Students arriving on campus at the start of the 2026 school year were introduced to newly constructed science classrooms in the D and E buildings. The construction of these classrooms is part of the Measure I bond which granted $197,000,000 to the Conejo Valley Unified School District [CVUSD] in 2014, to upgrade and maintain services across the district’s 31 sites.
The construction that has been in production is from a plan approved in December of 2023. This consisted of expanding the science classrooms from the original 10 to 12, with two new classrooms located in the E building. Stephen Lepire, Newbury Park High School principal, describes how this decision was made in order to accommodate the 12 science teachers at NPHS at the time, and cut down on oversized classrooms.
“We have [11 science teachers] currently on staff, and the idea was to maximize the space in the D building when there were three classrooms… [We] tried to maximize [the area], get eight bio and chem labs, and then try to have four physical science labs, which require smaller space,” Lepire said.
On Wednesday, Oct. 14, the Measure I Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee met in the CVUSD board room. Several NPHS teachers were present, and voiced their concerns regarding the outcome of the construction.
Maya Wright, NPHS Physics teacher, was one of four teachers moved to an E building classroom. Wright spoke of her concerns around the size of her new classroom at the Measure I meeting, compared to her old classroom.
“My new classroom is just 180 square feet. That’s a 25% reduction in space. That’s 25% of the room that wasn’t even built…There’s two other classrooms, E3 and E4, that are even smaller than that,” Wright said.
Jennifer Lockwood, NPHS science department chair and biology teacher, has been involved in meetings surrounding Measure I funding for the new classrooms. Lockwood described how the miscommunication occurred. While the reduction in space was outlined in the initial plans for the E building classrooms, science teachers were told by a former district member that the new classrooms were going to be larger than their original rooms. However, after measuring the classrooms herself, Wright noticed a 2 ft reduction in space from the plans to the actual building, in addition to the 25% reduction in space from her original room.
“It wasn’t until we saw [the E building classrooms] being built last year, that we knew this isn’t the same size. So the miscommunication happened sometime between the receiving of the plans and the actual implementation of construction,” Lockwood said.
According to Victor Hayek, Deputy Superintendent of CVUSD, the reduction in space occurred during the construction process, between the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning system’s lower units taking up space in the classrooms, and the discovery of a load-bearing wall in the E building.
“That [load-bearing] wall had to remain. So what they did was throw off some of the measurements for the other rooms. But from the beginning, there was no secret about it. The size of the rooms was going to be smaller than the two existing rooms,” Hayek said.
Wright described how the sizes of the E building classrooms present safety concerns when conducting labs.
“As a teacher, I need to be able to move around the room to monitor student work and help students who are struggling. In this classroom, I’m constantly stepping over backpacks, squeezing behind chairs, and struggling to find space to stand behind a student while helping them,” Wright said.
Concerns with the new buildings also extended to the removal of sinks and cabinets on both sides of the classrooms, which was seen in the original plans.
“There were sinks only on one side [in the C building], and so the designs were always to have sinks on one side [in the E building]. On that, the reason why we have the sinks on the walls that they are in the E is because of the plumbing on both sides,” Lepire said.
Lepire emphasized continuing transparency and communication through the next stages of the construction process.
“There’s always going to be continued communication and I think that the end goal is look at the first year here and then we make adjustments,” Lepire said.
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