A new elementary school being built in the Santa Maria-Bonita School District could mean some current students will have to change schools.
The Santa Maria-Bonita School District says the yet-to-be-named school under construction in the Enos Ranch area will be the district's 21st campus.
The new addition leaves the school district tasked with configuring new boundary lines to determine where students will go to school.
"We are looking forward to more schools, hopefully. You know, it will better help the students and the teachers as well so we are definitely looking forward to it," said Ouyki Mujica, parent of a Battles Elementary School student.
Others hope it won't affect them.
"The inconvenience would be of the location, having to take my kids somewhere else, where I think Sanchez Elementary is a really good school," said Esther Ramirez, parent of a student at David Sanchez Elementary School.
The Santa Maria-Bonita School District says they know the inconvenience it could potentially pose on families.
"It is a double-edged sword for some families but of course we try to keep the geographic areas small. So, for example, students that live near this school will attend this school. We don't want to bus them in from across town or anything like that," said Maggie White, Public Information Officer for the Santa Maria-Bonita School District.
The district has 17,000 students from kindergarten through 8th grade.
Over the years, some of its schools have been experiencing high enrollment numbers.
"Certainly, if we could take some of the students that attend there, bring them to the new school, it would give Battles a little bit of room to spread their wings," White said.
Mujica says she sees the positives of a new school but also said explaining the possible changes to a young kid will not be easy.
"Just to know that you have to move because of the boundary, it is such a hard decision to make and to try and explain that to your child, that will definitely have an impact," Mujica said.
The Santa Maria-Bonita School District encourages parents to attend school board meetings to be part of the deliberation process, especially when decisions regarding boundaries start being made.
KSBY did ask the district about the number of students that could be impacted but they said it was too early to know.
