Originally published in print in August 2025. View print issues here.

During the summer, the campus was transformed with a new paint job which brightened the hallways and refreshed lockers.

Polychrome Construction applied fresh coats of navy, gray and white paint as well as a blue trim to the underside of walkways, lockers, doorframes and exterior walls of all buildings except for the two-story buildings S, J, C and B. After finalizing the contract in August, CUHSD will pay $300,620 in total.

Principal Beth Silbergeld thinks that repainting old parts of the campus enhanced the school’s environment.

“It makes students and staff feel cared for because whenever we have the opportunity to change something aesthetically, [it] is an improvement,” Silbergeld said. “It improves our mood. It makes us feel seen.”

The brighter colors make the school feel “happier” and “more modern,” according to junior Corryn Swihart. Beyond aesthetic purposes, the revamp can also impact how students feel about their experience at school.

“It [makes] it more fun to come to school,” Swihart said. “It’s really nice to be in an environment that you like to look at, especially spending so much time here.”

English teacher Heather Amanatullah, who has taught at Branham for 13 years, hopes that the revamp will positively influence student behavior. 

“It looks so much newer [and] cleaner,” Amanatullah said. “Sometimes your surroundings start to match how you behave, so I’m hoping on campus this year the kids will clean up their stuff more and take more care and respect for our surroundings.”

In addition to changes to the exteriors of buildings, some classrooms were repainted over the summer by on-campus and CUHSD custodial staff members. In Amanatullah’s classroom, the walls were repainted and repaired.

“For your space around you to feel as you want it to feel, it makes it a more conducive learning environment for your students,” Amanatullah said. “It makes it a more joyful place for your kids.”

While Amanatullah thinks that the new paint has improved the campus, she wishes that other issues in her classroom that impact students more directly were addressed. Specifically, the air conditioning, which has a range of temperatures pre-programmed by the district, constantly made her classroom cold and affected instruction last year, but the issue hasn’t been fixed.

“I don’t know if paint was the most urgent matter,” Amanatullah said. “Just fixing the aesthetics might be avoiding some of the deeper issues that some teachers have been asking and requesting from the district, so we’ll see.”

The approval of Measure P — a school bond measure that authorized $474 million in bonds to be adopted by CUHSD — last November increased funding for facility repairs, technology upgrades and improvements to school sites. CUHSD is planning additional changes to Branham in efforts to modernize facilities and improve students’ experience in high school, according to Silbergeld. CUHSD plans to demolish some older buildings to replace them with new two-story buildings next summer.

“We’re just getting started with some of the ways in shifting — what it looks like and feels like,” Silbergeld said. “But change also takes time.”

Illustration by Kailey Fu/Bear Witness