The STEAD School recognized by Gov. Jared Polis
A charter school in Adams County is being recognized by Gov. Jared Polis for Growth and Innovation. The STEAD School now has 260 students in 9th and 10th grade as it builds toward a first graduating class in 2025.
"We need to train that next generation of leaders to solve these really big issues around food energy and natural resources," said Kelly Leid, a STEAD School Co-Founder.
"STEAD stands for Science, Technology, Environment, Agriculture and Design," said Amy Schwartz the other co-Founder.
Leid noticed a void in the education system as he worked with the City and County of Denver reworking the National Western Center. That's how the STEAD school idea was born. An emphasis on agriculture is woven throughout the standard high school curriculum.
"Math, science, language arts and so forth. But in addition, their elective courses are really around these agriculture science career technical education pathways," Schwartz said.
"This is active learning and by that we mean they're actually doing the work, it's learning made real," said Leid. "We're using agriculture and the science of agriculture across four pathways, animal, plant, environment and food science, to now teach them to apply those skills to solving problems."
The school is part of the Brighton 27J District.
"A lot of people when they think about agriculture, they think about John Deere tractors and overalls and not the innovation and science that is involved in the industry and where the industry is going in the future," Schwartz said. "We now have bees, bunnies, some reptiles over in the corner and chickens."
On Thursday Leid and Schwartz will be awarded the Citizenship Medal Growth and Innovation Award from Polis.
The co-founders say they're concentrating on graduating the first class in two more years but believe the principals in the STEAD School founding can be applied elsewhere.
"Every day our lives are affected by food or water or energy. So, these students can explore a lot of different pathways," Leid said.
"We think we have something unique and special going on here. It probably could be translated to multiple industries," Schwartz said.
