Publications

Spring 2004 Newsletter

California State Architect Castellanos On The Impact Of The Built Environment On Neighborhoods

With the billions of dollars being directed towards school construction in California, and particularly in Los Angeles, the need to examine and analyze the most efficient application of building standards for public school facilities has never been more significant. NSBN is pleased to present this interview with Stephan Castellanos, the California State Architect, in which he addresses the impact of the built environment on students and neighborhoods.

Stephan, from your vantage point as the state's architect, what's at stake during this first year of the Schwarzenegger administration re the built environment? What policies need to be addressed, adopted or enhanced?

We've spent a lot of time in the last few years focusing on the total environment for school children in California. We've been trying to move the Field Act beyond the notion that many people have of it, as a seismic safety provision, to being one that is about defining the kinds of environments that can enhance learning. We're promoting the idea that facilities themselves should be learning tools. We're hopeful that we can continue that agenda, and that we can continue our movement to create stronger partnerships between the state architect and school districts. We see school districts as partners in delivering safe, sustainable and effective learning environments. So the next step would be to expand these partnership efforts beyond our pilot programs (in San Diego and Los Angeles) to include all school districts in the state.

When we last interviewed you in April, you said that the state architect's office was: "...looking at the state's basic building standards and regulations to see what can and should be included to define a base expectation--a minimum set of standards -- for sustainability and excellence. In the short time that I've been state architect, I think we are seeing some success and real movement in the right direction." Is that still true? What progress re standards has your office actually made?

Buildings in California are built according to the safety standards contained in the California building code. Those standards are defined as health, safety and welfare standards. These are certainly important, but so much more needs to be done in order to make sure that we understand what should be required in all schools in California to ensure the best student and teacher performance--air quality, light standards, day lighting, acoustics, energy efficiency, and comfort. I believe that there is a need to develop statewide standards in these areas. My office is continuing to move towards setting minimum standards that can provide a benefit to learning environments. Currently, we're focusing a great deal on sustainability. As we now know, healthy environments and healthy children go hand in hand with effective learning.

The L.A. County health director, Dr. Jonathan Fielding, M.D., recently noted that the largest epidemic among Hispanic children in Southern California is diabetes and obesity. What in the minimum standards could be cited to ensure that public school officials building new schools are taking into account mitigating the health epidemic that is afflicting to many of our students?

This is a really important issue today, for school children in particular. But it's a bigger issue that my office can answer, because we are talking about community-wide issues that we all need to be concerned about for each and every citizen. Certainly children, being the most at risk population, and being defined as our future in California, need the first level of attention. Programs, like the Department of Education's effort to develop safe walking paths to schools, open space requirements, and physical education are all part of a solution. But overall, better community planning is needed

Stephen, you assumed, during the tenure in L.A. of Mayor Riordan, the position of state architect. The unmet challenges of Los Angeles Unified school facilities was one of your early priorities. Share what you've learned in working closely with Mayors and school district officials re 1) how best to constructively impact state/local working relationships, and re 2) infill public facilities investment?

It was pretty evident to me that LA needed as much support and assistance as the state could deliver in building safe and healthy school facilities, something that it seemed incapable of doing effectively for a number of years. We forged a very significant partnership with Jim McConnell and his staff. And, Governor Romer has been a tremendous supporter of this. Now, as Los Angeles Unified will be moving to the next stage of its program, and our staffs have come much closer together, we are learning a great deal from each other about what our individual and joint responsibilities are.
We've hired a supervisor in our office and assigned a staff member to serve Los Angeles Unified's needs. Because of the size of the program it represents, it is important for them to be successful. They educate more children than any school district in the state of California. The urban issues are one thing--we've passed regulations, for example, that allow LAUSD, among other schools districts in the state, to convert existing local buildings into schools. We've worked more closely with the charter movement since I've come into office, particularly now because charters have access to state money for facilities, and it was important for us to have charter schools see the DSA as a resource and not an obstacle.
In every respect, we've tried to convert DSA from an enforcement agency to an agency that sees school districts as partners, and where we can consult and support their goals to build facilities. The staff here helped make the first phase of LA Unified's program a success by making sure that all of their plans were approved and sent on for funding on time and on schedule. In this next phase we're hopeful that we'll do even better in continuing to support LA Unified. Beyond that, we're also gratified to see that LA Unified is focusing on quality design, sustainability, healthy environments, and understanding neighborhood context.

We're spending about $100 billion this decade on new schools and modernization in California and yet there is still no formal requirement to share best practices with districts around the state. If you were to urge the new governor's administration on how to realize the vision, but do it cost effectively, what would be on the table?

When you're talking about a $100 billion program, there's too much at risk not to share best practices information. These schools will change the face of our communities for generation to come. This is one of the largest, if not the largest, capital programs ever embarked on in this country, and it does have significant community impact. Assuring that facilities support learning is an exercise that requires us to share information on a very formal basis. A $100 billion program should be accompanied with institutions, or programs that are all about asking the right questions, developing the right data, analyzing that data, and then pushing it back out so that school districts, school district officials, board members, architects, engineers, contractors, and all of us who are involved in this very difficult effort understand two things. One, how can we do it at the lowest possible cost, because that continues to be an important consideration. We also have to maintain and assure that we understand what the right level of quality is. I know that there are examples of success across this country and throughout California, and those examples are what we need to learn from.

In an effort to leverage voter support and passage of park bonds and library bonds, health care and after school and adult programs, Robert Hertzberg, as speaker of the Assembly, championed the state school bond of $25 billion, half of which is on the ballot next May, which includes $100 million of joint-use funding. But the first $50 million of that money has not really been accessed by school districts. In fact, LAUSD never even applied. So what's the chasm here between opportunity and vision and the practicalities of realizing the leveraging opportunities of these joint use dollars?

This issue is incredibly complex. I'm not an expert by any means in all of the fiscal structures that exists for agencies throughout California. But, it's very clear to me, and to many others, that the fiscal structures that are a part of all these agencies we're asking to come together, are all quite different--sometimes to the point where it's difficult for them to collaborate or cooperate. I don't think there is an unwillingness to do it, but delivering public facilities is already very difficult, and we're asking folks to layer on another potential difficulty. We have to consider what we can do to encourage the leveraging of these dollars.
The notion of joint-use is too important to lose. We're at an age now where public resources are being challenged all the time. There isn't enough money to do everything we need to have done. Learning is obviously important to children, but it is also important to involve the community in their future. Beyond the idea of productivity and sharing costs and reducing costs, the idea of finding mechanisms that also can connect the community more fundamentally to the future of children and the success of their schools is too important to give up on. We have to continue to work on the political and economic structures that might prevent joint-use from being a success.

Obviously, school districts up and down the state will be putting bonds on the ballot in order to use local dollars to match the state dollars. Should there be some inclusion of joint-use in their allocations to match that fund? Or, is that just too hard to grapple with?

I don't know how hard it is to grapple with. I would encourage school districts to find opportunities to leverage their scarce dollars and match them with other organizations to hopefully deliver better facilities all the way around, not only for the school but for the community. There has to be community will, of course. These are local decisions and the will has to be there. But, I'd be hopeful that the communities themselves can see opportunities and the school districts can see opportunities in working with their communities to find some success in joint-use opportunities.

What are you seeing around the state and what can the state architect's office do in partnership with the Department of Education to ensure that these new and modernized campuses offer opportunities for after schools programs and universal pre-K going forward?

We've had an opportunity to forge a great partnership with the California Department of Education over the last several years. We're continuing to explore how we assure that schools meet community needs. The idea that schools serve a greater need than the 8-to-3 educational purpose has been realized for quite some time. The governor-elect, in his support of after school programs, builds on a long history of desiring to make school facilities themselves greater resources in the communities and the neighborhoods that they serve. Joint-use is a part of it, there's certainly no doubt about that. Where we find opportunities to assure the success of after-school programs, we will do that, either by the adoption of regulations, or the development of new policies and guidelines.

Lastly Stephen, your office not only works with schools, you've been a leader in the sustainability agenda for the state of California and its buildings. Can you chronicle the successes and what remains on your agenda there?

A lot remains, but we have changed the objective of the state now around this notion of sustainability. Californians been perceived as a leader in this area because of the state's involvement in the development of sustainable public facilities. We know that there are cost savings in sustainable building that are easy to quantify, like energy savings. But the effort that's been undertaken is to really try to take a look at capital outlay for public instruction and understand the benefits that we hope are accrued through the development and maintenance of healthy environments for human occupation.
A number of school districts throughout the state have adopted the Collaborative for High-Performance Schools standards for design and construction and for operation and maintenance. We're continuing to support more school districts at the local level through their school boards' adoption of those standards. As more people become aware of the benefits, more school districts, parents, and school board members are asking for the adoption of those standards.