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There’s a moved-in, but not yet lived-in, look to the new administration and classroom buildings at San Juan school in San Juan Bautista.
Unopened boxes are piled in Principal Ethan Stocks’ office. Handwritten room numbers are taped to doors. Teachers and students are figuring out how best to deal with the scattered backpacks lining the classroom floors.
There’s a strong sense of “new and improved,” and every sign, hand-drawn or not, points to a defining moment in this small school’s history.
“A few weeks ago, none of us had ever been here before,” Stocks said. “Looking out at the campus now, the space just feels so much different. The place we knew is gone, and even the adults have to discover this new thing and figure it out.”
The campus is halfway through construction that began during the 2025 summer break, including the demolition of two of the school’s classroom blocks. In their place are nine of the 13 planned classrooms, all air-conditioned, soundproofed and filled with new furniture and clean whiteboards.
“They are clean, streamlined, flexible spaces,” Stocks said. “There’s some color, lots of windows, natural light, dimmable lights in different configurations, automatic blinds that open and close. It’s got that new school smell—it just feels open and efficient and nice.”
The prefabricated classrooms, installed in an L shape toward the rear of the campus, were powered on in mid-July. According to Aromas San Juan Unified School District Superintendent Barbara Dill Varga, some uncertainty remained about whether everything would be ready for students’ return.
“There was a come-to-Jesus meeting with all of the subs and contractors,” she said. “We told them, ‘This is a real deadline. We’ve got adults coming who need to move in, and then we have kids four days later. This has got to be done.’”
Dill Varga said the meeting had its desired effect. Crews worked on weekends to make all the necessary connections and move each teacher’s educational materials, stored in boxes in the school gymnasium, into the right classrooms.
“Everyone was everywhere,” she said. “Our maintenance department was amazing, coming in from the other school sites to help. I was sweating bullets for a while. But things got done well enough that we could open school.”
Only the administration building lagged behind and for a while, Stocks, the teachers and staff had to organize for the first day of school from an older group of classrooms near the gym.
“We worked out of there for a week and a half,” Stocks said. “We did our best, but we did not have internet until the day school started. You know, no matter how well planned a project like this may be, there are hiccups and things that you can’t control. You just got to roll with it.”
It was worth the wait, Stocks said. The high-ceilinged administration building features a clean, spacious design with expanded offices, teacher and staff meeting areas, a break room, and a patio. Some students, he said, have even compared it to a modern hotel lobby.
“I think the kids realized last year that big things were happening,” he said. “And now they’ve begun to feel the reward for all the inconveniences of last year. It was noisy. It was dusty. And now it’s not, and they’re in these beautiful buildings.”
Stocks said incoming students, most of whom experienced disruptions and distractions from construction during the previous school year, coped with the changes at the new campus without significant disorientation.
“They reacted more to the newness and the novelty of what they were experiencing for the first time,” he said. “And then there’s logistical things still, like wayfinding issues that we’ve solved with little paper signs and teachers putting up their names on the door.”
The placement of the new buildings is only one clue to how the final campus will appear.
The central area of the grounds, between the administration building and the classrooms, already has several covered areas that will provide shade on hot days and serve as staging areas for outdoor classes. Plans also include an amphitheater to support the school’s growing drama program.
Stocks said more finishing touches are still to come as construction moves toward completion.
“There are going to be maker spaces, and those last three new classrooms for our youngest learners,” he said. “There is also a new multi-purpose room and cafeteria space to be built. Foundations will be poured at the end of October, and a year from now, we will be done.”
Currently, the gymnasium serves as a makeshift library, but a new building to house the books is also being constructed in what Dill Varga calls a particularly symbolic location.
“As you enter the school grounds, the first building that you’ll see, kind of blocking the view a little bit, will be the library,” she said. “And I’m taking credit for placing it there, because I believe that the route to education and progress goes through the halls of literacy.”
Stocks said the new campus is purpose-built for many functions the older school could not accommodate because of shifts in the idea of public education over the last few decades. There is a steady progression “towards the school as the central institution in the community.”
“A school is expected to do things that were not expected 50 years ago,” he said. “We feed your kids. We provide mental health and childcare services. All in addition to the core educational requirements that have always been our responsibility.”
The school’s rebuilding began after a 2022 seismic study, prompted by the campus’s proximity to the San Andreas Fault, was released. The project was greenlit when funds were made available through Measure O, a $30.5 million bond passed in 2020, and Measure D, a $44 million bond passed in 2024.
“I’d like to think that our students just feel a sense of investment,” Stocks said. “That they spent 40-some-odd million dollars building these things for them because they have value and they deserve to learn.”
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