After more than 60 years, it is time to change out the Roosevelt School sign.

Roosevelt Marquee

Of special note: The new marquee was funded with donations made to the Roosevelt PTA. NO PUBLIC FUNDS in any way were used to pay for this sign and in addition to paying for this marquee, the PTA continues to fund Art, Theater, Music, Outdoor Ed, Field trips, Dance, technology for the classrooms, the homework club and more.

It has also been suggested that funds would have been better spent paying for more hours for our school librarian. In fact, it is a district policy that parent groups cannot pay for staff positions. Parent groups can only fund technology, enrichment programs, field trips, community building events, etc. It is our understanding that this policy was put in place to ensure that the resource gap between the have and the have-nots would not be widened.

Thanks to Redwood City’s passing of Measure W, our school was able to increase our librarian’s hours using Measure W  funds!

Many people in the neighborhood seem to be under the impression that the new Roosevelt marquee is like the ones installed at Woodside or Sequoia high schools, but that is not the case. The marquee Roosevelt’s PTA is trying to install is the same size as every other modern marquee in the district, with the school name and mascot on the top 3′ of the sign and a message space of 12″. One that is similar to Roosevelt’s was installed at Hoover School last year:

Hoover Marquee

In an effort to be a good neighbor, the PTA has established that the sign will only be activated during school days between the hours of 7:30am and 6:15pm. The sign will be turned off on weekends, school holidays and during the summer break.

Many have asked why the sign was not placed facing Key Market. In addition to the cost of the marquee, the cost to install it at that spot would be more than $24,000 because electrical conduit would have to be run out to that spot, and then a taller base would have to be installed to make it higher than the fence so that it could be seen. The School Site Council’s plans to make Euclid a second drop off zone for the school have been in the hands of the City Council for almost 18 months. Our Site Council and principal Girardi have contacted the City Council and Mayor and it has still not been approved. We are not sure if that spot will ever be approved as a drop off zone since we really don’t know why the City Council is sitting on this proposal. Even if a drop off zone is made on Euclid, the fact that people are making left hand turns on to Euclid, speeding to make the light at Roosevelt Avenue and other drivers are pulling out of the Key Market and Rite Aid parking lots, makes it a dangerous corner. Also, there isn’t a crossing guard at those crosswalks. The district’s crossing guard is helping students cross Roosevelt Avenue at Upton. This is another dangerous spot for students to cross, so relocating that crossing guard would not be an option. It would be up to the district to pay for an additional crossing guard for that site.

The site just before the drop off zone on Vera and Winston seemed to be the best choice for the marquee since it would only directly face one home and another home on Vera would only see the side of the sign. In accordance with a Redwood City ordinance, the marquee is set 15′ from the sidewalk and nestled in a grove of trees.

The PTA recognized that our school needed a new marquee. The current marquee on the corner of Vera and Upton is original to the school. Because it is the constant target of children that use the field on the weekends for baseball and soccer throughout the year, the letters fall off and it has become the least effective form of communication that Roosevelt has. Roosevelt already communicates with parents in a variety of ways both electronically and in traditional formats. The parents however, have requested the marquee as it is another visual reminder of a meeting or event.

The consensus of the PTA is that the current sign makes our school look antiquated and is not in line with the marquees at almost all of the other schools in the district. A non electronic sign costs almost the same amount as an electronic sign and the non electronic signs have to be updated manually by a staff member or volunteer, so the information may or may not be accurate at any given time whereas the electronic sign can be easily updated via computer.

The PTA let the district know last summer that they planned on purchasing a sign as soon as the money was in place. The PTA got the district guidelines as to placement and rules regarding informing the neighborhood. Since the Teddy Roosevelt mural that was proposed for the wall of the MUR was moved to another wall on campus due to the objection of one of our school’s neighbors during our school’s beautification weekend, the PTA made sure that every guideline was followed with the marquee installation.  As it turns out, the turnaround time for the sign fabrication took 8 weeks less than expected, so the sign was delivered just days before spring break. In addition, the district’s facilities department had time in their schedule over spring break to install it, but that is now at a standstill and the marquee is now sitting in the district’s facilities warehouse.

The neighbor that the sign faces had no objection to the sign, and because it is to be positioned at an angle, only one other neighbor on Vera Avenue would see the side of the sign. That neighbor has voiced an objection to the installation of the sign. The PTA has offered to pay for plants to screen his view, but as of Monday, we have not heard back from him.

The Roosevelt PTA has been trying to do everything to be good neighbors while trying to continue revitalizing the school. The PTA is really trying hard to work with everyone and come to a mutually acceptable result.