Publications

Fall 2001 Newsletter

Speaker Hertzberg's Regionalism Commission Looks To Schools To Serve As Community Centers

With Assembly Speaker Hertzberg's Commission on Regionalism's (see: www.regionalism.org) Final Report awaiting its last comments and corrections, NSBN is pleased to provide our readers with an advanced look at this draft which looks to schools as as centers of communities and conversely, envisions engaging communities as places of learning. To do so will requre a new approach by the State.

By: Speaker's Commission On Regionalism

Goal

Ensure that schools and university facilities serve as centers of communities, and conversely, engage communities as places of learning.

Specific Outcomes

A new approach to planning, siting, designing, and operating schools and university facilities, as well as local land use decision-making processes and standards, is established, based on the idea of "schools as centers of communities."

Schools and universities become positive "anchors" for community development in local and regional comprehensive land use and transportation plans. This is especially important for older cities and suburbs.

Schools and universities more efficiently use land, energy, and materials for campus facilities. Joint use of school and university facilities becomes the norm.

School and university construction and maintenance funds are aligned with this concept.

Planning laws and zoning regulations conform to this concept.

A new practice is established, among planners, architects, builders, and others, that advances the planning and design ideas for the concept.

All segments of the state's higher education system produce both intellectual and practice leadership on this concept.

New leadership from the schools community, local elected officials and planning agencies, and the public at large, to sustain this approach. Education advocates adopt this concept as a vital element of the broader school reform agenda.

Key Issues

A high quality K-12 and post-secondary education is essential to the future of California's children, our economy, and our way of life. Elected officials and the general public understand this, and recent years have seen a major, all-hands-on-board school improvement effort. This has been focused largely on curriculum reform, teacher development and retention, adoption of performance standards, and new and increased public funding, and should be continued and expanded.

School Facilities and Student Performance. Studies have also shown however, that the location and quality of school facilities is a factor in determining academic outcomes. It is common sense: schools that are modern, pleasant facilities will encourage teachers and students to teach and learn; schools located close to home or transit facilities require less travel time for students, thus providing more time for after-school activities and homework; and schools that are accessible to home or transit make it easier for our time strapped working families to get involved with their children's schools.

Schools, Universities & Regional Development. At the same time, schools and university facilities are also major public facilities, and their siting, design, and use can be important determinants of community development or decay, and the strength of our neighborhoods and communities is a factor in whether we have sound regional development, or "hopscotch" new development, fleeing older neighborhoods. Too often we have seen inner city or older suburban schools fall into disrepair or abandonment, even as new "sprawl" schools are built, that is, schools located away from existing population centers, on the edge of towns and cities or out in "greenfields," thus contributing to sprawl development. The land is a precious resource, and should always be used in a manner that supports community physical, housing and commercial development and safe and walkable routes to school for children, and protects natural open spaces. Schools and university facilities should contribute, not detract, from that goal.

Barriers

Unfortunately, the statutory, funding and regulatory environment for planning and operating school and university facilities is either explicitly contrary to this purpose or often an enormous barrier to achieving this purpose, overcome only through extraordinary effort.

State and local school facility construction financing (usually through bond funding) has been silent on this issue, thus encouraging "business as usual" in the competition among school districts and university campuses for scarce funds. First-come, first serve policies inherently discriminate against urban districts with more difficult siting and construction challenges.

Facilities funding is usually categorical (for schools, libraries, housing, parks, etc.), without reference to other facilities funding systems. The competition for these scarce public resources makes it more difficult to collaborate.

Regulatory regimes are also categorical, and not well integrated. The highly visible and expensive disjunction between schools planning and environmental cleanup regulation experienced with the LAUSD Belmont Learning Center is the extreme example of this endemic problem. Improved attention to this problem is essential, because environmental challenges are found in both urban school districts (brownfields) and rural ones (former farmlands).

Bond financing has led to a "stop-and-start" approach to school and university construction, which is inconsistent with long-term, steady development aligned with community planning goals.

School and university planning is largely exempt from local and regional land use planning requirements, thus making it more difficult to encourage planning agencies and schools to collaborate; conversely, local and regional planning agencies often do not take into account optimum school and university facility strategies when making housing, transportation and other development decisions ("if we build it, i.e., housing, they will come, i.e., schools").

Large urban school districts may have too many local jurisdictions with which to collaborate effectively, and smaller local school districts often don't have the capacity to collaborate effectively with large planning agencies.

School facility planners often do not have access to state-of-the-art planning and design technologies, nor the funding to support technical assistance and professional development.

Either schools or their potential joint use partners often resist joint use of facilities largely because facilities management methods are unfamiliar to them or contrary to years of conventional practice.

Though university facilities operate in a different mode (our large residential universities are among the best of our "master planned" communities), there often are important community consequences for on-campus as well as off-campus facilities, but few incentives for joint use or other campus/community efficiencies. This may be in part because, like most state agencies, none of the three segments of the state's public higher education system is organized in a manner that encourages and rewards accountability to the regions they serve as well as the state as a whole.

Government Policy & Program Strategies

Orientation of School Construction Funding. School and university facilities construction and modernization funding, whether state or local, should encourage and support the achievement of "schools as centers of communities."

Permanent, Reliable Construction Finance. Over the long term, state financing for school and university construction should be based in one or more dedicated revenue streams, with bond financing used only to assure balanced allocation, design or use enhancements, or other special school construction financing needs.

Joint Use and Other Efficiencies

All public facilities construction agencies, including schools and university facilities, should encourage joint use, and efficient use of land, materials and energy. Financial incentives should be provided for high performance outcomes.

Smaller Schools

School reformers urge that children be taught in smaller schools to achieve better educational outcomes. This should be the norm for planning and design, and is appropriate for building in older cities and suburbs where land is scarce.

Professional Skills

The state government should provide special funding and technical assistance to enhance the capacities of school districts to adopt this new planning model and to fast-track construction once it is well planned.

Urban Reinvestment

Cities and redevelopment agencies should anchor their comprehensive community redevelopment plans around a network of schools, this encouraging middle class families to return to older neighborhoods.

Comprehensive Planning

Local general plans should be coordinated and consistent in the siting and development of housing, transportation, parks/open space, other public facilities, with schools.

Shared Responsibilities

The leadership role in changing the school planning paradigm should come from the Governor and Legislature, and the mainstream education advocates, using the "schools as centers of communities" principles in shaping state funding legislation, including bond financing. Of nearly equal importance, however, is the role of school administration, teachers' unions, and other powerful education lobbies, in advancing these ideas among their constituencies and with policymakers. Moreover, the special interests around other community and facilities development strategies, including homebuilders, affordable housing advocates, parks and open space advocates, community-based organizations and transportation advocates, should join this effort in a constructive, collaborative manner. Certainly the State Architect is a powerful voice for this change, and should be a source of innovative ideas for policies and best practices.

Timetable for Action

A major school bond measure is likely to be placed on a 2002 ballot by the Legislature and Governor. It could be a mainsail, propelling forward the "schools as centers of communities" movement, or it could be an anchor, delaying progress for years to come. Other statutory and regulatory opportunities will present themselves in the years to come, but the key will be to build local capacity (school planners and community and regional planners) simultaneously with state incentives or requirements.

Other Supporting Strategies

The New Schools Better Neighborhoods coalition, led by members of this Commission, has been a civic effort largely supported by private philanthropy. This kind of civic engagement and constituency building around this change strategy is best funded and led in the private sector, and should continue and be expanded.