Reports – Page 11 – Education Facilities Clearinghouse

Safe and Secure Balancing Safety and Fun on the Playground

campusMay 19, 2015

Vence, 2012

When children go to a playground, fun is the ultimate goal—especially with so much to choose from. Twisty slides, crawl-through tunnels, swings, monkey bars and more can keep children entertained for hours. But, ahead of having fun, safety still needs to be the No. 1 priority.

The fact is that the main source of playground injuries is falls to the surface, though "there are three other areas that need attention because they are related: supervision of the children, age-appropriate design (taking the children to the wrong age level of equipment) and equipment maintenance (the equipment may be broken)," said Donna Thompson, Ph.D., executive director of the National Program for Playground Safety (NPPS), a Cedar Falls, Iowa-based nonprofit organization that delivers training and services about outdoor play and safety.

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Natural Environment Elevates the Learning Experience

campusMay 19, 2015

DLR Group

School facilities are evolving from traditional indoor learning spaces to multiple-dimensional spaces that use the entire campus as a learning environment. During our school planning work sessions and design charrettes with students, the message they consistently convey to our designers is the desire to freely move outdoors during the day. It is clear that access to outdoor spaces enhances the overall educational and social experience. Studies by the American Institutes for Research and the Council for Educational Facility Planners International indicate students’ overall health and test scores can benefit from outdoor activity.

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Societal Values and Policies May Curtail Preschool Children’s Physical Activity in Child Care Centers

campusMay 19, 2015

Copeland, Sherman, Kendeigh, Kalkwarf, & Saelens, 2011

Three-fourths of US preschool-age children are in child care centers. Children are primarily sedentary in these settings, and are not meeting recommended levels of physical activity. Our objective was to identify potential barriers to children’s physical activity in child care centers.

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Using Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design in Problem-Solving, U.S. Department of Justice

campusApril 23, 2015

This publication by Community Oriented Policing Services discusses how CPTED can be used to modify a physical environment and remove or reduce opportunities for crime. Schools, planners, and law enforcement may use this resource to prevent crime and other adversarial, incidental, and human-caused threats, as well as to inform the development of security annexes.

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Youth Violence: Using Environmental Design to Prevent School Violence

campusApril 17, 2015

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

For more than a century, public health practitioners have modified the environment to prevent disease and injury. For example, in the mid-1850s Dr. John Snow removed the pump handle from a contaminated well in London to stop a deadly cholera outbreak. Modern environmental modifications, such as seat belts and airbags in vehicles, have saved countless lives. Other environmental modifications, such as sidewalks and community parks, have increased physical activity while helping to reduce obesity.

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Earth, wind, and fire – Managing risk in today’s schools, part 2

campusApril 9, 2015

Richard Weeks, 2010. Last Wednesday evening, the fictitious Liberty District School Board spent an hour discussing rental fees for the new Liberty Elementary School playground and athletic fields. During the televised discussion, the district’s school business official passed the superintendent a note that read, “Shouldn’t we be more concerned about the possi- bility that the pressure-treated wood on the playground is contaminated with arsenic?” The superintendent passed the note back to her with this response: “Now is not the time nor the place to discuss the possibility of leeched arsenic all over the playground. Please handle this tomorrow.”

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Who’s sick at school: Linking poor school conditions and health disparities for Boston’s children

campusMarch 25, 2015

Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health and the Boston Urban Asthma Coalition

A recent review of student asthma rates and environmental audits of school buildings suggests that schools with poor indoor air quality have higher than average rates of asthma. Many Boston Public School children and staff are learning and working in poor indoor environmental conditions that not only can exacerbate asthma, but also lead to other problems ranging from allergies and sinus infections to adverse academic performance.

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Educational Facilities Planner

campusMarch 17, 2015

Council of Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI), 2015

This volume of this publication is packed full of important information about school facilities, including articles on designing, technology, case studies on safe rooms, and retrofitting. For those involved in any aspect of planning school facilities, this is an helpful resource.

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Closing Schools in a Shrinking District: Does Student Performance Depend on Which Schools are Closed?

campusMarch 13, 2015

Engberg, Epple, Gill, Sieg, Zamarro, & Zimmer,

Closing schools is one of the most controversial decisions a district can make. Nevertheless, urban districts across the nation are closing schools due to declining enrollments, and federal policy is promoting school closure as an important strategy to deal with chronically lowperforming schools. The recent upsurge in school closings has given rise to concerns about the impact on student achievement, neighborhoods, families, and teaching staff.

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Authorizing Matters Navigating the Closure Process

campusMarch 13, 2015

Charter school closure, though sometimes challenging and emotionally charged, is an essential aspect of the charter school movement. The purpose of this Issue Brief is to provide a practice-oriented resource for authorizers and other charter school stakeholders to navigate the closure process after the decision to close a school has been made.