Despite the weather of the day, a chosen student aid must brave the elements, to put letters on the marquee outside.

“A digital marquee can be updated at any time, from anywhere, in any kind of weather,” administrative liaison for PTA and assistant principal Kristin Pryor said. “The current sign can only accommodate four lines of text with very limited characters and is a horrible chore when it is hot outside and when it is raining. We have to pick and choose what makes it onto the sign and what doesn’t.”

As a 6A campus competing against big and competitive schools means there are opportunities to celebrate.

“We have a lot to celebrate here at VHS,” Pryor said. “We have won the 5A Lone Star Cup two years in a row—that in and of itself is historical! Especially for a school under 10 years old. We should represent ourselves on the curb as well as on the field.”

Sometimes celebrating on the marquee currently in place can be more of a struggle than it seems to be worth.

“I would need more than two hands and two feet to count how many times the locks have been bent while the sign was being updated,” Pryor said. “When the locks are bent, the sign won’t lock. When the sign won’t lock, the potential for hi-jinks with letter rearranging is exponentially high! Typically we catch these shenanigans early, before too much damage is done, but it is still a major pain to have to redo everything and contact maintenance to come and fix the locks (again).”

With the digital marquee, all updates would be done through a password protected portal and the potential for broken locks is eliminated, but it comes with a cost.

“The VHS PTSA is committed to raising the $20,000 required to purchase the new marquee,” VP of fundraising Debe McKeand said. “The digital marquee has the ability to be updated anytime, from anywhere using cloud based software, which means we won’t be reading outdated information anymore.”

The money is being raised using a GoFundMe Campaign, a social donation platform.  The campaign was launched on Oct. 25 and the PTSA is hoping to raise all funds by Nov. 18.

“The main difference between a digital marquee versus the marquee we have now is the amount of information we will be able to convey,” PTSA president Rose Burkhardt said. “We have 2400+ students at Vandegrift. Four lines per week does not even begin to convey all the necessary and important information and celebrations each of our organizations, clubs, teams, and students work so hard on each day.”

The PTSA encourages students to check out their donation site: https://www.gofundme.com/vhsdigitalmarquee