PHOTOS: Inside New $11 Million Beaumont Unified School District Office

Beaumont Unified School District workers are settling this week into their new, expanded headquarters.

"It's really exciting," Superintendent Maureen Latham told Banning-Beaumont Patch while providing a tour of the Educational Support Facility on Thursday.  "I think it's the culmination of all the work we're doing together as a district to really use the resources of all of our staff and all of our different teams that we have."

Latham said the entire district is happy to be moving to one location, rather than being spread out across different sites.  The new offices consist of a "building A" and "building B," totalling 44,585 square feet.

"This is puts us all together under one roof so that we're really working together cohesively and we're not wasting time driving from building to building," she said.  "We can basically use our time much more efficiently and productively." 

Until now, the BUSD staff has been crammed mostly into the old offices located at 500 Grace Avenue.  That building was first erected in 1938-39 under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's public works program, according to a plaque that hangs outside.  Offices that couldn't fit into the building, like maintenance & operations and child nutrition services, were housed off-site in other district buildings.

"The excitement of being able to all work together is really, I think, the most important thing to our staff members because they really do feel a strong commitment to our district and now we're all working together in one place, not just in name only, but really in spirit and sharing our space together and doing things collaboratively," Latham said.

The move to the new offices at 350 West Brookside Avenue, next to the new Beaumont High School stadium, began March 25, once students in the district were on Spring Break, according to the superintendent.  

Latham said the majority of staffers will be housed in building A, and should be completely moved in by April 20.  Those in B– which will be IT, maintenance and nutrition services– hope to settle by June 15.

As for district parents, they can begin using the new facility right away, and the next school board meeting on April 9 will be held in the new boardroom.  More than 400 people will now fit into that room, as opposed the the smaller room on Grace which often was standing room only when large issues were on the agenda.

"There's only one place that [parents] have to remember to go," Latham said.  "Right now, we've had students who would come to the Grace Ave. district office, and then have to go over to Wellwood, to the enrollment center.   They might have to come up to Chavez to do child nutrition applications for their free and reduced meals.  Now we'll have everything in one location and we've really designed it so there's plenty of parking, and we hope we've created a really welcoming environment so that they know that we appreciate them coming and that they want to be here in Beaumont Unified.  That's really important to us."

The new office came at a price tag of $11 million, which came from the sale of the Grace Ave. location and the old Summit Elementary site to the city of Beaumont, according to Latham.

Latham said they've managed to stay on budget for the project, and are using all the furniture from the old building at the new site to help save money.

Design on the new building first began in 2009, and much of the project was built in conjunction with the new high school stadium to utilize the "economies of scale" in making phases of construction more cost-effective, Latham said.

An official ribbon cutting and open house will be held sometime soon, she said, however the exact dates are still to be determined.