GILROY
– With all the extracurricular activities parents and students
have to remember, schools aren’t always surprised when meetings are
forgotten or fund raiser forms are left waiting in the front
office.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – With all the extracurricular activities parents and students have to remember, schools aren’t always surprised when meetings are forgotten or fund raiser forms are left waiting in the front office.
Two Gilroy schools are using a high-tech, attention-grabbing system to spread their announcements to anyone passing by campus. Digital marquees in front of Gilroy High School and Ascencion Solorsano Middle School this year are keeping parents informed of current school news, often in less than a minute.
On Thursday, Rod Kelley Elementary School also installed a sign, albeit a low-tech version, to regularly post announcements.
The marquee at Solorsano posts a welcome message, the date and temperature, testing dates and upcoming holidays. Until Principal Sal Tomasello becomes a little more friendly with the programming system, he said, it will remain slightly under-utilized.
The first time he tried to change the posting, “I blew everything out, I lost everything,” Tomasello said. “I’m not real tech-savvy, so that’s one of the challenges in life.”
The sign, a model used on military bases, costs $70,000, including installation, set-up and a brief training session for Tomasello and Secretary Luann Corbin. It was included in the $18 million construction cost of the new school.
For now, Tomasello updates the messages weekly, and he hopes to start posting more events.
“What I would really like to do, too, is train some students in (the Associated Student Body) to get them to program events for us,” he said.
The high school’s sign, on the corner of Tenth and Princevalle streets, has been fairly easy to program, said Jack Daley, athletics and activities director.
“Ours is pretty user-friendly,” Daley said. “The software has a little simulator, so you can play it before you put it up there and see what it looks like.”
It took some tweaking to figure out how long messages should stay on the screen so people driving by can read it, but not wait too long for the next announcement, Daley said.
GHS asked Pepsi to donate the sign during the most recent negotiation of the soda company’s contract. District personnel installed the sign this fall.
Students at GHS will likely be recruited to input the announcements of meetings, sporting events and other messages, although staff will do the actual posting, Daley said.
The Solorsano and GHS signs include special features like graphics and various fonts, although neither school has used them yet.
At Rod Kelley, Parent Club President Stephanie Duncan knew a traditional marquee could spread news while cutting back on paper usage and waste.
“I have been wanting it the past two years,” she said.
Proceeds from the school’s annual walk-a-thon fund raiser, Rod’s Trod, paid for the sign.
The school’s new sign depicts its mascot, the knight, and has four lines for posting communication.
