Search

As the twenty-first century begins, America faces a daunting challenge: The "baby boom echo" is ready for school. The children of World War Two's baby boomers, millions of youngsters are crowding into schools across the nation. Thousands of new schools will be needed to accommodate them. This demand for educational facilities is unprecedented in American history. In response to this demand, innovative and practical learning environments--developed through educator-architect-planner collaborations--are being implemented around the country (Kennedy 2001). Some are variations on the traditional school site, designed to create more effective spaces for contemporary teaching and learning. Others expand the functions of the school to encompass community needs. Still others expand the whole notion of school by creating learning environments in such nontraditional settings as museums, shopping malls, and zoos, thus optimizing opportunities for learning while minimizing the investment of human, financial, and environmental resources. All of these creative solutions share one common theme: "Schools as centers of community." If the school of the future needs to be designed as a learning center for the entire community, its development must begin with a planning and design process that includes community members and reflects their needs. By engaging students, parents, educators, and a wide variety of citizens in planning and designing schools as centers of community, the best aims of a democratic society are served by both process and product. This publication outlines a systematic planning approach that can result in the successful development of schools as centers of community. Its chapters provide basic principles for designing such schools, case studies of successful projects, and a step-by-step methodology--complete with action checklists--for developing a facilities master plan. (Contains 1 footnote.) [Funding was also provided by the Building Educational Success Together. For the first edition of this report, see ED436082.]