The end is near – for construction. As the school year kicks off, Assistant Principal Joe Mahood reports, “Fortunately by November, the [construction personnel] will be gone, and we will have our campus back.”
Theater
In addition to being able to host a larger audience, the new theater offers a number of novel features. Drama teacher Shane Smuin notes, “For drama, I don’t think it will be all that different as far as the drama classes go. We’ll do our projects and performances as we usually did in the old theater. But the tech theater class will be significantly different because there are so many bells and whistles in the new theater … the theater will become the tech theater curriculum.”
For example, Smuin says, “We have follow spots for the first time. Follow spots [highlight] stars on the stage and wherever they go, they have a little extra light that follows them. So how to turn that on, how to maintain that, how to use it, how to move them around. That’s just one of many things that we will have in the new theater.”
Smuin looks forward to utilizing the larger space afforded by the new venue. For the spring
play, he adds, “I’m looking forward to using… what’s called a rear projection system. So it’s a movie screen, where instead of the projector being in front, it’s behind… The new theater will have the potential of not being just live theater but what they call multi-media theater. And we could project video, not just an image.”
Career and Technical Education Building
Adjacent to the student parking lot and science wing, the Career and Technical Education (CTE) building houses the engineering technology, anatomy and physiology, biotechnology and digital photography classes. In addition, Mahood adds, “There’s a room for multimedia, if we ever wanted to do theater/TV stuff… There are classes of multimedia in the district. Somebody, maybe Ms. Reed [or] maybe somebody else, has to take that curriculum, introduce it to us and build a program here. So it’s in its incipient stages.”
Substitute digital photography teacher Nicholas Carrillo, who has substituted throughout the San Mateo and Sequoia Union High School districts, says, “Digital arts and technical arts is a growing field, and so we’re still developing curriculum on how exactly to teach it…I think what’s nice about this class is that we’re not taking way too much from anyone else. Everything that I need is right here. This is like a one-stop shop for digital photography.”
Gymnasium, Center Court, Parking & Beautification
In the athletics department, the renovation of the small and large gymnasiums is expected to conclude by late September. While the former large gym, now the south gym, held 600 people, the former small gym and theater have been combined to form the north gym. The latter is expected to hold approximately 1,500 people, allowing Aragon to host CCS events.
New bathrooms and a snack bar have been installed near the girl’s locker room to facilitate any such events that may take place. In addition, an exercise room is to be built between the north and south gyms, and will hold much of the equipment formerly located in the fitness room adjacent to the science wing. The fitness room in question is to be reverted back to a dance studio outfitted with mirrors and balance bars.
Noting changes to the student parking lot, Mahood adds that 35 additional spaces have been created by altering the parking angle, bringing the total number of available slots to approximately 160.
Overall, he concludes by saying, “Classrooms were renovated over the last ten years. This has been a 12 year cycle. I don’t see this happening for at least another 20 years or so, unless the technology makes us change … we decide that we need a different classroom environment … This year’s freshman class will probably be the first freshman class in a long time that has gone through Aragon with the minimal amount of construction.”
