Ed Schmidt2013-05-19T15:08:00-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=ed-schmidtCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Ed SchmidtGood old fashioned elbow grease.October 3rd Countstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19340432012-10-03T16:08:56-04:002012-12-03T05:12:02-05:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/
For school districts across the state of Michigan, this Wednesday proves the wisdom of that statement.
October 3, 2012 is Count Day. According to the Michigan Department of Education's guidelines, "Count Day is when all public schools in Michigan tally the number of students attending their schools. Count information is critical to districts, because each student translates into state funding."
What are the stakes? It is estimated that the State of Michigan's per-pupil funding is $11,320, and a little more than half that money comes as the result of Count Day numbers.
School administrators certainly recognize the day's importance. Throughout the city of Detroit, schools will hold activities such as "Wear Your Pajamas to School Day" and "Win a Laptop Day." These programs will certainly get students to school, as will the teams of volunteers who will fan out across the city collecting a "stipend" for every wayward student that they bring to school.
You can argue the logic of using a single day to largely determine school funding levels. However, Michigan is hardly alone in its approach.
In Duval County, Florida, the school district is in the middle of its 20-day count. Enrollment numbers do not directly affect state funding in Florida. However, they are a contributing factor. And while Duval County Public School Systems' total enrollment is an impressive 125,387 students, this number is still almost 1,000 students below the state's projections. The decrease could result in the school system losing between $4 and $5 million in state funding.
But while the economic stakes are high, activities such as Count Day can obscure a broader issue regarding school attendance. Nationally, our dropout rate sits at nearly 8 percent - more than 15 percent for Hispanic students. In 2009, the average Detroit high school student missed 46 days of school.
These numbers are simply unacceptable. As parents, as community members, and as a society, we must do more to make sure that our children "show up" each and every day.
Studies show that attendance is one of the most significant contributors to students' success. In fact, one study suggests that a 1 percent increase in average attendance can lead to an 11.6 point jump in a school's combined pass rate. (1)
Don't get me wrong. I know that there will be another event on the 3rd that may attract the attention of the country away from Count day. And, I admit, that will be watching the polling numbers track across the bottom of my TV just like everyone else. But out of the corner of my eye I will be paying attention to the results coming out of Detroit, and hoping for the best.
When all this is said I cannot help asking myself a simple question:
"If every day can't be Count Day, how can we make every day Count?"
_______________
(1): Principals' Assessment of Schools Survey, "Is There a Correlation Between Perceived Building Quality and Standardized Test Scores?" By: Peter Riordan and Greg Monberg. Indiana University South Bend, School of Business and Economics, A503 Statistical Applications, April 24, 2012 ]]>When the School Came to Towntag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8849092011-06-29T13:46:08-04:002011-08-29T05:12:01-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/
As a part of the design process, we researched the history of the school. We met with alumni as far back as we could find, and talked with administrators and faculty. We even found a school janitor who had worked at the school for 35 years.
It did not take us long to learn that the oldest surviving teacher lived within blocks of the building.
Ms. Newberg had taught in the school for almost 25 years. She cared for her students, tutoring them after hours, mentoring them after graduation and even making sure that they returned and volunteered at the school.
She was an amazing woman. Alumni spoke fondly of her, remembering how she would walk to their homes and meet with their parents if their grades "slipped." Many proudly relayed tales of how she would enthusiastically celebrate their accomplishments individually.
We had to get this on tape. Interviews were set up, groups of four and five alumni gathered in living rooms and basements and we let the camera roll. We had to schedule and reschedule our time with Ms. Newberg because, at the spry old age of 104, she was a very busy woman. Her various activities made it difficult to find two or three contiguous hours, but we finally sat down and talked about her students and her school. She loved that high school community and her life as a teacher. There was no way that we were going to limit her air time. Whatever she wanted to talk about, we wanted to hear.
After about an hour, she told us a story of when "the school came to town." Ms. Newberg was raised in rural South Carolina in the early 1900s. This very agricultural, very segregated community did not have much in the way of amenities. They were the definition of "dirt poor." So the idea of a school, much less one that they could help pay for, was unimaginable. But here it was -- through the center of their dirt road community came the wagons carrying the material for their new school house.
She did not remember many of the specifics of the school, but we can be fairly certain that it was more than one building. The school probably came with a teacher's house, outhouse and the school house. This last structure was probably two classrooms, designed either on a North/South or East/West axis. It was heated by wood stoves, had real desks, took great advantage of the natural sunlight and, in a surprising number of cases, might still be standing.
Imagine building 5,357 schools in 12 states in 19 years. Now imagine that these schools weren't just four walls and a roof, but innovative facilities focused on daylighting, proper ventilation, flexibility, community use, child safety and comfort.
This accomplishment is inspiring enough, but now remember that this all took place in a time where 17 states still mandated that school populations be segregated. In this era, the disparity between the "white" schools and "colored" schools was obvious, apparent and embarrassing.
The building of more than 5,000 schools can be credited to one man: Julius Rosenwald. He was a brilliant businessman who is crediting with saving the Sears and Roebuck Company, rising from part owner to President and, ultimately, to Chairman of the Board. In the early 1900s, Mr. Rosenwald, and his friend Paul J. Sachs came to the conclusion that the plight of the African Americans was of paramount importance. Mr. Sachs introduced Mr. Rosenwald to two prominent educators, William Baldwin and Booker T. Washington. These introductions led to a position on the board of directors of the Tuskegee Institute. In 1913, this group constructed six small schools in rural Alabama. Mr. Rosenwald provided the funds, Tuskegee provided the design and oversight and Mr. Washington provided the educational model.
In 1917, Mr. Rosenwald established the Rosenwald Fund that contributed matching funds towards the construction of these 5,357 schools. Remember the story told by Ms. Newberg, and now imagine it playing out in thousands of communities across the country.
The requirement was that the funds had to be raised collaboratively between white and black citizens. Public funds and private donations had to be committed. And in a time when the populations legally had to remain separate, they had to come together to fund the local and private component.
Through Ms. Newberg's recollection we could all see the wondrous carnival bring the new school to town. It should tell us something about the drive for education and the impact that our schools have on our community, teachers and students. Remember the last school that "came to your town"? Was it accompanied by the fanfare and jubilation that I can only imagine came with Ms. Newberg's Rosenwald School?]]>Through Their Eyestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8580072011-05-05T12:56:41-04:002011-07-05T05:12:01-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/
The reason that we focus our efforts on schools has to be about children. It is not really about the national debt, or regional budget or even local property values. But too often, in the educational community, those words are used as a cliche, a catch-phrase or salutation that is repeated so often as to practically lose all meaning.
In less than 120 days the Detroit Public School system will open 320,000 square feet of new schools and almost 750,000 square feet of renovated schools. I mention Detroit because, lately, we don't think of Motor City as a place that gives birth to new things (other than the new car commercials: "imported from Detroit.") But it is, and the children of Detroit know it.
The Martin Luther King High School is being replaced. A new 180,000 square foot, $54 million dollar building will replace the 1960 building that, among other things, is sinking into the ground by way of an underground stream. Recently I had the opportunity of walking a large group of students through the construction site; all of the students wanted to see the new building and they all carried questions in mind.
As you can expect, there were the "important" questions: will our gym be bigger than our city rivals, how deep is the swimming pool, where will my locker be? But there were also the surprisingly insightful ones: how many science labs, will they all have fume hoods, will they all have natural gas, will the building be energy efficient, how much less electricity will be used, will we be able to work with the solar collectors?
The students realized that the educational environment being provided for them was going to seriously affect their lives. Yes, a better gym might give them an advantage over their city rivals, but a real robotics lab will expose them to technologies that will give them an advantage in the academic world. It makes you wonder what it's like to see the world through their eyes.
If I can be impressed by the inquisitive wonder of four dozen high school students walking through a construction site, how much more impressive will 4,000 students walking into new or renovated buildings this coming September be? What lessons can we grown-ups learn from their perspective? What do they perceive that we might have missed?
For some answers, I have had the opportunity to get involved with, and support, a wonderful program called "Through Your Lens," a collaboration of the 21st Century School Fund, Critical Exposure, and Healthy Schools Campaign to raise awareness of the need to fund school buildings that support learning and provide a safe, healthy environment for students and teachers.
By sharing photos and stories of what they see at school, students and teachers open a window for all of us to see the truth about school buildings today. You can see the winning photos from the 2011 Through Your Lens photo contest here.
In my academic life I never went to a new school. We never had the "shiny, new and blue" play ground equipment shown in one of the winning photos, but I can also say that we never used a piece of police "caution" tape as a jump rope. These are interesting and compelling images of "what [they] see every day at school: the good parts, the troubling parts, the things [they are] proud of and the things that [they] would like to change."
From May 9-13, the 2011 Through Your Lens Exhibit will be on display in the Rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill.
The first "Through Your Lens" contest received nearly 400 photos and stories from across the U.S. You can view them online, download or purchase a printed copy of the exhibit book here.
According to the Through Your Lens website,
We know that millions of children, especially those living in low-wealth school districts, spend their school days in poor quality, unhealthy, and overcrowded buildings that cause health problems and limit educational opportunities. All students and teachers have the right to adequate, appropriate learning conditions that will allow them to strive for and achieve the goals being set for them.
No single level of government can accomplish this alone. We must create a new federal, state, and local partnership to ensure that each and every single community has sufficient resources to provide high-quality school buildings to their students.
As an architect, I value the visual perspective and depth of perception we can achieve by developing a new way of seeing. So much of what passes before our eyeballs these days is a fast-paced blur of pixels, images, special effects and other technologically assisted viewing. But the reality of what we see around us, enhanced by our own experiences, personalities and points of view, can be extraordinary -- and crucial to our future as individuals, and as a society.
When it comes to schools, the perspective that can mean the most comes from those who are closest to education's "ground floor." I'm always eager to hear that these education consumers are saying and see what they're seeing. To whom should we be listening in this great debate?
Two words -- children first.]]>School Shootings: The School Safety Lesson We Can't Forgettag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8522832011-04-24T13:23:41-04:002011-06-24T05:12:01-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/
On April 16, 2007 an individual walked into a classroom building and killed 5 teachers and 27 students at Virginia Tech. As a "Hokie" myself (Virginia Tech, class of '81), I will always remember where I was on that day. But this tragedy still reverberates in other communities as well.
The Tech Corps of Cadets lit a memorial candle at 12 midnight last Friday night and extinguished it at 11:59 Saturday. Memorials were held on campus as well in the state capital.
On that fateful spring day, the gunman went from a dormitory building across campus, to a three story grey limestone building known as Norris Hall, an academic building that houses the Engineering Science and Mechanics programs. He pulled from his duffel bag a heavy chain that he laced across the three main doors of the building, and placed a note stating that attempts to remove the chain would result in the detonation of a bomb.
There was no warning and almost no protection. The first classroom, an advanced hydrology engineering class, had a professor and 13 students. All but 4 students were killed. In the rest of the building professors tried to barricade doors while students jumped from windows almost too small to fit through. In one case a professor moved his class into his office so that he could lock the door and protect the students. He then went to investigate the situation and was killed as he came down the stairs.
Imagine, 49 people shot in less than 12 minutes; that's one every 15 seconds. The event has caused a gun rights ruckus both for and against concealed weapons on educational campuses. In May 2008, the Midwestern Higher Education Compact published "The Ripple Effect of Virginia Tech," the results of a nationwide survey of student life officers and campus safety directors to assess the impact of the Virginia Tech shootings on campus safety and security procedures.
The Survey found that a profound change regarding school safety has taken place within a very short time in the U.S.:
Like ripples in a pond that eminate outward from a source of disturbance, the impact of the Virginia Tech tragedy has reverberated throughout the country in significant ways. The fact that nearly 9 in 10 colleges and universities conducted some sort of assessment of their ability to prevent or effectively respond to a campus shooting or other acts of violence is testimony to the profound impact of the events of April 16, 2007. The myriad strategies to improve safety and security that have been studied, pursued, and implemented since that date illustrate the effect of the Virginia Tech tragedy on campus policies and operations.
This past week, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a bill that would have permitted guns to be carried on public rights of way at public university and community college campuses.
Legislation that involves some form of gun carrying on campus is currently pending in at least ten states -- three of which, Illinois, Nebraska and North Carolina, are seeing this legislation introduced for the first time this year. Early 2011 saw nearly 20 states considering such legislation, but bills have already failed in Colorado, Florida, Idaho, New Mexico, West Virginia, Virginia and now Arizona. New Hampshire, too, voted down a two-year bill for this year, but it will reappear in 2012. Currently Utah is the only state that requires public universities to allow guns on college campuses.
Turning to technology, all State universities in Florida have created, or expanded, their emergency notification systems. Students can receive immediate text messages, emails or be alerted through a campus wide loudspeaker system.
While there may have been lessons learned for mental health professionals, law enforcement officials and campus communication planners, there has to be a "teachable moment" for educational facility designers.
In August of 2008, the U. S. Department of Education Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools issued a summary of School Safety and Physical Design. And while they referenced national design standards they also discussed school vulnerability assessments and physical design weaknesses. Design elements such as classroom door locks and vision panels speak directly to the tragic component shortcomings at Virginia Tech.
The bottom line is this: Schools need to be designed and renovated to be more efficient and a better value to their community. They need to be easily monitored, easily secured, and safe.
But how?
The renovation of Wilson High School in the District of Columbia involves a building built in 1935. One of the first things the design team did was hire a "pedestrian traffic" consultant to look at walking times and distances (the school encompasses a sprawling campus) with an emphasis on places to hide, get lost or to be "taken."
Traffic and walking patterns are just one component in an overall "vulnerability assessment" of school facilities. The U.S. Department of Education recommends that these assessments need to be a part of an ongoing process. The process should "evaluate and prioritize risks and areas of weakness that could have adverse consequences for individual schools and school districts."
One example might be the lesson learned at a large mid Atlantic suburban school district that suffered a high profile attack of a student in a "gang toilet" by an individual that should not have been in the building. Their response was to eliminate these "gang toilets" in academic wings and increase intrusion protection and surveillance in all of their school buildings.
It doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to discover the weaknesses in school facility security. These safety gaps include easy access to the school and classrooms by potential offenders, inadequate escape paths, an inability of staff to spot threats, and inadequate communications.
We may never understand what drives an individual to violence. Earlier treatment and screening might, in fact, surround those that need care and assistance with necessary safeguards. And perhaps enhanced personal defenses will make us safer by eliminating or reducing unsecured entrances, removing hidden areas, improving indoor lighting, securing and repairing doors and door hardware, maintaining emergency devices...the list goes on.
This year, the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings came and went with little media attention or public conversation. But I hope that over the next twelve months, we can apply the lessons of Virginia Tech to move education policy and planning forward towards real safety.
Next April 16th we will commemorate the passing of another year. Some of us will visit the Tech campus to remember our sons and daughters' team mates, favorite professors, or just heroic people. Some will visit Norris Hall to walk through the newly renovated building that was almost torn down in response to the tragedy.
And perhaps we'll also walk those corridors with the knowledge that finally, instead of reacting from crisis to crisis, we've built the foundation of safety standards that begin on the architect's table. I know they are on mine.]]>What We Talk About When We Talk About School Closurestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8414632011-03-30T11:38:23-04:002011-05-30T05:12:01-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/
Providence, R.I. and Detroit, Mich. are planning to close a total of 48 schools over the next few weeks. While there are ten times more schools on the closure list in Detroit (44) than in Providence (4), no one can say that the Motor City's cuts are eleven times more painful.
Closing even one school has a deep emotional impact on a community.
As a school designer and planner, I have to appreciate that every school building will, at some point in time, outlive their useful life. We try, as best we can, to make that point in time as far in the future as possible, but the years have a habit of creeping up on us.
We say that we build schools to last 50 years or more; 50 years from now is the year 2061. That would mean that schools built today would have to be designed to satisfy the educational needs of the great grandchildren of this year's freshman class.
We need to admit that, at some point in time, all of our school buildings will come to the end of their useful life. Okay, let me say it: every school at some point in time will need to close, make way for new facilities, or undergo a major reconfiguration and remodel. The question is when -- not if -- buildings outlive their usefulness.
Recently, my wife and I became "empty nesters." If there are some new parents among my readers you might say that you are sad for us; all you parents with high school students are probably congratulating us; and all other "empty nesters" can empathize with us. But the issue that we are facing is not so much that our children have moved away, rather "what do we do with our house?"
Just having this conversation is bittersweet. This is the house where we raised our children; we did homework in the living room, took prom pictures in the basement, and rebuilt my son's first car in the garage. But it has outlived its useful life. I never would have called it a big house but now it is too big; it is not broken but it has things that need to be fixed; it is not too far to drive to but it is nowhere near the Metro.
We have come to that point when the house that we made into a home really does not meet our family needs. Which brings me back to schools.
When you listen to the lamentations of community members in Providence, they want to know why these particular four schools have been recommended for closure. Why should Flynn, Windmill, Messer and Messer Annex school communities be forced to move?
The School Superintendent, Thomas Brady said that the schools "were picked for their age, condition, student performance and proximity to other schools. Flynn Elementary, for example, needs nearly $15 million in renovations and is within one mile of six other elementary schools."
This sounds reasonable enough but the Messer and Messer Annex schools have been used for teaching the children of Providence for nearly 120 years. The buildings were constructed in the 1890s! How many of us live in houses that old?
But schools are like homes and these venerable old buildings are connected to countless families. There are powerful emotional threads in the schools that tug at the hearts of children, parents, grandparents.
"It becomes a very emotional issue," Schools Superintendent Thomas Brady said.
No kidding. But when do the facility conditions, the financial implications overshadow these "very emotional issues"? I have been talking a lot about listening to your buildings, so lets talk about listening to your community.
A recent study said that the city of Detroit has hit the lowest population since 1910. The study said that Detroit looses the equivalent of one person every 23 minutes. When you consider that one out of every six people in the U.S. is a school age child, that means that Detroit is losing one school age child every 2 hours and 20 minutes. Extrapolating this data a little further we find that Detroit is losing the equivalent of two High School student body populations every school year!
At this rate, every high school in Detroit would be empty in 8 years. Of course, not every child leaving is a high school age student, or enrolled in Detroit Public Schools, but even if these numbers are half right it is a staggering statistic.
What we do know for certain is that the school district was built for 300,000 students but two-thirds of that population is now gone.
"The enrollment in the Providence Public School District (PPSD) has declined from a high of 27,900 in 2003 to 23,484 in 2009 or approximately 16% in six years. This has resulted in excess capacity in the system. The challenge of balancing the need for the community to be served by educational facilities in close proximity vs. the operational capacity of the system to provide appropriate programming in these facilities is what the update to the Facilities Master Plan seeks to address."
As Bob Dylan never said, "the demographics, they are a' changing." What does that mean for schools? What is the right number for how many schools a community needs, or can afford?
When a school gets to one half of the capacity -- should we close it? When less than one third of the students live within one half of a mile -- should we close it? When a school's repair costs more than one half of its replacement cost -- should we close it?
Or do we never close it?
Douglas MacArthur said that "old generals never die, they just fade away." Is that how we feel about old schools? The Detroit Emergency Financial Manager, Robert Bobb, facing that kind of enrollment decline and a mandate from the Governor to close half the city's schools proposed what amounts to a neighborhood takeover of schools. Charter schools will be selected to partner with communities to run their neighborhood schools. That's quite a shift -- and to repeat the wisdom of Superintendent Brady; "it becomes a very emotional issue."
In no way do I intend to belittle the very real and serious issues that comes with these decisions. The Providence decision could lead to the firing of almost 40 teachers. The Detroit decision leaves the city still wrestling with hundreds of millions of dollars of legacy debt. There are no easy answers -- only more difficult questions.
What we need is a framework for conducting a serious conversation about these decisions. They will still be "emotional." But maybe, just maybe, they can also be sensible.]]>Why School Architecture Investments Aren't Irresponsible (Part 2)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8369002011-03-19T11:09:49-04:002011-05-25T18:40:24-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/recent post about how a city's values can be reflected in an impressive new school building prompted some interesting comments. One in particular grabbed my attention.
A reader wrote,
"The premise that nice buildings make kids learn better is irresponsible and one of the key reasons schools are in such financial distress."
Although, as a school facilities architect, I might like to think otherwise, I know that many people have similar feelings. In these times, when budgets of every kind are being cut to the bone, spending public dollars on "nice buildings" can seem like a luxury we can't afford.
It's like that World War II era slogan, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without!" Only I would argue that when it comes to schools, fixing up old buildings is the best way to get the most use out of them.
It's another example of the dangerous decline in our infrastructure. Like our congested highways, bursting water pipes and corroding bridges, decaying schools are a reminder that our prosperity as a nation is jeopardized by physical neglect.
The nation's schools serve as pillars of local communities and often serve a dual purpose as disaster-relief shelters. As local governments hold the prime responsibility for funding schools, the economic downturn has had a negative impact on rehabilitation, modernization, and security improvements.
School facilities are not currently considered resilient because of decreased funding and increased capacity, the failure of designs to adapt to the ever changing learning environment, and the lack of system redundancy.
In order to achieve continuous assurance of service, future investments should consider life-cycle maintenance, rapid recovery, alternative services, security, and condition and risk assessment.
So, I would suggest to my critic (and by the way, folks, keep those comments coming whether you agree with me or think I'm nuts -- it's all about starting a conversation!) that it's not a question of what's nice, but rather, what's necessary. These buildings are old and the only way to keep them from decaying past the point of usability is to invest in their infrastructure.
Our "information world" is changing so fast that these buildings stand little chance of keeping up unless we work at it. Did you know that the top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not even exist in 2004? We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist and using technologies that haven't been invented -- in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet.
The race to stay ahead in the information age is as close as the smart phone in our pocket. In 1984 there were 1,000 Internet devices in this country. By 1992, that number rose to 1,000,000, and in 2008, the number was 1,000,000,000.
When a community decides to invest in school infrastructure, through a bond issue, revenue investment or change in political direction, the changes they seek are way more than cosmetic. The conversation I began with my post about the Crested Butte Community School made the point that when a community invests in schools, it is reaffirming the most deeply held values and beliefs.
In 2008 the, Gunnison school district (where Crested Butte is located) was facing deteriorating schools and an economic climate that was not conducive to tax increases, yet they managed to persuade voters to pass a bond which allowed for the repair, renovation, expansion and remodel of several schools in that district.
The community's overriding concern was that the improvements would cost more down the road while in the short-term the impact on students and teachers of deteriorating building conditions could be calamitous.
A similar step was taken in Detroit, when by a 62 percent to 38 percent margin, voters approved a $500 million bond referendum for new facilities and capital improvements in Detroit Public Schools.
Isn't that how public spending is supposed to work? Needs are identified, community support is mobilized, and the machinery of government is put to work -- with the consent of the governed.
But what if the public interest isn't on the government's radar? That's what frequently happened during the long, shameful period of segregation in America. In 1912, a Chicago businessman named Julius Rosenwald gave Booker T. Washington permission to use some of the money he had donated to the Tuskegee Institute to build six small schools in rural Alabama.
The program was such a success that Rosenwald set up the Rosenwald Rural School Building Program, to bring schools to small black communities throughout the South by offering design, planning and seed money assistance as long as they provided a workforce and local funds.
According to a website history maintained by the National Trust for Historic Preservation,
At the program's conclusion in 1932, it had produced 4,977 new schools, 217 teachers' homes, and 163 shop buildings, constructed at a total cost of $28,408,520 to serve 663,615 students in 883 counties of 15 states.
In a passage that echoes our contemporary conversation about the role facilities can play in the total engagement of students in their education, the website goes on to say,
In the early twentieth century, Progressive architects applied new ideas to school design and developed new standards to evaluate school plans. Their concerns included lighting, ventilation, heating, sanitation, instructional needs, and aesthetics -- all intended to create positive, orderly, and healthy environments for learning. Most of these designers and plans focused on urban schools, however. The designers of Rosenwald schools applied the same Progressive principles to country schools, and in so doing made the Rosenwald school building program a major force in rural school design.
As you can see from this presentation, the legacy of the Rosenwald school initiative is to sustain the guiding principle of every endeavor in education: It's all about the kids.
Whether the money comes from private or public sources, the point is that school systems in the U.S. are designed to reflect local, community values, concerns and techniques. As is the case with so many other aspects of the great American melting pot, one size definitely does not fit all.
Sure, there have been funds spent on schools in less distress than buildings a few miles down the road, and the clout of some "haves" can squeeze out the urgent needs of the "have nots."
But when a community's educational mission results in the renovation or construction of "nice buildings" that "make kids learn better" it is in no way "irresponsible."
In fact it may be the one thing that keeps our future generations from almost certain financial distress.
]]>Redefining the Classroomtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8313852011-03-07T15:50:06-05:002012-08-14T18:29:24-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/Hokies beating Duke??!!?) The students were from the colleges of Architecture and Building Construction. They are investigating an alternative to the typical temporary classroom structures.
"Learning Pods," Temporary Learning Cottages, Portables...whatever your local district calls them they all amount to trailers. And nobody likes to see their kids going to school in a trailer.
The lighting is bad, the air is bad, the acoustics are bad and the vibes are bad -- most of the time, it doesn't feel like a place where exciting, innovative education happens.
So the students I met with wanted to tackle theses issue in a way that only academia can; by taking it apart and starting at the most basic level. That, I suppose, is where I was to come in; what is the essence of a classroom? What are the essentials of a learning environment?
I asked the students to tell me what makes a classroom; if they were to walk into an academic building on campus, walk down a hallway looking into one space after another, what would tell them that one was a classroom and another was not?
Desks. Their universal answer was "desks". Not technology, not natural lighting, not even acoustical clarity. The answer was desks. All neatly in a row, typically facing a larger desk set to one side.
Now, when I asked what would make a great classroom they started with issues like technology and lighting and acoustics. So maybe that is their challenge; to get from where we are; our realities, to where we need to be; our possibilities.
One of the reasons that the team at Virginia Tech wanted to take on this problem was because of their success in last year's U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon.
I'm proud to say that my alma mater, Virginia Tech, won the 2010 Solar Decathlon that was held, for the first time, in Europe. In a closely judged competition, the Virginia Tech team won by less than one point in the overall standings for their Lumenhaus, an innovative design integrating architecture and technology:
LUMENHAUS epitomizes a "whole building design" construction approach, in which all the home's components and systems have been designed to work together to maximize user comfort with environmental protection.
LUMENHAUS is an amazing accomplishment. It was inspired by the Farnsworth House by Mies Van Der Rohe, and like that 1951 masterpiece it is an open pavilion in which each room is designed to be flexible to the owner's changing needs. You can see a documentary about LUMENHAUS here.
The Lumahus represents truly innovative approaches to sustainable energy, efficient use of renewable materials and a respect for the environment and world around us. All great principles to be used in the design for any school, even a temporary one.
Principles of daylighting and natural light, air quality and condition, acoustics, technology and furnishings were all a part of the Lumahus design and will be incorporated into Va Tech's temporary classroom.
But what about the permanent classroom design? One student asked, "so what happens if we get this right and the students like our temporary classrooms better than their permanent classrooms?"
Wouldn't that be the height of irony? To shift the paradigm so much that students and teacher actually prefer the temporary facilities! And only because the solution will have focused on elements integral to a positive learning environment.
In the 2009 Master Facilities Plan, the District of Columbia Public School system identified the classroom as the primary component instrumental to a successful learning environment. Their conclusion was that the prekindergarten through 5th grade students spent more than 90% of their academic life in these rooms and efforts spent in these areas would have the most immediate impact. They specifically focused on five elements; daylighting, air quality, acoustics, ergonomics and technology.
Each element has extensive substantiation, through published research, as having a beneficial impact on both student and teacher performance and health. From the Heschong Mahone Group studies of daylighting in 1999 and 2003 to the Collaborative for High Performing Schools Best Practices Manual, the concepts embraced by DC Schools will result in better places to learn. But these elements, alone, will not create better classrooms.
For the past six months I have had the pleasure of working with Dr. Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the Chief Academic and Accountability Officer for Detroit Public Schools. On top of all of her myriad responsibilities she has taken a personal interest in the design and configuration of the new and renovated schools projects that are underway in Detroit.
In the fall of 2009 the voters of Detroit voted to extend their taxes in order to fund a $500M School Construction Bond program. Eight new schools and ten major renovations will, in her words, have a major impact on the lives of thousands of families next year and in years to come. This realization drives her, and inspires those of us who are partnering with her as we consider materials, finishes, colors and furnishings.
This is not a charter that she takes lightly, nor do we. This focus on the educational environment comes from her belief that a good teacher can find a way to succeed in a bad classroom but that same teacher can do really amazing things in a great classroom.
So perhaps, when the students at Virginia Tech consider this new model for a temporary classrooms it is not only desks and computers,daylighting and air quality, and fixtures and equipment; but also teachers and students all working together.
I would say that it is not a classroom until it has the people. Creating a place to learn requires the human element. Otherwise it is just a building.]]>Crested Butte Community School And Others Make Bold Statement About City's Valuestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8276982011-03-01T13:31:34-05:002011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/
The building is beautifully designed, appearing as if it is three structures linked into one continuum of education, from kindergarten through 12th grade.
By far the largest structure in town, the building presents an impressive gateway to the community. The Butte, latticed with unbelievable ski runs, towers over everything else but this school makes an equally bold statement about community values, culture and priorities. Even the structure of the academic program, kindergarten through high school, in one building speaks volumes.
A number of years ago I was working on a school district master plan in a rural Virginia community. Part of the conversation involved busing, bus routes and school bell schedules.
You would be amazed to find how involved transportation planning is in a school district's planning and budget. In this case I assumed that their system followed the tradition grade models, with buses boarded in circles timed in stages; once for elementary students, once for middle school students and a third for the high school students. They looked at me like I was from Mars; the buses ran once for all students and, they explained, to this simpleton from Mars, that the older students watched over the younger students. They made sure that they got on and off at the right place at the right time. With this decision about how to organize their bus schedule, this school system was exercising one of the most important elements of a master plan -- needs-based flexibility.
Our school systems reflect our communities. They reflect our culture and values even if we do not realize it. When we plan school systems, our focus is far deeper than a superficial survey of new buildings or old buildings. It is more essentially a measure of how we project ourselves onto our schools and our schools onto us.
In the early '70s we designed and built schools around a social construct of "Open Planning"; no walls, no obstacles, just a community of learning. Around this time Reston, in Fairfax County Virginia, was emerging as a new modern planned community, incorporating town lakes, walking paths, community centers and other public spaces -- all new and planned around this planned community culture.
Terraset Elementary school was constructed in the late '70s as an open plan, solar heated, earth bermed school. The school design won numerous architectural awards and was visited by foreign delegation from as far away as Saudi Arabia. The image of Reston was beautifully projected onto the design of this new school, and its subsequent sister Terra Center, linking them into one community mosaic.
This achievement is not limited to new social experiments. In the District of Columbia they went through a school building boom in the late 1930s that resulted in a school model consisting of two multi-story wings flanking an administration/multipurpose/cafeteria core.
This "E" shaped plan was impressive in execution. Three stories of brick and granite, the two wings had separate side entrances ensconced in stone thresholds with the words "Boys" and "Girls" carved on opposite ends of the building designating the order of their approach to discipline and education.
During the same time monumental edifices were being constructed in Detroit named after people and ideas that mattered. Edwin Denby High, named after a former secretary of the Navy, has waves and battleships carved into the impressive brick facades. And Pershing High School, named after the famous five-star World War II general has tanks and helmet clad soldiers.
As I said above; this observation is not a commentary on the superficial. In no way am I suggesting that a community, considering some work on the local elementary school, get together to vote on their favorite color so that they can paint the outside to reflect their values.
This is an observation that suggests, whether we like it or not, that our schools already reflect our communities. Are they open and inviting, true community centers, or are they closed and reserved for that 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. slot of time reserved for education?
If we look at what we value and revere most in our communities, we can often see the influence of our schools. With their theaters, galleries, libraries, laboratories and athletic facilities, can we see how our schools solidify the legacy and values of our communities? And when we look at the challenges still to be faced -- disadvantaged youth, inner city poverty, neglect -- do we offer the classrooms, clinics, counselors and resources in our schools for a way up and way out?
Take this discussion to its most personal level. When we look in the mirror, if we do not like what we see we are challenged to make a change.
Grow a beard, lose a pound, or wash away the gray. When we look at our schools, if we don't like what we see we should challenge our communities to make a change. Partner our theaters with local artists, link our gyms to our Parks and Recreations, or offer our resources to Adult education.
Many or our new facilities are designed with multiple concurrent uses in mind. The community theater can go on while the regional basketball tournament and English as a Second Language classes take place.
But too often we assume that our existing schools are set in stone, literally and physically. That is not true; underutilized facilities are wonderful opportunities for new shared uses. Community theater partnerships might be as easy as a face lift and joint use agreements. And consider the benefits; our students have access to that "beyond the classroom" experience.
Next time you look at your community school, take a hard look. If it is not within your community means to "shed a few years" perhaps you can teach that old dog a new trick or two.]]>You Say Goodbye, I Say Hellotag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8214272011-02-15T12:50:27-05:002011-05-25T18:30:24-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/ Punxsutawney Phil, we will soon be saying goodbye to winter. (Although those of us who lived through last year's "Snowpocalypse" in the Washington, D.C. area are going to need more than a groundhog's word to believe that).
But there's another type of farewell on the way that will be heralded by the coming spring. School closings are in the air for many school districts. Will those goodbyes be as welcome as the melting snows?
Many school districts saw their enrollment populations boom in the mid '70s to mid '80s. The Detroit Public School system, for example, enrolled almost 200,000 students less than 15 years ago -- but by this past September they were lucky to enroll 87,000. This sea-change in school population has necessitated school closings.
In some areas where there isn't an overall decline in enrollment, there is often a migration of the district's population from one neighborhood to another that leads to school closings. Or, if there are not enrollment problems, then there are building problems. If not building problems, then budget problems. Whatever the reasons, from coast to coast, schools are closing.
The school closing process follows the classic pattern of the five stages of grief: first denial, then anger, followed by bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance.
Let me paint a scenario for you: the state has threatened to withhold matching funds until your school district administration agrees to reduce their surplus building inventory by "X" percent. What criteria do you use? Should the oldest go first?
As I have written in previous postings, some of these buildings are the gems of our inventory. Should the schools within the region with the greatest decline in enrollment be the first to go? The criticism of this approach is that the areas with declining enrollment might need added attention to stem the flight.
OK, then how about the school buildings with the greatest need? Again, the typical criticism is that the reason that these facilities are in such bad shape is that they have been ignored and resources withheld.
My experience tells me that the person who says there is an easy solution, with obvious choices, is a person who has never had to close neighborhood schools.
Mr. Thomas Brady, superintendent of schools for the Providence Public School District, reminded us before a recent evening community meeting that closing a school, any school, is an emotional proposition. That evening representatives from a small (less that 100 student) high school that was housed in a bank building without proper classrooms or cafeteria, a gym, auditorium or media center, pleaded for over an hour to rescind what they believed to be a planning recommendation to close their school.
The district was showing a significant surplus of facility inventory, some of which was in new buildings. The state had threatened to withhold the district's state funds and the school was within a quarter mile of a large comprehensive high school. Surplus facility, limited resources and proximate facilities.
If those were not the criteria that a community should use when deciding to say goodbye, what are? More importantly, can these decisions be removed from anecdotal, seat-of-the-pants judgments and quantified with objective measures and standards?
Such a procedure does exist and it's called a Master Facilities Plan.
One of the most troubled school systems in the nation has been, to my mind quite tragically, in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C. But D.C. schools are in the midst of a stunning turnaround, in part because of the work being done by administrators, leaders and stakeholders in the District of Columbia Master Facilities Plan.
The DCPS MFP, adopted in February of 2009 and modified in 2010, used the following criteria:
Educational Adequacy
Schools as the Center of Community
Demographics
Facility Condition
Operational Efficiency
And instead of looking for spikes of failure, they looked at trends in performance. In other words, they looked at all five matrices to determine defensible strategies. The advantage was that these trends could live beyond the published Master Facilities Plan. Triggers were set in place where things would take place if the trends in the five matrices continued to move in certain directions.
For example, it becomes inefficient for urban school districts to operate a grade level at a school once enrollment falls below a certain point. The State of Michigan Department of Education has an academic model that cannot support a middle school much below 350 students.
Objective experience has shown -- although there are, of course, exceptions -- that below four classes per grade it's hard to support the full range of support academics (i.e. health instructor, librarian, music teacher). Again, they can exist but below that magic number those resources have to be shared with another school or program.
Not to be cruel, but when do the wants of the few outweigh the needs of the many? If you objectively compiled your data, stacked it against your criteria, noted the trends of performance and decided to close a school; how do you say goodbye?
Can a building that once served as a school continue to support community needs as a center, library, annex? Or should it be sold off to live on in another incarnation, as offices, housing or nonprofit space?
Or is the best decision that the building come down in a cloud of dust and smoke, making way for future generations just as it set the course for the previous ones?
Either way, whether it's with a coat of paint or a cloud of dust, this season we will say goodbye to a number of our school buildings. Let us make sure that we do not pull these decisions out of a groundhog's burrow just to make a proclamation, shove the prognosticator back in the hole and turn our back. There is an art to goodbye and it comes with a lot of planning.
And if you do it right, that planning can mean saying hello to myriad new possibilities and opportunities.]]>Are You Listening to What Your School Is Saying?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8193612011-02-07T19:31:18-05:002011-05-25T18:30:24-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/
This is not my version of the "Sixth Sense" and I am not talking about all buildings...just some buildings. Actually, I hear a very specific type of building talk; school buildings.
I can walk into an empty school building and hear students, teachers, activities, programs even when they are long gone. And old buildings, as you can imagine, speak loudest of all.
Old school buildings have a classical grace that you rarely find in other building types. Sure, the old train stations speak of grandeur and arrival, but old schools speak of character and permanence. All right, not all old school buildings, but if you go back 50 years and beyond these are, typically, "verbose" structures ripe with verse, nuance and cadence.
No doubt, you have one or more of these buried treasures in your community. Many of these aging resources are shuttered or suffering benign neglect -- dying a slow, painful and very public death. But before any more are thoughtlessly demolished, we need to look more closely at them. We need to listen to what they're trying to tell us.
Don't be so quick to label me a "building hugger." Although I have hugged a building or two in my day, I have also seen my share of school buildings that "had nice personalities" but you couldn't pay me to hug them. So what about the whole talking thing? Maybe it is more a listening thing than a talking thing.
Consider this for a moment: less than 35 percent of the construction cost of a school building is taken up by systems -- electrical, mechanical, plumbing and technology. If you assume that 50 percent of the exterior is "salvageable," then it's just the wall, windows, insulation, interior finishes and waterproofing that have to be replaced. Over 30 percent remains as a standing investment. On a 180,000 square foot high school, at $150 a square foot, the base budget is $27 million. Almost $9 million is sitting there waiting to be capitalized upon.
"Not so fast" you say, "my old building is too big, too small, too far away from our current school age population." Exactly. Now your school buildings are talking to you too.
I've just finished a project in the District of Columbia, modernizing Eastern High School. A massive three story Gothic school built in 1923, it occupies two city blocks on historic Capitol Hill.
When I first toured the building, it wasn't empty, but it might as well have been. It housed less than half the number of students it had originally been designed to accommodate. The few students I did see seemed embarrassed when running into a guest in the hall of their school.
The top floor was closed off due to a leaky roof and a lack of maintenance and empty classrooms throughout the rest of the building were used for broken old furniture and school supplies. Nine-foot windows had been replaced with six-foot windows and the remaining space covered with plywood. Hallways were draped with electrical and computer wires. The gym, cafeteria and auditorium were dismal.
But the building's structure was sound, the ornate plaster molding was hidden but intact. Caged-in light wells could be opened as atriums, unused courtyards could become student commons and the old school offices, long ago walled and partitioned off, could be open to the natural light and configured as one of the most striking media centers I believe that I will ever see.
The more we listened, the more we were convinced that Eastern was a special building. The architect, Snowden Ashford, had designed over 70 school buildings for the District of Columbia. He understood the need for natural light, air and ample halls allowing for easy movement. He knew school buildings were first and foremost built for learning. Ashford liked them to be sited in such a way that the building was above street level, to remind the students that they were "walking up" to something special.
Eastern was planned to belong to the students and teachers -- to be a thriving, integral and proud part of the community. Hundreds turned out for the grand opening. There was a parade down East Capitol Street, followed by speeches and tours of the facility. Everyone knew that when they passed Eastern High School, they were seeing something special.
But Eastern was not the exception to the rule of school design -- a standout among a pedestrian status quo.
Every major school district in the country built grand schools that represented both civic pride and hope for the next generation. But then, something happened. Time passed -- and time took its toll.
The result was that, in 2010, Eastern was still not an exception to the rule -- only now, the rules have changed. Eastern's worn-down state is typical of buildings in every major school district that desperately need modernization.
Modernization, it must be noted, doesn't always mean "new." In fact, the nostrum that "new is always better" can be harmful.
The balance in our listening is the art to the science. We hear a myriad of conflicting things from these buildings. While the designs may be impressive, the foundation may not be sound. While the legacy may be inspiring the building may be an eye sore. The listening must be unconditional, but the interpretation must be discerning.
Many a head of district school facilities has written off an old building in favor of a shiny new one. Many a beautiful old building has greeted the wrecking-ball because the people making the decisions lacked the imagination to improve on a solid, historic foundation.
A perfect example of this is the old Dunbar High School, once the pride of the "colored" school system in the District of Columbia. Like Eastern, Dunbar was also an Ashford design and looked much like Eastern. Unlike Eastern, Dunbar was demolished in the early 70s and replaced by a high school designed by an architect who'd never designed a school before or since. After the riots that ravaged Washington's inner city, the architect was instructed to make security the school's most prominent feature. As you can see, it looked like a prison.
Times are finally changing. Eastern has been modernized and Dunbar is slated to be demolished yet again. Eastern is knock-your-socks-off beautiful, it is old, it is clearly academic, and has all the systems needed to provide a 21st century education. Most importantly, Eastern is again inspiring the children walking its halls. They are proud of their building and they know it is the only one of its kind.
The other day, I visited another grand old pillar of the Washington D.C. school system, Phelps High School, recently modernized after years of abandonment. One of the students walked up to me and smiled with pride, "Are you here to see my school?" It was music to my ears.]]>Schools Must Keep Stricter 'New Year's Resolutions'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8155182011-01-31T20:06:05-05:002011-05-25T18:30:24-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/
If you're like most people, your response is probably a sheepish admission that your resolve and determination turned out to be as fleeting as a New Year's kiss.
"Less than a quarter of those asked for a university study had managed to stick to their resolutions. Of those who failed, many had followed the spurious advice of self-help gurus -- which almost guarantees disaster, apparently."
Talk about a self-defeating prophecy! Part of the problem is that even as we vow to make that hugely important change, we know that everyone is going to ask us, "So, what is your New Year's Resolution?"
And we all know that uncool resolutions are... well, uncool. "World Peace," in this instance, just doesn't cut it. "Going to the gym every day" is too pedestrian. And "losing 30 pounds" says something about what you were doing last year. So, perhaps some forethought needed to go into this decision.
Believe me, many school districts are going through the same internal soul searching. Only they can't forget about their resolutions for the near future. Too much is at stake, and too many interconnecting agendas and populations are involved.
Most school districts are a couple of months into a master planning process that began last summer. The city school district of Syracuse, New York, for example, used the beginning of the school year to conduct community meetings and had provided a recommendation to the school board and city council at the start of the New Year. Their district, like many others, knows that crucial decisions need to be made in the first quarter, so that they can be announced with enough time to teachers, students, parents and community to react long before the end of the school year.
We are well aware of the extent of assessment, data gathering, deliberation goes into our personal New Year's resolution. But what goes into a school planning resolution? As you can imagine, bad information, or limited information, goes into a bad resolution. Before we can make a resolution to go to the gym every day, we should have a gym membership, or at least know where we can get one. Before a school district can make a facility recommendation they need to know, metaphorically speaking, where the buildings are.
Tom Brady, Superintendent for the Providence, Rhode Island school district, taught me a fundamental approach to the effective school planning resolution. He explained that using trends of performance across a matrix of data points establishes a more defensible resolution than limited milestones based on public opinion. In short, it's important to establish a broad set of criteria and measure all aspects of school performance against them. Using fundamentally sound criteria like facility age, condition, repair costs, energy costs paired with test scores, adjacent population, community use and development plans paints a compelling story.
This story can be used to determine the allocation of resources or the validation for closings. In the Louisiana Recovery School District of New Orleans, they are trying to determine the most effective places to spend their remaining resources. Meanwhile, in the Detroit public school system they are trying to determine what resources they should keep open. And in Long Beach, California, the community is benefiting from a comprehensive and well-thought-out planning process.
It sounds simple, doesn't it? Take stock of the facts, be realistic, and let your resolutions take shape according to logic. But life doesn't always work that way. Sometimes we make the most important decisions in a blink of an eye--or with the quickness of a kiss. Of course, school systems have to be more thoughtful and take more time to set their priorities. But like people, schools need to remember how to get back to basics.
When it comes right down to it, to update the song we all remember from the movie Casablanca, "you must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a plan is just a plan, the fundamental things apply as time goes by".
]]>School Shootings: When Things Go Horribly Wrongtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8104102011-01-25T16:23:15-05:002011-05-25T18:25:24-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/
Of course, it only took a few moments more for me to find out.
As we all came to learn, things on campus had gone horribly wrong on that April morning. A student had barricaded the doors of an academic building and had commenced a shooting spree that left 33 dead and 17 wounded.
Students and teachers had tried their best to run, jump and hide from the gunman. Doors were barricaded and/or locked but the outcome -- escalating catastrophe -- seemed inevitable once the course of actions was set into motion. Or was it?
When it comes to catastrophic school violence in this country, two incidences have to stand out: Columbine High School and Virginia Tech University. Other acts of campus violence, like the sniper at University of Texas, or the shooting at Kent State are notorious for other reasons -- the former in the annals of crime, the latter in the story of the upheaval of the Vietnam War era. Still, the fact that people died just because they happened to be on a campus during the rampage of a lone gunman is chilling.
The appalling truth is that we have more student-on-student violence occurring on or near school properties than elsewhere.
During the 2007-08 school year, 85 percent of public schools recorded that one or more of these incidents of violence, theft, or other crimes, had taken place, amounting to an estimated 2.0 million crimes (figure 6.1 and table 6.1).
We find campus violence so startling because it takes place in environments we like to think are the epitome of safety.
Safe from bullies, safe from intruders. We want schools to be as safe, if not safer than our homes. In Columbine, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold carried a rifle, shotgun, pipe bombs, napalm, propane time bombs and knives into the school unnoticed. In Blacksburg, Seung-Hui Cho wrapped a large chain through ornate door hardware, barricading the building and walked through the building opening doors at will, even after people in the building knew that an attack was under way.
In light of the Tucson attack, everyone is talking of "teachable moments". What can we learn from the tragedy in Tucson about public discourse, public safety or personal rights?
In this light, then, what should we have learned from events of catastrophic school violence?
Here's a "teachable moment" from June of 2004.
A middle school student at Bull Run Middle school, Manassas Virginia, carried a rifle and shotgun into the school bathroom. He had come to school with his mother, a school cafeteria worker, and went out to their car between classes to retrieve his weapons. While he was loading the shotgun, a teacher passed by, recognized the sound, and notified the school administration who notified the local police. The Prince William County Police department had developed an emergency response plan based on the lessons learned from Columbine. They arrived swiftly, acted decisively and apprehended the student without incident.
The reason that the teacher was able to hear the activity was that the school had been designed using CPTED standards (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design). The public restrooms had no doors; there was a "maze" entrance into the bathrooms obscuring line of sight but not range of sound. The school had installed an extensive surveillance system alerting the school to the 12-year-old camouflage-clad student leaving and re-entering the building. They had worked out a communication system within the school and with the local authorities.
In many of our school systems, student safety has become a major capital investment. New generation weapon detection thresholds are placed at every point of entry. Student and teacher biometric scanners are used as both entry control devices as well as attendance and proximity detection devices.
In the new $500 million Detroit school construction bond program, more than $64 million has been set aside for security and security related construction. Including a new, state-of-the-art-school and public safety command center. Information from all of their 175 school facilities will feed into this one center, assembling and coordinating the data from on-site cameras, proximity sensors, entry metal detectors and public safety personnel.
Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb was quoted in this article about the plan:
"When I talk to parents about what should be the district's top priorities, many place safety and security in schools above anything else," said Bobb. "Our new safety and security plan is designed to improve school monitoring with state-of-the-art digital cameras and alarms and a new employee and student badge system that combined will allow us to know exactly who is in our buildings at all times and cut police response times in an emergency."
Last year, in our country alone, violent incidents led to two deaths and two injuries at elementary schools and seven deaths and 22 injuries in our high schools. As a parent, as a school designer and as a citizen, I find these statistics unacceptable.
Often times, in the wake of these tragedies, we feel frustrated, powerless and at a loss to understand how school violence can be prevented.
The horrific shootings in Tucson have started a national debate over the way we discuss the issues of the day and that conversation should continue. But there are also lessons to be learned from the campuses, buildings and design priorities of our nation's schools. Within those walls, "teachable moments" abound.]]>From Arizona Shootings, Teachable Momentstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8129322011-01-24T17:54:47-05:002011-05-25T18:25:24-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/
Of course, it only took a few moments more for me to find out.
As we all came to learn, things on campus had gone horribly wrong on that April morning. A student had barricaded the doors of an academic building and had commenced a shooting spree that left 33 dead and 17 wounded.
Students and teachers had tried their best to run, jump and hide from the gunman. Doors were barricaded and/or locked but the outcome -- escalating catastrophe -- seemed inevitable once the course of actions was set into motion. Or was it?
When it comes to catastrophic school violence in this country, two incidences have to stand out; Columbine High School and Virginia Tech University. Other acts of campus violence, like the sniper at University of Texas, or the shooting at Kent State are notorious for other reasons -- the former in the annals of crime, the latter in the story of the upheaval of the Vietnam War era. Still, the fact that people died just because they happened to be on a campus during the rampage of a lone gunman is chilling.
The appalling truth is that we have more student-on-student violence occurring on or near school properties than elsewhere. According to the National Center for Education Statistics,
During the 2007-08 school year, 85 percent of public schools recorded that one or more of these incidents of violence, theft, or other crimes, had taken place, amounting to an estimated 2.0 million crimes (figure 6.1 and table 6.1).
We find campus violence so startling because it takes place in environments we like to think are the epitome of safety.
Safe from bullies, safe from intruders. We want schools to be as safe, if not safer, than in our homes. In Columbine, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold carried a rifle, shotgun, pipe bombs, napalm, propane time bombs and knives into the school unnoticed. In Blacksburg Seung-Hui Cho wrapped a large chain through ornate door hardware, barricading the building, and walked through the building opening doors at will, even after the building knew that an attack was under way.
In light of the Tucson attack, everyone is talking of "teachable moments". What can we learn from the tragedy in Tucson of public discourse, of public safety, or of personal rights?
In this light, then, what should we have learned from events of catastrophic school violence?
Here's a "teachable moment" from June of 2004.
A middle school student at Bull Run Middle school in Manassas, Virginia carried a rifle and shotgun into the school bathroom. He had come to school with his mother, a school cafeteria worker, and went out to their car between classes to retrieve his weapons. While he was loading the shotgun a teacher passed by, recognized the sound, and notified the school administration, who notified the local police. The Prince William County Police department had developed an emergency response plan based on the lessons learned from Columbine. They arrived swiftly, acted decisively and apprehended the student without incident.
The reason that the teacher was able to hear the activity was that the school had been designed using CPTED standards (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design). The public restrooms had no doors; there was a "maze" entrance into the bathrooms obscuring line of sight but not range of sound. The school had installed an extensive surveillance system alerting the school to the camouflage-clad 12-year-old student leaving and reentering the building. They had worked out a communication system within the school and to the local authorities.
In many of our school systems, student safety has become a major capital investment. New generation weapon detection thresholds are placed at every point of entry. Student and teacher biometric scanners are used as both entry control devices as well as attendance and proximity detection devices.
In the new $500 million Detroit school construction bond program, more than $64 million has been set aside for security and security related construction, including a new state-of the-art-school and public safety command center. Information from all of their 175 school facilities will feed into this one center, assembling and coordinating the data from on-site cameras, proximity sensors, entry metal detectors and public safety personnel.
Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager, Robert Bobb was quoted in this article about the plan:
"When I talk to parents about what should be the district's top priorities, many place safety and security in schools above anything else," Bobb said. "Our new safety and security plan is designed to improve school monitoring with state-of-the-art digital cameras and alarms and a new employee and student badge system that combined will allow us to know exactly who is in our buildings at all times and cut police response times in an emergency."
Last year, in our country alone, violent incidents led to two deaths and two injuries at elementary schools and seven deaths and 22 injuries in our high schools. As a parent, as a school designer and as a citizen, I find these statistics unacceptable.
Often times, in the wake of these tragedies we feel frustrated, powerless and at a loss to understand how school violence can be prevented.
The horrific shootings in Tucson have started a national discussion over the way we debate the issues of the day, and that conversation should continue. But there are also lessons to be learned from the campuses, buildings and design priorities of our nation's schools. Within those walls, "teachable moments" abound.
]]>Building Schools that Worktag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7951042010-12-10T14:17:24-05:002011-05-25T18:20:30-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/Tuskegee institute. In his address he said:
[The child] is never safe until he has been taught a trade, until he has been taught that all forms of idleness are a disgrace, and all forms of labor, whether with the head or hands, are honorable.
This philosophy of safety through education is an interesting principle. We spend a lot of money securing our students in facilities that follow rigorous security and safety standards, such as Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) but the thought that quality education and safety / security are linked might be a little dated.
My mother's family placed a great deal of stock in ones education. For them education meant liberation-- a way out of the cotton fields of south Texas. My grandmother saw education as a way to a better life for her children. In fact, three of my uncles went on to be school superintendents in south Texas. My uncle Roland Pena,of Rio Hondo, TX, takes great pride in the fact that he can look out the window of his district administration office and see the same cotton gin that loomed so significantly on the horizon when he worked the fields. Rusting and unused today,it reminds him of how far he has come and what the power of education has meant in his life.
The transformative power of education has become something of a cliche for middle class families where secondary education is pretty much taken for granted. The pride and promise felt by that first family member to complete an education is as distant a memory as the horse and buggy.
We tell our children that if they work hard and study they can grow up to be doctors and lawyers. But do they still hear the message that if they work hard and study they will grow up to be safe and secure? And more importantly, do our schools explain this principle? I believe these values are far from archaic. They may not be articulated as often as they were a century ago, but they are still relevant.
For Booker T Washington and other visionary thinkers of his time, the goal was to develop an approach to education that focused on the training of a segment of the population that was looking for freedom. Most of the time, the path to freedom involved learning a trade. Printers, tailors, carpenters and masons were in demand and students with these skills could enter the world with a certain sense of independence.
But that would prove to be just the beginning. What Washington may not have expected was that the discipline associated with these trades provided these students with an excellent foundation in the fields of engineering and science, and that it wouldn't take too long for young people to find their way not just into the trades, but into rigorous and valuable professions. The pace of change and academic advancement clicked into high gear once Washington and his peers built a solid foundation, with the result that students soon went on to recognized engineering universities such as Cornell, Drexel and MIT. That must have felt like a miracle to families who were not too many generations away from hopeless poverty and even slavery.
Are we providing the opportunity for similar miracles today? And more importantly, are our facilities structured to grow and nurture evolving, transformational education?
We have IB, AP and G&T (International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement and Gifted and Talented) but do enough of our schools cover the basics? Do they teach our children to be safe and secure?
For a while, in the late 70's and 80's the Vocational programs in high schools were looked down upon. If you couldn't make it in high school there was always VoTech. But as jobs in production and manufacturing declined, enrollment in many of these programs suffered.
In the District of Columbia one of the legacies of Booker T. Washington's program, Phelps Vocational High School, was a recognized stalwart of the school system, dating back to 1923, But by the mid '90's it was shuttered and abandoned. Students who had been trained in masonry and welding had gone on to MIT while others trained as plumbers and electricians had opened businesses of their own. Phelps had become a white elephant of a school--costly, unwieldy,and no longer useful in its original purpose.
But then, in 2005 the school district decided to reopen Phelps with a new focus on Architecture, Engineering and Construction. One of the few public schools in the country with this purpose, the renovated school building is now seen as a successful teaching resource while keeping the students warm, dry and safe. Vocational education has made a successful transition from a 19th century model to the 21st century.
In these hard economic times, where many are thankful that they have the skills necessary to hold and prosper in the competitive work environment, the value of a "practical" education is ever present. As such, school facilities that are designed to support these practical missions are of growing importance. The Phelps High School has Masonry, Welding, heavy Equipment and Architectural CADD labs. Davis Aerospace Technical High School, in Detroit Michigan, is placed at the smaller Coleman A. Young "City Airport" at the end of one of the shorter runways. And Cincinnati's School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA) ,the first school in the country to combine a full range of arts studies with a complete college-preparatory academic program for elementary through high school students, has the Corbett Theater integrated into the campus. Each of these elements are integral to the successful delivery of the curriculum and mission of the school. And each provides a way to enable the students to learn with their hands as well as their heads.
"Comprehensive" educational facilities are, and will remain, the mainstay of our nation's educational facility portfolio, but in order to assure that all of our students are "safe" in their future the diversity of curriculum and facilities that are tailored to support that curriculum are critical. At the Armstrong Manual Training School dedication ceremony in 1902 Mr. Washington's assertion, that it is "honorable" that a larger proportion of the educated men and women must learn to use their hands as well as their heads, is as true today as it was almost 110 years ago. The safety of our children resides in both their health and wealth / success. We design schools, or should design schools; to keep students healthy but do we design schools to allow students, all students, to be successful? Do we build schools that teach students how to work?]]>Schools: They're Not Just for Students Anymore!tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7805322010-11-08T15:02:53-05:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Ed Schmidthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-schmidt/"Buildings should be good neighbors"--Paul Thiry
As the art and science of architecture have evolved over the years, one of the most important changes has been the understanding that buildings are more than bricks and mortar. At its best, architecture adds vibrancy and life to the community. Buildings don't simply occupy space on a landscape--they transform it. And in the process of that change, they enhance the quality of life not only for the people who interact and use the buildings on a daily basis, but for entire communities and populations.
As an architect who specializes in public facilities, particularly schools, I enjoy the challenge of creating buildings that reflect the energy and purpose of the communities they serve. More than 10 years ago, for example, I led a design team that was responsible for three elementary schools in Richmond, Virginia. All three were based on a new prototype design that created clusters at the various grade levels, a large media center and generous cafeteria and gymnasium areas. The decision to duplicate a single design allowed for efficiencies in materials, construction and operations. That being said, one was very different.
The Blackwell Elementary School was one of the earliest schools established in the city of Richmond. The old eight room section located on the corner of Seventeenth and Maury Streets was opened in September, 1888 as the combined Maury Elementary School and Manchester High School. Like many schools, the facility underwent several major rebuilding programs; first in 1916, again in 1951, and once more in 1967, before it finally outgrew its footprint and saw a new, multi-million dollar state of the art facility built on the site in 1999.
Our design for that school included a larger gymnasium, community classrooms, offices, storage areas and a separate entrance that provided an identifiable "front door", registration counter and recreation center offices.
The idea was simple and sound; pool the allocation of resources that were to be spent within the neighborhood in an efficient and mutually beneficial way. Envision a community revitalization that goes beyond schools. In this way, everyone wins; achieving the economy of a single construction contract and ancillary benefits to city schools and city parks and recreation.
The idea is not a new one. When you travel through a number of large urban school districts in older cities and towns, you will find large community assets incorporated within the original designs.
How integral can a school renovation become to the life and culture of a community? Well, recently my firm finished conducting a renovation and addition to the historic Phelps High School, in Washington DC. Not long after, a wedding party approached the new principal to see if they could hold their ceremony in the school's dramatic, sky-lit atrium space!
A school as a wedding venue? Why not?
The point is that our communities are in need of new / renovated schools, libraries, community clinics, theatres, recreation centers and community centers. And if the reason that we cannot combine these facilities is because we cannot work out the shared use agreements, then we need smarter people working on the problems.
Security and access control must be a primary concern when we co-mingle populations. The challenge to the school system, and their building and design teams, is to make it easier to "get past no" and find a way to fulfill the ambitions the community. What could have been a deal breaker should be a design challenge.
How can a town's library fit into a school's collection, and serve the public at large while meeting the academic requirements of students? What does it require to expand the utility of a school's swimming pool in terms of separate entrances, shower and locker facilities as well as community hours of operations? We need to adapt to the mind-set of seeing logistical challenges instead of arguments against schools as centers of the community, to be used not only by students but by everyone.
That's just what happened in Medina, Ohio. When the school district was looking at expanding the high school, they focused on creating value-based partnerships with the community. The resulting project included a 100,000-square-foot Community Recreation Center that is attached to the high school, but is open for use by local residents (they purchase memberships, just like a regular rec. center).
The City of Medina provided $7.5 million to fund the center, as part of the larger $66 million high school expansion project. The Performing Arts Center hosts both school events as well as community arts performances, and tour dates by professional music, dance and theater troupes.
What's more, Medina General Hospital uses the Recreation Center as a satellite office for their Physical Therapy program. Medina Cable Access has a partnership with the district to provide educational programming and new updates. There is even a television studio next to the media center where students develop local programming and work with professional staff.
All this transformation of cultural and civic life--because of a building!
It's happening more and more often--schools are being renovated and built to play integral roles in the daily life and growth of our neighborhoods. Something similar may be happening where you live--if so, you might want to start going to the meetings and joining the conversations that are turning that school down the street into a proud community resource--or maybe even a great place for a wedding!