The Dolores School Board has postponed seeking grant funding from the Colorado Department of Education to move the K-12 school campus to a new location.

“We’re pausing this whole project,” said Maegan Crowley, chairwoman of the school board. “We may need to revise the plan.”

The COVID-19 pandemic’s toll on the local economy and state funding remains in doubt.

Originally, the school board planned to apply for a grant from the Building Excellent Schools Today Program under CDE, which provides funding annually to the construction of new schools and renovations of existing schools, for the 2021 school year.

The project would require a bond, which needs to be paid back with interest, so the board decided to put a hold on the project to find out “what the local community thinks of the project,” Crowley said.

“We need community support to pass the bond, so we want to see how it would impact the community first,” particularly in light of the economic fallout of COVID-19, Crowley said.

The board began the process of selecting a location before the start of the pandemic, and chose one of three possible properties. Two committees were created to plan long-term for the campus move, though the board emphasized that seeking funding for construction has been paused for the time being because of the economic impact of the virus.

“We want to make a decision everyone is comfortable with,” Crowley said.

But the school board is still accepting professionals with experience in design or marketing from the community to serve on the Design Advisory Group and Bond Initiative Committee for the project.

ehayes@the-journal.com