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This year’s return from winter break was unlike any other for Cesar Chavez Ravenswood Middle School. At drop-off, families no longer faced construction fences. Instead, students walked along a red carpet into their newly renovated campus.
“I’m watching the joy of the people dropping off their children,” Principal Cristian Miley grinned.
In March 2022, the Ravenswood City School District began a $50 million renovation project to modernize the middle school campus, the single largest new capital project in the district’s history. Since then, half the campus has been closed to its 567 students during construction. Class was held in 30-year-old portables.
Finally, Miley is proud to have “the nicest school in the county.” Two new buildings are home to a new media center, classrooms, and student services offices. Bigger rooms mean more opportunities for group work and less noise, sixth grade math teacher Harriet Huang said.
For the first time, there is a dedicated space for the school nurse. Behind the school, new courtyards and play structures, open to the community, are being developed. Even small upgrades, like water fountains with filters, can have a big effect on the feeling of the space, the school’s coordinator of operations, Kim Cheadle said.
Cheadle walks through the redesigned airy courtyard smiling, greeting students who say hello. She spent her winter break getting the campus ready for their return. Cheadle, like her parents before her, attended Cesar Chavez Ravenswood Middle. Still a part of the community years later, she sees how new physical spaces can shape student experiences.
With the renovation comes an expectation that students who aren’t used to new things learn to take care of their spaces, Cheadle explained. She chuckles when one sixth grader says the teachers are stricter in the new classrooms.
“I went to school here and nothing was ever new,” Cheadle said. “(I’m) just trying to hold them accountable. They got to know this is our little city, and, yes, we’ve gone through some things, but we are conquering.”
‘(I’m) just trying to hold them accountable. They got to know this is our little city, and, yes, we’ve gone through some things, but we are conquering.’
Kim Cheadle, Ravenswood middle school’s coordinator of operations
Improvements like newly installed classroom technology and air conditioning, which many don’t have at home, helped contribute to what Miley described as a “palpable positive energy” after the school’s reopening.
“The kids felt so good about the space that it translated into how they were engaging,” Miley said. After school, even kids who seemed not to care at the grand opening began to open up, he remembers. “They’re walking by me during that first week like, ‘Dr. Miley, our school is so dope!'”
Many view the renovation as not just an improvement for the school, but for the wider community. In an area where many families can see the economic disparities between their district and neighboring Palo Alto, Miley believes that Ravenswood’s new campus proves that its historically underserved community deserves new things, too.
“The culmination of this project right now is something that I think is going to really bolster and inspire this community to feel supported, to feel like they matter, and to feel like people are truly putting their money where their mouth is,” he said.