Ponderosa raises funds to improve aging auditorium

Auction on May 6

BY HALEY LENA HLENA@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

e theater department at Ponderosa High School is hosting an auction on May 6 at Douglas County School District’s Legacy Campus to help fund auditorium renovations.

“Hundreds of theater parents this year really wanted to do something bigger,” said Kayla Diaz, theater teacher and director at Ponderosa. “So they have organized an entire event to really get more support across the community.”

As the school is coming up on their 40th anniversary, upgrades are needed for the auditorium’s lighting system and theater seats.

“We have a suspicion that our lighting system was not even new when we got it at Ponderosa,” said Diaz. “ ere’s a little plaque that we discovered sort of recently on one of our lighting towers backstage that says ‘property of Douglas County High School’, which is actually the only school in that district that’s older than Ponderosa.”

Currently, some of the lighting instruments in the catwalks are about 30 years old. ey have gotten to the point where replacing the bulbs have become di cult and the wiring and connections limits what the department can do.

Although Diaz doesn’t believe the seats are original to the building, the fabric is coming o , a lot of the seats don’t pop back up, and armrests are becoming wobbly and starting to come o .

“ ere’s other stu throughout the theater that the kids learn how to problem solve really well and work around, but things that we comments the county received from residents in April, the Douglas County Planning Commission voted 5-1 against the language changes. e planning commissioners serve as an advisory group, and the county’s board of three elected commissioners — George Teal, Lora omas and Abe Laydon — generally make the nal call on development decisions in areas outside of municipalities. ough it attracted backlash, the proposal is misunderstood, according to county sta .