A Photo Tour of the Arts Education Center

If you've driven by in the past couple of years, you've seen the external progress of the huge, modern Arts Education Center.

Starting as a project idea under the Measure B school facilities bond, our community saw the need for a modern theater for our talented San Leandro students. Measure B passed, and now years later, we're moving in!

It all started with educators and community members coming together in planning meetings to dream big about what we would like in this building. Our students put on wonderful plays, musicals and concerts every year.

The students, and the community, deserve better than plays in a classroom, musicals in the gym and metal fold-up chairs for the audience. We decided a state-of-the-art theater was what we needed.

In addition to the theater, we knew that classrooms were also needed to make it a thriving center for arts education. We decided to move our Drama program out of its converted Home Economics classroom and into a Black Box theater/classroom. A Black Box is a small theater for teaching, rehearsals and more intimate performances. 

Our multimedia academy, the San Leandro Academy for Multimedia, was another growing program that has moved around over the years from portables and then into the old shop building. As another goal for Measure B was to renovate the shops, we decided to move SLAM into the new building as well. 

This will create an important connection between theater and media that will take our performances to another level. SLAM's home in the new building will include two state-of-the-art multimedia classrooms, a television studio, two sound recording rooms and two classrooms. 

The theater is equipped with remote controlled HD cameras that can film the performances on stage and send the video to the SLAM control room to be mixed and streamed live on the Internet.

We are entering a new era at San Leandro High where our arts programs will be showcased in a venue we can all be proud of. We thank the people of San Leandro for passing Measure B.

Below, you can see many of the photos I have taken over the years as the Arts Education Center went from a parking lot to what it is now.

Stay tuned to Patch for more information and images when we are able to bring our students into their new classrooms, theater, and television studio for the first time.