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The Pleasanton school board will be looking to approve one of three different elementary school boundary adjustment scenarios and align the middle school boundaries with the elementary school during Thursday’s board meeting.
Back in the fall of 2020, the Pleasanton Unified School District Board of Trustees decided to not continue with plans to build a tenth elementary school which was originally listed in the $270 million Measure I1 bond project list that voters passed in 2016.
According to Thursday’s staff report, that decision was made due to declining enrollment and financial considerations.
Instead, the board directed staff to develop a plan that would adjust the elementary school boundaries to address enrollment imbalances and student overflow issues.
Staff had begun that work in the summer and fall of 2021 before putting the process on pause in order to address the city’s Housing Element update and to also receive post-COVID enrollment projections.
Then last summer, staff relaunched their efforts by assembling a Boundary Technical Committee and a larger stakeholder committee of parents, teacher association representatives, administrators and city representation.
“Multiple meetings were held, and three scenarios were developed,” according to the staff report. “During this process, we discovered that modifying the elementary school boundaries also impacts the middle school boundaries, resulting in needed adjustments to both boundaries, so they align with each other.”
The Board of Trustees will now be choosing one of those three boundary adjustment scenarios on Thursday — district staff are recommending that the board go with the fourth scenario.
In each scenario, students at Lydiksen, Donlon and Fairlands Elementary Schools will be fed into Hart Middle School, students at Walnut Grove, Alisal, and Mohr Elementary Schools will feed into Harvest Park Middle School and students at Hearst, Valley View, and Vintage Hills Elementary Schools will feed into Pleasanton Middle School.
The only difference between each of the scenarios, according to the staff presentation from Thursday’s agenda, is the amount of outgoing elementary school students being assigned to their new middle school boundaries.
That phasing into the new boundaries will also be part of an implementation plan that the board will also be reviewing and possibly accepting on Thursday.
Some pieces of that implementation plan include assigning transitional kindergarten and kindergarten students to their new residential schools beginning July 1 and getting future sixth-graders to attend the middle school in their new boundaries by next year.
According to the staff report, staff will be studying the high school boundaries over the next year before they can present a plan to the board in 2024.
The board’s open-session meeting is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Thursday (March 23). Read the full agenda here.
In other business:
District staff will be asking the school board to green light a project that would develop new outdoor spaces for both the Horizon Early Education Center and STEAM Preschool sites.
Both of the early learning programs, which are currently located at the PUSD district headquarters on Bernal Avenue, had received supplemental funding last month in the amount of $295,500 as part of an amendment to the Inclusive Early Education Expansion Program grant that the district had previously received.
The new funding was meant for the “expansion and increased access to quality early education opportunities for children with and without disabilities.”
“At both locations, improvements to the outdoor play space are needed to ensure accessibility and appropriate adaptive outdoor equipment,” according to the district staff report. “As a new California State Preschool Program, our contract mandates that 10% of our enrolled children are children with exceptional needs.”
Ross Recreation Equipment, a playground equipment supplier in Santa Rosa, has already developed designs for the proposed outdoor play spaces at both sites, according to the report.
“The designs use the existing outdoor footprint, avoids major renovation, and includes equipment that can be removed and reinstalled at another location,” the staff report states.
The fact that they can be reinstalled is essential given that the district plans on moving both programs to Harvest Park Middle School where all early learning programs will be part of one unified Early Learning Center.
The total cost for this new outdoor spaces project will be about $197,160 but will again be fully funded by the Inclusive Early Education Expansion Program grant.
* After nearly a year since PUSD acquired property at the Arroyo Center to serve as the new district headquarters, the school board is finally set to approve a construction bid that would officially kick off the transition into the new space.
On July 14, 2022, the Board of Trustees approved a resolution authorizing Superintendent David Haglund to acquire the two-building property located on 5758 and 5794 West Las Positas Blvd.
The first phase of the purchase process, which was also completed on July 14, provided the board with initial design ideas and preliminary pricing plans to assist the district in obtaining cost estimates for the tenant improvements.
In total, the purchase of the complex, also known as the Arroyo Center, will cost $23,480,261 for the district to acquire from the current owner, ECI Four Arroyo LLC.
The district will keep three acres of the current district headquarters on the edge of downtown Pleasanton, at 4645 and 4665 Bernal Ave., while the rest of the seven acres will be put up for sale.
That property was recently estimated in value between $31 million and $34 million, which would help pay off the newly purchased Arroyo Center.
The district also approved an updated lease agreement during the July 14 meeting for the sole tenant currently renting a portion of the Arroyo Center, electron microscopy firm Gatan Inc. — which would make the district the landlord of the lease going forward after escrow closes on the purchase.
The company will begin paying the district about $80,000 starting next year every month from now until 2027.
Since then, DSK Architects, the firm hired by the district for $267,718, have been completing construction documents, which included tenant improvement layouts and contents, agency approvals, bidding and construction plans.
Of the many construction bidders, staff is now recommending that the board approve an agreement with JD General Construction, Inc. for the amount of $5,325,630.00.
According to the staff report, JD General Construction has successfully completed work for the district in the past and their bid is within the acceptable range of the district’s estimate for the tenant improvement project.
“Pending the plan approval by the city of Pleasanton the week of March 20, 2023, the construction period is anticipated between March 28, 2023 through early July 2023,” according to the staff report. “The district will subsequently have furniture delivered and installed, and will begin moving in July 2023 before the start of school opening in August 2023.”
