Harvest Prep to open for next school year in San Luis

Harvest Preparatory Academy (HPA) will open their doors for the 2009-2010 school year in San Luis and will be located at the Riedel Plaza on the east side of the city.
 
Months after Jeff Philpot, city administrator, said there were talks about the school opening on the unoccupied side of the ACT Call Center building, John Ybarra, HPA administrator, said they are in the final stages of negotiations, and they expect to sign to sign a lease on the 12,500-square-foot building.
 
“We are excited because we know that the services Harvest offers are good for Hispanic families and, in fact, almost 40 percent of our students are from San Luis and Somerton,” Ybarra said.
 
He explained that after talks with San Luis officials and administrators, establishing the school in the Riedel Plaza was more practical.
 
“We made a reasonable proposal on the contract, but we couldn’t agree on cost. We were not able to meet their needs,” he said.
 
“The rent was too high for our budget. This is a private school and must be managed as a business. Our business is to offer the best education possible, but if we are going to pay a lot for a building we will not be able to pay for good teachers. That’s why we couldn’t go on.”
 
Harvest Prep will open in San Luis with close to 200 students, preschool through second grade with an emphasis in learning English, he said.
 
“Families have been asking us to open in San Luis because they now have to get up at five or six in the morning to bring them here (to Yuma) and that is hard for the little ones,” Ybarra said.
 
“This is excellent news. Harvest started looking for me but they were already in negotiations with the city and I didn’t want to be in competition with anybody. Everything has a reason. Children from the 9th Comite de Bien Estar section had to go to school in Somerton. Families are ecstatic,” said Nieves Riedel, owner of the Convention Center, who explained that the lease agreement is for five years with an option to buy.
 
They have had conversations about the possibility that once Harvest Prep’s student enrollment increases, they may use the 54,000-square-foot building that was previously occupied by Food City.
 
That is a very real possibility, he said.
 
“Harvest is coming and I welcome anything that means jobs. The school district is doing a good job but it is good for people to have options. Harvest is an option because they are already serving many children and it must be because people like their system,” he said.
 
The way Harvest Prep is organized, which is similar to the majority of private schools, allowing them to offer high academic services, he said.
 
In addition to providing good educational services, they run a solid business, he added.
 
“Like any business, we have to offer a good product and we are doing that. This year all of our 10th graders, many from San Luis, passed the AIMS test with better scores than the national average and the school has been recognized as an excelling school at a national level,” he said.
 
In addition to their plans of opening in San Luis, Harvest Prep is looking into the possibility of opening another school in Riverside County in the community of Murrieta, Caif. There is a large Hispanic population there, he said.
 
In Yuma, Harvest Prep offers classes from preschool to 12th grade and has 900 students and 120 employees.
 
“We are growing quickly. We started in 2000 with 100 students and 10 teachers. We are a solid business that offers high-quality education in Yuma, and we have to work in San Luis to build confidence that the system we have in place here will be the same there and for that we need time,” he said.
 
“People want the same degree of integrity and services that we have here and we must provide that and more,” said Ybarra.