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Members of the Pleasanton Unified School District executive cabinet and other district officials pose for photos during the Foothill High School campus renovation project groundbreaking ceremony on June 5. (Photo by Christian Trujano) 
A recent rendering shows the design option for the new Amador Valley High School theater that was OK’d during a June 4 facilities committee meeting. (Image courtesy of PUSD) 
In May, construction workers were on track to finish laying down the new turf at Pleasanton Middle School as part of the middle school field renovation projects, which are funded by Measure I. 
A rendering of the new transitional kindergarten classroom building slated to be built at Donlon Elementary School. Construction is already underway and is scheduled for completion in early 2026. (Image taken from district documents) 
PUSD Trustee Mary Jo Carreon (left) and Deputy Superintendent of Educational Services Ed Diolazo (right) smash Foothill High School gym lockers to celebrate the first phase of the school’s campus renovation project, which includes demolishing the locker rooms. (Photo by Christian Trujano) 
A rendering of the new transitional kindergarten classroom building slated to be built at Fairlands Elementary School. Construction is already underway and is scheduled for completion in early 2026. (Image taken from district documents) 
A side view shows the proposed design for the new Amador Valley High School theater, which is part of the larger campus renovation plans. (Image courtesy of PUSD) 
A rendering of the new transitional kindergarten classroom building slated to be built at Valley View Elementary School. (Image taken from district documents) 
Construction workers contracted out by the district work on laying down the new synthetic field and other improvements in May as part of the Pleasanton Middle School field renovation project, which is funded by the 2022 voter-approved Measure I general obligation bond. The district predicts that the project will be completed by fall. (Photo by Christian Trujano) 
A rendering shows the proposed design for the new Amador Valley High School main gym, which would be funded by Measure I. (Image courtesy of PUSD)
With summer vacation currently underway throughout the Pleasanton Unified School District, the empty school sites give construction workers the chance to begin and move forward several facility repair and renovation projects — most notably the campus renovation project at Foothill High School, which broke ground two weeks ago.
Construction at Pleasanton Middle School for a new synthetic turf field and track is also scheduled for completion by this fall.
Last month, the Pleasanton Weekly sat down with several top district staff members who lauded many facility improvement projects that were funded by Measure I1, a $270 million bond measure that voters approved in 2016. District cabinet members like Ahmad Sheikholeslami, assistant superintendent of business services, also praised PUSD’s design progress on various recent projects that are funded by Measure I, a $395 million general obligation bond that voters approved more recently in 2022.
“Basically from here on it’s going to be construction, design, planning, opening,” he said. “For the next five years it’s going to be (an) incredibly busy time.”
However, over the past year the district has faced more criticism from community members on how PUSD received public input during the design phase for a couple of these projects, with parents from Valley View Elementary School more notably calling out the district and their school site for not including them in the decision-making process.
“I feel like it’s rushed because … they already have their plan in place for what is going to happen and they are simply trying to check the box of public notification and public input without ever actually truly considering what is being said and is presented to them,” Brittany Hasselbrock, president of the parent-teacher association at Valley View, told the Weekly.
Over the past decade, PUSD has been using Measure I1 funds to renovate and improve many of its facilities throughout all of its schools.
This included new fencing around various schools, the complete rebuilding of Lydiksen Elementary School, new classrooms at Hart Middle School and Amador Valley High School, and a new career technical education building at Foothill High School. Other Measure I1 projects also included new air conditioning units and fire systems across all schools.
Kathy Narum, chair of the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee (CBOC), told the Weekly that a lot of those projects — while mostly unseen by the public — are extremely beneficial for the city’s student population, some of whom did not have cool air during some extremely hot days.
She also stressed that as a member of the CBOC — a committee which was set up as an independent auditor that ensures the district is appropriately spending bond money — she has seen how transparent the district is in handling the bond money.
“The money is being used in the manner that the residents, the voters, expect,” Narum said.
Now, the district is shifting its focus over the next few years on Measure I projects, which are set to bring some of the most notable changes to several school sites.
One of those marquee projects include the campus renovation projects at Foothill, which will see completely new athletic and performance arts facilities.
The dual athletic and performing arts facility project will aim to connect to the existing competition gym and completely reimagine that central part of the school with a new pathway, improved lawn seating, a new synthetic turf field and many more improvements.
“I know (from) talking with lots of students and staff that they’re very excited about this,” Foothill principal Sebastian Bull said during the June 5 groundbreaking ceremony. “They know it’s going to be a messy couple of years but they are extremely excited about the finished product.”
Over the summer, the construction team will work on building interim housing for the affected programs and will begin with demolishing the locker rooms. According to Aaron Kael, executive director of facilities, construction and bond program, the project is aiming for completion in the winter of 2027.
Some of the other major Measure I projects that have been underway also include the transitional kindergarten projects where elementary schools around the city will be building additional spaces to house TK students.
According to Kael, construction is already underway for the new TK classrooms at Donlon and Fairlands elementary schools, with completion anticipated for the first quarter of 2026. The TK expansion project at Mohr Elementary School is set to begin construction this summer.
However, Valley View has been a recent point of contention during these TK expansion talks — mainly due to parents and other community members not agreeing with the fact that the school site design plans seek to move the school’s community garden.
Several community members told the Weekly they felt like the district’s overall process for coming up with these bond project designs seem to be moving a bit too fast and without much community involvement.
According to Kael, the district uses what is known as a design build delivery method where, before they start a project, the district forms a site committee that is made up of stakeholders who represent different “user groups” at the campus. Committee members, Kael said, typically include the principal, faculty, non-credentialed staff, parents and, in some cases, some form of student engagement.
The committee then meets with the district’s architects and discusses the various needs that the school would like to see addressed through these projects.
That eventually leads to a project design that is presented at a community meeting where neighbors can learn more about the project before the design goes through the facilities department meeting and then, finally, to the Board of Trustees for final approval. The idea is that the design gets refined through the community meetings and staff meetings.
But Hasselbrock, who is also a member of the CBOC and was a parent at the school, said the parents at Valley View were mostly unaware of the proposed TK expansion project because many people either don’t know about the site committees or they didn’t know about the facilities meetings.
She said she only caught wind of it at the CBOC when it was listed with the other elementary schools.
“I feel like I have been able to provide the parent population with more details given the fact that I have CBOC committee presentations available that have renderings and drawings,” Hasselbrock said.
The main issue for her was how stakeholders like herself — and the PTA which funds the garden — were not included in those initial conversations, which led to the decision of placing the new TK buildings at the school on top of where the garden has been located for years.
Kelly Cantu, former Valley View PTA president, also agreed that the PTA has put in a lot of money into the garden and that PUSD should be more considerate when making these sorts of decisions because it involved not just the PTA’s money, but parents’ money as well.
“We have to be fiscally responsible with our parents’ money for our parents to feel comfortable donating to our PTA,” Cantu said. “If the district takes away something that parents have funded … over the years, then it’s hard as a PTA for those parents to gain trust with us.”
The lack of communication issues between the district and Valley View parents also mirrors a similar issue at Amador Valley High School earlier this year where staff and community members did not agree with the original design of the school’s campus renovation project, which aims to construct the new athletic and performing arts facilities.
Kael said the district had several meetings where they asked questions about the logistics of where things should go in these new facilities and what amenities they were looking for before working with a consultant to turn those needs and requests into a design.
But during that design-build process, because the district is looking at different firms and different designs, PUSD had to keep quiet, which is why when they came out on the other side with a design, many people at Amador felt like they were left out, Kael said. He also attributed that lack of communication to the December holiday break — the original Amador renovation project design came out in January — which didn’t leave PUSD with much time to inform the public.
Diana Hasenpflug, the head athletic trainer at Amador, previously made comments to the school’s student-run newspaper, Amador Valley Today, regarding the lack of communication between the school community and the district when it came to the design of the new facilities.
She told the Weekly more recently that in the beginning, there were people in the community — including herself — who felt like their input was not being considered or didn’t know what was going on in general.
“Nobody asked them, nobody really knew what was going on within the committees because none of us were a part of (them),” Hasenpflug said.
But while certain steps in regard to the community input process might have not been communicated in the beginning, Hasenpflug said that has definitely shifted since then following a survey which the district said garnered over a thousand responses.
“When they took our feedback, they made changes,” Hasenpflug said. “For example, they’ve included the entire physical education department in these meetings … When they took our feedback, they made changes.”
“I think the engagement has really picked up,” Sheikholeslami said. “They’re meeting, they’re designing, they’re actively involved and there’s excitement there.”
However, that wasn’t the same sentiment felt at Valley View because, while the school site and district are continuing discussions about where to locate the garden, community members like Hasselbrock feel like they can’ trust the district anymore.
Hasselbrock said she feels like there is also a lack of trust between the community and the district because, at least for her, she has received inconsistent information. She said she would sit down with people and see one thing but then witness completely new information at a public meeting regarding the same issue.
“To me, why would I ever believe that what you’re saying is the truth,” Hasselbrock said. “The number of plans that I have seen and the number of location changes that have happened to the garden are absolutely crazy. And at this point … I don’t ever fully trust that we will get the garden back.”
But when The Weekly brought these concerns to Kael, he said the discussions surrounding the garden at Valley View have been an enhanced level of engagement where the a site committee specifically focused on the garden — made up of about 12 people — is working to find a comparable location.
He said while he recognizes that not everyone will be happy in all of the decisions made during many of these bond projects — one case in point is Hasenpflug’s athletic training program not being included in the new gym project — the district’s goal is to present the best information and decisions available.
One example that he pointed to was the Amador Theater.
Narum said the school’s committee really wanted to look at the theater’s historical ties to Main Street and that the latest option for the facade captures the arches, which is an architectural motif seen around the city.
She said the committee especially wanted to look at doing the facade right because of the controversy surrounding it within the community — in the past, residents have spoken up against the demolition of the theater due to wanting to preserve its historical nature.
Kael said the district also recognizes the historical significance of the theater, which is why they are including nooks inside the lobby of the theater for displays of historical elements of Amador and past performances. He also said school board trustees recently provided staff direction recently at the June 4 Facilities Committee meeting to move forward with the theater design option that includes the arches at the facade.
“Wherever something is really important to the community, we want to get as much feedback as we can possibly get so that we can do all that listening and we can try to assimilate it into an end product that is going to meet as many needs and as many desires as we can,” Kael said.
But according to Valley View community members like Hasselbrock and Cantu, they still feel like the district needs to reassess its design process in general so that they can get more input from the community, even if that means it takes longer to complete projects.
“We need to just breathe and take the time to do it right the first time,” Cantu said.
