On Thursday, Aug. 9, Welby Community School families were welcomed back to school with a special ribbon cutting ceremony celebrating the completion of their new gymnasium, music room, library, and classrooms. The School District broke ground on this project in the summer of 2017. Outside the building, Mapleton is collaborating with area partners to blend the unique geological, cultural and agricultural history of the area into outdoor learning spaces and discovery play areas. The Welby Outdoor Learning Park vision is to create outdoor spaces that operate as extensions of the classroom. The School District is seeking multiple grant opportunities to support the construction of this project, and hopes to know more about the future of this one-of-a-kind project this fall.

Welby’s summer work is in progress, including window replacement, roller shade installation, and common area tack board installation.  Onsite work at the soccer field, detention ponds, and north concrete work is complete. 

There is ongoing work into the ‘18/’19 fiscal year, but all work will be complete before teachers and students return in August 2018.  The increased project budget of $11.2 million is still intact, which approximately $14k of unallocated remaining funds.

Final inspections are complete, but some minor work continues at Welby. Around the building, crews will begin replacing some of the older windows to improve efficiency in the older wing of the building. Outside the building, Welby's green thumb is showing! With help from the Big Green team and Big Green founder Kimbal Musk, Welby's "Guardians of the Garden" harvested kale, radishes, spinach and other greens they planted in April. Students hope to host a 'garden-to-table' meal for the school by serving their harvest at Welby's salad bar. 

Outside the building, excitement is growing for Welby's Outdoor Learning Park. Thanks to a grant from the National Park Service Rivers, Trails and Conservation program, Mapleton is working alongside a team of experts and stakeholders to transform the open spaces around Welby into an outdoor learning park that will enhance and enrich learning experiences for all children. Seniors from the Colorado School of Mines are designing a “treehouse” for the park as a part of their senior capstone design project. The student engineers delivered a model representation of the future structure and are currently collecting feedback from Welby staff, students and families. Although it will not be built in a tree, the structure will look and feel like a classroom or community gathering space amongst the trees. The structure will help enhance multiple Expeditionary Learning modules, including Birds, Trees, Sun, Moon and Stars, Human Study of the Ecosystems, Water Conservation and Pollinators. Mapleton is working with community stakeholders to discuss pathway designs, historical markers, and other park elements and hopes to present additional information to the community in the fall.