Long in need of an upgrade, Permian High School has started an Adopt-a-Seat campaign to remove and replace its auditorium seating.
PHS Principal Delesa Styles said the fundraiser will pay for 1,220 seats with vinyl on the seats and backs, which makes them very durable and easy to clean.
Lone Star Furnishings LLC will be the vendor. Styles noted that Fine Arts Director Aaron Hawley and Executive Director of District Operations Cortney Smith have been instrumental in the project.
She added that they are actually losing some seats due to ADA compliance.
She noted that they will be removing a few seats in the back of the middle row to add a soundstage at some point.
It will cost $22,436 just to remove and dispose of the chairs due to insurance. they will also have to resurface the existing floor at a cost of $106,619 for ADA compliance. The new chairs will cost $312,168 bringing the total to $441,223.
The cost per chair is $361.66, but they are $400 each to account for inflation.
Contributions are tax deductible, Styles said. You can pay in person at Permian High School or mail a check or money order to Permian High School Accounting Department, Attn: Adopt-a-Seat Campaign, 1800 E. 42nd St., Odessa, Texas, 79762.
“… We hope to start it in the summer of 2023 … while the kids are away. But we realize we have quite a bit of fundraising ahead of us. It’s a seat at a time, a day at a time. At this point, we’ve had a lot of positive feedback and donations already,” Styles said. “The first day that we launched this, we had an orchestra parent stop by after school and leave a check to officially adopt (a) seat. Also, I was going to mention that by the end of the week, we had an anonymous donor that stopped by and bought three seats. The family did not want their name disclosed.”
A number of the current chairs are broken, torn and/or falling apart. There are some chairs with no bottom cushion at all.
Maintenance comes to weld the seats as they break, which Styles said happens frequently.
There is normally plenty of seating, but people will try two or three possibilities before finding a functional seat.
“This is the second set of seats at Permian. I thought they were original. The originals were placed in the mid-90s. And there was a principal at Permian that got in touch with Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD, sometimes known as HEB. Trinity High School was redoing their auditorium, so these seats were actually bought secondhand from Trinity High School. Their colors obviously are red and black, hence the red seats,” Styles said.
She added that with bond issues, and Permian being more than 60 years old, you have to go for infrastructure first as the seats might be considered cosmetic.
This is Styles’ third year at Permian.
“I consistently receive emails asking about the seating and what the plans are. Because of the scale of this project, we had to break it down into what would be a manageable project for getting our community involved, our alumni involved, our students, our staff. And so when you think about an auditorium of 1,200-plus seats, it literally comes down to one seat at a time. This is a grassroots, roll-up-your-sleeves … fundraising campaigns, as donors contribute $400 … it’s about the cost of a seat when you add the removal, the flooring, the seat … a small fraction for inflation. We have donors that are happy to write a check for $400. We realize, especially now with the economy and inflation, that that’s not possible for some people. We respect that. But we’re taking donations of any size.”
They were also conducting a sale of Mojo spirit shirts for $10 each. For every shirt they sold, they made $10, so 40 shirts would add up to a seat.
The auditorium, she said, is the hub of the school. It’s the site of fine arts performances, athletic signings, senior class, staff and parent meetings.
“… We want to make this a place where we can be proud of inviting guests into our auditorium. So yes, it is layers. The first layer, obviously, is the seating. We believe that if we can get people into the auditorium and comfortable and see the potential of our space, that we’ll have more interest in the next phase of addressing stage; addressing the soundstage in the back. If you look up there in the corner, you can see where it’s currently housed and we want to bring that down to the midsection in the back, so we will clear out a space and lose a few seats in the back to meet ADA compliance, which is slightly changed since the seats were installed and then plan ahead,” Styles said.
The chairs will come from Lone Star.
Demri Balerio, a 15-year-old sophomore, Jase Contreras, a 17-year-old junior, and Vivian Bell, a 16-year-old junior are Student Senate members.
Contreras is the treasurer.
“I think it’s really great,” Balerio said of the project. “It gives us an opportunity to really understand everything that goes on with our other departments such as theater, choir, and anything that really uses the auditorium.”
Contreras said the fundraising should have started a long time ago and he feels that the organizations that use the auditorium should have a nice space for all the work that they put in.
Bell, who is in choir, said she spends a lot of time in the auditorium and has gotten feedback from her grandmother. A long time ago at a choir concert, there was a seat at that went “straight to the floor and we had a good complaint about it.”
Balerio said she has friends in choir, so she goes to a lot of concerts.
“It’s very hard to get group seating if you want to sit with your friends to watch …,” Balerio said.
Contreras said the refurbished auditorium is something he and his peers will be able to visit in the future.
He is a percussionist in the band and they would like to use it for concerts, but they wind up using the Odessa High School Performing Arts Center.
Styles noted that they often have to use off-site spaces.
Once they complete the project, she said, they will be able to use what they were paying in rental fees back into other levels of restoration.
“We are elated to finally put it out there. Again ideally, we hope to start in the summer, but we’re committed however long it takes. We’ll sell one seat at a time until we sell 1,220 …,” Styles said.
If they do have any surplus after the project, they will move on to revamping the stage area, updating the curtains and panels in the front.
“It’s like any project. It starts evolving into more and we just want to focus primarily on this portion of making sure that we treat our guests well when they come in the auditorium,” Styles said.
“… We want to bring things back to our own auditorium,” she added.
