Location update 11/8/21
When we moved back into the Teen Center in August, after a 17-month hiatus, we were made aware that a long-overdue construction project would commence sometime during the school year. (This 30-year renovation was set for sometime after March 2020, but …) Our pie-in-the-sky optimism combined with the fact that we navigated the 2020-2021 school year really well led us to shrug and think, “Eh, what’s a little construction?”
In Session 1, you were surveyed about the options we were considering in Session 2, which included taking our program offsite, online and outdoors between Thanksgiving and Winter Break (three weeks, November 29- December 17), not just because of potential construction, but as a safety precaution again the spread of Covid-19, flu and other colds, that latter of which is already showing its impact.
Our tightly-crossed fingers and toes were also hoping luck would have it that the construction would take place at that time, and through Winter Break, so we’d come back to an updated facility on January 10. We were told we’d have about a one-month’s notice before construction began. But, since September, we have been scouting out our options. Art Trek in Newbury Park offered to open their doors to us if we needed space during construction, as they did last year, for the in-person classes.
However, since Covid numbers in our County are low, and vaccine availability is increasing, we feel better about staying fully in-person for those three weeks, assuming we don’t get our 30-day heads-up about construction starting before November 17. (Plus, wearing masks will help stem the spread of flu and colds through to Winter Break.)
Here’s what is planned at the Teen Center:
- Replacement of all floors in the Teen Center, except those in the math/computer room and the gym. For this, everyone exits the building.
- Reconstruction/renovation of the bathrooms (a portable facility would be in the parking lot)
- Complete renovation of the kitchen
- Renovation of the outdoor area in back
While all of this will result in an updated facility, we realize it will not be an easy work around. Yes, the game room and the gym will be least impacted (after the floors are replaced in the game room), but the classrooms, kitchen and noise level will be an issue. Air quality could also be an issue. And, here we are in November with no set start date, which means that construction will likely heavily impact Session 3. That means that we can’t easily plan for the next Session. And while start dates could be further extended, that still puts us in a planning bind. There’s no way of telling how this might impact us, maybe for months. We’ve been told that “no construction projects these days are short, due to supply chain issues and costs.”
But there is reason to be hopeful, even excited about the adventure ahead. We are fortunate to have earned a lot of good will in the community, and a couple of interesting options are presenting themselves to us. Our mission during this bit of upheaval is to a) keep our kids learning and having fun; b) maintain the integrity of our program; c) trade off what we can’t have with something different and wonderful (those of you with us last year know that we attempted to do all three and were fairly successful!)
We hope that what we plan to do will have the least amount of impact on families and be a great adventure for kids. As soon as our plans are more concrete, I will let everyone know. We can’t put the cart before the horse. But I assure you that you’ll know our plans prior to registration for Session 3 (December 6), if not before, so you can decide if you want to continue (we hope so!), change classes up, or go with the flow.
Stay tuned.
Location update, 6/4/21
After months of dialogue, scouting, visitations, learning about the limitations of zoning, dealings with the City of Thousand Oaks, and even after making a few proposals on locations which ran into roadblocks, we have finally decided where we will be for 2021-2022. The short answer is… we are returning to The Thousand Oaks Teen Center. Yes, we are heading back to our home of almost nine years and, rest assured after the year we’ve all had, we feel pretty good about it.
There is a longer answer, however. If you read my post below (from 5/5/21), you will understand that there were some big reasons that we felt it best to find our own location after growing One Spark Academy for ten years. When we moved our things out in November of 2020, we hadn’t been there since March 13 (2020) and it was the perfect opportunity to scout out a new home. Not only was our stuff out, but most of our students didn’t have an emotional connection to the Teen Center. A new home would allow us an office, storage (all the unique courses we offer come with many materials to store!), classrooms that wouldn’t need to be broken down day after day, and use all year.
However, finding a suitable location was not as easy as we hoped, despite the plethora of vacant spaces, since the City wasn’t quite sure what to do with our designation for zoning (that is still a work in progress, but we can’t wait around on final answers). On one hand, this past year taught us that OSA is not dependent on a single location. We can teach pretty much anywhere, and do it well. On the other hand, most parents are not able to drive their kiddos around to various locations throughout the day, so a central location is key. If there was a third hand, not having a main location made us think super creatively. For example, had it not been for a pandemic, we wouldn’t have built a permanent structure at the Las Flores Community Garden or explored the concept of outdoor kitchens. Also, we must grapple with the reality that had we leased our own location prior to the pandemic, and then not been able to use it (but still be paying rent), OSA may not have survived the year. What allowed us to have such a phenomenal year, and indeed it was, was because we were somewhat antifragile, meaning we could bend and flex and adapt much more easily than a set system, like a big district (there’s a book on the concept). And, that reality continues: as long as the pandemic is still forcing countries into lockdown, and dangerous variants continue to circulate, the coming year will have some “Covid considerations”. So remaining flexible is key.
Our move back and our use of space will look similar for the handful of students who were with us in 2019-2020. But, there will be some changes and challenges this year, the biggest being that the Teen Center will undergo a long-awaited renovation and we are not sure when its stages will be. The catering kitchen will be remodeled as an industrial prep kitchen (yay!) as well as bathrooms and the whole back yard. There are thoughtful work arounds for all of these stages, and the Teen Center intends to remain open throughout, but you can expect that there will be a little disruption. Quite frankly, these challenges seem like child’s play after this past year’s adaptations, so we’re not too worried. The classrooms will be fine, the gym is big, the game room will be open, the park is a stone’s throw away… there’s plenty of space not being affected.
We are also going to rent an additional space as an off-site office. We don’t want to continue storing stuff at our homes and in a storage unit (and the Teen Center can only hold a fraction of what we use). That space (a suitable contender is 1.5 miles away) can also be used for meetings, evening classes, and small group tutoring. We will pay a lot more this year for rent than we did in 2019-2020, but less if we leased our own space. However, an off-site office is a healthy step for us to explore what it feels like to have a bulk of our things in one space that has our name on the door.
I can’t emphasize enough what a great working relationship we have with the Teen Center. The staff there is like family. We have been transparent in our needs, and they are aware that the need we have for our own space will likely continue. Then again, we might find that having multiple smaller locations is a better path to take for OSA’s sustainability. So, we’re taking all of it in stride. After a crazy year, having a familiar soft place for our students and our team to land will be a stress-reducer, and we won’t spend our summer furniture shopping. Right now, it’s a win-win for both the Teen Center and One Spark Academy. As for our friends at Art Trek, we will continue holding events and activities there as well. That’s a given!
To all of you who have waited patiently, please know how grateful we are for your trust and kindness as we explored our options. Although some of you expressed hope that we would return to the Teen Center, we know that you would have stuck with us no matter where we would have landed because you know we would only have made a move if it was workable. Now we can all plan forward, and you can expect that this coming year is going to be another wonderful OSA adventure!
(Update from 5/5/21)
On November 7th, 2020, One Spark Academy moved out of the Thousand Oaks Teen Center, our home for almost nine incredible years, and put all of our OSA belongings in a Newbury Park storage unit. It was a sad day, but one that we knew was likely inevitable.
When OSA started in July 2011, the wonderful folks at the Teen Center agreed to allow us to rent space during its “non-operational hours” (up until 2:00 PM weekdays during the school year). We started with seven students and grew to 35 students by the end of the year. At that time, none of us knew what to expect in two years, let alone ten.
The Thousand Oaks Teen Center is about the best possible place a little train like OSA can chug along and build steam. No experimental program like ours could dream of having a huge gym, game room, a kitchen, outdoor spaces, a gorgeous park and City library within walking distance, and four well-lit classrooms to use in the early part of the day. And, the staff at the Teen Center was (and still is) like family to us. It was a symbiotic relationship and we hope that OSA students will continue to enjoy their facility in the future, especially given the incredible renovations about to be underway. Let’s be honest. The Teen Center is awesome! We were very, very lucky.
However (big sigh), OSA’s use of the building was limited, and that reality can never change. The Teen Center is a city building, created by the City of Thousand Oaks for the exclusive use of teens in the Conejo Valley and beyond, and run by the Conejo Recreation and Park District. It can never be rented or occupied by us or anyone else more than it was. That means: no permanent classroom set up (we set up and broke down tables and chairs every day for nine years), no use in the afternoons for “after school” classes taught by us, no parenting classes (which we’ve long wanted to do), and no regular use by us during the times the building was open to the public (like… late afternoons, summers or weekends). We at OSA have long known that we needed a space of our own: a place to unpack, leave projects set up, have an office, display our own address… if we were ever going to take a chance on growing, or even providing our staff the opportunity for full time positions, or serving students in the afternoons and summers. But how does a program like ours leave a place like the Teen Center, and downscale to the reality of what can be realistically afforded? If ten years is any indication, it’s hard. The kids loved it, we loved it, and the Teen Center loved us! A lot of incredible memories were made there.
But then a pandemic came along. We had no control over our use of space, even if we followed all protocols. Had we put all of our eggs in one basket and waited, we’d not have temporarily moved our indoor learning to Art Trek, and our kids wouldn’t have had indoor Mapping, or Archaeology, or in-person academic support this year. That is why in November we decided that, in order to allow the Teen Center and OSA to figure out our collective next moves, we needed to pack up and put our stuff in safe-keeping until we could settle again. After vacating the Teen Center (our last day was March 13, 2020), we discovered other ways to meet our students’ needs. We built the Garden Classroom at the Las Flores Community Garden, set up Fitness Club and Hiking Club at the local park and trails, and then secured two lovely classrooms at Art Trek. It’s hard to believe what an incredible year 2020-2021 has been despite the pandemic, and not one memory was made at the Teen Center.
Now as we look ahead, we have two paths. The easier path would be to return to the Teen Center, as we’ve been invited to do. There would be some changes in our terms of use, we’ll face the same growth challenges as before, and we’re still at the mercy of a global pandemic which may shutter us again should the building need to prioritize space for public programs. But trust me when I say there hasn’t been a night in the past year that I haven’t felt this pull.
The other path, and the more difficult one (emotionally and financially) is to find a home of our own, a place to finally unpack, where we can put things on the walls, leave puzzles and games in process, meet up on weekends, and have access during summers, if we’d like. Looking at options in the Conejo Valley has been a time-consuming quest for the past five months. There are differences in light industrial, retail storefronts, offices, and a mix of space. We have learned a lot about how much rent, utilities, and the challenges of having one’s own location can vary. We also learned what the City will and will not allow us to use, being that we work with kiddos and such. There’s a lot to consider: size of the space, access to a kitchen and restrooms, parking, drop off, pick up, convenience for driving, safety, accessibility to other places we can use, and whether we can have any green space. But, mostly, we must consider what we can afford after enduring a very difficult year, financially. Thankfully, we got a lot of help this year, but no matter how we slice it, we’re about to embark on a huge set of growing pains. It will be a lot more expensive to rent space that is smaller than we had at the Teen Center, as well as pay for it for the full year. Oh, and then furnish it.
But ultimately, that may be the best route for the long term sustainability and freedom of OSA. After a year of students learning in FIVE different locations (online, Art Trek, the OSA Garden, the park, and the trails), we know we can not only think outside the box, but we can handle any size of space with flexible creativity. OSA is much more than one single location. And this is the first time in ten years that only a handful of returning students have an emotional connection to the Teen Center. Most of the kids coming next year can see a new space with fresh eyes, perhaps more so than their teachers.
What can parents expect for next year? We currently have a proposal in for an office/storefront in Thousand Oaks, which (if they accept our proposal for some modifications) will have four smallish classrooms, a smallish kitchen, and a smallish eating area. But at 2,300 sq. feet, it will be enough space for our unique classes, Circle, studying, learning, and being together. It is more square footage than we used at Art Trek, it is super convenient for arrival and drop off, has plenty of parking, and is accessible to tree-lined sidewalks for “walking and talking” during breaks. There is no gym, no game room, and no huge space to run around. But, the potential is there to grow and expand when other nearby spaces become available (as they could), once we increase our ability to pay for more square footage. Is this where we will end up? Who knows. But if this space falls through, as several have, we will keep looking. And perhaps, we will again rent space at the Teen Center, if it’s available, and enjoy our old home for some or most of our activities, just as we are using several locations to provide learning options that are diverse and accessible.
Hang in there with us. If you’ve learned anything about One Spark Academy this past year, it’s that we are flexible, responsive, creative, and always on the hunt for awesome ideas to help our students learn.
With gratitude,
Lori Peters (5/5/21)