Del Mar Academy Case Examine


Colorado district groups with Faculty Specialty to furnish and equip a $60M facility from finish to finish.

Jennifer Murtha, principal of Del Mar Academy in Aurora, Colorado, had a imaginative and prescient for what she needed the brand new faculty’s studying environments to appear like and the way they’d perform.

“I needed a much less institutional appear and feel,” she says. “I needed smooth and exhausting seating so that youngsters had selections.”

Murtha and different leaders from the Aurora Public Colleges turned to Faculty Specialty for assist in bringing this imaginative and prescient to life. Led by Senior Studying Atmosphere Specialist Belinda Engles, Senior Inside Designer Emma Kopatich, and Strategic Account Chief Paula Florian, a crew of Faculty Specialty professionals designed, furnished, and outfitted a brand new faculty constructing that college students may take satisfaction in—one which evokes them to study every single day.

“We serve plenty of children who’ve grown up in poverty and who’ve had fairly tough occasions of their lives,” Murtha says. “There hasn’t been a brand new faculty on this neighborhood in 67 years. For them to have a wonderful constructing is very nice. The neighborhood deserves it, our workers deserves it, and positively our youngsters deserve it.”

Del Mar Academy

Welcoming and Inclusive Studying Environments

The brand new Del Mar Academy, which opened in August 2023, serves college students in prekindergarten by way of seventh grade, with eighth graders being added for the 2025-26 faculty yr.

In designing the brand new facility, district leaders needed to create fashionable studying environments that may be welcoming and inclusive for everybody, with comfy seating selections to accommodate college students with completely different preferences, wants, and studying kinds.

Versatile furnishings empower lecturers to rearrange their school rooms in ways in which assist completely different educational methods, whereas quite a lot of seating kinds empowers college students to decide on a mode that’s most conducive for them to study.

Del Mar Academy

Fashionable, hands-on studying areas like a STEM lab and a digital arts studio allow college students to study future-ready abilities like coding and digital music manufacturing. “It’s about giving high-quality grade-level instruction to each scholar,” Murtha says.

The varsity’s center faculty school rooms embrace tall group tables in order that college students can stand and work in the event that they select. Elementary school rooms embrace conventional chairs and in addition swivel stools for college kids who’ve issue sitting nonetheless. Preschool school rooms embrace quite a few center-based actions reminiscent of water tables as a substitute of simply desks and chairs.

A sensory room inside the new faculty is designed to satisfy the wants of scholars who require extra sensory enter. It’s outfitted with a bubble tube and different gadgets that present sensory stimulation. For example, sensory ground tiles create liquid patterns when college students step on them, and LED furnishings cubes change shade when college students contact them. This helps college students assert management over their setting, which promotes self-regulation abilities.

The sensory room is used for neurodivergent learners and people who need assistance calming down or regulating their feelings.

“It’s primarily for our special-needs college students, however our occupational therapists pull out college students from basic training school rooms who want that stage of consideration as properly,” Murtha says. “The fantastic thing about this room is that youngsters can select what to do. We don’t inform them what to do in that house.”

Even the cafeteria is designed to offer college students selections, with conventional cafeteria tables but additionally café- fashion seating for small teams of two or three kids.

“College students can get their meals after which discover a seat that’s most comfy for them,” Murtha notes.
“On the finish of the day, no one needs to eat with 300 folks. This can be a option to give children just a little extra company.”

Del Mar Academy

Deliberately Designed

The neighborhood’s response to the brand new faculty facility has been overwhelmingly constructive. “The primary phrase that everybody says is gorgeous,” Murtha says. “It’s a wonderful faculty.”

The varsity’s trendy, fashionable studying environments give college students a way of satisfaction and self-worth whereas altering their outlook on coming to high school.

“We’ve surveyed our college students during the last yr, and what we’ve heard is: ‘I like my faculty. I prefer it when my dad and mom come to my faculty,’” Murtha says. “After I inform our older college students, ‘We spent $60 million on you,’ they positively really feel vital.”

Not solely is the brand new constructing engaging, but it surely’s extremely practical as properly. Academics like having the ability to configure the furnishings simply to assist completely different groupings and actions. The sensory room helps put together college students to study who’re anxious or who’ve bother focusing.
“We have been very intentional with our design,” Murtha says.

Working with Faculty Specialty on the design of the brand new faculty’s studying areas has been “a dream,” she provides, noting: “They’re simply so fantastic. The true testomony of any relationship is what you do when there’s battle. We had some gadgets on again order, issues that Faculty Specialty couldn’t management, they usually have been unbelievable in working to make sure that we opened on time and inside price range. They bent over backward to assist us discover the suitable furnishings.”

She concludes: “I’d suggest them to anybody.”



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