The city’s school board approved a measure to name the media center inside the new School 16 building after Italian-American trailblazer Mary Augusto, who founded “La Voce Italiana” or “The Italian Voice” newspaper and was the first woman to run for mayor in the Silk City.

Augusto died in 1982. To preserve her memory, Augusto’s daughter, Cesairna Augusto Earl, lobbied the board of education to either name School 16 or the media center after her mother. The daughter argued, her mother saved the school when the Board of Education attempted to shut it down in 1946-7 because it was too expensive to heat in the winter.