Ravenswood credits its transformation to community’s faith in its school district

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For generations, public schools in East Palo Alto and Menlo Park’s Belle Haven neighborhood were in dire need of renovations. Roofs leaked when it rained and heaters broke in the winter. These days, Ravenswood City School District campuses boast newly constructed buildings and fields, and are covered in greenery. 

Over the last decade, Ravenswood successfully passed four bond measures totalling over $200 million that have funded the renovation of three of its schools, with another underway. The key to winning votes is “building community trust,” said Superintendent Gina Sudaria.

Ravenswood has seen an overwhelmingly positive response to bond measures on ballots in the past decade. Starting in 2016, Measure H received 87% voter approval and the most recent, Measure A on the June 2 ballot, won with nearly 70% in semi-official results. Both needed 55% approval to pass. 

District officials said asking the community for money again and again is nerve-racking, but try to ask for no more than is necessary and make sure the promised improvements are evident. In the past four years, the district has been able to modernize and rebuild three of its four campuses. 

Transforming aging classrooms

The start of the district’s transformation began with the 2015 Facilities Master Plan, a blueprint that mapped out a multiyear process to evaluate Ravenswood’s campuses and identify improvements for stronger educational programs and safer schools. 

But the estimated total for renovations was costly, adding up to over $332 million, with an expectation that inflation would increase costs in the following years. Dstrict officials knew they had to act quickly. 

Many of Ravenswood’s facilities had not been renovated since the 1950s, said Assistant Superintendent Will Eger. Campuses were riddled with chain link fences, blacktops were cracked, buildings lacked ventilation and play areas would get flooded by rain, he said. 

Sudaria described the old classrooms as “uninspiring,” requiring teachers to put in a lot of work to transform their spaces into a joyful learning environment. 

Voters in 2016 passed Ravenswood’s first bond, Measure H for $26 million, which largely funded the “Safe, Warm, and Dry” project to replace roofs and locks at all sites, according to Eger. 

In 2018, nearly 70% of voters approved a $70 million bond with Measure S, primarily the renovation of Cesar Chavez Ravenswood Middle School. Another $110 million bond passed in 2022 with 71% approval and earlier this month, a $70 million bond was approved in the June primary. 

Construction on the middle school campus began in March 2022 and was completed in less than two years, with students returning to new classrooms in January 2024. 

This school year, Los Robles-Ronald McNair Academy reopened in November 2025 and two months later, Belle Haven Elementary School welcomed students back to its entirely rebuilt campus in January 2026. 

The district has brought in about $5.5 million in annual revenue from leasing seven of its properties. According to Eger, this translates to more than $3,000 per student, closing the funding gap between Ravenswood and the rest of San Mateo County schools. 

Its current lease sites include two future affordable housing developments, which will offer teacher housing at the former Flood School site and the district office at 2120 Euclid Ave. in East Palo Alto. Other sites are leased to childcare providers such as All Five, Kidango and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative-backed private school, The Primary School, which is shuttering this summer. 

Building trust and community

Former Ravenswood school board member Sharifa Wilson said when the people of East Palo Alto are asked what word they would use to describe their city, “they say family.” 

“It’s a community that supports one another, that puts its arms around one another, and so the idea of going out and asking for money to do this for our children was something that I felt was going to be very successful, and was proven correct,” said Wilson, who also served on the East Palo Alto City Council for 12 years. 

Eger explained that people had wanted to see changes in the school district for a long time, but there wasn’t enough trust in the school board and district leadership to pull it off. 

Sudaria, who joined the district as interim superintendent in 2018, said an alignment between the board and district leadership is necessary to prioritize and strategize the level of improvements Ravenswood has been able to achieve. 

“When Gina (Sudaria) says ‘This is the right thing to do,’ people listen, and all that positivity is a snowball effect,” said Eger. This level of confidence in the district comes from Sudaria’s years of experience and presence in the community, he added. 

Financial transparency and clarity are necessary to build the trust, Sudaria added.

“The community wants what’s best for its kids, and that’s why we also want to do our due diligence of being very fiscally responsible,” she said. “Will (Eger) and the team have done a great job making sure that our dollars go exactly to what we say it’s going to do and move quickly…and complete projects, if not close to budget, some of them under budget.”

Trust also comes from consistently interacting with local residents and driving change in schools that are accessible to the greater community, Sudaria said. This includes building affordable housing, hosting community events for the Super Bowl and World Cup on Los Robles’ new field and allowing everyone to benefit from district improvements.

Across the district’s new campuses, Sudaria said she can feel a stronger sense of pride from students and staff. 

New campuses are fitted with new technology,  building have large windows for natural lighting and new green spaces enable outdoor learning. Los Robles Ronald McNair Academy’s new campus, with over 100 trees of 25 unique species, was even recognized as California’s first accredited arboretum on a K-12 campus. 

“It is extremely rewarding and fulfilling to see that the kids have these nice, clean, bright environments to work in,” said Wilson. “It’s like shining a big light onto something that was dark and dreary.”

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