Before a new school opens, the neighborhood wants to know what is going up behind the fence. In March 2025 we built and installed the temporary construction sign for Valor Academy Elementary School, a Bright Star Schools campus on Plummer Street in North Hills. These are the project notes, plus what to know if you need a construction sign for a site of your own in Los Angeles.
The project
Valor Academy Elementary is part of Bright Star Schools, a Los Angeles charter network. The school spent years in borrowed space while its permanent campus went through city approvals; in May 2023 the City Council’s planning committee cleared the North Hills site (ABC7 covered the hearing). The campus built since is a two-story school of roughly 39,000 square feet with 27 classrooms, and the project won a 2026 Los Angeles Business Journal award for community impact (project page).
Our part was small but the most visible thing on the block: the sign that tells the street what the fenced lot will become.
What we built
A post-and-panel construction sign. A wood post frame was set along the site fence and a large printed panel was mounted to it, carrying the school rendering, the “Future Home of” message and the logos of the school and its project partners. The panel is printed with outdoor inks and laminated so the rendering holds its color through a full construction season of Valley sun.
Why a construction sign is worth doing properly
- It answers the question everyone asks. For a school, “what is being built here?” is community relations, not just marketing.
- It credits the partners. Showing the funders and partners is often a requirement on public and non-profit projects.
- It is the project’s front door. Deliveries, inspectors and subcontractors find the site by the sign.
Materials and mounting
For a sign that has to live outdoors for the length of a construction project we recommend rigid panels, aluminum composite or MDO plywood, rather than banners. Banners flap, tear and fade; a rigid panel on treated wood posts photographs well from the day it goes up until the day the doors open. Panels can be swapped later for a “Now Enrolling” or “Opening Fall” message on the same frame.
Permits
Temporary signs in the City of Los Angeles have their own rules on size, placement and how long they can stay up, and construction projects often carry conditions of approval that spell out what signage is allowed. We check both before anything is printed so nothing has to come down. See our sign permits page.
Need a sign for your project site?
We design, print and install construction, “coming soon” and post-and-panel signs across the San Fernando Valley and greater Los Angeles from our shop in Pacoima, ten minutes from North Hills. Send us the site address and what the sign needs to say and we will reply with a layout and a quote. See sign installation, large format printing and banners, or contact us.