New Quad Built With Student-Raised Funds

For the last eight years, Colina Middle School students have gone door to door and hit up friends and relatives to buy magazine subscriptions to raise money for a new gymnasium on the Thousand Oaks campus.

At a dedication ceremony this afternoon, the students will know the satisfaction of a job well done--but it won’t be a new gym they will dedicate.

Rather, they will celebrate a $50,000 outdoor quad, built entirely with money raised by students.

Tyler Clark, co-advisor to the school’s 72-member Associated Student Body, said the students began their fund-raising drive with hopes of building a gym, but changed their plans last year.

“We realized it would be too difficult to raise the money [for a gym],” Clark said.

Fortunately, however, the middle school won’t have to go without one: In November, voters in the Conejo Valley Unified School District approved an $88-million bond measure that includes money to build gyms at all four of the district’s middle schools.