PBL to move to samo campus in fall of 2024
At the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, the Pathways for Project-Based Learning (PBL) will be moving to the Business building on Samo’s campus.
The move will occur at the same time as the opening of the new Exploration building on campus, which will most likely happen in time for the fall semester; the staff in the Business building will transition to Exploration, as the moving of PBL will displace them. The move was announced on Nov. 8 2023 in an email to PBL students and parents that detailed what life would be like at the start of next year, including the expansion of the Innovation Studio, a modern twist on the arts and crafts room, and access to more teachers and student-led clubs.
PBL Math teacher Patti Newton has echoed the intrigue of the new possibilities for students on the Samo campus and the stress of moving to different campuses.
“There’s a different feeling to being our own school and creating our own schedules,” Newton said. “We’ll still have those principles at the Samo campus and it will be the best of both worlds.”
PBL opened its doors at the start of the 2019-20 school year at the Michelle and Barack Obama Center for Inquiry and Exploration on the corner of Ocean Park Boulevard and Lincoln Boulevard, a campus they shared with Olympic High School for the first three years of its existence. However, reconstruction of the nearby Santa Monica Alternative School House (SMASH) forced PBL and Olympic to move to a small part of the campus at Santa Monica College (SMC) for the foreseeable future as the SMASH students and staff would occupy the Obama Center. PBL’s stay at SMC would prove to be temporary, however, as PBL’s part of their campus will be demolished as a part of the college’s reconstruction process.
PBL principal Nicole Nicodemus is hopeful that PBL’s move to Samo will help increase the school’s popularity among future high school students in SMMUSD.
“The district wanted to move us to the Samo campus because they wanted Samo students to be a part of PBL Pathway,” Nicodemus said. “Many students didn’t want to be part of PBL because they were worried about missing out on opportunities with their friends and Samo, and our hope for this move is for that to no longer be as big of a barrier as it was in the past.”
PBL students have almost always been on campus at some point in their daily schedule, as freshmen and sophomores have fifth and sixth periods at Samo, and juniors and seniors have first and second periods on campus as well. One of the main goals for this move is to increase PBL’s proximity to Samo student life and extracurriculars in sports, the arts, and government-related activities among other things.
PBL student Asa Colwell (’25) is optimistic about how the move will change the identity of PBL and how the Samo student body will further accept PBL students as their own.
“I feel like PBL has always been viewed as the ‘special school’ and that no one has given us a chance,” Colwell said. “PBL gives students a lot of chances to be creative and explore their interests and if people gave us a chance, they would get to see how great this program is.”
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Declan Ney / The Samohi
PBL has called SMC home since 2022, with nine classes available to them.