Cool Our Schools OUSD is a movement, it's not a non-profit or organized group. Efforts are fueled on a volunteer basis from concerned parents, teachers, and community members. A lot has happened behind the scenes to make progress, and we realize we should have updated this website sooner!
We'll do a better job moving forward.
The OUSD school board officially voted to issue $385M of General Obligations Facilities Bond (Measure Y) - This means the $8M allocated for heat mitigation in classrooms is officially available!
OUSD has begun the process to install thermometers within OUSD classrooms. We have requested information on how the public can access temperature data, and are waiting to hear back.
The draft Facilities Master Plan was released. Although many parts of the plan would impact progress on classroom temperatures, section 4.12 (starting on page 77) shows the feedback from the community was heard and integrated into this plan.
The Facilities Committee reviewed the Facilities Master Plan. We attended this meeting and left e-comments to make sure that leadership was aware of how fast Alameda Unified is working to implement passive cooling to cool classrooms, to inquire what progress has been made towards making similar progress in OUSD this summer, and to share our voices on the future of the Master Plan. We recieved no answers or clarification on summer projects or how the $8M allocated to heat abatement in Measure Y will be spent.
Preston Thomas and four members of his facilities team, including JaQuan Cornish, (our favorite project manager) came to Sequoia to see firsthand what had been done, to talk about next steps for Sequoia, and to talk about how this could be scaled district wide. Overall, the meeting was positive and collaborative. There were no specific follow-up steps agreed to, although comments from OUSD leadership seemed to indicate that if the Measure Y bonds were issued this winter/spring, work could happen to improve classroom temperatures as early as this summer.
In November, Facilities Leadership including Pranita Ranbhase (Executive Director, Facilities Planning) came to Sequoia's PTO community meeting to discuss Facilities Planning processes district-wide. At the meeting, the Sequoia community made it clear to the Facilities Team that although we understand the amount of work and strategy they put into facilities planning, it is unacceptable that so little progress has been made to solve this issue.
In December, the Facilities Committee held a session with all board members invited (all were present except Hutchinson) to discuss the Facilities Master Plan. No draft Plan was presented. However, we still advocated that this plan spread investment across all schools to fix egregious problems such as classroom temperatures.