Planning Commission Agenda and Packet 2008 07 10

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The Patchwork School 1428 Main Street, Louisville, CO 80027 www.thepatchworkschool.com 720-271-6729 June 12, 2008 To Whom It May Concern: We are writing on behalf of The Patchwork School, which has recently begun leasing the property located at 1428 Main Street in Louisville. We would like to request a Special Review Use Hearing in order to use the existing properly as a school, beginning August 25th 2008 for the 2008-2009 school year. For this past school year, September 2007 to June 2008, The Patchwork School was located in a residence in Broomfield, Colorado. In order to expand the number of children that the school can accommodate, we decided to find a commercial property that would allow us to operate with a Child Care Center license rather than a Family Home Care License. The aforementioned property in Louisville was found to be perfectly suited to the school's needs, as it still provided a home -like atmosphere, but could house more students. The rooms in this residential property are particularly well matched with our philosophy as we feel that children should be able to purposefully select how and where they want to work. Thus we do not plan to convert the building to a traditional classroom - style school, but will instead utilize the bedrooms, kitchen, and other spaces as they are — with each space being designated for specific purposes, such as a library, music room, studio, etc. The proposed enrollment capacity for the new location is twenty-eight children (at any given time), with four teachers, for a student teacher ratio of no more than 7:1. The students will range in age from 2 1/2 to eight (preschool through third grade). The school will be licensed through the Colorado Department of Human Services. Students attending half -day programs will be in school from 9am-1pm and full -day programs are from 9am-3pm. Parents also have the option of one hour before -school care (8am-9am) and/or one hour of after - school care (3pm-4pm). These times were specifically chosen so as not to interfere with the Louisville Middle School start and end times across the street (8:40am and 3:30pm). As for parking, the teachers will park in the spaces behind the school (there are about 5 spaces), and we believe that the space immediately in front of the building will be sufficient for parents. We encourage parents to drop- off and pick-up students during a window of time, rather than at a specific time (between 8:50 and 9:20 for drop- off and between 2:40 and 3:10), because it can be very difficult to get small children to operate exactly within adult timeframes. We have found that parents tend to spend an average of 7 minutes dropping off and picking - up. It appears that about seven cars can park in the space immediately in front of the building. Thus, with a maximum of 28 students, each spending 7 minutes, and with 7 parking spaces, we would need 28 minutes to accommodate them all (which fits within the thirty -minute window). In addition, some of these children are siblings, and we don't expect more than 21 children on any given day. We understand that on occasion the number of cars may exceed seven, but we expect that other nearby businesses will at times use the spaces in front of the school, as well. The only exception to any city ordinances that we would like to request is regarding a fence that divides the front yard and the back yard. Currently the back yard is enclosed on three sides with a six foot tall fence, however the fourth side (the side dividing the front and the back) has a four foot tall fence. We feel that this fence is sufficient for ensuring that the children remain safely inside the fenced area because the children will be supervised outside at all times, the student to teacher ratio is very low (1:7), and there is an additional chain -link fence in the front of the property so that even if they were to climb over the four -foot fence they would still be on school grounds. In addition, this shorter fence will allow teachers (all of whom are under six feet tall) to see over