Paint crew, left to right: Sam Miller, Stan Fly, Joe Jones and Bruce Deverman
Dennis Blauser
In the face of ever increasing financial constraints imposed by the State of Arizona, the Oracle School District is utilizing creative and collaborative ways to continuously improve the physical learning environment for their students. The latest example of this is the awesome professional quality volleyball court that was recently installed on the Mountain Vista campus. For the past several years the District has made an aggressive and significant push to make our campus more attractive, safer and a place that students can really take pride in. Restroom restorations, community construction projects like the soon to open concession facility complete with restrooms, a new preschool facility and now this wonderful volleyball court are the types of projects propelling our small ambitious District to new heights.
These improvements can only happen with a supportive and forward thinking School Board, strong financial planning and an increasingly strong relationship with the SaddleBrooke and SaddleBrooke Ranch communities. The new volleyball court was partially funded using District capital improvement monies. A significant portion of the volleyball court funds came from super volunteer Alan Levenson and his friends and family. Alan, a SaddleBrooke resident, recently turned 80 years old and decided that instead of gifts he would ask his family for donations to help Mountain Vista do something special and significant for the kids. It turns out that Alan’s family is just as nice and caring as he is and consequently contributed more than five thousand dollars in donations for the project. Our SaddleBrooke friends’ contributions did not end there. Because we wanted the new court to be perfect, we knew it needed to be professionally striped which is very costly. It just so happened that the SaddleBrooke Wednesday Night Volleyball Club that plays in our gymnasium has a member, Sam Miller, who in his past life did court striping. Sam recruited his friends Stan Fly, Bruce Deverman and Joe Jones and on a Saturday morning these gentleman installed a perfect new paintjob on the Mountain Vista Court.
The new facility is not only magnificent, it provides a much needed activity that is age appropriate for our fifth through eighth grade students. Any time the students have a spare minute the court is filled with happy, healthy students engaging in what is always an organized and spirited volleyball game. The Oracle School District continues to be a more healthy and happy place thanks to the good people in our District.