The walls are up at the new Guadalupe School in Rose Park. And school administrators say the fundraising campaign is on target for an August opening.
Leaving the old 13,000-square-foot school house in Poplar Grove behind for a brand new 50,000-square-foot-building in Rose Park means there’s plenty of room for amenities that students, teachers and faculty at Guadalupe School have only dreamed about. There’s ample classroom space, a library, a computer lab and staff restrooms. Perhaps Executive Director Vicki Mori’s favorite new features are the windows that overlook the Rose Park Golf Course and Rosewood Park.
“Windows are something that really are a treasure to us because we don’t have very many of them inside of Guadalupe,” Mori says. “Everybody wanted a window and we did our very best to make sure that everybody got something.”
The charter school provides in-home visits to new parents with infants, classes for children ages 1-3, a preschool program, an elementary school for Kindergarten through 6th grade and adult education classes.
Guadalupe has served some of Salt Lake City’s most underprivileged kids and their families for more than 40 years. Mori says all are low-income and most are minorities who are learning to speak English.
“They just really see themselves blossoming,” Mori says. “They now can pick up books. They can begin to read. We feel that the story is good and that the people in the community certainly know what that is.”
The Guadalupe School Capital Campaign is about half a million dollars away from a $9 million goal.
Mori says she and other school administrators are busy recruiting teachers and students to the new school, which is scheduled to open this fall. She says they hope to double the elementary and pre-k student population for the coming school year.
