{"id":117536,"date":"2014-09-29T20:45:09","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T02:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/gangapreneur-donates-to-kiva-montessori-school\/"},"modified":"2014-09-29T20:45:09","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T02:45:09","slug":"gangapreneur-donates-to-kiva-montessori-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/gangapreneur-donates-to-kiva-montessori-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Gangapreneur donates to Kiva Montessori school"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Josh
Josh Warinner (center) leads a tour of the new Kiva Montessori Charter School for Garrett Smith (left) and David Pozzi of The Herbal Alternative. The local medical marijuana dispensary donated $1,300 to the school.<\/span>Tobie Baker\/The Cortez Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To enter the Beech Street schoolhouse, Garrett Smith rang the door buzzer. He was immediately provided a laminated visitors badge when stepping inside the door.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the same thing we do everyday,\u201d he said, chuckling as he hung the school pass around his neck.<\/p>\n

Garrett Smith, owner of The Herbal Alternative, runs one of four Cortez medical marijuana dispensaries. Visitors wishing to tour his Lebanon Road facility must also don a guest pass.<\/p>\n

Smith went to the school bearing a gift. After presenting a $1,300 donation to the new Kiva Montessori Charter School, he and colleague David Pozzi toured the two-classroom school. About 75 elementary students are enrolled at the school, which opened this year.<\/p>\n

Josh Warinner, executive director of the school, said the contribution would help to offset cost for student services, ranging from lunch programs to classroom instructors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about the students and their education,\u201d said Warinner.<\/p>\n

Asked about potential criticism from the community for accepting money from a gangapreneur, Warinner said the school would never reject a donor\u2019s gift.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is to help students and our school thrive,\u201d said Warinner. \u201cThe focus shouldn\u2019t be on where the money is coming from.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the school tour, students gathered in small groups, some students sitting in the hallway to study, others zigzagging through the hallways high-fiving Smith and Pozzi. Teachers paced the classrooms, \u201cguiding\u201d students with \u201cindividual learning\u201d when needed. It wasn\u2019t your parents\u2019 traditional school environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have desks,\u201d said Warinner.<\/p>\n

After the tour, Smith said he was impressed with the progressive approach utilized to teach students at the charter school. He reiterated it was an honor to help impact the needs of local school children.<\/p>\n

\u201cEducation is the key in life, and we\u2019re happy to know that we can help make a difference in our community,\u201d said Smith.<\/p>\n

tbaker@cortezjournal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warinner (center) leads a tour of the new Kiva Montessori Charter School for Garrett Smith (left) and David Pozzi of The Herbal Alternative. The local medical marijuana dispensary donated $1,300 to the school.Tobie Baker\/The Cortez Journal To enter the Beech Street schoolhouse, Garrett Smith rang the door buzzer. He was immediately provided a laminated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":117537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5794,5735],"tags":[338,135,93],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-117536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-business-enterprises","tag-marijuana","tag-students"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117536"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=117536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}