Hopes high for Commerce City school

Sports facilities, labs, art rooms, theater planned

By Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 19, 2008 at 7:15 p.m.
Updated June 19, 2008 at 11:54 p.m.

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Local officials hope a state-of-the-art high school, rising on the site of a defunct chemical weapons plant, will help lift a community out of poverty.

The school, combined with a community college on the campus, will let teenagers learn at the same place where their parents will be able to receive job training, take English courses or continue their education.

"Can you imagine, if you have the parents going to college and they (the students) have that before them - that their parents did it, and now they can do it, and their children can do it," City Councilwoman Reba Drotar, a Commerce City native and longtime school volunteer, said Thursday. "The possibilities are actually limitless."

The building - the school board will choose a name next year - opens in fall 2009. It is on a small part of the former Rocky Mountain Arsenal, where chemical weapons were manufactured for the Army.

School officials hosted a tour of the construction site Thursday.

The $64 million structure replaces Adams City High School, built in 1939.

Adams County School District 14 has been struggling for years to boost learning in the face of widespread poverty.

The building will be divided into four "academies," including a program that emphasizes science and technology and another built around the arts. The building will include only about 50 traditional classrooms. The rest of the 293,000-square-foot structure includes extensive laboratories, sports facilities, career education areas, art rooms and a theater with a full-size orchestra pit.

A culinary training area will include two kitchens.

The space is configured so that student chefs will be able to serve dinner to patrons who will then walk down a breezeway to the theater to see a student production.

That kind of design is consistent with school reform efforts that emphasize learning outside traditional classroom.

"These are multi-tasking kids, and then we say, 'Go sit down and don't move. Sit in a row . . . And they tune right out," Lange said. "So now (in the new building) you can pick your area, pick the way you want to learn."

The building also addresses another 21st-century concern - security.

"With the touch of one button, we can lock everything in this building," said Mike Grandstaff, the district's chief operating officer. Police responding to an emergency will have access to the security cameras inside the building.

The community college courses will be operated under agreement with three Colorado community colleges and the private Johnson & Wales University.

Some hard-working teens will be able to receive an associate's degree along with their high school diplomas.

A special school

Features of the new high school in Commerce City:

* Composed of four small "academies," each with an academic specialty, to better adapt to students' interests and create a small-school intimacy.

* Full "wellness clinic" for students.

* 42-inch HDTV screens in classrooms. Teachers will access the screens with instructional materials from their laptops.

* Possibly the only Colorado school with a view of a buffalo herd. That's because it adjoins the defunct Rocky Mountain Arsenal, which is now a wildlife refuge. The refuge has one of the largest concentrations of eagles in the U.S. The school's teams happen to be nicknamed the Eagles.

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