Wood Middle School Construction and Modernization

Demolition will begin on the Wood Campus in July 2024. Construction will take place from July 2024 to July 2026.  

A design team comprised of architects, Wood teachers and administrators, and parents met 13 times to collaborate on the type of campus and buildings that would work best for the Wood community. 

AUSD supports safe routes to schools and the new design for Grand Street. We are currently planning to build a new driveway that will go from Grand to Otis Avenue to provide access for service trucks and emergency vehicles, as well as to a new athletic field that we hope to eventually build on the Lum campus.  To encourage biking and walking to school, we will try keeping the gates to the new driveway closed during drop off and pick up times and ask families that drive students to school to drop them off  along Grand Avenue.  

Little League rents two fields from the City of Alameda at Rittler Park. These fields will not be affected during construction. The league also rents two fields from Alameda Unified that are adjacent to Wood Middle School. Only one of these fields will be available during the Wood construction, but it’s likely that the league will able to rent another field from the City. After construction, it’s possible that the current Wood School field can be reconfigured into a muti-use field that accommodates baseball, but the design team will need to decide what configuration of fields will work best for WMS students. 

AUSD will engage in a CEQA process – called a “Mitigated Negative Declaration” – for the WMS project beginning in September. That CEQA process will focus on the Wood campus project and include an environmental review, traffic study, and a cultural resources assessment. The CEQA process includes a 30-day public review period during which community members, public agencies, and other organizations can review and provide comments specifically on the environmental aspects of the project. We will provide ample notifications about this review period and how the public can participate. 

AUSD moved students and staff out of Lum Elementary School in June 2017, as analyses of the soil at the site showed that the land under and around the buildings was at high risk for significant liquefaction settlement in the event of a major earthquake. Analyses also showed that the buildings' foundations were not sufficient to withstand that liquefaction. That meant that if there is a strong earthquake, the buildings could sink and partially collapse. 

Because the buildings cannot be used for educational purposes, they have sat unused for the last six years. The district now needs to use the campus to build a temporary campus of portable buildings to house first Wood Middle School and then Otis Elementary School while their campuses are under construction. 

Demolition will begin in November 2023. Portable classrooms will be installed and ready for instruction by August 2024. 

The seismic risk at Lum resulted from a combination of liquifiable soils and inappropriate foundations of the existing buildings.  The portable classrooms we are providing for the temporary campus will have foundations that are appropriate for the soil conditions - as determined by the State Division of the Architect.  In addition, temporary classrooms are significantly smaller and lighter than permanent classroom buildings, which affects the seismic risk.

The seismic risk at Lum resulted from a combination of liquifiable soils and inappropriate foundations.  The portables we are providing for the temporary campus will have foundations that are appropriate for the soil conditions, and the State Division of the Architect will review all plans. 

AUSD hopes to construct a new athletic field for Alameda High School on the Lum campus. Encinal High School is receiving a new field on its campus in 2024; the AHS field would provide amenities the school cannot provide either on its campus or at Thompson Field (including a full-sized track,). 

Lum Elementary did not move to temporary classrooms for a number of reasons, including:

1. Other AUSD elementary schools had room for the Lum students

2. Temporary classrooms ("portables") are expensive, as are the portable bathrooms, sinks, and other facilities that would have been required by the school.

3. Temporary classrooms are not a good solution for permanent teaching and learning. In the long run, AUSD is slowly but surely replacing portables with permanent classroom buildings.