Divide and Conquer

Santa Monica Boulevard Elementary Charter School was using filing cabinets to separate one large multipurpose room into a technology center, storage area, office and one-on-one learning environment for special education students. After a quick search on the Internet, the school found an affordable and timely solution to their problem: Screenflex Portable Room Dividers.

Like so many other schools in Southern California and across the nation, they were extremely cramped for space. “Needless to say, it wasn’t working out,” said Linda Lee Technology coordinator at the school. “The students could see right into the other work areas and it was extremely noisy and distracting for everyone.”

Lee knew she would have to make the most of the space she had to work with. The charter simply couldn’t afford any additional classrooms, and even if it could, waiting was not an option. The campus was expecting 1,500 students in the fall and her special education students would be without a private place where resource specialists could conduct speech therapy.

“Everything I needed was right there on the Screeflex website,” said Linda. “I placed the order and in less than three months, I had the space I needed at a cost our school could afford.”

For approximately $10,000, the large multipurpose room was transformed into three nice-sized rooms and a storage area. The walls are 6-feet tall and include three doors that help to create more private study and work areas, as well as mallard green designer fabric that blends in nicely with in the school’s decor and surroundings.

Screenflex designed the room dividers so that speech therapy could be conducted in one area, teachers could prepare lesson plans in another and items could be stored in the remaining section. All of the dividers are on casters so they can be easily wheeled away and stored in just minutes. This versatility makes dividers an excellent alternative not only to conventional construction, but to modular classrooms as well.

“As your needs change, you can open a room back up and you would never know the dividers were there,” said Steve Bonesz Marketing manager at Screenflex. “That is the beauty of portable room dividers.”

“A school may have tremendous growth one year, but a significant decline the next,” said Bonesz. “Portable room dividers allow your school to change its use of space as its needs change at a much lower cost than using modular classrooms.”

www.screenflex.com

This article originally appeared in the School Planning & Management July 2013 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Case Study Highlights Texas District’s Campus Security Upgrades

    The Taft Independent School District near Corpus Christi, Texas, recently partnered with Intech Southwest Services to revamp its campus security technology system, according to a news release. Intech has released a case study on its website detailing the process that advanced the district’s technology by more than 20 years in less than three weeks.

  • Longwood University Selects Builder for $73M Performing Arts Center

    Longwood University in Farmville, Va., recently announced that it has selected Swedish construction company Skanska as the builder of its new performing arts center, according to online news. The project involves the demolition of the current building and constructing a new, 64,500-square-foot facility.

  • Tennessee State University Gains Approval for New Engineering Facility

    Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tenn., recently announced that it has received approval from the Tennessee State Building Commission to build a new engineering building on campus, according to a university news release. The 70,000-square-foot, $50-million facility will play home to the university’s engineering programs and the Applied & Industrial Technology program.

  • i-PRO, NovoTrax Partner for New School Emergency Response Solution

    i-PRO Americas, Inc., which manufactures edge computing cameras, recently announced a partnership with NovoTrax, provider of end-to-end life safety and mass notification solutions, to address gaps in emergency response workflows at K–12 schools, according to a news release.

Digital Edition