San Andreas School students paint soundwall for annual community
service project
Seniors from San Andreas Continuation High School partnered with
Hollister city staff April 23 to paint a stretch of sound wall on
Westside Boulevard, near South Street.
The community service project has become an annual tradition put
together by teacher Barbara Murray and Marcelo Orta, Jr., the parks
division supervisor. For seven years, the students have helped with
painting sound walls, cleaning up landscaping and other
projects.
”
They are learning the process,
”
Orta said.
”
They are learning how to paint.
”
About two dozen students learned how to prime and paint the
sound wall, up from an average of 10 in past years, Orta said. The
students used paint brushes and paint rollers, buckets and stepping
stools to reach every part of sound wall along Westside
Boulevard.
San Andreas School students paint soundwall for annual community service project
Seniors from San Andreas Continuation High School partnered with Hollister city staff April 23 to paint a stretch of sound wall on Westside Boulevard, near South Street.
The community service project has become an annual tradition put together by teacher Barbara Murray and Marcelo Orta, Jr., the parks division supervisor. For seven years, the students have helped with painting sound walls, cleaning up landscaping and other projects.
“They are learning the process,” Orta said. “They are learning how to paint.”
About two dozen students learned how to prime and paint the sound wall, up from an average of 10 in past years, Orta said. The students used paint brushes and paint rollers, buckets and stepping stools to reach every part of sound wall along Westside Boulevard.
“We told them to wear old clothes,” Murray said, of some of the paint splotches the students had gotten on their clothing.
Murray said the community service project started as a way to get the senior students off campus while the underclassman are taking STAR testing. During the week, the students also have a check-out appointment with a counselor to make sure their credits are in order to graduate, and more than a dozen students took assessment tests at Gavilan College, at the Briggs Building, in preparation of continuing their education.
“They get some connectedness to the community,” Murray said. “Some people look at them as, ‘Oh, those kids,’ but all kids are a work in progress.”
She explained that many of her students have had to overcome major hurdles in their lives to get this close to graduation, and many of them have a clear idea of what they want to do in the future – from attending nursing school, signing up for the military or entering law enforcement.
Jesus A. Castro, a senior, was in a car accident a year ago. He had to wear a halo for three months, due to injuries to his neck.
“I had a broken neck and I have scars,” he said, adding that it wasn’t hard to keep on track with school.
“I did what I needed to do to get back,” he said.
Castro, who enrolled in San Andreas two years ago, said his teachers at the smaller school “pay more attention.
“They keep you more focused. I like it better.”
He has hopes of attending a culinary school in San Francisco.
William Fajardo, a senior, said he will probably go to college or join the military.
Both agreed that painting the sound wall was hard work.
“It’s hard work doing something like this,” he said.
The students got started at 8:45 a.m., and by 10 a.m. had gone through 15 gallons of a light tan paint. Orta said the colors are selected from those approved by the engineering department for sound walls, but he added that neutral colors and those that “people like” are less likely to be defaced by graffiti.
“Hopefully, we will instruct them on how to paint and they will gain a little knowledge,” Orta said. “They are not used to doing hard work. And if this is not what they want do – they need to stay in school.”
Rodrigo Aguilera, a painter with the parks division for Hollister, said the students would cut the average time for the project to about half.
“It gives me a head start,” he said. “It needs to be primed and then painted. Instead of two days, I will spend one day on it.”
He laughed as one student walked by, dripping paint on the sidewalk from a paintbrush.
“It will be beneficial job training,” Aguilera said. “They learn a little skills and it encourages them to do something.”
Murray said the project also helps the students to understand how things work in the community. She said she often hears comments from the students, saying that certain areas of the city look run down and wondering why people don’t fix it. She said now the students understand how much work it is – and how much city staff and money – it takes for even a project such as painting the sound wall.
“The kids come out and see the work,” she said. “They see how hard it can be.”
