The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Working around the construction zone
By Kendra Walker
The Crested Butte summer season is winding down, which means the Gunnison Watershed School District is gearing up for a new school year. And despite the rumors of the Crested Butte Community School building construction delaying the first day of school, students will still be heading back to school on Monday, August 25 as scheduled.
According to district superintendent Leslie Nichols, there are a total of 700 students enrolled at Crested Butte Community School at the beginning of this 2025/26 school year. Last year, the school had approximately 715 students heading into the first day. Of those students this year, 288 are in grades kindergarten through fifth grade on the elementary side, and 412 are in grades sixth through 12th with the secondary school.
On the teaching and administration side, Nichols said there are 34 elementary staff, 40 secondary staff and 12 additional shared staffers at Crested Butte Community School. Nichols said the district is looking to fill several positions, including a library aide, a secondary school math teacher, a secondary school G/T interventionist, food service and the district is always in need of substitute teachers.
Nichols said that CBCS is also looking for another bus driver. During the GWSD board meeting on August 11, district transportation and facilities manager Paul Morgan confirmed that there are two bus routes for CBCS in the mornings, picking up kids in CB South, making their way to Skyland, Riverbend and Buckhorn and then onto the school. There is only one bus back in the afternoon, but Morgan said the district has a great relationship with the RTA to help the students get home. “The kids have figured out how to take the RTA to get back to CB South. That has worked out,” he told the school board. “We really appreciate Scott Truex with the RTA, they have changed schedules to accommodate the school and we work really well together.”
However, as with the last couple of years, Mt. Crested Butte and the town of Crested Butte do not have a bus route. “Mt. CB and town on the west side are affected by our lack of drivers,” said Morgan.
Board president Tyler Martineau asked whether there had been any conversations with Mountain Express to get students down the mountain in the mornings, and Morgan said he would follow up with them; however, the school’s 8:30 a.m. start time hasn’t worked with the Mountain Express bus schedule in the past.
As reported in last week’s Crested Butte News, construction will continue through the 2025/26 school year and while there may be some troubleshooting of systems after the students are back, Nichols and the facilities improvements project team expressed their gratitude for the cooperation and coordination from the administration to help establish a plan to bring students back to school in the midst of the expansion.
For the first day, Nichols noted that the main parking lot has a new pattern to it, though drop off and pickup flow should feel very familiar. The high school parking lot should also feel very similar as the past, though some slots may be taken by construction equipment.
“We really are urging all drivers to slow down. Construction complicates things, and beginning of the year traffic patterns take everyone a minute to adjust to,” she said. “Our Red Lady neighbors really deserve slower drivers – the speed limit is 15! Thank you!”
