Guadalupe Oak Grove Park Outdoor Classroom

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.

The Open Space Authority has contributed $265,284 toward Reach 1 of the Penitencia Creek Trail. This section stretches from Alum Rock Park to Noble Avenue. The trail will follow one of the few urban creeks in the county that flows through its natural channel, offering visitors a chance to observe a riparian ecosystem.

The Authority’s grant helped fund Living Classroom’s Garden-Based Instruction in the Campbell School District. Living Classroom's environmental education program focuses in three key areas: environmental literacy, connection to healthy food, and science learning that is relevant and real to the lives of students. Living Classroom will provide a full-service program to schools, including lesson instruction to hundreds of classrooms with multiple lessons for each class each year over multiple years, lesson materials, garden installation and maintenance, and recruitment and training of volunteer parents and docents. The goal of the Authority-funded portion the program was to provide top quality, engaging garden-based learning experiences in the areas of science, nutrition, math, and social studies for at least 1,200 K-3 students at five Campbell schools