A Bird's Eye View is a newsletter designed to keep our community updated on the progress of our most exciting project to date--building Animas High School's permanent campus at Fort Lewis College.
Project Updates

  • Our lead architects from Denver-based firm Anderson Mason Dale will be on campus this week to present schematic designs to teachers, staff and board members to get feedback and input about individual classrooms, offices and shared spaces.

  • Join us for the AHS Online Community Meeting: Presentation of Schematic design of our New Campus Monday May 17 at 5:30pm via this Zoom link. Community engagement is an important piece of the design process for our permanent Animas High School campus at Fort Lewis College. We have received approval of our early Schematic Design and would like to share that with you all! Our architect team from Anderson Mason Dale will present information virtually. Please join us to see the exciting progress on our new school--all are welcome!

  • Juniors Antonio Crouchelli and Robert Cossey are wrapping up their 3-week LINK Internships with Anderson Mason Dale, where they have been able to get an insider's view into the proces of designing our school.



For more information about the AHS Campus Construction project timeline and process, please visit http://animashighschool.com/new-building-information/

We seek full transparency and equity in our hiring and awarding of contracts, and therefore will not meet with potential vendors outside of our Request for Proposals and interview processes.
Osprey Voices

Ted and Moira Compton are the parents of Cecilia (Ce) Compton, AHS Class of 2019.  Ce is finishing her second year at Pitzer College at the Claremont Colleges in California, where she is studying Environmental Analysis. Ted and Moira both served on the AHS School Excellence Committee during the four years Ce attended AHS. With Ce taking flight from the home nest (pun intended, Ospreys)!  Ted continues his engineering career as the Director of Technology at United Pipeline Systems located in Durango, but is stepping it up a notch by running for the La Plata Electric Association Board of Directors. Keep an eye out for ballots around May 19th.  Moira is the executive director of the Durango Mesa Park Foundation, the future home of the La Plata County Fairgrounds, a large-scale bike park, and future home to athletic and recreational amenities for our community as well as a cultural/music venue. This year the park will host the 2021 Colorado high school mountain bike state championships!  

What attracted your family to AHS? Ce guided much of her educational path and as parents we were comfortable with her instincts and with the ultimate direction she wanted to take. She had attended Durango Montessori and the early days of Mountain Middle.  Every year Ce's drive in school increased and her desire to continue with a project-based education was what attracted us to AHS.

How did AHS prepare Ce for life after high school? AHS provided Ce with many valuable tools for her educational toolbelt (had to tie in the pre-construction terminology!) for preparation after high school.  In our mind the one tool that has had the most impact on her post high school success was self-advocacy.  Ce stepped into college life and “real world” Covid life with a strong capacity for self-advocacy.  She understands what she needs and is not afraid to go after it. Ce was also well prepared in high school to present work clearly and succinctly not only in college but in her internship last summer with a solar start up.  

Another critical item that AHS excels at is producing excellent writers that are prepared for the next step. Ted's sister, Lee Ann Harbison, is a biology professor at Fort Lewis College and she is always able to pick out the AHS students by the quality of their written work!

How do you see AHS positively impacting our community?  AHS provides a choice for our area's high school students.This is important because there are many different types of learning styles and learners in any population. But this is even more important because it allows different schools to excel at different areas of focus. One school does not have to try to be the best at everything. Each school can excel in a different way, and in this way AHS makes all of the high schools better thus having an overall positive impact on our community. Student involvement in the community either through service projects, LINK internships, Sophomore Inspire Week or presentations allows students to interact with community members which has a lasting and meaningful impact with our community and for AHS students.
 
What's most exciting to you about AHS building our permanent campus at Fort Lewis College?  We feel that every class that has graduated was hopeful that they would be graduating from AHS's permanent home. The road has been long and dotted with large obstacles. The most exciting chapter for AHS is the unlimited possibilities that a permanent home and the close proximity to FLC can unlock! For example, Steve Smith can have extra lab time, longer labs = longer reports = even more preparation for college-level classes and labs--now that is exciting to us! Joking aside, there is not just one thing that is the most exciting to us, there will be hundreds of amazing experiences and ideas that will pop up with a permanent AHS campus.
 
Where do you envision AHS in 10 years? We envision that AHS will be nationally recognized for not only academic achievement and local and national college placement, but also for continually charting a positive path for students to engage with the community that surrounds and prepares them to take flight from the Nest. From teacher involvement, community interaction, unique learning experiences with Osprey Week, AHS students  will continue to be presented with what is stimulating about our region and our community. We envision AHS students will have great stories to take with them and share at colleges across the country.
In the News