School Design Trends

Smaller = Better Students, Academics

by Don Talend

In a world where “bigger is better” with sprawling developments of new five-bedroom homes and roads ruled by massive sport-utility vehicles, schools are developing something different.

Amid concerns about the quality of the U.S. educational system, a new “small schools” movement is taking shape and the impact is being felt among designers of school projects in the Midwest.

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The idea behind the small schools movement is that students miss out on personal attention to their academic progress in many growing districts where new schools are being built and existing facilities are expanded. In this environment, the thinking goes, this perceived lack of attention creates a learned helplessness and disconnectedness from the school, leading to poor academic performance, absenteeism and disciplinary problems.

According to research by the Small Schools Workshop a group of educators, organizers and researchers based in the Fischler School of Education at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. a small school can improve student performance, attendance and graduation rates; reduce violence and disciplinary problems; and increase teacher satisfaction. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which granted $7.6 million to build 12 Chicago small high schools in 2003, commissioned a 2005 study by nonprofit research group WestEd titled “Rethinking High School: an Introduction to New York City’s Experience” that indicated significantly higher attendance and promotion rates through small schools.

Although no standard small school blueprint exists, some commonalities can be found. Small schools seek to identify students with a subset of the institution as a whole their grade or a subject-based “academy” for science or language, for example.

Also, facility resources or portions, such as a learning resource center, are dedicated to a particular grade or academy. Student circulation patterns for a grade or academy that keep students aligned with their academic entity, not to mention reduce the chances of disciplinary problems, are another common attribute.

Nothing New in Chicago

The small-school idea is nothing new to Chicago, where the mayor’s office took over the schools many of which were performing poorly in 1996. Perhaps because the schools had nowhere to go but up, the city has been open to new ideas in educational delivery methods.

Two of the more prominent small schools are the Little Village High School on the Southwest Side and Walter Payton College Preparatory High School on the Near North Side.

The Payton school, which opened for the 2000 school year, provides a glimpse into the possible future of secondary education in Chicago. The $25 million, 162,000-sq-ft, 800-student facility 2 mi north of downtown is one of several regional college prep academies planned by Chicago Public Schools. Its construction was part of the city’s $2.5 billion Capital Improvement Program, which was launched in 1996 the first initiative to renovate and improve the district’s schools in nearly 20 years. Payton features several design characteristics that facilitate a competitive, globally connected learning environment.

The facility has two separate blocks dedicated to separate academic and support functions and linked by perhaps the school’s most distinctive architectural feature: a central, four-story, glass-enclosed atrium. The enclosed circulation spine serves as a secure entrance and interactive space.

The atrium stairs are centrally located to maintain a sense of community among all of the students. Academic exhibits and social activities are held in this area and lockers, study areas and dining tables located next to the dining hall encourage gathering.

The first floor also has table tennis and break-out areas for informal learning during lunch periods and seminar days, says Mary Ann Van Hook, partner in Chicago-based architecture firm DeStefano and Partners Ltd., the design/managing architect for the school. Reflecting a new educational emphasis on wellness are exercise machines on the atrium’s second floor.

The academic block holds most of the school’s 21 flexible-space, 900-sq-ft classrooms, as well as laboratories, rooftop planetarium, greenhouse, computer labs and weather station.

Connectivity is a key feature of the school, as raised computer flooring throughout provides flexibility as the school’s infrastructure needs evolve. Students can check out laptop computers and connect them to the Internet via numerous Ethernet ports. The school also has a distance learning lab that allows students to interact with instructors and students in other schools and in other countries.

A tight urban site necessitated a couple of design features to accommodate the facility’s surroundings. The two main blocks were steel-framed and clad with light brick to fit into the surrounding neighborhood. Glass on the west side of the building was triple-glazed to mitigate noise from elevated train tracks located only a block away.

The larger, $51 million Little Village High School at 31st Street and Kostner Avenue was built for 1,800 to 2,000 students, yet four separate 450- to 500-student schools with their own administration, identity and principal reporting to a master principal. Some spaces are shared among the four schools in the 287,000-sq-ft facility, including the library and media center, two gymnasia, pool, cafeteria and 500-seat auditorium, as well as baseball and soccer fields outside.

In order to integrate the separate schools within the larger facility, Little Village has four “main streets” one per school arranged as four east-west hallways with the classrooms looking out onto courtyards. The common spaces are arranged perpendicular to the main streets.

The school also fits in with the surrounding neighborhood’s heavily Mexican population with color schemes for each school to represent the four ancient worlds according to Aztec myth: earth, fire, water and wind. Another defining architectural feature is a 60-ft.-tall solar calendar inside the central courtyard consisting of more than 800 steel pieces, ceramic tile-lined walls holding the calendar and skylight that directs sunlight onto mirrors that reflect it onto the calendar.

Creative Problem-Solving in Indy

Another ambitious, small-school project in the Midwest is an addition to and renovation of Decatur Central High School in Indianapolis which had already created five separate academic learning communities focused on creative approaches to solving problems in the technology-oriented Information Age.

The $85 million renovation, which is scheduled for completion during the 2009-2010 school year, will provide better facilities for the new educational concept.

The renovation will include an addition on one side of the existing building for a total of 435,000 sq ft of space in the school that will accommodate up to 1,800 students. Additionally, about 100,000 sq ft of existing space will be renovated.

Upon completion, the school will have a one-story wing for central administration offices and 350-400 students and two more two-story wings to accommodate 350-400 students per learning community. The addition will also have four industrial tech labs/classrooms, three art rooms, a media center, an 800-seat cafeteria, a band room addition, a second pool and renovated physical education spaces. The renovated school will have a wide main corridor leading to a student commons area that will have four small learning communities radiating from it.

“It’s a concept of identity with a group and knowing your teachers so they can create plans that are more individual student-focused as opposed to focused on an entire class,” says Deb Kunce, associate and program manager with Schmidt Associates, Indianapolis, the architectural firm for the school.

Design and Desired Outcome

Designing small schools like those in Chicago and Indianapolis requires architects to understand the desired outcome of a new method of educational delivery.

Architectural consultant Pat Sumrow of Lemont, Ill.-based Oakwood Consulting Services Inc. and a former school administrator in Chicago’s western suburbs, notes that many of the specifics of small school design reflect societal and technological changes.

For example, Sumrow says, more space is being devoted to physical fitness, such as exercise machines, as school boards strive to commit students to a lifelong wellness-oriented lifestyle, a philosophical shift that takes the focus off of the school gymnasium and competitive sports as the place and method for achieving fitness.

Additionally, entire rooms are often devoted to school labs as technology has provided students and teachers with a much greater capability to conduct research rivaling that of some colleges than in the days when a few Bunsen burners and beakers in the rear of a classroom comprised a lab.

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