VENTURA : Students Tackle Ambitious Plaza Project for School

Geneva Wasserman and other seniors at Ventura High School had good intentions when they planned earlier this year to build a picturesque plaza, complete with stage and a cascading fountain, as a gift to the campus.

What they didn’t forecast was that seeing the project through to completion would be so hard.

“We didn’t realize how all the little things would add up to extra hours of work. We kind of picked a hard project,” said the 17-year-old senior class president.

Indeed. Up to now, most senior class gifts have involved such items as donations of signs or shrubbery.

But after consulting with Principal Jerry Barshay in January, the seniors decided to create something that would have a significant effect on the otherwise drab quad area of the campus.

So the students, led by Wasserman, drew up blueprints with the help of architect William Morgan, a Ventura High graduate.

They also lined up donations of building materials, trees and shrubbery, and got professional landscapers and masons to supervise their work.

A core of 30 students are performing the manual labor themselves, mixing mortar and laying a circular block wall on the project on weekends and after school, Wasserman said.

They hope to have the entire project completed in less than two months, just in time for graduation in mid-June, she said.

The plaza would have cost the school $26,000 if built by a contractor, Barshay said.

The students still need about $6,000 to pay for concrete that will be poured as the base of the 2,000-square-foot plaza, he said.

Barshay said he is proud of the students’ efforts.

“We spend so much time taking graffiti off. This is very positive.”