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Building Blueprints
Reuse of existing buildings is nothing new in Massachusetts, where three-hundred-year-old structures aren’t out of the ordinary. The renovation of older buildings to serve fresh purposes can pose a range of opportunities and challenges. Massachusetts-based construction firm Colantonio recently renovated a century-old building in Quincy, Mass., to serve as a children's special education facility.
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ESSER Funds
Congress appropriated an extremely large amount of funding for school projects, and the final round allocations totaled $122 billion. That’s a huge amount – about $380 per person in the U.S. This revenue came through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief program and was delivered with a mandated deadline: It must be obligated by Sept. 30, 2024.
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Predictions & Trends
We asked our readership to send us their predictions for 2024 trends in educational facilities. Across K–12 and higher-education campuses both, we asked for opinions on topics like technology, flexible learning spaces, campus safety & security, disaster response, and more. This article is the third in a three-part series compiling responses from educational professionals and vendors.
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Predictions & Trends
We asked our readership to send us their predictions for 2024 trends in educational facilities. Across K–12 and higher-education campuses both, we asked for opinions on topics like technology, flexible learning spaces, campus safety & security, disaster response, and more. This article is the second in a three-part series compiling responses from educational professionals and vendors.
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Healthy Schools
Incorporating sensory movement pathways in schools can offer several benefits for students' physical, cognitive, and emotional development. These pathways are designed to engage multiple senses and provide students with a structured way to engage in physical movement throughout the day. Sensory movement pathways, also known as sensory pathways or sensory trails, have gained attention for their potential benefits in promoting children's physical, cognitive, and emotional development.
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Sustainability
The Electric Vehicle (EV) revolution is upon us. A recent analysis by EY found that EV sales will outpace all other engines three years sooner than expected. This demand will be further driven by the Inflation Reduction Act with new incentives to encourage domestic EV production and ownership. Campuses need to be ready with convenient access to fast and reliable charging stations to support students, staff, guests, and electrified fleets.
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Building Blueprints
“Your voice matters” defined the Upper Arlington, Ohio, High School master planning and design process, and it was the catalyst behind the project to improve aging facilities in this high-performing district.
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Designing for SEL
While these design goals sought to balance the various needs of a school, they also supported social-emotional learning (SEL), which focuses on fostering social and emotional skills within school curricula. SEL can take many forms, but it generally adheres to five central competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making.
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Campus Design
Creating successful spaces to spark curiosity, collaboration and confidence for students starts with several key programming and design considerations.
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Theaters/Performing Arts
Getting a student out from behind a desk; having them work with others in a self-directed way; allowing them to explore and express themselves and make things; having them learn skills that can be applied in life and in possible career paths—those are goals behind today’s push to change how students learn, to get them to want to come to school every day. Education in the theatrical and performing arts promises much of these.
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Storm Shelters
Reliable storm shelters must include the engineering necessary to ensure safety, comply with required guidelines and create comfort during emergencies.
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Healthy Schools
Today’s K–12 leaders are tasked with everything from adhering to rigorous academic standards to implementing operational procedures to building healthy school communities, and for many, sustainability unintentionally falls to the bottom of the priority list. Further, the cost of taking on green initiatives is on the rise, making it even more of a challenge for financially strapped school districts to meet sustainability expectations and commitments.
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Healthy Schools
Summer is flying by, which means a new school year is around the corner. As students begin to fill the hallways, so does an inevitable influx of germs and illnesses. A successful school year starts with creating a safe and healthy environment to welcome students back. Prepare your building for a new school year with these hygiene and cleaning recommendations.
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Campus Security
Ballistically protecting a school can be a daunting and complicated task. Focusing on practical best practices streamlines the process and makes your efforts more effective.
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Indoor Air Quality
With the start of a new school year, the health & wellness of students, teachers, and school district employees has become—more than ever—a top priority and concern.
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Emerging Technology
Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) are the future; Isaac Asimov and the rest of classic sci-fi have been telling us this for decades.
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Campus Audio
How can audio from intercoms and IP speakers play a role with perimeter security?
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Building Blueprints
The client was Grover Cleveland Charter High School, part of the Los Angeles Unified School District in Los Angeles, Calif. The challenge, modernizing a 1960s-era, single-story school to double its square footage to accommodate additional students and to follow biophilic design goals that would benefit students and foster collaboration and social interaction.
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Active Learning Spaces
What if you could apply crucial STEAM concepts in a way that engages students like never before?
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Learning Space Design
Generation Alpha is the class of digital natives born after 2010—currently learning, exploring, and growing in PK–12 environments. What makes them different than past generations of learners? Technology has been ingrained into them as part of their childhoods.
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HVAC
The importance of HVAC units in schools was brought to the forefront when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in the early parts of 2020. The federal government also took notice as they issued approximately $190 billion in COVID relief funds through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER).
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Building Blueprints
The school district of Clayton High School prides itself on a commitment to a rich, rigorous academic culture, and wanted to offer its students a state-of-the-art library that reflected those priorities. The question was: What does a 21st-century teenager want out of a library these days, anyway?
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ESSER and EANS funds are designed to help schools reopen quickly and safely, as well as address the months of significant learning loss by U.S. students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Only now are experts beginning to understand the full scope of learning loss brought on by a year-plus of the pandemic – and initial reports are worrying.
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Building Blueprints
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Editor's Note
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It is a well-known fact that the environment affects human performance, both physically and mentally. This is especially true for students, who are impacted by the quality of air in their learning environment.
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Grand Prize 2021 Education Design Showcase
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Standard hygiene practices, like proper handwashing, are more important than ever.
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Security & Planning
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HVAC & IAQ
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Twister. Funnel. Whirlwind. A tornado by any other name is still considered the deadliest and most destructive natural disaster on earth. Occurring on all continents except Antarctica, tornadoes have both terrified and fascinated mankind for centuries. The U.S. averages almost 1,300 tornadoes per year, more than all other continents combined. How do we protect ourselves when a tornado strikes? It is this question that has driven architects, engineers and the construction industry to develop codes and guidelines such as ICC 500 and FEMA P-361. These guidelines, at least in part, will help to ensure the proper construction of tornado shelters in order to save lives.
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Design Guidelines
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IAQ
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IAQ
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COVID-19 and Schools
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Friday, March 19, that it is relaxing social distancing requirements for students returning to school for in-person learning. The organization has determined that students wearing masks in a classroom environment can be spaced just 3 feet apart.
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Cybersecurity
The Office of the New York State Comptroller has completed audits on three school districts in the state. The audits uncovered that the districts have neglected to follow some crucial cybersecurity policies, leaving them potentially vulnerable to cyberattacks.
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Health Policy
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released an updated guide on how K-12 schools around the country can take steps to safely reopen—for good.
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Podcast
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Podcast
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Media Center
Here’s how Midland School District overhauled the media centers and turned them into central activity hubs for the schools.
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Cleaning & Maintenance
Although you set your initial school maintenance plan during the late summer months, now is a good time to evaluate its effectiveness, find opportunities to refine your processes, and make sure you and your teams are doing all you can to safeguard students and staff if and when they enter your doors in person.
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Reader Survey
COVID-19 has changed and will continue to change every aspect of education in K–12 and higher education for the foreseeable future. We polled our readership to learn of the experiences taking place across the nation and get a glimpse of what's being planned going into the spring 2021 semester and beyond.
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Learning Spaces
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Interiors
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Cleaning/Maintenance
This year, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses like the flu is more important than ever.
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Adaptive Reuse
As the education industry assimilates to a new and uncertain future, we can take one lesson from 2020 with us: we must embrace innovative solutions and have the courage to try new things as we plan for the future. Adaptive reuse can support this endeavor.
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Classroom Spaces
With a curriculum centered on connection to nature and environmental stewardship, Linden Waldorf School's vision for the pavilions were to move all classes completely outdoors where students get to be in nature throughout the whole school day.
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Sustainability
Sustainable flooring is a smart choice for schools interested in providing a healthy learning environment and demonstrating their commitment to a better global environment.