A major goal of FUSD’s Long-Term Facilities Plan is to ease overcrowding at elementary schools, and each project involves converting existing junior high schools into middle schools by adding 6th grade to existing programs for 7th and 8th graders. The conversion process can result in student body increases of over 70 percent, requiring significant demolition and new construction, onsite layout and circulation reconfiguration, and campus-wide modernization programs to support the new capacities.

PlaceWorks is performing Phase I ESAs as well as EIRs for each conversion project. As part of these efforts, PlaceWorks has coordinated closely with City of Fremont engineering staff on local preferred approaches to CEQA-based transportation analyses and with regional transportation agencies pending exceedance of regional commute hour trip-generation thresholds. The locations of the existing schools in Fremont’s well-established residential neighborhoods requires attentive construction-based noise and air quality analyses, which PlaceWorks is performing in-house. We are also completing our specially-designed Geologic and Environmental Hazards Assessment, a comprehensive checklist report from sections of the Education Code, Public Resources Code, Government Code, and Title 5 that will allow FUSD to qualify for state matching funds.