Pacific Beach Middle School is starting to look more like a work of art. The most recent enhancement to the school was a giant ocean mural completed in May.
The mural, painted and partially donated by artist Tom Plonka, is on the school’s auditorium wall on Ingraham Street. It depicts an ocean featuring three whales with Crystal Pier in the background.
“I wanted something that everybody would recognize as a PB landmark, and Crystal Pier is a PB landmark,” said Friends of Pacific Beach Secondary School member Cori Meara.
Meara, who has a seventh-grader attending the school, said the cost for a mural of that size is about $10,000, but Plonka decided to complete the mural at a cost of only $4,000 to the school. Students and their families raised the rest of the money via different fundraisers, and Frazee Paint helped out by donating all of the paint used in the mural.
A major portion of the funds came from family nights at local restaurants, at each of which 20 percent of the proceeds were donated to the completion of mural. Parent donations provided $1,500 and students raised an additional $600 for the proj-ect in a Mural Madness fundraiser at the school.
“We wanted to get back to basics and get PB involved in the schools like they used to be,” Meara said. “We wanted to get back that good PB feeling.”
This newest mural took approximately two months and joins two other murals at the school, including one with dolphins that replaced an old marquee. Each of these, in addition to other campus enhancements, are the result of the PB Middle School PTO’s beautification committee.
Two years ago, the PB Middle School PTO started a beautification committee. Meara said this was necessary because the school is International Baccalaureate school and it needed to be more attractive to potential visitors.
“We decided we needed a major overhaul because it basically looked like a prison,” Meara said.
Meara said the beautification process started last year with gardening and foliage on Felspar Street. In addition to the murals, there is a tile mosaic of the Earth in the lunch area. Meara said the mosaic symbolizes the International Baccalaureate idea of global learning.
Leftover funds raised for the Crystal Pier mural will be put towards painting the outfacing doors at the middle school. That project will be completed this summer.
“There will either be waves or shells “” something with a beach theme,” Meara said.
Either way, PB Middle School will continue to get a little bit brighter.
Pacific Beach Middle School is located at 4676 Ingraham St.