What You Can Expect in 2022-23 & Beyond

Jeff Leahy

Through the collective efforts of our community, Colorado Rocky Mountain School has successfully emerged from a tumultuous past few years and currently enjoys financial health, stability, and sought-after programming that gives us the capacity to design our future path. We know that the CRMS program works and that it works well. To prepare for the opportunities over the next 20 years, CRMS trustees established their vision to ensure that the next generation of students graduates from CRMS ready for the world ahead and that they continue to gain the selfknowledge and self-ownership that the CRMS experiential program uniquely provides. View the Future Path on our website www.crms.org/about/crms-future-path/. To ensure that this foundation was at the forefront of our daily work, faculty and staff drafted a “path of the CRMS graduate” that embraces our collective belief that learning and growth are both perpetual and central to achieving a “good life” at any age.

An essential piece to achieving our aspirations for our community is to think meaningfully and broadly about how we can add value to our community by expanding our notion of what it means to be a part of CRMS. This involves addressing how we can do more to attract and support students, staff, and faculty who come from various experiences, cultures, and races.

We have already embarked on this process by having consultants guide our trustees, faculty, staff, and students through this work over the past two years. This work has led to various initiatives, including creating a student work crew focused on diversity and an independent study class that connects our students to schools in India and Africa.

This year, a faculty committee will gather regularly with the specific charge of focusing on the community experience. This committee will include Gabriel Gutierrez, who joined us as the first Director of Community, Engagement, and Belonging. We are excited about this new position at CRMS. Still, the path forward does not rest on the shoulders of a single individual. All the community members have an interest and desire that this is common work we all want to be engaged in.

We have gotten this far through our collective work and efforts. As we move forward down this path together in a post-COVID world, we intend to address our campus spaces so that they support the wellness and shared communal experiences occurring within and outside our school boundaries.

Read more about Gabriel Gutierrez, Director of Community, Engagement, and Belonging, on the CRMS website.