COLORADO SPRINGS — Renovations are coming to one middle school in southeast Colorado Springs.
Atlas Middle School is building a new facility with more safety measures and technology advancements. School officials hope the new building will improve the students' learning environment.
On Friday, they broke ground on the multi-million dollar renovation project. The Principal of Atlas Middle School, Aaron Pomis, shared a story about his experiences teaching at Atlas, highlighting the challenges and quirks of the school's current building.
“We are here to turn soil but also plant seeds for the future,” said Pomis.
Atlas Preparatory was officially established in 2009. The school started with 80 fifth graders. The Executive Director, Brittney Stroh, said they have since grown one grade at a time.
Atlas Preparatory is a public community charter school serving grades kindergarten through 12th grade. They are part of Harrison School District 2.
“In 2009, we started with this founding campus. It was two strip malls that were separated by a concrete breezeway,” Stroh said.
Stroh said the two buildings were not meant to be a school.
“It has interesting areas where the electrical is different, or maybe the light switches are in odd places, we've made it work,” Stroh said.
Stroh said it is time for an upgrade and this renovation project is finally coming full circle.
“To be able to provide a full K-12 experience with facilities that meet the rigor and the quality of education we're providing in our classrooms, so that our staff and our students are able to show up and do their best work every day,” Stroh said.
The current middle school has 52 entrance ways. Stroh said the new facility will have stronger safety measures.
“Definitely, for us, it was an important thing to be able to reduce the number of doors and make them all secured entry,” Stroh said.
She said they will eliminate 90% of those doors.
“So we have fewer entries and all of them will be fob access so one can walk up and try to enter the building,” Stroh said.
The renovations will include technology advancements, and teachers’ number one request— more outlets in the classrooms.
“We do have the appropriate electrical outlets because as trivial as that sounds, a lot of times people plug in a lot of things and it can overwhelm the system. And so, to be able to have Chromebooks to have the proper internet setup, the proper technology and classrooms for teachers to have touch boards to utilize that,” Stroh said.
The students will have their first ever gym.
“We're going to build a competition sized gym that allows students not only to practice on a daily basis for sports, like basketball and volleyball, but also hold home games,” Stroh said.
The project will be done in phases. The plan is to renovate the south building and expand it onto where the field currently is. Once complete, students will be moved into the south building and the north building will be demolished.
“Our plan allows us to keep our students in school at all times, there'll be no disruption to the learning environment,” Stroh said.
The renovated school will have two floors and be over 44,000 square feet. It will include 25 classrooms, 4 intervention spaces, dedicated library spaces, state of the art regulation size gym, brand new larger food pantry, full service kitchen and secure entry ways.
“Today, we embark on a new chapter, one that will minimize the obstacles our staff and students might have with a new building, a fresh start, and power outlets for all,” said Pomis.
School officials said they hope to have the renovations completed by December 2025.
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