’ve never had before,” she concluded.
More than 120 Central students were given a tour of the campus by their teachers and welcomed by Interim Superintendent Steve Betando and Board of Education trustee Ron Woolf of the Morgan Hill Unified School District during an early morning assembly Thursday. The students didn’t seem to mind the loud noises of ongoing construction and unfinished areas of the school grounds.
The 85 Tilton Ave. location, formerly known as Burnett Elementary School, was closed in summer of 2008 in a cost-cutting move by MHUSD brought on by the state budget crisis of the time. Most recently, the property was used as the search headquarters for Sierra LaMar, the Morgan Hill teen who went missing March 16, 2012. Those headquarters have since relocated to the old Central site at 17960 Monterey Road.
In July, per direction from the Board of Education, Betando appointed a five-member Citizens’ Advisory Committee to recommend three options for re-naming the site. Additionally, a public hearing, inviting residents to make their own suggestions for the new name, took place at a recent Aug. 13 school board meeting. The committee will pick three final names and submit them to the Board, which will put it to a final vote at its Aug. 27 meeting.
While the new campus is already home to Central, which will keep its school name, the facility is also expected to house some of MHUSD’s other alternative educational programs yet to be determined. There are currently eight classrooms with eight teachers dedicated to Central instruction on the campus.
“I was comfortable there (at the old Central site),” said 17-year-old senior Naomi Lopez, who transferred from Live Oak High School to Central last year. “But this is better and bigger with more opportunities.”
“Outside is messy, but inside is much better,” agreed Noemi Barriga – a first-year Central student who previously attended Ann Sobrato High School – as she stood inside Christine Charlebois’ completely redone world history, U.S. government and civics classroom.
Securely hanging on the front wall of the room was is a 70-inch LCD flatscreen Smartboard – one of the many technology upgrades each classroom is equipped with at Central. Students walked into state-of-the-art classrooms with brand new desks and chairs, shiny multi-color laminated flooring, and two spacious windows with a scenic view of the rolling hillsides. In Charlebois’ room, the desks are organized in four separate horseshoe formations to accommodate 28 students.
“The start of school is chaotic to begin with. Moving is chaotic as well. But we have stayed positive through it all,” said the energetic and jovial Charlebois. “The kids now feel that they’re at a high school…(the old site) was not a high school campus.”
In addition to her teaching duties, Charlebois – who is entering her fifth year at Central and actually taught at the old Burnett Elementary School from time to time – also sets the students’ class schedules. On Thursday, she fielded several questions from students about any changes they wanted to make.
“A lot of the kids are here because they get lost in the big system,” explained Charlebois in between her exchanges with students. “At Central, it’s really hard to hide and pretend to be anonymous. I can go out on campus and I know the names of about 75 percent of these students.”
Continuation high schools such as Central offer more one-on-one attention; along with teachers who are well apprised of students’ credit deficiencies and what it will take to catch up. Being surrounded by other peers in the same predicament also motivates students to turn their grades around, according to teens like alumna Zaira Medina, Central’s “student of the year” in 2013 who turned her life around after falling way behind at Sobrato High.
For some of Central’s students who attended Burnett as children, Thursday was a strange homecoming of sorts as they reminisced about their elementary school days. Other students shuffled around campus catching up with classmates and taking in their new surroundings.
“It’s roomier over here,” proclaimed senior Darren Nguyen, 18.
In order to graduate, Nguyen still needs to cover about 40 credits – something he would not have been able to pull off at Sobrato High, where he transferred from.
Walking to the administration office with Nguyen was his classmate and fellow senior Marsha King, who was glad to be on the new campus after coming to Central last year.
“It’s nice. It was fun over there (at the old site), but there’s more room here,” said King, who made up 56 credits last year and only needs to four more credits to be eligible for graduation. “It makes me feel proud. I’m proud of myself.”
Temo Esparza, the bilingual liaison for the past three years at Central, is also content to be working at the new, larger campus in northwest Morgan Hill.
“I was pretty excited when I heard we were moving because now we’re able to have more students and have a bigger continuation high school,” said Esparza. “I think the kids deserve it. They deserve to have a bigger high school.”
Donna Simmons, who taught at Central for 25 years before retiring nine years ago, remains involved with the continuation program. On Thursday she snapped pictures of new students for their identification cards and will also help create the school yearbook.
“We outgrew that site. We had four classrooms, four teachers, a principal and a secretary,” recalled Simmons. “It’s fantastic. This is just what they need, something they can identify with, something that’s big enough for the student population.”
Mathematics teacher Gail Webb, who has worked at Central for 13 years, was “very excited” about the opening of the new campus. She recalled Macias-Morriss’ dream of moving to a bigger property that included a multipurpose room and athletic fields for school-run sports teams.
“This was her vision,” said Webb. “As the staff grew, as the student body grew, this was only natural.”
Webb, looking out to the wide-open fields in the rear of the campus that parallel Monterey Road, was not at all deterred by the dirt and rundown landscape. Instead, she compared the entire campus to the purchase of a “fixer-upper” house.
“You have to look past the broken windows and the leaky pipes. You have to see what the final product will be,” Webb said. “It’s a work in progress.”
The use of the facility remains a “work in progress” as well, as the district finalizes what specific programs will also be housed and offered at the 85 Tilton Ave. site.
But, for now, Macias-Morriss is just glad to call it home.
