Hamilton School Property Update

The Torrance Unified School Board has asked staff to follow up on previous requests in 2017 and re-explore the current options for changing the use of the Hamilton School site. 

This is for four main reasons:

1. The State of California is headed into challenging financial times, and we need more ongoing revenue sources
2. We can’t afford the ongoing maintenance expenses, and past school bonds didn’t cover adult schools
3. Nearby property developments have demonstrated the current value of Hamilton
4. We need improved facilities for our Transition students.

Unlike a sale, which just provides one-time funds and leaves the decisions on what to do with the property completely up to the buyer, Torrance Unified is looking to exchange the property for something that will create ongoing, sustainable income for the District, such as a different type of property.

An important benefit of an exchange is that we can put “conditions” that a developer must follow such as enhancing community access to greenspace or requiring enough parking spaces for new houses.

Torrance Unified has gone on record stating we are absolutely committed to ensuring that baseball and softball will continue in North Torrance without missing a season. Torrance Unified staff has been working with the leadership of the sports organizations, ball field design experts, and the City of Torrance to explore options for investing in new or enhanced facilities as new locations for the ball fields.

We are working with our Special Education Department and labor partners to move Transitional facilities to a workable location. While initially planned for North High, based on community feedback, we are now looking at Levy Adult School.

We are planning to keep Adult School programming and classes in North Torrance at other school sites during the evenings, and a new rented location for both day and evening classes. We plan to work with the community to see if there is enough interest in starting up additional classes that community members asked about during our July Board meeting.

While not required, Torrance Unified is committed to using several million dollars from the exchange to ensure the leagues still have four regulation, high-quality fields to practice and play games on in North Torrance, two each for North Torrance Little League and North Torrance Girls Softball.  

Torrance Unified is exploring several locations including El Nido Park (two NTLL fields), North High School (two NTGSL fields) and as backup, Lincoln Elementary (two fields). No decisions have been made yet. You can see updated sketches in the presentation from the July 8 board meeting.

Absolutely not. We can assure you that no final decisions or deals have taken place. We have been actively holding meetings to hear from representatives of various community groups over the past few months and many crowd-sourced ideas have already shaped and changed our potential plans several times.

The decision to change the use of the Hamilton site will have to go through a public School Board vote, a public Request for Proposals (RFP) to find a developer, a public vetting of potential developers, and public decisions by the City Council regarding zoning, traffic, and other considerations. You can see a proposed timeline on Slide 4 in this presentation, which shows that the whole process will take more than two years.

The main source of funding for capital improvements and major maintenance on Torrance Unified buildings comes from taxpayer-voted bonds. The last four bonds that our Torrance community passed have not included funds for our central buildings where our employees work such as student testing, welcome center, and IT, or any of our Adult school campuses like Hamilton. Our feedback from the community is that they only wanted to focus funding on schools where our TK-12 students actively attend.

Torrance Unified has looked at alternative funding solutions, however, the State of California school bond program will not provide matching funds for this project. We would need to pay for modernization of the Hamilton site from our General Fund.

A 7/11 committee explored the need for Hamilton back in 2017, and determined that it was not needed for the school district’s continued future growth and goals. In the past, when we had to modernize Hull Middle School, we had to move the students to Levy School for a long-term stay. During this process, Torrance Unified had to invest in significant upgrades to Levy to keep the students safe, which meant that Levy is more up to code and in better shape than Hamilton.

We are committed to a public process to gather input for the School Board to consider as they make their decision.

To date, we have held several meetings to gather input from the community: 

Feb 2024: Established a dedicated website for the project with regular updates for the public
March 19: Held feedback meeting with leadership of NTLL, NTGSL, NTNA
April 17: Held feedback meetings with leadership of NTLL, NTGSL, NTNA, Adjacent Neighbors of Hamilton
May 1 & 9: Large community meetings held at North High
April - July: Introduced an online tool, ThoughtExchange, and invited feedback
June: 12,000 resident postcards inviting them to the July 8 school board meeting

You can provide thoughts through our current online survey open through July 15. After that time you can also email communications@tusd.org with questions or concerns, or call our Communications Department at (310) 972-6156.

Our school board members have received reports of all of our meetings with the community, and they held a Board Meeting on July 8 in North Torrance focused on listening to the needs and concerns of the community. As our ThoughtExchange online surveys finish, before they vote on this project, they will also have access to read every community comment. Your input has continued to change the plans of the District, and the School Board is very interested in continuing to listen.

As elected public officials, our five School Board of Education members are subject to the Brown Act, a California law that makes sure school board meetings are open for the public to see. This means that a majority of the board can't meet outside of a board meeting to talk about issues relating to the School District. This rule ensures that the community can see and participate in the decision-making process keeping everything fair and transparent.

The School District will not be involved in the ongoing construction, maintenance, or sale of any housing units that may be constructed on the Hamilton site. If the School Board approves moving forward with an exchange, they would then approve conditions for the development as outlined in the Request for Proposals (RFP) from potential developers. These conditions can include issues important to the community, such as construction nuisance mitigation, parking availability, and the amount of green space, then the developer will have to work with the City for the zoning, traffic, permits, and other processes.

Due to the decline in enrollment across the state and the looming economic hardships of the State, Torrance Unified is working hard to ensure we have sustainable, conservative, long-term revenue sources so we can pay for the resources required to fulfill our mission of ensuring that each and every student is educated and prepared to succeed in life.