Wednesday marked an important step for the Santa Maria Bonita School District as it pursues building a new elementary school.
Trustees selected a familiar company they’ve worked with in the past. They unanimously selected AMG & Associates, Inc. from Santa Clarita to construct the school. The company offered a net bid of $40.7 million for construction.
“I just wanted to give you my personal assurances as president of our company that this is an extremely important project for us as well,” Albert Giacomazzi said, AMG President.
Courtesy: DLR Group
“We’ve worked with AMG before,” said Maggie White, the school district’s public information officer. “We’ve had a great relationship when they built Jiménez school. It came in on budget, on time. They were very responsive to requests and needs.”
Matt Beecher, Assistant Superintendent for Business Services, told trustees the total cost including the amount to purchase the site and furnishings will tally up to an estimated $51 million when the school opens its doors in August 2020.
“For elementary schools being built in 2019, [$51 million] is a pretty good price,” Beecher said.
The school, which will sit on the corner of College Drive and Meehan Street, is moving forward in big part to the voters. In 2014, voters approved the Measure T bond measure that would help provide $45 million to projects, but $6 to $7 million will head to other projects. At this time, the project will not receive any funds from the state.
The unnamed school will have 26 classrooms and the district has plans for it to set a high standard in education.
“It will be a very cutting edge school,” White said. “There is going to be a significant special education program and there are plans that would allow special education students to be integrated into regular education classrooms. There is a large library. So we do have a lot of plans for it and hope that it will be really a wonderful asset to that community.”
AMG expects to break ground within 30 days. The company says it could have as many as 100 workers on the project throughout the process.
Any changes in construction material cost will be covered by AMG, not the district.
The community will help in the naming process of the school.
