With shovels and hard hats, some students and staff at Desert Star Community School symbolically broke ground for a new construction project that will add more classroom space and allow the school to expand to offer eighth grade.
The school operates on the Waldorf model, or as the school’s website puts it, the belief “in educating the whole child and recognize that each child possesses a unique blend of intelligences, i.e.: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist and others. We have used these complementary educational philosophies to design a curriculum that leads to a mastery of standards while cultivating and expanding all intelligence areas in a developmentally appropriate context.”
The school has 155 students from Cornville, Cottonwood, Sedona, the Village of Oak Creek and surrounding areas.
This groundbreaking marks the start of the first phase of planned expansion at Desert Star in Cornville.
The current project will see the construction of two new classrooms and a play field for middle school-aged children.
The project should take about 12 months, said Jennifer Young, a member of the school’s board of directors.
Phase two will see the construction of a multiuse community building and two more classrooms, followed by a third and final phase that will replace modular buildings with permanent classroom space as well as an expansion of existing classroom and office space.
For the full story, see the Wednesday, Oct. 24, edition of the Cottonwood Journal Extra.
