As school district residents headed to the polls Tuesday, May 20, to vote on a proposed school budget and elect three members to the Board of Education, High School seniors Chloe Holgate, 17, and Lara Bryfonski, 18, prepared to make history of their own.
In a room that lay empty just two years ago, the students-turned-news-anchors prepared to broadcast for the first time ever from the Saratoga Springs school’s new, state-of-the-art television studio.
This broadcast serves as an example to the community of what could be for the years to come, said Holgate. `I think this place has a lot of potential. Hopefully, we can show that to the people who come to the broadcast.`
Less than two years ago, Dave L’Hommedieu, director of information technology, stood in the same space. Then, he said, the room was no more than the gray-and-white walls, checkered floor and some counters.
`I saw this,` he said, his hand passing over a room that now housed video cameras, mixers, several flat-screen monitors and five editing stations, `and I thought, we can’t just let this sit here. We have to do something with it.`
L’Hommedieu contacted local TV stations to ask for donations. He received an interview set from Capital News 9. A legislative grant provided by Sen. Joe Bruno, R-Brunswick, combined with the school’s own funds, allowed for the purchase of video and editing equipment.
In January 2007, the high school TV team was created to investigate the use of the television and production studio for program and curricula use.
`We wanted to use technology to take kids to the next level and expose them to 21st century skills,` said L’Hommedieu. `Can they apply technology? Can they evaluate and synthesize information? Can they evaluate sources?`
L’Hommedieu said that the challenges encountered during the studio and production studio project were ones he welcomed, ones he would like to see integrated across the whole curriculum, though he acknowledged that the task was easier to do in a technology curriculum than in some other fields.
`It’s a different way of learning from the normal everyday,` he said. `We come into the class, and the whole class is a real world problem that has to be solved.`
The week prior to the election, Holgate and Bryfonski interviewed school Superintendent Janice White and incumbent board members Jeffrey Piro, Mia Pfitzer and Francis Palumbo, all of whom ran unchallenged for re-election.
`Most students have never met administrators and don’t know anything about the administration who make the decisions that affect us every day,` said Bryfonski. `Its nice to feel like I was involved in the administration for a change since most kids never see that side of the schools.`
Also in the week prior to the live broadcast, the duo conducted a poll among school peers to learn if students were aware of the coming elections or the issues on the ballots.
They learned that while most students were unaware of the $107,353,350 budget, which represented a 2.92 percent increase from 2007-2008 numbers, the $3.2 million site improvement proposition for Dorothy Nolan Elementary School or the $845,000 proposition to purchase up to eight 66-passenger school buses, students did know that the election was coming. They, however, had issues of their own.
`Better cafeteria food was one thing everybody wants,` said Holgate laughing.
A more serious item students would have liked to see included in the budget was more money for the music and arts departments, especially the drama club, which is currently unfunded.
At 8:55 p.m., as the polls prepared to close, Holgate, Bryfonski and the technology instructors who assisted them, prepared to go live with election results.
`Five minutes, everybody,` L’Hommedieu said.
`My biggest concern is getting the numbers straight,` said technology instructor Donna Andress, whose responsibility included gathering incoming vote counts and displaying them in real time.
`Forty-five seconds,` L’Hom-medieu said. To the girls: `Deep breath out there. Don’t lose your smiles.`
The lights dimmed, and little more could be heard than L’Hommedieu’s loafer’s pacing on the floor.
`All right, let’s roll everybody` L’Hommedieu said. `Let’s cut to the opening video. 3 ` 2 ` 1 play, please.`
At 9 p.m. exactly, technology instructor Jim Nair started the music and then faded to the girls.
In the auditorium down the hall, Holgate and Bryfonski appeared live on a big screen before the school board and residents who watched the girls report the passage of the budget and both propositions as well as the re-election of Piro, Pfitzer and Palumbo.
`This is the beginning,` said Superintendent White. `It’s symbolic. We want our students to take control of their learning.`
Following the broadcast, Holgate and Bryfonski said the production was a lot more rocky than they’d expected, referring to a 10-minute segment in which they’d had to ad lib while awaiting the vote count from Division School, which was delayed. Because the broadcast was the first ever for the school, both anchors said they had anticipated some problems.
Holgate, who will attend SUNY Geneseo, and Bryfonski, who will attend Boston University, in the fall, said the only regret they had was that the broadcasting program began just as they are preparing to graduate.
Along with L’Hommedieu, they hoped Tuesday’s broadcast would be the first of many.
`This was not an informative broadcast but an historical one,` said Holgate.
`It’s a great addition to our high school that opens up a world of possibilities,` added Bryfonski.“