Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

What can we learn about campus communication from K–12 districts?

  • By Jaime Mendez
  • 04/01/18

Historically, there wasn’t much in common between primary/secondary schools and college campuses in terms of communication needs. Class bells weren’t useful. Campus size made paging systems impractical. But the advent of new technologies—and new threats—should prompt college facilities professionals to take some pointers from their K–12 cousins.

Many K–12 campuses have moved to network-based distributed communication—putting functions like paging, intercom, and bells on the LAN instead of separate hardwired analog systems—as a way to increase efficiency, flexibility, and safety. Basically, that means a server, a software interface, and a variety of flexible IP-addressable endpoints in classrooms, offices, and interior/exterior common areas. For example, staff can set up different zones for voice paging or digital signage messages, and make changes anytime with a few clicks. Schools have also gained new safety functionality: panic buttons in classrooms, silent alerts, and instant triggering of lockdowns and all-clears from the office or even a mobile device. Integrating all these functions under a single platform is a big plus.

Because the technology scales on infrastructure are already present on campus, it makes sense for colleges to consider adapting it to their needs. Taking emergency preparedness as an example, how would an instructor alert others of a potential threat today? If locking doors were an appropriate response to that threat, how would you do it, and should the same process automate communication across the entire campus? Also important, do you have a way to tell everyone the emergency is over?

Many prominent K–12 districts have good answers to these questions. If yours aren’t quite so clear, it’s worth taking a closer look at the solutions they’ve been creating.

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management April 2018 issue of Spaces4Learning.

About the Author

Jaime Mendez serves as architectural consultant at FrontRow. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Indiana University Launches Capital Campus in D.C.

    Indiana University recently held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new IU Capital Campus in Washington, D.C., according to university news. The eight-story facility will provide a central hub for the university’s existing programs and business operations based in D.C., uniting them under one roof and providing the opportunity to expand.

  • Classical building columns display digital data streams

    The Campus Nervous System: Why Facilities Risk Is Now a Leadership Issue in Higher Education

    Facility performance now intersects with safety, compliance, on-campus experience, institutional reputation, and financial resilience. That places it firmly on the leadership agenda.

  • California High School Opens New Classroom Building for 7th-, 8th-Graders

    Santa Rosa City Schools in Santa Rosa, Calif., recently announced the completion of a new classroom building for Piner High School. As the campus transitions to a Junior/Senior High School, the facility will play home to the school’s new population of seventh- and eighth-grade students.

  • Designing for Every Mind

    Learning environments have the power to shape not just what students know, but who they become. When a school is designed with genuine empathy—for the full range of ways students think, sense, and engage with the world—it becomes more than a building. It becomes a catalyst for growth, confidence, and belonging. That is the animating idea behind neurodiverse design, and it is one that is transforming how more architects and designers are thinking about school design.