The STEAD school, dubbed the “nation’s first fully integrated nextgen agriculture secondary school,” opened Friday in Commerce City’s Reunion subdivision.

The 27J School District charter school is located on the city’s far northeast edge off 108th Avenue and Walden Street. It’s part of the 10-acre L.C. Fulenwider Campus that will house some 700 students, with eight buildings, including a 20,000-square-foot barn that will serve as the school’s gymnasium, farmland, pens, stables and a silo.

While thousands of STEM schools have opened nationwide in recent years, STEAD appears to a be a first, and is definitely the first new agriculture-focused high school to open in Colorado in years. STEAD stands for “Science, Technology, the Environment, Agriculture and system Design.” 

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The first class of 160 were mostly on hand Friday to tour the officially finished school building, and continue working on the planter boxes in the front courtyard and moving wheelbarrows full of dirt for the garden.

“How do we prepare future generations to solve these really, really big issues around food and energy and our environment,” said Kelly Leid, STEAD co-founder, board vice president and director of lifestyle operations for Oakwood Homes. “When I started telling people we’re going to create an Ag school, there was a lot of blank stares. But as I started to talk about what modern agriculture is, and the possibilities for what these students will get to see and experience, all of a sudden you see their eyes open and people get it.”

Officials toss out the scary statistic that in the next 20 years, 64% of Colorado’s agricultural producers will exit the industry “a trend that threatens the state’s future food and water security.”

Students will experience a “project-driven curriculum” that will explore four “pathways” through animal and plant agriculture, food science and the environment. Leid said more than 3,000 career possibilities will emerge from those fields of study, including biomedicine, food and water security, agricultural sciences, renewable energies, etc.

“The intent is not every kid is going to be a farmer,” Leid said. “These are going to be our doctors, our veterinarians, our environmental scientists, our software engineers, our farmers and producers.”

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At full capacity, the school will have the largest Future Farmers of America program in the country.

27J School District has about 18,000 students from Aurora, Brighton, Commerce City, Lochbuie and Thornton and encompasses parts of Adams, Broomfield and Weld counties. STEAD is the sixth district-approved charter school.

STEAD is riding a trend of increased public charter school enrollment nationwide, and in Colorado. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released a September study that showed “hundreds of thousands of families switched to charter schools during the first full school year of the pandemic.” 

Nationwide, charter school enrollment grew by 240,000 students, a 7% year-over-year increase. It’s the biggest increase in five years, according to the study. It shows Colorado’s public charter school enrollment grew 3.9%, while the “district school enrollment” dropped 4.5% in that same time.

L.C. Fulenwider Inc. donated the 10 acres of land for the STEAD campus. CEO and Chairman Cal Fulenwider III told the crowd Friday his grandfather bought the land in 1905 and would be incredibly proud that it is being used for an agriculture school.

“Agriculture is in our blood. We get it. We have witnessed how much this industry has changed,” said Fulenwider. “When they came to us two or three years ago to ask (for the land donation) … My reaction was immediate. He asked me and I got covered in goosebumps. I was so excited I couldn’t stand it … The unanimous approval from our family came right away.”

Students who spoke at the event thanked Fulenwider, and partner Oakwood Homes, and shared their excitement starting a new school.

“We address the staff by their first names,” said Isabelle. “While this seems strange, to me personally it changes the dynamic and makes things like coming to them for help easier. These personal relationships are what makes my STEAD experience great.”

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire, though this is a fire that will never be extinguished,” said Roy. “It’s now in each one of your hands and will continue to touch the lives, hearts and minds of every student that will walk the halls of this establishment.”

Parents Robert and Sherrelle Lewis said STEAD was the perfect place for their 14-year-old daughter Sydney Sherrod.

“It provides more of a practical education to be used in whatever path she chooses, versus just memorizing facts,” said Sherrelle Lewis. “I think the more hands-on model, the project-based learning, is how she’ll learn well.”

Adams City High School was too far from where they live in Buffalo Run, she said. Prairie View High School is overcrowded and the new Reunion High School is years from being built and opening.

“The STEAD is so much more practical, whether she wants to work after high school, go to a trade school or on to college,” Sherrelle Lewis said.

Principal Kevin Denton said the students have been involved in the school’s planning and organizing the whole way. They picked the bee mascot Stingers. The student groups are hives. Eventually a non-profit business called STEAD Farms will sell products like honey, eggs or other project creations.

“They will be able to earn some of that money for a scholarship account that each student will have,” Denton said.

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There was a lottery in the spring for the first class of 160 students. About 190 applied.

“I always tell people that the curriculum is the state standards,” he said. “But how we do it is really different. We’re a project-based learning school. We have six-week project cycles, and students have a central question or problem they seek to solve.

“They took the risk to be the first class, and they’ll get the reward of getting to be co-founders with us,” he said. “We listened to the students a lot. We’re helping them see we’re partners in their education and I think that changes the tone.”