T.-3 20-1090 A discussion by the Board of Education, with documents, of a recommendation from its Facilities Committee, that the Board authorize the placing on the November 3, 2020 General Election Ballot a $735 Million Dollar General Obligation Bond to continue meeting the more than $3 billion physical infrastructure and facilities needs for District's K-12 Pupils and, if so, instruct the Superintendent of Schools and/or the General Counsel to prepare formal documents for the Calling of Said Election at a Special Meeting to be held Monday, June 29, 2020.
I am an Assistant Principal at CCPA, housed on the Havenscourt Campus. I have spent 25 years on the Havenscourt Campus as an educator, and have seen the various transformations this campus has undergone in the last 25 years. CCPA took on the responsibility to educate all children in the Havenscourt community. It is not fair to our community's students to have them in overcrowded classroom spaces as we expand. Learning is limited in this type of environment. Leaving aside the obvious facilities needs in the main building (aged plumbing and electrical, aged HVAC system), our community deserves the funding to building more classroom spaces to accommodate our approved expansion.
Hello my name is Alma Ortega , I am a parent of Melrose Leadership Academy (MLA) I have been part of this community for last 10 yrs with a former and current student. I ask you to please keep us on the bond to help us keep our Vision of Dual Immersion Program all on one Site. We have build a strong community and would appreciate to stay together on one Campus. Thank you
I urge you to support this bond measure and include MLA as a priority. Our aging facilities serve 500 students from across the district. Many infrastructural issues need addressed, but the most important is building shade systems to lower the 105 degree temperatures in classrooms that impede learning and teaching. When selecting funding, equity is crucial and should take into account necessity and the number of students served as well as race and socio-economics.
I fully support this bond and hope that the board decides to allocate the funding to CCPA for the construction of additional facilities. CCPA has agreed to expand in size with the recent closure of Roots, and without these funds, we will be unable to provide our students with the nurturing environment they deserve. These demands will only become even more pressing as we continue to take on even more students with every passing year. Please consider CCPA when deciding how this bond will be spent; we really need your support.
I'm writing to respectfully urge you to support this bond so that MLA may continue to expand its mission of providing high quality dual immersion education. Being a parent who volunteers and sits on several school parent groups, I have noticed that the school is in need of some facility upgrades. The kindergarten class bathroom’s, currently flood and have been that way for years. The school is also in need of permanent structures with state-of-the-art classrooms, and not temporary trailers. The school is also in great need of a central cooling system to better support children’s learning, during summer hours. I’ve been in classrooms where students are so bothered by the heat and where teachers discuss strategies to support their learning amidst the heat. Oakland District really needs to step up and better support its schools. Families here are paying large amounts of local and property taxes and our schools are not seeing any benefits from these taxes.
Hello, as a parent of 2 children in OUSD. I want MLA (Melrose Leadership Academy) to be included on the list.
**MLA has a high Facilities Conditions Index of 4, with overheated classrooms and other conditions. The building was built in 1931.
**MLA is a high demand school with hundreds of families on the waiting list and needs the addition.
**MLA has great teacher retention, graduating students enter high school with Advanced Spanish due to our Bilingual education and it has one of the fastest growth rates of any Oakland school.
MLA Facilities Bond measure!! MLA needs a yard for kids to play on, the classes get to hot to learn due to outdated boiler, middle schoolers need science lab and lockers and the whole school community should be on Maxwell Campus instead of two campuses. Help our students get a new renovated school.
I have two children at Melrose, and support bond funds for MLA. The school has outdated infrastructure and facilities. Currently, temperatures get above 110 degrees in the classrooms - no kid can learn under those circumstances! We don't have lockers, labs or any athletic facilities for the middle-school kids. There is also a growing number of children attending the school in 2021 (200+ over the 2019-2020 school year. We need more space! Rather than splitting up the campus into two locations, it makes more sense both academically and financially to add improvements to the current school to build out new classrooms for the current and the new students.
I'm writing to respectfully urge you to support this bond so that MLA may continue to expand its mission of providing high quality dual immersion education. I am a mother to an 8-year-old student who currently attends Melrose Academy. We are an example of a Spanish speaking household family who had a difficult time getting into Melrose Academy. We decided to send our son to a bilingual charter school that was close to our home but highly unregulated; our son’s learning also suffered tremendously. We were on Melrose wait list for 2 years and somehow got lucky and found a spot in the middle of the school year. Our son just finished 2nd grade at Melrose Academy and we couldn’t be happier with his learning achievements. Our son moved up several reading levels and was identified by his teacher, as most improved student. This exemplifies how great Melrose’s teachers are, and how we need to support more Oakland families who are on the wait list and are wanting their children to be bilingual
I've been a history teacher at Skyline for 5 years- for the past 4 years, I've been in a portable classroom that gets extremely, unbearably hot. I've seen my in-room thermostat push 90+ degrees on the hottest days, but even on a regular "hot" day we'll hit at least 80 by mid-day.
OUSD's original solution was to give me two fans that created more noise than relief from the heat. Although there are some classrooms that do have AC installed at Skyline's campus, there are many classrooms like mine that lack AC. Unbearable heat in my classrooms make it hard for my students to learn and hard for me to teach. With climate change guaranteeing an overall increase in temperatures, there will be more and more hot days that my students will have to suffer through.
Skyline needed AC in all of its classrooms for the past 4 years, it is long overdue.
I would also like to express support for including the Maxwell campus of Melrose Leadership Academy on the list for the General Obligation Bond. Our high-demand, high-quality dual immersion school is in need of major facilities upgrades. We need to consider the safety of our students and community.
Melrose Leadership Academy was expanded by OUSD 5 years ago to offer more access to high-quality dual language programming to East Oakland's youth. We now operate a program that serves 650 students in a 400-capacity building in need of much repair (index level 4!) and in a separate satellite 250-capacity building that has been left entirely unmaintained by a local charter school. We have no gym, no useable kitchen, no athletic field, no shade structures, no access to water for students when they're playing, no A/C and no science labs on either of our sites. Our classrooms reach up to 110 degrees and kids and teachers are too hot and uncomfortable to focus on learning. We have a robust newcomer and bilingual special ed program that needs additional classrooms to grow into so we can continue to serve East Oakland's most vulnerable youth. We cannot even maintain our current program without additional space! Please approve this item and keep MLA as a priority. Thank you.
I am a parent of two children at Melrose Leadership Academy (MLA) and support the bond and prioritizing money for improving facilities at MLA. This school has a proven track record. According to OUSD CORE Data, the students are growing at one of the fastest rates of any school in Oakland. The school has outgrown its site and is unable to accommodate the massive demand for its programming from families district-wide. The facilities have aged. The classrooms have inadequate cooling, and the outdated electrical system can not handle the fans needed in every room to make them habitable. There are no science labs for the middle school, no gym to accommodate sports and it is not safe in the event of an earthquake. The school community works diligently to support the programs to enable the school to thrive. However, we can only do so much. Please help our children and the staff of MLA focus on teaching and learning by improving these very outdated and unsafe facilities.
As a mother of an MLA student and a long time resident of Oakland, I urge the board that MLA secure the funds required for much needed improvements. As a college student, i tutored at MLA and was amazed of how well the dual language program worked at the school. i instantly knew that if i ever had a child I would want them to go that school. Fast forward to today and my son has been enrolled at MLA since TK and is moving forward to 1st grade in this coming school year. MLA is a wonderful program that is helping my child grow not only academically but culturally ans socially as well. Make OUSD stronger by supporting MLA and expanding and enriching educational opportunities for bilingual / bicultural students. MLA needs OUSD support to bring back the MLA community in one place rather than the separation of the school into two locations. Please help our TK-8 thrive together!
Our second of three boys is starting kindergarten at MLA this year. We love the community and social awareness that MLA provides. We think it is so important that for continuity sake the students are able to stay on the same campus for their entire education at MLA. We strongly support leaving MLA on the project list.
I am a teacher at CCPA and a parent of 2 OUSD students. I am also very proud of the work CCPA is doing to support the students we serve in our community. I support the bond to be used to support the expansion of CCPA. CCPA began a process of doubling our student body from 6th through 12th grade. By 2022 we will lack the facilities to serve our students. Help us avoid overcrowding and support the community at CCPA.
I am a parent of two children at the Melrose Leadership Academy. MLA has outgrown its aging facility and needs to remain on the project funding list as proposed.
As parents of a student in OUSD's Melrose Leadership Academy (MLA), we very much support including our school in the proposed bond funding. Our facilities are in strong need of upgrading, and because enrollment in our school has been growing so much, our community is now split across two different sites. Bond funding would enable us to re-unite the school in its main location and upgrade the facilities to provide a better learning environment for our students. Thank you for your consideration, Katie Hern, Parent, Oakland resident, and college professor
I am an Assistant Principal at CCPA, housed on the Havenscourt Campus. I have spent 25 years on the Havenscourt Campus as an educator, and have seen the various transformations this campus has undergone in the last 25 years. CCPA took on the responsibility to educate all children in the Havenscourt community. It is not fair to our community's students to have them in overcrowded classroom spaces as we expand. Learning is limited in this type of environment. Leaving aside the obvious facilities needs in the main building (aged plumbing and electrical, aged HVAC system), our community deserves the funding to building more classroom spaces to accommodate our approved expansion.
Hello my name is Alma Ortega , I am a parent of Melrose Leadership Academy (MLA) I have been part of this community for last 10 yrs with a former and current student. I ask you to please keep us on the bond to help us keep our Vision of Dual Immersion Program all on one Site. We have build a strong community and would appreciate to stay together on one Campus. Thank you
I urge you to support this bond measure and include MLA as a priority. Our aging facilities serve 500 students from across the district. Many infrastructural issues need addressed, but the most important is building shade systems to lower the 105 degree temperatures in classrooms that impede learning and teaching. When selecting funding, equity is crucial and should take into account necessity and the number of students served as well as race and socio-economics.
I fully support this bond and hope that the board decides to allocate the funding to CCPA for the construction of additional facilities. CCPA has agreed to expand in size with the recent closure of Roots, and without these funds, we will be unable to provide our students with the nurturing environment they deserve. These demands will only become even more pressing as we continue to take on even more students with every passing year. Please consider CCPA when deciding how this bond will be spent; we really need your support.
I'm writing to respectfully urge you to support this bond so that MLA may continue to expand its mission of providing high quality dual immersion education. Being a parent who volunteers and sits on several school parent groups, I have noticed that the school is in need of some facility upgrades. The kindergarten class bathroom’s, currently flood and have been that way for years. The school is also in need of permanent structures with state-of-the-art classrooms, and not temporary trailers. The school is also in great need of a central cooling system to better support children’s learning, during summer hours. I’ve been in classrooms where students are so bothered by the heat and where teachers discuss strategies to support their learning amidst the heat. Oakland District really needs to step up and better support its schools. Families here are paying large amounts of local and property taxes and our schools are not seeing any benefits from these taxes.
Hello, as a parent of 2 children in OUSD. I want MLA (Melrose Leadership Academy) to be included on the list.
**MLA has a high Facilities Conditions Index of 4, with overheated classrooms and other conditions. The building was built in 1931.
**MLA is a high demand school with hundreds of families on the waiting list and needs the addition.
**MLA has great teacher retention, graduating students enter high school with Advanced Spanish due to our Bilingual education and it has one of the fastest growth rates of any Oakland school.
MLA Facilities Bond measure!! MLA needs a yard for kids to play on, the classes get to hot to learn due to outdated boiler, middle schoolers need science lab and lockers and the whole school community should be on Maxwell Campus instead of two campuses. Help our students get a new renovated school.
I have two children at Melrose, and support bond funds for MLA. The school has outdated infrastructure and facilities. Currently, temperatures get above 110 degrees in the classrooms - no kid can learn under those circumstances! We don't have lockers, labs or any athletic facilities for the middle-school kids. There is also a growing number of children attending the school in 2021 (200+ over the 2019-2020 school year. We need more space! Rather than splitting up the campus into two locations, it makes more sense both academically and financially to add improvements to the current school to build out new classrooms for the current and the new students.
We need space for our school expansion so that students can learn in comfortable and safe environments.
I'm writing to respectfully urge you to support this bond so that MLA may continue to expand its mission of providing high quality dual immersion education. I am a mother to an 8-year-old student who currently attends Melrose Academy. We are an example of a Spanish speaking household family who had a difficult time getting into Melrose Academy. We decided to send our son to a bilingual charter school that was close to our home but highly unregulated; our son’s learning also suffered tremendously. We were on Melrose wait list for 2 years and somehow got lucky and found a spot in the middle of the school year. Our son just finished 2nd grade at Melrose Academy and we couldn’t be happier with his learning achievements. Our son moved up several reading levels and was identified by his teacher, as most improved student. This exemplifies how great Melrose’s teachers are, and how we need to support more Oakland families who are on the wait list and are wanting their children to be bilingual
I've been a history teacher at Skyline for 5 years- for the past 4 years, I've been in a portable classroom that gets extremely, unbearably hot. I've seen my in-room thermostat push 90+ degrees on the hottest days, but even on a regular "hot" day we'll hit at least 80 by mid-day.
OUSD's original solution was to give me two fans that created more noise than relief from the heat. Although there are some classrooms that do have AC installed at Skyline's campus, there are many classrooms like mine that lack AC. Unbearable heat in my classrooms make it hard for my students to learn and hard for me to teach. With climate change guaranteeing an overall increase in temperatures, there will be more and more hot days that my students will have to suffer through.
Skyline needed AC in all of its classrooms for the past 4 years, it is long overdue.
I would also like to express support for including the Maxwell campus of Melrose Leadership Academy on the list for the General Obligation Bond. Our high-demand, high-quality dual immersion school is in need of major facilities upgrades. We need to consider the safety of our students and community.
Melrose Leadership Academy was expanded by OUSD 5 years ago to offer more access to high-quality dual language programming to East Oakland's youth. We now operate a program that serves 650 students in a 400-capacity building in need of much repair (index level 4!) and in a separate satellite 250-capacity building that has been left entirely unmaintained by a local charter school. We have no gym, no useable kitchen, no athletic field, no shade structures, no access to water for students when they're playing, no A/C and no science labs on either of our sites. Our classrooms reach up to 110 degrees and kids and teachers are too hot and uncomfortable to focus on learning. We have a robust newcomer and bilingual special ed program that needs additional classrooms to grow into so we can continue to serve East Oakland's most vulnerable youth. We cannot even maintain our current program without additional space! Please approve this item and keep MLA as a priority. Thank you.
I am a parent of two children at Melrose Leadership Academy (MLA) and support the bond and prioritizing money for improving facilities at MLA. This school has a proven track record. According to OUSD CORE Data, the students are growing at one of the fastest rates of any school in Oakland. The school has outgrown its site and is unable to accommodate the massive demand for its programming from families district-wide. The facilities have aged. The classrooms have inadequate cooling, and the outdated electrical system can not handle the fans needed in every room to make them habitable. There are no science labs for the middle school, no gym to accommodate sports and it is not safe in the event of an earthquake. The school community works diligently to support the programs to enable the school to thrive. However, we can only do so much. Please help our children and the staff of MLA focus on teaching and learning by improving these very outdated and unsafe facilities.
As a mother of an MLA student and a long time resident of Oakland, I urge the board that MLA secure the funds required for much needed improvements. As a college student, i tutored at MLA and was amazed of how well the dual language program worked at the school. i instantly knew that if i ever had a child I would want them to go that school. Fast forward to today and my son has been enrolled at MLA since TK and is moving forward to 1st grade in this coming school year. MLA is a wonderful program that is helping my child grow not only academically but culturally ans socially as well. Make OUSD stronger by supporting MLA and expanding and enriching educational opportunities for bilingual / bicultural students. MLA needs OUSD support to bring back the MLA community in one place rather than the separation of the school into two locations. Please help our TK-8 thrive together!
Our second of three boys is starting kindergarten at MLA this year. We love the community and social awareness that MLA provides. We think it is so important that for continuity sake the students are able to stay on the same campus for their entire education at MLA. We strongly support leaving MLA on the project list.
I am a teacher at CCPA and a parent of 2 OUSD students. I am also very proud of the work CCPA is doing to support the students we serve in our community. I support the bond to be used to support the expansion of CCPA. CCPA began a process of doubling our student body from 6th through 12th grade. By 2022 we will lack the facilities to serve our students. Help us avoid overcrowding and support the community at CCPA.
I am a parent of two children at the Melrose Leadership Academy. MLA has outgrown its aging facility and needs to remain on the project funding list as proposed.
As parents of a student in OUSD's Melrose Leadership Academy (MLA), we very much support including our school in the proposed bond funding. Our facilities are in strong need of upgrading, and because enrollment in our school has been growing so much, our community is now split across two different sites. Bond funding would enable us to re-unite the school in its main location and upgrade the facilities to provide a better learning environment for our students. Thank you for your consideration, Katie Hern, Parent, Oakland resident, and college professor
I support this.