All Sonoma Valley school campuses to get new signs

The goal is for the outside of the SVUSD campuses to look as modern as the teaching going on inside.|

Over the next 12 to 18 months, every Sonoma Valley Unified School District campus will get a new “monument” sign out front, as well as interior signage that coordinates with the others campuses and the district as a whole.

SVUSD Superintendent Louann Carlomagno explained that the goal is to update and unify school signs that have hit or are nearing their lifespan, while taking a first step toward improving the curb appeal of the school campuses.

“Some are almost 30 years old,” Carlomagno said. “And this opportunity to sign all schools in one project not only refreshes each school’s entry identity, but allows the creation of a single design approach to tie together the schools in the district, and relate them to the Sonoma Valley environment.”

Funds for the signs are allocated from 2010’s Measure H, as part of the larger school frontage improvement projects in the master plan. The cost of the signage program was not available as of press time.

The school district has commissioned full-size mock ups of the sign designs, which will be installed on three campuses for internal study beginning today, May 23 at both Sonoma Valley High and Flowery Elementary schools. The high school mockup will be moved for study at Altimira Middle School on May 25 and 26.

To conserve costs, the SVHS mockups for size and placement will double for the Altimira study (therefore, the mockup at Altimira will briefly read “Sonoma Valley High School”). Flowery’s mockup will be a compact vertical design that is planned for all campuses.

Dimensions will be finalized in the full-size mockup study next week, but the two long horizontal monuments planned for the lengthy frontages of SVHS and Altimira are expected to be 17 to 22 feet long. The vertical signs at the other school entries will be around six feet high.

The purpose of the mock ups is for internal review, to finalize placement and scale decisions for final construction drawings, said designer and district parent Lori Winter, who has been involved with the project since its inception last year.

The sign program covers all schools in the district, including the charters and Creekside High School.

Flowery and Altimira will be the first schools to receive their new signs, as the installation will coincide with upcoming frontage improvements at those campuses. The rest of the monuments will be implemented over time, in concert with each school’s site improvements at their frontage, as scheduled by the district.

The new wall-mounted signs do not need to wait for frontage work, and will be installed in the coming months.

The first phase of developing the new, coordinated identity sign program began mid-2015 – that’s when Winter, of Explore Creative, was retained to survey all existing school identity signs (free-standing as well as wall-mounted), and present recommendations for improvements.

Community meetings, facilities meetings, board presentation and discussions with the architect and project managers have been ongoing since last October. Community members were invited to attend a work session at the district office in February, and some edits to the original design came out of their suggestions. The school principals were presented to during one of their scheduled principals meetings.

A progress update will be presented at the June 6 school board meeting, and construction drawings will then be sent out for public bid.

Email Lorna at lorna.sheridan@sonomanews.com.

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