The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Modular classrooms becoming a reality for the 2019-2020 school year
by Anika Pepper
Superintendent of the Gunnison Watershed REJ1 School District Dr. Leslie Nichols updated the school board on Monday, October 22 regarding the master plan for facilities improvement within the district. Nichols stated that she has received a second draft of the Facilities Master Plan to consider.
Nichols also added demographic information about the school sites. With the Crested Butte Community School hitting its maximum capacity of nearly 750 students for the 2018-2019 school year, Nichols said it is time to start planning for the future.
“This year in 2018-19 we did hit our first trigger point, that we started the year with almost 750 kids,” she said. “That does mean that it is time to start planning for a modular on that campus to accommodate numbers next year. I will continue to pursue this with [the design firm] RTA Architects for what cost will incur.”
Nichols explained that this is not just a simple solution of adding modular units onto the campus. Details such as student safety, access to the internet and technology, and hooking up the PA system into the modular classrooms need to be taken into careful consideration while planning this phase of the facilities adjustments at CBCS.
During this discussion, school board member Tyler Martineau asked which part of CBCS is approaching maximum capacity and whether there were greater efforts needed in the elementary or secondary sections of the school. “It is pretty spread out,” said Nichols. “We are bumping up against maximum numbers in both elementary and secondary. Both principals at the school have a lot of great ideas on how to address these challenges, however, so we will move forward with that discussion.”
In addition to the discussion of modular classrooms at CBCS, Nichols said improvements to the school parking lot are still in the works. “We are continuing our conversations with the town of Crested Butte on adjustments for the parking lot and safe route to school. The traffic study engineer is completing her work. There has been a positive impact—we just don’t know how much yet, and we are eager to see the impact.”
