DSUSD superintendent: Indio High agriculture program on pause for ‘facelift,’ not elimination

More than a dozen students, parents, community leaders, and members of the agricultural industry turned out at the Desert Sands Unified School District Board of Education meeting Tuesday night to oppose the planned closure of Indio High School’s agriculture and Future Farmers of America program, drawing a pledge from the superintendent that the district has no intention of permanently eliminating it.

DSUSD Superintendent Dr. Kelly May-Vollmar told the board and the packed room that she and the district’s Career Technical Education director had visited Indio High School administrators and that the program’s problems stem from enrollment, not budget.

“Nobody wants to terminate the ag program or the FFA [Future Farmers of America] program at Indio High School,” May-Vollmar said. “We have money for the program, we’re not concerned about funding for the program. It’s a student interest concern — students are just not voluntarily signing up to be a part of that program.”

Still, the superintendent described the district’s plan as a “pause” to redesign and modernize the program, with an eye toward partnerships with university programs, including one at UC Riverside.

“We know that the program needs a facelift,” May-Vollmar said. “We really want to work in conjunction with the community partners. We’ve received so many amazing letters and emails and outreach. We want your wisdom, we want your expertise, we want to work with you on those programs.”

May-Vollmar also committed to finding a way for students currently enrolled in the program to complete their experience, saying the district is working with the Riverside County Office of Education to arrange continued support through the end of their time at Indio High.

The closure of the program was announced earlier this month by Indio High School Principal Monica Rodriguez, who cited declining enrollment and noted that the program had reached a point where it was “no longer sustainable to support a full-time teaching position.” The program’s agriculture teacher, Mamie Powell, is retiring at the end of the school year.

The announcement drew immediate pushback from the Indio City Council at their meeting on May 6, where members expressed a desire to intervene. Mayor Elaine Holmes said she could not imagine the school without an FFA program, and councilmember Ben Guitron said he had contacted a DSUSD board member, who confirmed only about 30 students expressed interest in the program for the coming year.

Indio High FFA President Roberto Sanchez, a senior, told the board Tuesday night the program has shaped students for 49 years and that he had collected signatures from 224 students who said they wished they could take an agriculture class.

“If even just half of this figure is concrete, that is five classes worth of students who wish to pursue an agriculture education,” Sanchez said. “If DSUSD is committed to protecting the future of hundreds of students and ensuring that our agriculture industry can thrive for another 100 years, you will invest in protecting our district’s most influential ag program.”

Sanchez said he and other students noticed a disparity between how FFA is treated compared to other programs, “Other programs at Indio High School have gone through similar periods of struggle, where membership dwindles, or teachers are spread thin. When those programs face problems they are supplemented and rightfully allowed to regrow.”

Others pointed to decisions made over the years that they said contributed to the program’s decline. A retired Indio High teacher who taught at the school until 2013 said the program had three teachers, but when they retired, the district chose not to replace them, leaving Powell to handle 186 students across multiple courses on her own.

A community member who addressed the board said part of the enrollment problem stems from the program’s course offerings, arguing that floral design classes had come to dominate the curriculum at the expense of core agriculture courses such as agribusiness, horticulture, agricultural science, and biotechnology. “That is not agriculture,” the speaker said. “It doesn’t represent agriculture in the Coachella Valley.”

Community and industry voices added to the chorus of support. A representative of the Riverside County Agricultural Commissioner’s office read a letter of support from Commissioner Delia Jimenez Cioc, citing the Coachella Valley’s estimated $840 million crop value and calling the Indio High program “a significant investment in our local youth and the future of the agricultural community.”

Chris Pickering, who operates the Riverside County Fairgrounds, told the board that Indio FFA students spend months each year housing and caring for their livestock in the fairgrounds’ barns before the annual fair, in exchange for helping clean and maintain the facilities — and that without agricultural education in local schools, “our profitable fields will turn into desert sands.”

Also on hand were working farmers, including the Vice President of Ocean Mist Farms, Jeff Percy and Stephanie Sobotka from Peter Rabbit Farms who stressed that the modern agricultural world needs professionals who work in various fields from engineering and robotics to marketing and environmental stewardship.

The program’s impact on graduates was also on display, multiple Indio High graduates spoke up at the meeting, including Angelina Benavides who said she used her experience in FFA to graduate from Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in agriculture science and went on to work at the California State Department of Food and Agriculture and the county of San Diego’s Department of Weights and Measures.

Indio City Councilmember Glenn Miller, himself a father to two students who went through the FFA program at Indio High School, said the program is vital not just for the economic benefit or jobs, “Less farmers means less food,” he said.

He added, “The city of Indio paid $2 million to Desert Sands Unified School District to reconfigure” Indio High School during a remodel, Miller said, adding that part of that investment was intended to ensure the agricultural program received proper facilities. “This program is definitely needed.”

There were no action items on the agenda Tuesday night related to the agriculture program. The next regularly scheduled board meeting is June 9.

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