I had the chance to go to the Legacy Campus in recently for an engineering competition. The spacious and modern building serves a great purpose. In 2018, a bond was approved by voters to purchase the previous CU South Extension and Wildlife Experience in Lone Tree. The Douglas County School District and Board of Education bought the property with a plan to renovate and serve the district as the Legacy Campus. The new purchase cost the district $10.3 million, a fair price for a 14-acre plot of land and 175,000 square feet for staff offices, classroom space, and areas for conference and competition events.
Dr. Rex Corr is the Director at Legacy Campus, and he shared his incredible excitement about providing greater opportunities for students currently in the Douglas County School District. The Legacy Campus provides opportunities to expand the Career and Technical Education (CTE) and Concurrent Enrollment (CE) programs. These programs have been growing in DCSD and are helping prepare students for careers after high school. The Legacy Campus offers classes to point students to future pathways in both trade and university.
"We're not pulling in any of the programming from our neighborhood existing schools. We are building additional pathways to really connect student passion to pathway," Dr. Corr said. "We have a breadth of programming we're bringing on board."
“It is a central offering of career and technical education courses through nine different pathways.” Architecture and Engineering, Building Controls Technology, Advanced Robotics, Culinary and Hospitality, EMT Fundamentals, Aviation, Secure Network Technologies, Future Educator, Nursing are the seven current areas of focus. They were selected by looking at which industries would have the most demand.
Students stay enrolled in their home schools and attend Legacy Campus for these pathway-specific classes for several class periods each week. Local universities helped to create a curriculum for students to work toward college credits and industry certificates. No tuition is paid by students in their concurrent enrollment courses. Dual enrollment courses require a very fair tuition price that was negotiated by the district.
Students attend Legacy Campus by choice. They enroll in the CTE offerings from the district and are excited to learn in their chosen field. College credits are available through the classes offered and the beautiful campus provides facilities needed for hands-on learning. For example, students receive instruction in a kitchen, engineering lab, aviation simulator, or medical classroom.
Transforming the museum spaces into what can serve students has been a creative process. Animatronics have been repurposed to be studied in the robotics pathway. Mannequins and statues can still be seen around the educational campus. The large museum rooms offer wide open spaces and opportunities for learning. Some fun photos showing transformations can be seen on the Legacy Campus website, legacycampus.org.
Creating this unique, centrally located campus provides a great opportunity for our district's students. Students do not have to leave their home school completely, but can remain involved in classes, sports, and activities with their current high school. Supplementing with additional learning at the Legacy Campus within the seven pathways makes the program especially convenient and flexible. Investing in our students’ future is a great mission, and it will be exciting to see how the program at Legacy Campus grows.