Public welcome to attend educational visioning workshops to assist school building effort

By the Amherst-Pelham Regional Public Schools

During the month of January, the Amherst Elementary School Educational Visioning Group (EVG) — a group of administrators, teachers, School Building Committee members, parents, and community partners – will participate in two Educational Visioning Workshops run by New Vista Design and DiNisco Design. Each workshop will be a collaborative virtual session designed to inform the elementary school feasibility study that has been awarded to the town of Amherst by the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). Participants will be led through a step-by-step visioning process aimed at capturing their best thinking about Amherst elementary schools’ current and future educational goals and priorities, building on previous visioning work done by the district, and exploring best practices and possibilities in innovative school facility design.

The workshops will take place virtually via Zoom (please see the meeting link below) and are designed to be highly participatory, engaging, and informative. The educational and architectural goals set during these workshops will have a direct and tangible impact on the design approach and features of the new school facility. We understand that this is already an extremely busy time of year that has been further impacted by the return of students to in-person learning, so we do hope that you will consider taking part in these visioning sessions and sharing your ideas and dreams for the renovated and/or new elementary school facility. 

Zoom Meetings Link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86385133436

Meeting ID: 863 8513 3436

We have scheduled two meetings to cover the same content in the hopes that you will be able to join one of them: Thursday, Jan. 13, 8:30-11:30 a.m., and Wednesday, Jan. 26, 6-9 p.m.

Focus areas will include:

• Priorities for the new and/or renovated facility.
• 21st-century learning goals that have been approved by ARPS.
• Strengths, Challenges, Opportunities, and Goals (SCOG analysis) associated with this projects and ARPS’s elementary schools’ current academic programming as well as the District’s vision for its future.
• 21st-century design patterns that innovative elementary schools throughout Massachusetts and the US have put into practice to make their forward-thinking learning goals come alive on the level of facility design.
• Blue sky ideas that participants would like to see in the new school program and facility.

The meetings will be recorded and posted to the Elementary School Building Committee (ESBC) website at https://www.amherst-school-project.com/ where you may also provide input and feedback at your convenience.

Please contact Cathy Schoen, ESBC Chair, at schoenc@amherstma.gov if you would like more information about the upcoming workshops and how to take part in them.