By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
A gradual change has been happening over the past several months at Mack Lyon Middle School in Overton. Little by little, the outside appearance of the school has been changing from its former colors of red and back, to the all new school colors of blue and gold.
A big piece of that transformation took place on Saturday, September 26. Bright and early at 8:00 that morning, a crowd of 50 volunteers assembled in front of the schools. They were all ready to start painting.
The group went straight to work painting railings and poles on the exterior of the school, replacing the dilapidated old red color with a clean royal blue color.
By about 11:00 they had wrapped up their work leaving brand new gleaming blue surfaces all around the school.
It was an all-volunteer crew. About 30 of the painters were from the Mack Lyon Middle School community including students, parents, teachers, staffers and alumni.
Another 20 people in the group were professionals from painting contractor AllPro Painters in Las Vegas. AllPro had been contracted by the school to paint some of the larger, and harder-to-reach areas on the school’s exterior. That work was mainly done earlier this month, with some of the smaller details still ongoing.
But on Saturday, the AllPro volunteers were donating their morning in a service to the community. AllPro being a multi-state company, painters gathered from Las Vegas and southern Utah to Overton to help in this outreach effort to the Moapa Valley community.
It was AllPro workers that got everything prepped for Saturday’s project well in advance. That included taping, sanding and putting down drop cloths beneath all surfaces to be painted to protect from drips.
That alone was a fair amount of work by the team, said AllPro supervisor Mike Holden.
“We do a lot of work for the school district and, in this, we just wanted to give back to this particular school,” said Holden.
Holden added that the AllPro company has led volunteer projects like this in the past, mostly in inner-city schools that need a little extra help.
Holden said that he was able to get a supplier Dunn Edwards in Las Vegas to provide all of the paint and painting supplies for the volunteer project.
“We have done quite a few of these, but this time it really felt right for some reason,” Holden said. “Everything just kind of came together this morning. It has been great.”
Paul estimated that the volunteer work from locals, the help and prep work from AllPro volunteers, and the paint and supplies saved the school between $10,000-$15,000 in labor and equipment costs for that project alone.
Paul expressed appreciation for all who showed up to help on Saturday.
“Of course, we actually had way more people who wanted to come to help,” Paul said. “But we had to scale the project back to stay within the COVID-19 health guidelines. We had to keep the group size inside of 50 people. Otherwise, we might have been able to do a lot more.”
All the volunteers wore masks while they worked and observed other health safety protocols.
Paul said that the school rebranding is still an ongoing process. Even with the work that was done this month, there is still a long way to go.
“You don’t think about what a huge thing it is to rebrand a school until you start into it,” Paul said. “All of a sudden, around every corner it seems like there is red or black that you forgot about and that needs to be changed to blue or gold. So it will be going on for a while.”
The idea to rebrand the school was student-generated and the momentum and support for the change came from the students. The mascot of Mack Lyon is also changing from the Mustangs to the Mariners.
This is was meant to be more in line with the existing nautical theme of the Buccaneers at Grant Bowler Elementary and the Pirates of Moapa Valley High School.
The Clark County School District does not provide additional funding for a rebranding of this kind. Rather funding for this project had to come from the individual school’s budget.
So Paul has taken the project on a little at a time as funding becomes available. He said that he expects most of the re-painting project to be completed by the end of this year.
