Animas High School is inching closer to opening its new location at Fort Lewis College.
The building, with a maximum price tag of $19.1 million, is months away from welcoming students to its project-based classrooms.
Plans to build the new school on the FLC campus were established last year after AHS and the college agreed to a lease of 3.2 acres of land.
The 40,500-square-foot structure will have two floors, with a common space flowing through the building’s central spine and ending in an atrium at the southern end.
Support staff members and administration will be spread throughout the entire building but will encompass a large portion of the bottom floor.
“The idea is that all of us are accessible to students at any time,” said Sean Woytek, head of school at AHS. “We have an open-door policy, and we wanted the building to reflect that.”
The two-story atrium will be used as a multipurpose room and common area for students to eat lunch and present projects. The space will feature a projector, surround-sound stereo system and a warming kitchen for students.
One of the features emphasized by Woytek was the usage of natural light. The building has many large windows as well as sky lights allowing for good visibility.
“We have light coming all the way down from the roof to the first floor, and all of the classrooms are going to have multiple big windows so that natural light is coming in,” he said. “Ideally, we’re not using lights as much and students learn better with natural light.”
Some other new additions to the school include an upstairs science lab, a universal workshop and a makerspace.
According to Woytek, in the 13 years of AHS, the school has never had its own science lab and has used facilities provided by FLC. With the new school, students will no longer have to preplan their lab time months in advance.
The makerspace and universal workshop will be housed on the school’s bottom floor and use garage doors so students can easily take their projects to another location if needed. These shops will allow access to tools, such as 3D printers and laser cutters, students can use for their various projects.
The school will also be adding a new music classroom on the second floor specifically designed for music production.
In partnership with iAM MUSIC, the classroom will be designed to best suit the acoustic needs for producing and will have multiple recording studios.
“We’ll have professional-grade equipment so students can do the recording and editing all within those studios,” Woytek said.
Students interested in developing podcasts and video will also be able to use the space.
Because of the school’s proximity to FLC, Woytek said it will be an opportunity for high school students to further collaborate with different collegiate educational fields.
“Right now, in our current facility, we collaborate with the school of education quite a bit as well as other schools within the college,” he said. “But there is that distance barrier, and being right next to Fort Lewis College is going to allow both institutions to think differently about collaborations with each other.”
There have been discussions between AHS and FLC about hosting conferences where AHS students will stay in dorm rooms over the summer and get involved with lab-style classes on campus.
“That synergy between the two entities is going to be pretty amazing to see,” Woytek said.
AHS enrolls 195 students, and the new building is constructed to accommodate about 250 students. The location is set to open in October.
