Quick Take
Students, staff and community members celebrated the groundbreaking for Pajaro Middle School’s new turf athletic fields Monday morning. Members of the San Francisco 49ers Foundation, 49ers alumni and Gold Rush cheerleaders also attended the event at the school.
Pajaro Middle School seventh-grader Ethan Gonzales and his classmates couldn’t hide their excitement Monday during a groundbreaking event for a new turf athletic field at their school, following years of using a deteriorating field riddled with holes.
“The old field was just busted up, so now we’re gonna have a lot more advantage,” he said. “Before, in the rain, we just used to slip, and then it would used to be a big old mess.”
Dozens of Pajaro Valley Unified School District officials, middle school staff and students, community members and other guests gathered at the school Monday morning to celebrate the groundbreaking. The project marks a significant investment in the community that has endured historical underinvestment and devastation after the Pajaro River flooded the small farming town and the school in 2023.
PVUSD Superintendent Heather Contreras said construction on the new field starts this week, and officials hope it will be complete within the school year for the school’s 385 students and wider community to access.
“I think the floods of 2023 caused great devastation for this community,” she said. “So being able to make the school whole and be able to have everything in new and working condition, and to provide for this community something that they really wanted and asked for, is significant because we were able to see it come to fruition.”
Contreras added that this field will be the Pajaro community’s newest athletic field. The school’s students are 96.4% socioeconomically disadvantaged and 46% are English learners. Many of the families are from Mexico or work in agriculture.
The 2023 flood severely damaged the school, forcing its sixth grade students to relocate to Ohlone Elementary School and seventh and eighth grade students to relocate to Lakeview Middle School for the remainder of the 2023 school year and entire 2023-24 academic year. The cleanup alone cost $3.4 million, and renovations cost $4.5 million. The Federal Emergency Management Agency covered 90% of the rebuild costs; the district covered the rest.
Funding for the approximately $8 million athletic field project comes from a mix of donations and the district’s $315 million Measure M bond, approved by voters in 2024.
Interim Pajaro Middle Principal Ricky Maldonado said it’s an “amazing feeling” to watch the project get started.
“The kids can have pride in ownership of the school that they come from,” he said. “They don’t have to go to a park to play their sports, now they have a field at their middle school that they can play, and then Pajaro as a whole, this is a field that their children can use for years to come, and play sports on and build memories.”
During the groundbreaking, several people, including Contreras, spoke before the large crowd and students participated in athletic drills on the field. Members of the San Francisco 49ers Foundation – a donor to the project – as well as 49ers alumni and Gold Rush cheerleaders also attended.
Pajaro Middle School eighth grade teacher Alexis Flores said she’s hopeful and motivated for the future of the new field for the school.
“It’s really great to see because these kids need it – we all need it,” she said. “But every day, kids will be practicing, playing – they’re gonna learn a lot, and they deserve it.”
Gonzales, the seventh-grade student, said he’s curious about what the new field will look like and is excited about it looking cleaner once it’s completed.
“For a small school to have [a new field] like this, I think it’s pretty cool,” he said.
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