Tehachapi school to receive summer revamps

The Tehachapi Unified School District held their regular monthly board meeting on Apr. 9. Topics of this meeting included exploring the creation of a district-wide student cell phone use policy, the official passing of the 2024-25 school year calendar and a long list of summer revamp projects happening across the district.

The TUSD 2024-25 school year will run from Aug. 14 to June 12 with eight reserved snow days. Students returning in the fall will be greeted by refreshed, repainted and remodeled campuses and classrooms due to the district’s series of upgrade projects to take place over the summer.

Cummings Valley Elementary will see freshly painted handrails, repaired laminate flooring and a brand new water fountain outside of the cafeteria that was donated by the school’s PTO. Tompkins Elementary is receiving asphalt sealing, bathroom repairs and a new coat of paint in the front office. Extensive floor replacements at Golden Hills Elementary are scheduled and among the rooms to be re-floored are the office and the newly remodeled cafeteria, which will now have matching new flooring. Golden Hills will also be altering their front entrance to be ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant.

Jacobsen Middle School is set to see landscaping on the eastern side of the campus and the removal of some old, unused lockers in favor of trophy cases. The campus will receive various ramp repairs and a floor restoration project for the gym seeks to bring it back to an acceptable condition for student use. Stucco repair is to be done on walls across Tehachapi High School over the summer, with administration preparing for the repaint the school will need in the next couple years. The Tehachapi Education Center, the base for the Tehachapi Independent Learning Academy and several after school programs such as the Boys and Girls Club, will receive a makeover of the band room. When the room is renovated, it will be available for use by the after school programs.

All schools are slated to have cameras installed at the front door in conjunction with the already existing buzzers, so staff can both remotely see and let in people. School solar projects across the district are progressing as planned.

Aside from renovations, another substantial topic of the board meeting was the use of cell phones in the classroom. Schools across the country and world are learning how to integrate and control the use of ever-advancing technology in the classroom and TUSD is one of many school districts exploring cell phone usage policies. Most board members agreed that outright banning phones would not be the right approach, but rather that the choice should reside in each teacher’s hands. A cell phone policy would seek to definitively set who has the authority to dictate cell phone usage and what the consequences of breaking the rules are. The topic will return for further consideration in future board meetings.

TUSD will hold their Classified Employee Celebration Week from May 20-24 to celebrate the district’s classified staff, such as janitors and bus drivers. California Day of the Teacher is May 8 and will coincide with TUSD’s Teacher Celebration Week happening May 6-10.

TUSD board meetings occur on the second Tuesday of the month at 5 p.m. in the Claude L. Wells Education Center located at 300 S. Robinson St., Tehachapi.