Guadalupe Oak Grove Park Outdoor Classroom

While there are many trails in the Santa Clara Valley, none connect the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Diablo Range and tie the Santa Clara Valley into the Bay Area Ridge Trail, a 375-mile network of trails that unites the ridges circling the Bay Area. The Authority is helping to fund the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council’s feasibility study to consider and identify a preferred Ridge Trail alignment between Santa Teresa County Park and the Coyote Creek Trail as part of ongoing efforts to fix this South Bay “trail-gap.”

The School of Arts and Culture at MHP (SOAC) is bringing green infrastructure to a newly acquired property. La Placita is across the street from the Mexican Heritage Plaza (La Plaza), where SOAC has operated since 2011. SOAC is planning, designing, and implementing a safe, urban, public, outdoor recreational space for the Alum Rock Avenue and Eastgate Avenue sides of the acquired property. The space includes an educational experience about the native habitat of East San José.

Measure Q funds will go towards Joseph George Middle School's Learning Lab/Community Garden, which will promote environmental education by expanding on an existing garden on the school's campus. Through apprenticeships, outside classroom lessons, and community meetings students, teachers, and parents in the Joseph George Middle School community will become more aware of environmental and land use issues. End results will include: improved student academic outcomes, increased knowledge and awareness of gardening and the environment for all involved constituencies, the beautification of the school campus and the neighborhood, and the introduction of freshly-grown produce into the diets of several families who currently live in a park-poor neighborhood within a food desert section of San Jose. Construction will begin in Spring 2018.