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The Education Center Reinvents Itself... Again, Part Two |
Bill Hudson | 5/5/08
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Archuleta County Education Center Executive Director Don Goodwin settled himself at a table opposite the Pagosa Springs Town Council last month to make an offer. The Town is considering relocating its maintenance shop — currently located across the street from the new Sports Complex on South Fifth Street — and the Education Center is considering building a brand new post-secondary education facility. Continued...
Architectural sketch of the new 13,000 square foot Education Center facility by Fänäs Architecture. Architect Wayne Huff has also donated a sketch of the proposed new facility. |
The Town’s maintenance shop is a stone’s throw from the Pagosa Springs High School and its existing fiber cable; Goodwin needs a location near fiber for his high-tech education concept. Meanwhile, the Town realizes it needs additional public parking on the downtown business district, if that commercial area is to remain viable into the future; the Education Center currently sits on a corner lot on block from the center of town.
Would the Town consider some kind of property swap?
At last month’s presentation, Goodwin sat flanked by large architectural drawings of the proposed, much-expanded Education Center. Two sketch versions of the new 13,000 square foot building — almost four times the size of the current Education Center — had been donated by local architects Fänäs Architecture and Wayne Huff. As the Council listened with curious attention, Goodwin told of his communications with computer giant Cisco Systems, and of that company’s interest in working with Goodwin to develop an innovative secondary education system for small rural communities, based on Cisco’s new TelePresence Classroom.
 When Goodwin finished his presentation — which to this reporter, at least, sounded fascinating, and intriguing — Archuleta School District Superintendent Mark DeVoti stood up in the audience and reminded the Town Council that the school district has been indicating its interest in the same maintenance shop location, for the past four years. DeVoti noted that the district is considering a long term concept of locating all the community’s schools in the areas around the high school, in a “campus” arrangement. The maintenance shop property would fit into that concept at some time in the future — but not if the Education Center is located there, DeVoti said.
The school district, of course, has even more impressive downtown property to swap, if there is any swapping to be done. Its junior high school takes up nearly a whole city block right in the center of the downtown business district.
Of course, the school district is not exactly rolling in dough at the moment. Student enrollment is down over 100 students — about 6% — over the past two years, and expected to drop another 100 by next school year, mainly due to families leaving town as economic hard times strike once again in Pagosa.
That decline very likely means substantial budget cuts for the district over the next few years — so the time for building a whole new campus of school buildings seems, at this point, decades off into the future.
Meanwhile, Goodwin is already showing off architectural drawings of his innovative concept — and he seems very confident that he can put the whole thing together within the next couple of years.
The Town Council took no action on Goodwin’s proposal at last month’s meeting, but I had a chance to sit down with him a few days ago and discuss the future of post-secondary education in a small rural community. Many people concerned about diversifying the Archuleta County economy have been putting forth the idea of a small community college here. A community college would help keep young people in the county, say proponents of the idea, and would also help provide a better-trained workforce to support businesses thinking of relocating here.
Goodwin seems to have an even more practical idea.
“I’ve been in the community college business, in and out of Colorado, for 35 or 40 years, and I know what the budget circumstances are with the state and the population requirements to do a community college. We won’t have one for a long, long time. The question is, do we want one at all? Because the burden of maintaining a staff, maintaining a large facility — and then the burden of maintaining the technology around the programming in a current state — is extremely challenging, even for community colleges that have tax support from the communities they serve.
“So for me, a strategy would be, how do we access the best practices of a college environment, in real time, without having that burden?”
The solution that Goodwin put forth conjured up a fascinating image. A student sits in a small classroom, interacting with a computer monitor. On the monitor, the student sees his professor — who is actually teaching a class in Durango, Farmington, or some other college town. In the professor’s classroom, a second computer monitor sits at a desk and displays our Pagosa student, taking the place of a live student. The professor and the student are able to interact in real time, just as if they were in the same room together.
The Education Center gets access to professional college-level instruction — or possibly professional business training — without the need for maintaining all the infrastructure of a community college. All that’s required is fiber optic cable and an interface.
From Goodwin’s account, Cisco Systems seems to be on board and eager to help test the innovative system using their new TelePresence Classroom. The installer of the TelePresence systems, Wire One Telecommunications, is also on board. The “content network” that Goodwin envisions includes — for starters — Archuleta County Education Center, Archuleta County School District 50 JT, Fort Lewis College, Durango School District 9-R, San Juan Community College, Pueblo Community College and Colorado State University.
Goodwin says he has tested the system personally, and says he finds it far superior to anything he's seen before, as far as real-time interactivity.
El Pomar Foundation has already awarded a $25,000 matching grant to the Education Center to conduct a feasibility study of Goodwin’s idea — and the Town has agreed to match half of it, with the Education Center guaranteeing the other half. Goodwin says he can see this new educational system up and running within the next couple of years.
“The Education Center Board really thinks this is an infrastructure investment that will serve us long term.”
All he needs, it appears, is a place to build his new Education Center. Anyone ready for a land swap? |
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