This month, Proposition YY bond funds will allow for improvements to be made on the UC High campus.

  According to Principal Jeff Olivero, there have been a series of improvements that have been carried out throughout the past several years at UC High. There is now a stadium with astroturf, new lights, a remodeled upper field, and an upgraded counselors’ office. All of these have been a result of proposition funds and site modernization funds. Olivero added that a new digital phone system will be coming this summer.

   The next project for UC High involves the Child Development Center. According to Olivero, the Child Development Center should be getting remodeled sometime during the spring of 2020. They are using new funding to upgrade and overall  improve the school’s Child Development Facilities.

      According to Olivero, the idea is to bring schools up to date and ready them for the twenty-first century, to last another 20 years.

    According to the San Diego Unified District website, the funding for the improvements come from two sources. One source is the Site Modernization Fund, which is funding from the state. The District can apply to the state and obtain these funds which are then commingled with the District’s money to do site improvements. The other source is the different Propositions that citizens voted in over the years, which are all funding initiatives to upgrade facilities at schools (sandiegounified.org).

   Olivero stated, “The voters have been voting in a series of these different Propositions over the past 12 years. Most recently, the voters voted in Proposition YY — which is ‘huge dollars.’ Eventually, those bonds will become available to start spending money on schools.”

    “Now that Proposition YY has passed, the District is looking to build new facilities at all of the high school campuses. They’re talking about the new Child Development Center, a new Theater Arts facility, as well as an auxiliary gym,” said Olivero.

   According to Olivero, an auxiliary gym is a gymnasium with no bleachers and no score board. It is just a gymnasium facility that has basketball courts and volleyball courts for varsity, junior varsity and physical education classes to use.  According to Olivero, the theater and gym will not be built until several years from now. Olivero also added that the new theater will seat 500 in comparison to to our 260 that we have now.

   According to Child Development Teacher Antonina Salemi, “Next door, our space is very small. We are hoping to apply for a license as an official licensed Child Care Center in the future. Right now, if we were to apply for a license, we wouldn’t be able to obtain one with the current setup we have in there. The square footage is not large enough and the outdoor play space is not large enough. There are little details that would be needed to be modified in order to qualify for that license. We do want to qualify so that we can show the community that we are a quality center, that way parents will want to keep participating in our program, bringing their little ones here.”

   “The neatest part of the modernization is that the center is going to be more based on the Reggio Emilia Philosophy, which comes from Italy. It is all about neutral colors and a home environment in child care. There will be plants and dim lighting that is supposed to be soothing for both adults and children. There will also be lots of plants, gardening, pets in the classroom, things like that,” explained Salemi.