COLORADO SPRINGS — D11 received an unexpected gift recently that they say will help protect the health of its teachers, students, and staff.
It all started on September 16, when a Washington D.C.-based pharmaceutical company held its annual conference at The Broadmoor. They had purchased air purification systems for each meeting room at their event then were left wondering what to do with them afterward.
Then the sales team at Visit COS got involved. The team helped coordinate the annual conference and thought D11 schools would greatly benefit from the purification systems, leading to 67 purifiers being donated to D11 schools.
So far this year, D11 has had to deal with rising COVID-19 cases among teachers and staff as well as cases that require quarantining. It also just implemented a mask mandate. District officials we spoke to say having these purifiers in place will be immensely helpful to each of its schools, bringing in better air quality.
"What this does is we've placed these in all of our nursing offices and so when a sick student comes in it will help purify the room better," Terry Seamen, the Executive Dir., of Facilities and Transportation for D11, said.
This gift is also helping the district out financially. Seamen says a gift like this is something that the district can't really afford to do on its own. In fact, the district has a $700 million facility backlog and all available resources are going to fix what really needs repairs.
