Facilities Plan

Towards the fulfillment of EBI’s mission, the Board of Trustees has prepared a facilities plan that will allow the school to grow to the size envisioned by its founders and provide the classroom and other spaces required of an international, bilingual program of educational inquiry.

EBI’s current facility on the St. Augustine’s Church campus has many significant positive features, including location, classroom size, and the inclusion of specialized spaces, like a large gymnasium. Due to these numerous positive features, the facilities plan envisions making the St. Augustine’s campus EBI’s long-term home.

However, we also need additional spaces to meet the needs of our growing community.  We are thrilled that we successfully negotiated to the acquisition of a property at 4550 San Pablo Avenue in nearby Emeryville that, along with our St. Augustine location, can provide space for years of growth. The acquisition is a partnership between the school and a philanthropic fund administered by Oliver & Company, an East Bay construction firm with extensive experience working with independent schools. The opportunity is tremendous, as it allows us to invest in a long-term campus solution, as well as to build out classroom and other spaces as we continue to meet the growing needs of our program.

The 4550 San Pablo Avenue in Emeryville is centrally located and close to our St. Augustine campus. The EBI Board of Trustees and Head of School selected this site according to search criteria laid out in 2009. The criteria was carefully identified and applied to locate a site within a two-mile radius of EBI’s existing St. Augustine campus that could eventually be developed to meet EBI’s long-term goal of creating a permanent, single campus home owned entirely by the school. EBI’s future occupancy of this new potential space will be phased, and the plan calls for a large portion of the school to remain on the St. Augustine campus for at least five years.

For the 2011-2012 school year our third, fourth and fifth grade students will be occupying this campus.  As the year progresses the EBI community will come together to work on the further development of this site.

This type of bold and thoughtful planning is part of an EBI tradition that began with its auspicious founding. The school opened a full year ahead of schedule because its founders were prepared and recognized the need to capitalize on the availability of the spacious, well-situated and affordable building offered by St. Augustine, which has allowed EBI to also call this site home. Careful stewardship in the few short years that have followed have allowed EBI to retire the start-up debt associated with securing our St. Augustine location, just three years after the school opened. It is this pioneering spirit and deep commitment on the part of EBI’s founders, families, faculty, students and supporters that have led to our success to date and which will sustain our future growth.

You can find additional information about this growth plan in this section of our website. You will also be able to find regular updates here.

Thank you for your ongoing support and collaboration.