For 49 years, students at Rancho El Chorro Outdoor School, tucked in the San Luis Obispo hills above the California coast, learned about science and ecology by investigating tidepools and dissecting squids. ( source – Smithsonian Magazine)
“Everything was experiential,” says Celeste Royer, Rancho El Chorro’s Director of Environmental Education. “Getting these kids out into the natural environment, giving them a chance to explore, inspiring them to want to know more—it’s so unique from their traditional classroom experience. It’s a learning environment that can’t be replicated inside.”
“My bread and butter comes through the residential programs,” Royer says. “We lost hundreds of thousands of dollars by not being able to run those.”
With a resulting half million dollar deficit, the superintendent of the San Luis Obispo County Education Office, which oversees all supporting educational programs for the district, made the decision in early May to shutter the outdoor school that serves about 7,000 students annually from five different counties.
