Committee raising funds for future high school’s programs
SOMERTON — A group of residents is raising funds to make sure students have access to extracurricular and after-school programs just as soon as a new high school opens in Somerton.
Over the past two years, the Committee for Somerton High School has raised $25,000 toward that end, and now its sights are set on a loftier goal: raise another $50,000.
Voters in 2015 approved a nearly $80 million bond measure for school upgrades throughout the Yuma Union High School District, of which about $25 million is earmarked for a future high school in Somerton. But that money only goes toward construction, and committee members don’t expect the school to have much money beyond basic needs in the classroom.
“We have seen how funds for schools throughout the state over the years, as well as in other states,” said Helen Anaya, the committee’s president. “So we got together to provide support for the Somerton high school. We will help them so those programs aren’t lacking in the first few years after the school’s opening.”
Construction of the campus on the city’s west side is expected to begin sometime after 2020.
Anaya said the committee, formed two years ago, is focusing on raising funds to cover the costs of athletic and arts programs and tutoring.
This month, the committee partnered with the city of Somerton in hosting the Somerton Corn Festival, with proceeds from registration fees paid by vendors working the festival and from food sales at the event going toward extracurricular and after-school programs. Also during the festival, the committee received a sizable check, for $4,000, from the Cocopah Tribe.
Anaya said the committee has also brought in funds from a benefit golf tournament, and is looking at organizing other fundraising events, such as a softball tournament and a car show.
Somerton has a charter high school, the Jose Yepez Learning Center operated by the nonprofit organization PPEP Inc., though most of the city’s youth attend Kofa High School in Yuma. But given the demands of travel between the two cities, many Kofa students from Somerton don’t have time to take part in extracurricular activities at the Yuma school, said Gerardo Anaya, Somerton’s vice mayor.
Prior to the 2015 bond issue, Somerton officials had lobbied YUHSD to locate its next campus in their city, arguing that Somerton had grown large enough to merit its own school.
Next to the planned high school site is a parcel the city has purchased with plans to create an athletic complex that would be shared by city residents and student athletes of the school.
“As a city we are anxious for the high school to come,” Gerald Anaya said.