In Spanish, “Las Vegas” translates into “The Meadows,” and The Meadows School has proudly honored its city and name as a premier center, educating children from prekindergarten through 12th grade. From humble beginnings 37 years ago, The Meadows School is now a sprawling 40-acre campus ready to expand with its first academic enhancement in 15 years. The Meadows STEM project will be added on to the existing Sarah D. Barder Hall Upper School building with a scheduled completion in the fall.
“Over the past eight years, there was tremendous growth in our Beginning School, a pre-K program. As we built out, this allowed us to look at what else we can do to accommodate our additional students, especially our Upper School,” said Head of School Jeremy Gregersen.
Gregersen is dedicated to growing the educational curriculum, especially in STEM with the advancement of robotics and engineering.
The expansion will triple the size of the STEM classroom for kindergarten through fifth grade students, so they will leave the Lower School building and come over for their science classes. There will be four additional classrooms for Upper School students and an engineering and robotic lab that will serve both Middle and Upper School students. The state-of-the-art workshop classroom for the growing sixth through 12th grades will offer programs in robotics, engineering and drone construction with hands-on engineering, drones and coding classes. For kindergarten through fifth grade, there will be many opportunities to engage in more hands-on exploration of science, technology and engineering and learn about the process of experimentation with storage for multiday experiments.
As for the STEM program: “For us, it is not just the science, but teaching kids how to think more critically, which is vital as these kids grow up,” Gregersen explained. “We want them to have exposure to the sciences and STEM topics, and science is one of the best ways to teach critical thinking.
With over 20 years of experience in education, Gregersen joined the faculty of The Meadows School as a teacher in 2005. He has taught in the Middle and Upper School and served as the Middle School director before being promoted to head of school.
This new space will help The Meadows School meet the needs of its growing, soon-to-be enrollment of 300 students in the Upper School. Future plans include expanding other grades as a result of the demand for educational opportunities.
“This is just the beginning of a new era for us,” Gregersen said.
For more information, visit themeadowsschool.org.
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