The Archuleta School District Board of Education heard that several of its campuses and classrooms are in need of improvements after early findings from a summer survey were shared during the board’s meeting on Oct. 10.
Reviewing preliminary data collected by RTA Architects — a Colorado Springs-based firm specializing in educational projects — board members learned how the elementary, middle and high schools fared when assessed for educational adequacy and overall facility conditions.
“Educational adequacy actually talks about the quality of spaces that you have to deliver instruction,” RTA’s Doug Abernethy said. “The second part is the more tactile … facilities-focused information.”
Assessing both measures, Abernethy explained his firm scored more than 200 metrics at each of the three schools, including classroom sizes, technology, furniture and outdoor spaces, with standards from the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) also factoring in.
Abernethy noted the findings represented a bird’s-eye view of the strengths and challenges at each campus, and that more feedback from school staff and the community would be important in plotting a course forward.
Pagosa Springs
Elementary School
With an overall score of 56 percent, Abernethy explained Pagosa Springs Elementary School’s (PSES’s) educational adequacy was “at a D or an F, depending on the teacher.”
He reported to the board, “We’ve assessed probably almost 200 buildings across the state using this metric, and [PSES] falls into the bottom third from a data perspective.”
Built in 1968, Abernethy explained the elementary school is approaching the end of its useful life, citing the building’s capacity, safety risks and potential barriers to academic achievement.
“The No. 1 place where children get hurt in America is actually in traffic,” he said, pointing to the school’s busy pickup and drop-off zones.
Limited visual connections to hallway corridors were also a concern, Abernethy noted.
With a calculated total capacity of 783, Abernethy explained the functional capacity of the school was actually lower — around 639.
That could prove problematic, he added, if enrollment at the school rises and student-teacher ratios are kept near or below current levels.
Other challenges Abernethy outlined were the sizes of the school’s library and cafeteria, the absence of a gymnasium, and the lack of views to the outside from many of the classrooms.
“Roughly one in every four classrooms in this building doesn’t have an exterior window,” Abernethy reported, and explained test scores have been shown to increase from 8-12 percent when students and teachers have access to views and natural daylight.
Pagosa Springs Middle School
Facing similar challenges as the elementary school, Abernethy explained Pagosa Springs Middle School scored a 55 percent when evaluated for its educational spaces and condition.
“There’s just some inherent challenges that we have with the middle school,” he said, pointing specifically to its age and location on U.S. 160.
The school building, built in 1954, is struggling to keep pace with current trends and standards in education, Abernethy noted.
“From an instructional standpoint, the way we deliver instruction today is very different than we delivered it 70 years ago,” he said.
CDE standards recommend today’s classrooms be around 900 square feet, Abernethy explained, noting classrooms in the middle school are about 740 square feet, hindering teachers’ ability to modify the learning environment.
With most of the school’s outdoor recreation spaces located across the highway and under control of the town, Abernethy suggested student safety is also an issue at the school.
Limited space for small group work and interventions, an undersized cafeteria and outdated furniture also contributed to the school’s low assessment score.
Pagosa Springs High School
“This is as good a score as we’ve seen,” Abernethy said of the 26-year old high school building, which received a passing score of 74 percent when measured against RTA’s educational rubric.
Abernethy complimented the school’s overall condition as well as its outdoor amenities, spaces for collaborative work, as well as its safety and security upgrades.
But with the school operating at about 91 percent capacity, Abernethy explained other questions around special education, intervention and student success spaces would eventually arise.
“You don’t have room for some of those things right now,” he said. “We start to run into challenges where we can’t create spaces that’ll support the educational delivery model.”
Current spaces for career technical development will likely need to be expanded in the future, according to RTA’s analysis, with additional storage and an auxiliary gym also identified as potential improvements to the campus.
Next steps
As the school district and RTA continue to refine data collected during the summer’s assessment, plans to share more details about the schools’ facilities condition and soliciting community feedback are also underway.
After gathering initial feedback from school staff, the district plans to offer three opportunities for community members to weigh in.
Those sessions are tentatively scheduled for late October and after the general election in November, with additional details forthcoming.
Describing the information sessions, Abernethy said, “We want to find out where the pinch points are, where some of the challenges are, the things that are going well.”
He added that the pace of any improvements would largely be determined by the school board and the community.
“It’s really up to the board and the community to have a conversation about where’s the priority, what do they think of the timing and what really makes sense,” he said.
There’s not yet been an evaluation conducted for the San Juan Mountain School building, but Superintendent Rick Holt suggested one may soon be needed.
“It’s under-designed for its capacity,” Holt said of the school, which currently has an enrollment of around 50 students, according to administrators. “It is a concern. It’s also our newest building, which is also a concern.”
By December, Holt explained he hopes to have a better idea of what staff and community envision for the other schools — including defining top priorities and which areas to direct funding.
Until then, Holt noted he hopes to communicate the gap between “what we have and what we could have, before assigning dollar amounts to any potential improvements.
“What would we like to do better?” Holt asked. “[I’m] trying to keep that as our focus right now.”
He added, “I’d like the community to be considering what we could do for our students before we talk about how much [that] would cost us.”
garrett@pagosasun.com
