Four years, three principals, two failed bonds and one hardship school later, Bear Creek has managed to add four measly portables. A pool? Not a chance. A theater? Heck no. Rain gutters? FORGET IT.
Bear Creek was the recipient of the Digital High School grant this month, which will provide the school with over $700,000 for technology in the next three years. In the fall, Bear Creek will be completely rigged with fiber-optics lines for Internet and Ethernet use.
In the next two years, computers and other equipment will be added to every classroom.
Finally Bear Creek is moving in a positive educational direction. With luck, all graduates of Bear Creek will be computer literate in a couple of years.
Sure, the students will be crammed 40 to a room and have no place to swim or act, but at least they will have a concept of what a computer is and how to use it.
After the failed bonds, LUSD is going ahead with plans to build a fourth high school anyway. While this will eventually ease overcrowding, it will suck up all the funding to the district.
Having two unfinished high schools in the district would ease overcrowding, but without the passage of a bond, the education level will not improve much.
Instead of using funds to eventually build a fourth high school, the district should finish Bear Creek first. That way at least students will be getting a real education while being packed into classrooms like sardines.
The Class of 2000 had high hopes of what their campus would look like on graduation day, but Bear Creek is just as unfinished as it was when it opened its doors ten years ago.
Students have to share books and desks, the swim teams are bussed to Tokay for practice and games, and the drama department shares an elementary school cafeteria with the cheer squads.
If it were not for Gary Podesto, the football teams would likely still be playing their home games at the Grape Bowl, and if it were not for Sunrise Little League, the varsity baseball field would not exist.
And if it were not for the DHS grant, Bear Creek would still have classrooms with no computers.
The Bruin Voice would like to extend a huge thank you to the community for its contributions to a campus that LUSD has seemingly all but ignored. Now if only the community would reach out its heart one more time and pass a bond measure to clean up the mess LUSD students have been left with, Bear Creek may become a place where students can do more than learn from a shared textbook, sit at a shared desk, act in a shared cafeteria, and swim in a shared pool. If only the community would give Bear Creek an identity of its own.