You’ve got to love Brian Repola’s attitude. Faced with a long waiting list of prospective students, the executive director of the Pueblo School for Arts and Sciences made the bold decision to add another campus. But not just anywhere: Repola and his staff chose to put the new campus in Salt Creek, a small community on the eastern edge of the city limits that hasn’t had a school of its own in three decades.

“Why Salt Creek?” Repola asked rhetorically at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new campus. “Why this school building? My answer is, ‘Why not?’ Why shouldn’t this school be open again? Why shouldn’t students in this neighborhood and throughout Pueblo have another choice?”

Why not, indeed. The new school is located in the long-abandoned Fulton Heights Elementary School, which was refurbished with grants, financial donations and in-kind contributions from throughout the Pueblo area. Repola said Salt Creek neighborhood residents have even gotten into the act – weeding, sweeping and picking up trash around the school grounds in preparation for the first day of classes Aug. 14.

Read more at The Pueblo Chieftain.