Completion of new Calexico High classroom building celebrated
CALEXICO — Completion of a new, two-story classroom building at Calexico High School was celebrated Tuesday morning with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
In attendance were Calexico Unified School District administrators and trustees, as well as representatives from the high school itself.
Teachers have yet to move into the building, which contains 16 classrooms and is fully equipped with modern furnishing, wiring and technology equipment.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the building occurred on Dec. 3, 2019.
The state-of-the-art building will be used for English classes for all grade levels — underclassmen on the first floor and upperclassmen on the second.
The general student population will use the staircases to navigate the building. The building’s elevator will be used only by teachers, staff and students who have authorization.
The building has the capacity for 524 students.
Each classroom has an approximately 85-inch monitor. The desks in each class come in two sizes. These, along with the chairs, can be further adjusted as necessary.
All classrooms on the second floor have special skylights installed that make use of natural sunlight to illuminate the room, helping hold down electrical costs when the sun is out.
The amount of light that comes through these skylights can be controlled.
Between any two classrooms in the building is a teacher work room
they share in common. These work rooms are rooms that teachers can enter to collaborate and talk to their neighboring colleague.
CHS principal Gabrielle Williams-Ballesteros said that, during her eight years as a history teacher, she would’ve loved to have one of these teacher work rooms.
“It’s not only the collab- oration between students, but it’s also the collaboration between teachers,” Williams-Ballesteros said.
The new building sits where the school’s former staff parking lot was. Staff parking has been moved to the front of the school on Encinas Avenue.
New parking lots have been installed on each side of the new building. Security cameras have been installed on the light posts in these lots.
A new full-sized soccer field is being installed on the right side of the new building.
The drive-thru area where parents pick up students at the school’s front entrance, known as Circle Drive, has also been redone.
A new pedestrian pathway has been added from the sidewalk on Encinas to the school’s front entrance, which gives pedestrians a safe walking path as they go through Circle Drive.
Those in attendance Tuesday also received a tour of the school’s modernized culinary arts building.
The modernization was completed in June 2020.
“The culinary arts facility gives our students access to an incredible state-of-the-art facility, which is, by far, one of the best facilities in the state,” CUSD Superintendent Carlos R. Gonzales said.
During Tuesday’s tour, Fernando Nuñez, the school’s culinary instructor, showed off the 4,960-square-foot facility and what new equipment and tools his students will be using once they return to campus.
The facility’s new refrigerator and freezer will allow the high school’s culinary program to do something it has never been able to do before: accept food donations from local businesses and farmers.
“This class is pretty expensive when it comes to supplies,” Nuñez said.
The school district is now working on another new, two-story classroom building, which will be built next to Circle Drive.
This new building (Building B) will have 12 classrooms. It will complement the design of the completed 16-classroom building and is scheduled to be completed by July 30, Gonzales reported.
Seven trailer classrooms currently sit where Building B will be constructed.
These trailers will be relocated on campus and will remain in use.
The two new buildings, the parking lot renovations and the culinary arts building modernization were all funded through Measure V bond funds. Measure V funds were also applied to the parking lot project the school’s football field. That project was finished in August 2019.
Gonzales, on behalf of the CUSD, thanked the community of Calexico for its trust in passing the bond in 2016.
“This is the result of that trust,” Gonzales said. “What a legacy this is leaving for our community.”