Lower School

Your investment will unite our community and ensure a best-in-class learning environment for our youngest students.

Thanks to the generosity of our community, both in leadership and philanthropic gifts, ESD broke ground on its new Lower School in May 2018. Follow the progress of the building and how it will transform learning and teaching here.

 

 

Lower School Building Renderings

Situated in the heart of the campus, the new Lower School will open intellectual, physical, spiritual, and social connections to the Middle and Upper Schools. All divisions on one campus will allow for expanded faculty and student collaboration and the astute use of resources across all divisions.

The Lower School is the springboard for lifelong curiosity and purposeful relationships, offering:

  • Grade-level homerooms connected by a shared collaboration space, or “neighborhood,” helping solidify and define the identity of each grade while building strong communal bonds
     
  • A Discovery Commons on each floor, providing a unique library, media, and design space that offers zones for concentration, collaboration, performance, research, and engineering
     
  • Specially designed spaces, including two science labs and a design and creation lab, where children learn by doing, questioning, inventing, building, and solving
     
  • A community staircase that anchors the building, acting as part traditional stairs and part stadium seating and allowing students to gather for impromptu performances, presentations, or to work in small groups 
     
  • Outdoor access for each grade level, including open-air classrooms on the second and third floors
     
  • Library resources throughout the building that will adapt to the swiftly changing learning needs of our students