South San Francisco, CA June 3, 2015 Submitted by John Horgan SSFUSD 
The trustees of the South San Francisco Unified School District have decided to head back to the drawing board and re-think their options for modernizing and renovating Martin Elementary School. Martin, which opened in the 1930s, has been ticketed for extensive construction work for the last several years. But complications have arisen, not the least of which are financial. Any project at Martin, located just northwest of South San Francisco’s downtown core, would be a multi-million-dollar undertaking.
At their June 1 meeting at Martin, the board members agreed that there are too many unknowns to make key decisions on the school’s future now. A major factor in the trustees’ deliberations is a set of new housing developments (a total of 440 units) scheduled to be built not far from Martin, which has an official 2014-15 enrollment of 439 students. How many new District students will be generated by those projects? The trustees said they need to know. “We need to start from square one, to take a step back,” said Board President Judy Bush. The aim will be to collaborate with a Martin building committee and District staff in order to come up with fresh information and alternatives for the school’s future, even including the possibility of constructing an entirely new set of facilities.
Preliminary findings are expected later in June.