Horizon Community School (HCS) is a community-based, early childhood education program that opened its doors in Marin City in 2017. The program was founded in response to an April 2016 strategic needs assessment which showed the great need for affordable early childhood education located within the community of Marin City. 

The mission of HCS is to advance educational equity and social justice by providing Marin City families with access to quality early childhood education in their community. Since its creation, the program has become an immediate success, offering essential early childhood education at an affordable tuition to children under 5 years of age. To meet the program’s full potential and continue to provide children and families within the community with access to quality early childhood education, HCS engaged Dorman Associates to help them create a new campus that will provide  more classrooms and administrative spaces. The new campus will consist of:

● Three double wide modular classrooms programmed for different age groups

● A double wide modular administrative space

● Outdoor play area, providing play and gardening areas for the children

The new spaces will provide much-needed support and education areas for teachers and children. The classrooms are grouped together in modular units with age-appropriate toilet and diaper areas, direct level access to outdoor play, maximum windows to increase natural light, open classrooms for proper supervision and janitorial closets. A separate modular unit contains the administrative spaces that support the function of the school. It provides a single point of entry for security, a lobby area with a check-in desk at the center’s main entrance, adult restrooms, teachers’ lounge, meeting room, and the director’s office.

With our familiarity of the modular units and understanding the limitations and opportunities that the modular platform allows, Dorman Associates, Inc. can innovatively and efficiently modify the units to meet our standard basis of design as well as the client’s programmatic and licensing requirements. An important factor in the success of our projects lies in our ability to prepare the site and coordinate grading, utilities, and drainage issues such that the site will be ready to receive the modular units to sit level on the site and create valuable indoor / outdoor relationships for the classroom.