Building Our Vision: Transforming the Grounds
Creating a Master Plan and Implementing the First Priorities
With the purchase of our own property in August 2015, Camellia Waldorf School now has the opportunity to make the new campus truly ours. Much of the effort over the last eight months has focused on moving and readying the indoor spaces. Our next step is to transform the outdoor grounds!
We have the exciting and unprecedented opportunity to invest in our school because it is ours. We have the chance to start from a clean slate to develop something that reflects our ideals as a community. As a Waldorf school, the outdoor learning environment is so integral to the curriculum.
Each year, the school’s top need is the focus of a special fundraising effort called Fund-a-Need. This year’s Fund-a-Need has two components:
1) The first step is to create a master plan for the grounds of our new campus. To do this, our community will develop a shared vision for our outdoor spaces. We will undertake a school-wide planning process, facilitated by a professional landscape architect. Using the input from our community through a series of meetings, the landscape architect will then draw up a master plan for the campus that will represent our collective vision.
2) Once our master plan is complete, the second step is to implement the top priorities of the plan. An $8,000 grant from the Waldorf School Fund has already allowed us to begin the transformation of the preschool yard and provide new swings for the kindergarten yard. Next steps include further transforming the kindergarten yard, the elementary and middle school play areas, the school’s outdoor learning environments, and the front entrance of the school. Completion of the entire plan will require additional fundraising efforts and time.
Our goal for this year’s Fund-a-Need is $30,000. The first $8,000 has already been raised through grant funding. With an additional $22,000 we can develop a comprehensive master plan for the outdoor spaces and begin to implement our top priorities. We are launching “Building Our Vision: Transforming the Grounds” at our annual auction fundraiser, Camelliapalooza, on April 30, with additional contributions welcome through May 31, 2016.
This effort builds upon last year’s Fund-a-Need “Building Our Future,” which supported us in purchasing our campus as well as hiring a middle school math specialist and adding an algebra offering to our eighth grade students. Now, we challenge our Camellia community to envision how we can transform our campus, creating a superior outdoor learning space for our children.
Our new campus presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our school. Your investment in a thoughtful, inclusive planning process will serve our current students – and generations to come – at Camellia Waldorf School’s permanent home.
