Over the summer, a series of construction projects began at Aragon and other schools in the San Mateo Union High School District. As a result, the campus was closed from May 28th to August 6th. These projects are part of Measure L, a $385 million bond intended to improve facilities in the school district.
With students returning to Aragon on Aug. 10, many of the new changes can be observed across the campus, from a new PA system to different paint colors. Something something but there’s more to come. There are additional construction projects planned for the future.
“Next summer, they’ll finish the encapsulation process that they started this [past] summer,” said principal Valerie Arbizu. “We also have a large baseball project and all of our signage will go up so people can actually figure out where they’re going on our campus.”
The transite panel project refers to the district’s plan to encapsulate the external panels on the Aragon buildings that contain asbestos. In addition, the baseball field will be revamped and raised a couple feet to prevent flooding. The grass will be replaced with turf. The campus will also continue to be painted, with the central colors being “scarlet” and “black magic,” according to Arbizu. The current projects are being completed faster than expected.
Despite the progress, there have been some challenges. For one, the switch to the new PA system has not been seamless. Feedback can be heard coming from the system in some classrooms, and the bells are currently projected at a very low volume.
“Our bells are kind of funny right now,” Arbizu said. “We’ll keep working through that. Right now, we’re just trying to make sure that everything is connected.”
“[Freshmen] weren’t able to get the full orientation experience and had to wait to get a tour until the [first] day of [school]”
Another slight challenge has been the impact that the construction has had on Link Crew. Interfering with some of their campus tour dates, Link Crew had to adapt their program to ensure that the freshmen still got a tour of the campus before beginning their first days at Aragon.
Junior and Link Crew leader Giuliana Mendez discusses the effect that the construction had on the group.
“I felt like [the construction] impacted the freshmen because they weren’t able to get the full orientation experience and had to wait to get a tour until the [first] day of [school],” said Mendez. “I feel like it made them more susceptible to getting lost.”
Despite these small issues, the construction projects have overall been going smoothly, and students can observe more of the changes in the coming years.
