What If
Smart Schools
One of the largest statewide expenditures in public infrastructure
goes to building and maintaining public schools. This year, public
K-12 school enrollment reached a record 5,844,111 students, surpassing
the previous all time high by more than 110,000 students. Enrollment
has more than tripled in the past 50 years. The estimated growth
in student enrollment is approximately 50,000 students annually.
New enrollment records will continue to be set for the next nine
years, increasing to an estimated 6,180,921 students in K-12 public
schools by the 2007/2008 school year. This constitutes a total
increase of 547,275 students, or 10 percent between 1997 and 2007.
This estimate includes a decrease of 345,193 Anglo students and
an increase of 800,000 Hispanic students, indicating the current
and continuing demographic trend toward greater diversity, but,
in part, also the decision of many Anglo parents to leave the
public school system.
The renovation and replacement of educational facilities is currently
in a state of crisis. It can take up to seven years to run the
gauntlet of local and state approvals and procedures before a
school is ready to serve its constituents. As a result, school
boards and building officials are working hard to get facilities
on line faster. Larger and larger schools are being built in an
attempt to address the problem. In an attempt to save time and
money, districts are sometimes forced to replicate building plans
that are outdated with respect to current educational research
and teaching strategies. In most cases, projects move forward
without much involvement from students, parents, educators and
community members, all who have a long-term stake in the outcome.
The result is often community alienation, disenfranchisement or
even backlash.
There is a woefully inadequate allocation of time and money for
planning how schools will fit into their communities; how the
efficiencies of building larger and larger schools may not be
justified in light of critical social and educational consequences;
how combining school and community uses could produce more efficient
and community centered environments for learning; or even for
adequately identifying risk factors like building on toxic waste
sites and other environmental hazards that can lead to mistakes
at a scale that would have once been considered unimaginable.
It's not always that there isn't enough time allocated to get
the job done or enough well - intentioned people running the show.
It's not even that everybody isn't working hard enough. Rather,
in its haste to get something accomplished, the system can't seem
to work smart enough to accomplish an increasingly complex set
of needs with a limited quantity of resources.
The current need to renovate or replace educational facilities
presents an opportunity for citizens, educators and planners to
take a much smarter view of the design of learning environments.
This "smarter" view can include everything from how
learning spaces are designed to the process used to plan and design
them. More traditional educational facilities were once designed
to sustain a model of education characterized by large-group,
teacher-centered instruction occurring in isolated classrooms.
But current knowledge and research about learning calls for new
models. These new models of education are characterized by more
active student involvement - by students doing rather than just
receiving, creating rather than recreating, thinking, working
and solving problems. They are supported by strategies such as
cooperative, project-based and interdisciplinary learning, all
requiring students to move about, work in various sized groups
and be active. Furthermore, new models call for all students to
learn to higher standards. This in turn has resulted in an increased
emphasis on learning styles, multiple intelligences and the special
needs of each student.
Smart school planning and investment means replacing the current
factory schools with facilities that support these and other examples
of current best practices and ongoing research in the learning
sciences. This means, among other things, that school populations
should be significantly less than previously projected, and that
large school populations may in fact be detrimental to the learning
process. The development of smaller schools on smaller sites can
also save time and money, and put schools closer to parents and
students, allowing schools to better serve as centers of their
communities.
There are also opportunities to accommodate more efficient and
productive uses for educational facilities. For the most part,
school facilities in California have been, and continue to be,
designed and constructed to serve a specific educational purpose
based on a limited educational function. Most educational facilities
operate during a 7-8 hour time frame as stand alone institutions,
with limited access or joint use by other community organizations.
In most cases, the auditoriums, sports facilities, food service,
libraries, media center, computer labs and other specialized areas
of the school are available for use by the general public only
on a very limited basis. Thus, local municipalities must provide
duplicate facilities to serve the same functions, with separate
budgets for capital improvements, staff and operating expenses.
Smart school planning and investment means designing facilities
that can accommodate expanded community functions to save on the
time, money, land and other environmental resources used to duplicate
functions elsewhere. Smarter designs for new or renovated facilities
can accommodate direct community access to spaces like libraries,
gymnasiums, auditoriums, performing arts, athletic and recreational
spaces that can serve the broader needs of the community. Instead
of being designed for a limited time frame of 7 - 8 hours every
day, combining community uses can produce facilities that operate
12 - 14 hours, serving a wide range of community needs that can
also include things like health clinics, counseling centers and
other social services. These designs can be implemented without
jeopardizing the health and safety of students, by having certain
community activities take place during school hours and others
limited to evenings and weekends. The result of these smarter
and more efficient joint use design strategies is to reduce duplication
of community infrastructure.
Today's educational facilities should also be designed to strengthen
the integral relationship that exists between a school and its
community in other ways. They should serve a variety of community
needs in partnership with a wide spectrum of public, civic and
private organizations. They should provide spaces for public meetings
and activities. They should provide access to communications technology.
They should help meet the leisure, recreational and wellness needs
of the community. They should support relationships with businesses
that are productive for students and supportive of the local economy.
They should provide spaces that facilitate the use of external
experts and skilled community volunteers for a variety of functions,
including mentorships, apprenticeships and work-based and service
learning. When implemented through a community-based planning
process, the results can also include increased community engagement
and support for a wide range of cultural, social, economic, organizational
and educational needs
Smarter schools should be inviting places rather than foreboding
institutions. Their locations should encourage community use and
their shared public spaces should be accessible - day and night,
all year round - to the community. Schools should be places where
creative configurations of space expand their use to encompass
early learning and adult education; where learning occurs "after
hours," at night and on weekends; where school-to-school
partnerships, links with businesses and collaboration with higher
education are encouraged and supported. They should enable learners
of all ages and serve as centers for lifelong learning. Today
we know that 12 or 14 years of learning will not be enough to
equip people for the rest of their lives. We can't afford to think
of graduation as a finish line, and that means that one of the
most important end products of schools needs to be citizens who
have learned how to continue to learn. Schools should support
learning for people of all ages. In short, school facilities should
allow access to flexible and comprehensive programs to meet all
learning needs. They should provide space and programs for everything
from early learning to adult education and training.
Smarter school planning and investment can also extend the learning
environment beyond the traditional school site by creating schools
in non-traditional settings. When community sites become destinations
for educational field trips and extended academic learning centers,
the links between school and community are strengthened. But these
extensions are not limited to field trips alone. Through partnerships
between school boards and other community organizations, a wide
variety of community resources like museums, zoos, parks, hospitals
and even government buildings can be enlisted to serve as full-time
integrated learning centers. In this way, the school is not only
the center of the community, but the whole community can also
be seen as the center of the school - school as community and
community as school - a learning community.
All of these examples point to ways that schools can better serve
as the center of their communities, either by playing a more integral
role as a community activity center or by extending the learning
environment further out into the community to take better advantage
of a wider range of community resources. Schools that are more
integrated with their communities in these ways can strengthen
a community's sense of identity, coherence and consensus. Like
a new version of the old town square, they can serve as a community
hub, a center for civic infrastructure, a place where students
and others can learn to participate and support the common good.
A national movement integrating schools more closely with the
community is growing, with support from the U.S. Department of
Education and other organizations. At a recent national conference
focused on the design of learning environments, a set of national
design principles were identified and adopted. These design principles
call for educational facilities and designs that will:
- Enhance teaching and learning and accommodate the needs of
all learners;
- Serve as centers of community;
- Result from a planning/design process involving all stakeholders;
- Provide for health, safety and security;
- Make effective use of all available resources;
- Allow for flexibility and adaptability to changing needs.
In addition to the U.S. Department of Education, these design
principles have been endorsed by the Council of Educational Facilities
Planners International and the American Institute of Architects,
which together represent the largest contingent of educational
facility planners in the nation.
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