By staff writer Kyra Kong

Alameda Unified School District will build Bay Farm School a new building on campus for the middle school soon, according to district plans.

The building will have four to six classrooms, and may have two floors. Planning is beginning this spring and construction is estimated to end in summer 2018.

Teacher Roxanne Clement confirmed that the school will have a new middle school building. “We do know that we are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, we need to have some more classrooms.” Mrs. Clement said. “We don’t know for sure if the portables will stay or if those portables are going to go.”

She said that the district will probably build in the grassy area behind the portables.

Architects are only beginning the planning, so no one really knows what it will look like when it’s finished. Mrs. Clement said that she has heard it’s going to be a two-story building, but she is unsure whether our bay fill soil will be able to accommodate more than one story. “Someone is going to have to study it a bit more to find out,” she said.

The construction has been paid for by the school facilities bond measure that Alameda voters approved in 2012.

Students and parents liked the idea of a building to house the middle school.

“I guess it will be good. We won’t have to walk in the rain in order to get to our classes,” 6th grader Quinlan Wilson said.

“I think it would be a good idea to build a lot of community in the middle school so they will be housed in one area, and so that the kids would have classrooms closer together and they will get to know each other a little better,” said 8th grade parent Vicki Williams.