Dos Pueblos High School Celebrates Opening of New Media Center

Taking the place of dilapidated portables at Dos Pueblos High School is the school’s new media center, which was surrounded by school leaders, reporters, and students in party hats for its ceremonial ribbon-cutting on Tuesday morning. The Virgil Elings Media Arts and Communications Center houses hundreds of students each day to learn about asking questions, meeting deadlines, and cooperating with their peers to tell and craft stories. 

Superintendent Dr. Hilda Maldonado, who herself once dreamed of being a reporter, noted, “The world needs journalists.” Behind the building’s glass facade is a space created and equipped for the young DP News team and their daily broadcast — including a news desk donated by KEYT — as well as yearbook staff and other budding journalists and creatives. The center went live and started hosting classes this past fall. 

The project was spurred by a series of “what ifs,” school leaders explained on Tuesday. It was envisioned by teachers John Dent, Amir Abo-Shaeer, and Emily Shaeer, who wrote the proposal for the $3 million technical education grant that funded the center’s development in addition to money from Measure I funds to replace the old portables and uneven asphalt they sat upon. It is a wing of the school’s larger Career and Technical Education Hub on the south end of campus. 

“The skills these students learn in their new classrooms will prepare them to be 21st-century journalists, broadcasters, documentarians, filmmakers, and so much more,” Maldonado said. “We are so proud to see the high-quality work DP Media students are doing each and every day.”