New Vista High School opens in Boulder: Inside the new $52 million campus

New Vista students walked into their brand-new school for the first time on Jan. 7, greeted with a red carpet welcome at the corner of Baseline and Broadway. The building, which has big views of the Flatirons to the west and CU Boulder to the east, is the first purpose-built home for New Vista since its founding. 

New Vista is a small, alternative high school that has been relocated multiple times since it launched in 1993 by founding principal Rona Wilensk, who ran it for nearly 17 years. Unique to the school are programs like advisory teachers, a student-driven curriculum and a de-emphasis on standard athletics in favor of offbeat sport clubs like ultimate frisbee. For years, it operated out of the Baseline Middle School building, which was among several aging BVSD facilities deemed too costly to maintain. 

According to a facilities assessment, many BVSD campuses were built between the 1950s and 1990s during the post-war and modern eras, when construction was fast and quality was low. Baseline was one of them. These deteriorating buildings have reached a point where maintenance costs outstrip the cost of rebuilding.

The new building is designed for about 350 students, leaving some wiggle room for growth from the current headcount of about 315. Enrollment declines are happening across the district and are expected to hit high schools even more when the record-low elementary cohort reaches that level. The school board’s Long Range Advisory Committee has established a process for addressing low-enrollment schools at the elementary level but has not yet addressed middle and high schools. 

Nonetheless, size wasn’t a concern for the district’s Capital Improvement Plan Review Committee, which decided it was time for an upgrade.

“We all made the decision that this is not about enrollment, it’s about the program. Without New Vista you don’t have this program in BVSD,” said Rob Price, assistant superintendent of operations, during a 2022 board meeting. 

The building was funded by two voter-approved bonds — one authorized in 2014 and another in 2022 — that have 30-year repayment terms, according to BVSD’s CFO, Bill Sutter. Taxpayers will be paying them off through 2052, with about $52 million allocated to this project. 

The school’s principal, John McCluskey, was hired in 2022, after the design phase had already begun. He credits a committee of students, teachers, community members and others for helping create a building that is bringing staff to tears. A music recording studio is one of the highlights.  

“The music teacher emailed me at about 11 last night,” McCluskey said in an interview last month. “He said, ‘I just have to be honest with you — I think I’m in tears about how excited I am about what I’m gonna be able to do here.'”

The building was designed for flexibility, allowing students to learn both inside and outside the classroom. It features secure outdoor balconies for science and art, and a workshop with garage doors that open to the main atrium. 

“Being a nontraditional school this gave us an opportunity to be a little different,” said Jack Mousseau, director of K-12 education at Moa Architecture, which designed the building. 

Teachers there act as advisors for a cohort throughout the students’ four years at the school, holding daily meetings in their classrooms. This required classrooms to be able to flex between traditional teaching and smaller, more intimate conversations. Restorative justice has long been a regular practice at the school, so there is a dedicated space for those personal meetings, as well as a wellness center for students to decompress.  

A two-story, light-filled atrium sits at the center of the school, with “learning steps” that function as impromptu seating for class lectures, school assemblies or informal gatherings. Since New Vista has no traditional athletic programs like football and basketball, the atrium is embedded into the flow of the school day rather than being a separate gymnasium. 

“I’ve been in six schools over 34 years and I’ve always thought, that auditorium remains empty and useless 80% of the time,” McCluskey said. 

As a small focus school, New Vista attracts students and families who might not feel like traditional settings are for them. Some of its students are neurodivergent and benefit from an environment designed to meet a variety of needs. 

“We don’t have a majority of students here, but we definitely have a handful of kids who kind of fall into that neurodivergent category who kind of see us as a safe haven,” McCluskey said. “I think we have the notion that the whole building is a learning space — it doesn’t just happen in the classroom. …Everything feels like a place you can sit and collaborate together.” 

BVSD has set a sustainability goal of achieving net-zero energy use by 2050. To meet this goal, facilities must minimize energy consumption and maximize the use of renewables. The New Vista building, which is solar-ready but doesn’t yet have panels installed, will use less than half the energy of the old building. Its estimated annual energy costs are projected to be less than 85% of Boulder’s building code baseline. 

For now, the old building will remain until the campus clears out for summer. Then it will be torn down and replaced with trees, open space and a student garden.