Colorado district groups with Faculty Specialty to furnish and equip a $60M facility from finish to finish.
Jennifer Murtha, principal of Del Mar Academy in Aurora, Colorado, had a imaginative and prescient for what she wished the brand new faculty’s studying environments to appear to be and the way they’d operate.
“I wished a much less institutional feel and appear,” she says. “I wished tender and exhausting seating so that youngsters had decisions.”
Murtha and different leaders from the Aurora Public Faculties turned to Faculty Specialty for assist in bringing this imaginative and prescient to life. Led by Senior Studying Atmosphere Specialist Belinda Engles, Senior Inside Designer Emma Kopatich, and Strategic Account Chief Paula Florian, a workforce of Faculty Specialty professionals designed, furnished, and geared up a brand new faculty constructing that college students might take pleasure in—one which evokes them to be taught each day.
“We serve lots of youngsters who’ve grown up in poverty and who’ve had fairly tough occasions of their lives,” Murtha says. “There hasn’t been a brand new faculty on this neighborhood in 67 years. For them to have a lovely constructing is very nice. The neighborhood deserves it, our workers deserves it, and definitely our children deserve it.”
Welcoming and Inclusive Studying Environments
The brand new Del Mar Academy, which opened in August 2023, serves college students in prekindergarten via seventh grade, with eighth graders being added for the 2025-26 faculty 12 months.
In designing the brand new facility, district leaders wished to create fashionable studying environments that will be welcoming and inclusive for everybody, with snug seating decisions to accommodate college students with totally different preferences, wants, and studying types.
Versatile furnishings empower academics to rearrange their lecture rooms in ways in which help totally different educational methods, whereas quite a lot of seating types empowers college students to decide on a mode that’s most conducive for them to be taught.

Trendy, hands-on studying areas like a STEM lab and a digital arts studio allow college students to be taught future-ready abilities like coding and digital music manufacturing. “It’s about giving high-quality grade-level instruction to each pupil,” Murtha says.
The college’s center faculty lecture rooms embrace tall group tables in order that college students can stand and work in the event that they select. Elementary lecture rooms embrace conventional chairs and likewise swivel stools for college students who’ve problem sitting nonetheless. Preschool lecture rooms embrace quite a few center-based actions similar to water tables as an alternative of simply desks and chairs.
A sensory room throughout the new faculty is designed to satisfy the wants of scholars who require extra sensory enter. It’s geared up with a bubble tube and different objects that present sensory stimulation. As an example, sensory flooring tiles create liquid patterns when college students step on them, and LED furnishings cubes change shade when college students contact them. This helps college students assert management over their surroundings, which promotes self-regulation abilities.
The sensory room is used for neurodivergent learners and people who need assistance calming down or regulating their feelings.
“It’s primarily for our special-needs college students, however our occupational therapists pull out college students from basic training lecture rooms who want that stage of consideration as effectively,” Murtha says. “The great thing about this room is that youngsters can select what to do. We don’t inform them what to do in that area.”
Even the cafeteria is designed to provide college students decisions, with conventional cafeteria tables but additionally café- type seating for small teams of two or three youngsters.
“College students can get their meals after which discover a seat that’s most snug for them,” Murtha notes.
“On the finish of the day, no one needs to eat with 300 folks. This can be a approach to give youngsters a bit of extra company.”

Deliberately Designed
The group’s response to the brand new faculty facility has been overwhelmingly optimistic. “The primary phrase that everybody says is gorgeous,” Murtha says. “It’s a lovely faculty.”
The college’s trendy, fashionable studying environments give college students a way of pleasure and self-worth whereas altering their outlook on coming to highschool.
“We’ve surveyed our college students during the last 12 months, and what we’ve heard is: ‘I like my faculty. I prefer it when my dad and mom come to my faculty,’” Murtha says. “Once I inform our older college students, ‘We spent $60 million on you,’ they undoubtedly really feel necessary.”
Not solely is the brand new constructing engaging, but it surely’s extremely purposeful as effectively. Lecturers like with the ability to configure the furnishings simply to help totally different groupings and actions. The sensory room helps put together college students to be taught who’re anxious or who’ve hassle focusing.
“We had been very intentional with our design,” Murtha says.
Working with Faculty Specialty on the design of the brand new faculty’s studying areas has been “a dream,” she provides, noting: “They’re simply so great. The true testomony of any relationship is what you do when there’s battle. We had some objects on again order, issues that Faculty Specialty couldn’t management, and so they had been unbelievable in working to make sure that we opened on time and inside funds. They bent over backward to assist us discover the suitable furnishings.”
She concludes: “I’d advocate them to anybody.”