MONTVALE—Student representatives from Pascack Valley and Pascack Hills regional high schools revealed their schools’ winning mascot logo selections for the Panthers and Broncos at the Oct. 25 Pascack Valley Regional High School District school board meeting.
The final selections were shown to school trustees Oct. 11, when trustees agreed to accept the final decisions made by students and staff at both schools.
Pascack Valley’s Evan Scalia and Pascack Hills’ Hilary Siegel, the board’s student representatives, revealed the winning logos during their regular reports.
“I commend everyone involved with developing the mascot logo designs. The school committees worked hard to ensure the designs incorporated input from our students and staff, giving our schools mascots they can rally around for generations to come,” interim Superintendent Daniel Fishbein told Pascack Press on Oct. 26.
No trustee commented on the final vote at the meeting. Both schools voted in mid-October on the final two mascot logo options that had been winnowed over months by committees at each school.
Pascack Valley High School serves the residents of both Hillsdale and neighboring River Vale; Pascack Hills High School serves the communities of Woodcliff Lake and Montvale.
At Pascack Valley, the winning Panthers’ logo mascot received 83.5% of the vote while the winning Pascack Hills’ Broncos’ mascot received 64.1% of the vote, said spokesperson Paul Zeller, district director of communications and technology.
Due to the regional school board’s unanimous decision in June 2020 to retire both schools’ mascots, Pascack Hills High School dropped its Cowboy mascot and branding to become Broncos while Pascack Valley High School retired its Indian mascot and branding to become the Panthers.
The mascot selections came after months of meetings between committees at each school composed of student and staff stakeholders.
Despite strong public and political pressure, the regional board declined to reconsider its decision to retire the prior mascots and said that the previous mascots offended a significant portion of its communities and were not inclusive.
The final mascot logo votes were officially disclosed to students at both schools on Oct. 15, said Zeller.
He said the next steps include style guides for logo usage are developed for each school by a previously hired consultant and graphic designer.
“Once we have the full library of logo files and style guides for each school, athletic directors will be able to start purchasing items they have planned and budgeted for, such as equipment, uniforms, and signage. We will develop new letterhead for the schools, to be used once all supplies of existing letterhead and other stationery have been depleted,” said Zeller.
School organizations and clubs will be able to reference their respective library of logo files and the style guide to develop publications, spirit wear, and other items, he added.
What do you think about the new school mascot logos? See our letters policy on page 2 and sound off!