The MHS extension at the Innovation Campus is tentatively scheduled to open in the fall of 2024, Executive Director of Learning and Innovation Priti Johari said. The extension will expand career pathway programs for high schoolers and alleviate overcrowding at MHS, Johari said. The facility will also house Calaveras Hills High School, the Milpitas Adult Education Program, a community college extension, and the district offices, she added.
The Innovation Campus will be completed in three phases; the target date for completion of the third phase is fall 2025, Superintendent Cheryl Jordan said.
According to the MUSD website, the district successfully passed Bond Measure AA in 2018, which allocated $66.8 million to develop the Innovation Campus. However, the district still needs $25 million to complete the Innovation Campus, the website says.
“We couldn’t predict in 2018, when we calculated the amount of money that we needed, that we were going to go through a pandemic, and there would be a gas shortage and drought and all these other things that drove the costs up more than 50%,” School Board President Chris Norwood said.
MUSD has been working to cover these additional costs by talking to local legislators like Ro Khanna and asking corporations for donations, Norwood said. The district is not very interested in asking taxpayers for more funding when it could be used for other resources, he added.
“Currently, we have applied for matching bond dollars from the state, and we expect to get around $12 to $13 million,” Jordan said. “The board and I have been working very diligently to get business partners as well as institutes of higher education interested in supporting and becoming partners. For example, one is KLA. This is the third year of their three-year agreement and they’ve done $750,000 in exchange for naming rights of the STEAM lab.”
There will be a capacity for around 500 MHS students at the Innovation Campus, Norwood said. Other programs at the campus include an early education research center and a workforce development center, he added. The Innovation Campus will focus on local-industry-related programming like manufacturing, environmental science, biotechnology, and virtual design, he said.
“We’re looking to partner with businesses in the city to provide internships, apprenticeships, summer jobs, job fairs, and those types of things for our MUSD students,” Norwood said.
Teachers from MHS will relocate to the Innovation Campus upon completion, though details are still being planned out, Norwood added.
“We don’t have to hire because we have teachers at Milpitas High School, so to alleviate some of the traffic (on Escuela Parkway) or some of the overcrowding there, those teachers would move over to the new campus,” Norwood said.
The Innovation Campus will offer facilities such as game design and coding technology and multiple well-equipped science labs, Johari said. The district is exploring bringing the MHS Engineering Academy to the Innovation Campus, she added.
“We actually are working with Evergreen Community College to develop an advanced manufacturing pathways program,” Jordan said. “That would be very beneficial because, in our own backyard, 30% of the jobs are in advanced manufacturing. For example, that’s Flex, Cisco, KLA, and TDK.”
An MHS student enrolled at the Innovation Campus might attend all their classes at the campus, or they may need to commute between the Innovation Campus and the main MHS campus, Johari said.
“We’ve been talking about how we could create a shuttle system so that we would have a shuttle that goes back and forth,” Jordan said.
The district has conducted meetings with Jordan, Milpitas Middle College High School Principal Karisa Scott, Calaveras Hills High School Principal Carl Stice, MHS Associate Principal Skyler Draeger, other administrators, teachers, and student leaders from the MUSD middle schools and high schools about the goals of the Innovation Campus and what programming it should offer, Johari said. For example, the district has conducted empathy interviews with around 10 high school students to learn what has supported and inhibited their interest in STEAM fields, she said.
“Something that we know across our district is that we want to focus on creating more equitable outcomes for all of our students,” Johari said. “Right now, there’s still a disparity in terms of outcomes and access, in particular to STEM careers, for our African American and Latino students.”
Calaveras Hills High School, Adult Education, and a few district offices have remained at the Innovation Campus site even during ongoing construction, and the other programs will be integrated in phases, Norwood said. However, construction has not been on schedule, he added.
“COVID-19 has slowed down the supply chain,” Norwood said. “It has slowed down access to some materials, so we had to wait for those materials. Plus, we just had that three weeks of rain (in January), which is going to probably slow down the project as well because construction crews are designed to work every day.”
Jordan is excited about the unique approach to education that the Innovation Campus will take, she said.
“We want our learners to be able to go into businesses to actually apply what they’re learning,” Jordan said. “We would also like to have business partners who are co-teaching or guest teaching in classes, so we’re really trying to think outside of the box and make this something that is an exciting place for people.”