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Tag: Best Practices

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Terry T-K Huang, PhD, MPH, CPH; Dina Sorensen, MArch; Steven Davis, AIA; Leah Frerichs, MS; Jeri Brittin, MM; Joseph Celentano, AIA; Kelly Callahan, AIA; Matthew J. Trowbridge, MD, MPH, 2013.

We developed a new tool, Healthy Eating Design Guidelines for School Architecture, to provide practitioners in architecture and public health with a practical set of spatially organized and theory-based strategies for making school environments more conducive to learning about and practicing healthy eating by optimizing physical resources and learning spaces. The design guidelines, developed through multidisciplinary collaboration, cover 10 domains of the school food environment (eg, cafeteria, kitchen, garden) and 5 core healthy eating design principles. A school redesign project in Dillwyn, Virginia, used the tool to improve the schools’ ability to adopt a healthy nutrition curriculum and promote healthy eating. The new tool, now in a pilot version, is expected to evolve as its components are tested and evaluated through public health and design research.

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National Association of Psychologists, 2006. High profile acts of violence, particularly in schools, can confuse and frighten children who may feel in danger or worry that their friends or loved-ones are at risk. They will look to adults for information and guidance on how to react. Parents and school personnel can help children feel safe by establishing a sense of normalcy and security and talking with them about their fears.

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Glen I. Earthman, 2002. School building design features and components have been proven to have a measurable influence upon student learning. Among the influential features and components are those impacting temperature, lighting, acoustics and age. Researchers have found a negative influence upon student performance in buildings where deficiencies in any of these features exist.

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Department of Homeland Security (DHS)/Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), Department of Justice (DOJ)/Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI), United States Department of Education (USDOE), & Department Health and Human Services (DHHS), 2013. Our nation’s post secondary institutions are entrusted to provide a safe and healthy learning environment for students, faculty, and staff who live, work, and study on campus. Faced with emergencies ranging from active shooter situations to fires, tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and pandemic influenza, this is no easy task. Many of these emergencies occur with little to no warning; therefore, it is critical for institutions of higher education (IHEs) to plan ahead to help ensure the safety and general welfare of all members of the campus community.

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21st Century Schools, 2010. There has been a slow but steady increase of research on the impact of public school facilities on educational achievement and community outcomes and of the rigor of the research. This summary of studies is part of a larger literature review conducted by the 21st Century School Fund with funding from the Charitable Trust of the Council on Educational Facility Planners International.

The review is designed as an update to the 2002 review “Do School Facilities Affect Academic Outcomes?” by Mark Schneider, originally commissioned by the 21st Century School Fund’s Building Educational Success Together collaborative and then expanded by Dr. Schneider and published by the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities.

Recent research continues to point to a small but steadily positive relationship between the quality of a public school facility and a range of academic and community outcomes.

This study reviews the literature on:

 Facilities & academic outcomes
 School building systems

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Gracye Cheng, Steve English and Mary Filardo, 2011. Acute disparities in the access of public school students to adequate facilities, coupled with the compelling evidence of how poor quality school facilities are implicated in lower student achievement, make it imperative that any inquiry into the nature of inequity of education in the United States include an understanding of the conditions, design, utilization and location of public school facilities. In the attached paper, we provide background on the role and impact of school facility condition and recommendations to the U.S. Department of Education Excellence and Equity Commission. We are joined in expressing our concern about inequity in facility conditions by: Center for Cities and Schools, UC Berkeley, California; National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, Washington, DC; Innovative School Facilities, Portland, Oregon; Public Education Network, Washington, DC; Healthy Schools Network, New York; Designs for Change, Chicago, Illinois; and the ACLU of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland.

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21st Century Schools, 2011. Proper planning of school facilities is critical for all school districts no matter how large or small, whether major construction is in the works or the district is managing enrollment declines. When school districts properly plan for their school facilities they have better schools, more public use and higher value for public spending. This evaluation guide was designed for superintendents and school boards that are called on to develop or sign off on plans, but who generally may not have extensive experience with educational facility planning. It can also be used to help community members participate in high quality educational facility planning.

An Educational Facilities Master Plan is a written document that describes the school district’s real estate and capital improvement requirements and its strategy and school specific plans for meeting these requirements over a 6-10 year period. On the real estate side, educational facility master plan elements will address the space needs for schools, administration and logistics, including proposed site selection, school closings and consolidations, attendance boundary changes, leasing, joint use and co-locations. On the capital improvement side, educational facility master plan elements will include: the justification, scope, schedule and estimated cost for major repairs, modernization and new construction.

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EPA, 2015. This January, as part of National Radon Action Month, U.S. EPA encourages you to test your school facilities for radon. A known human carcinogen, radon is one of the most hazardous indoor pollutants. It is the leading cause of lung cancer among non-smokers, causing almost 21,000 deaths a year. Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that emanates from rock and soil and can enter school facilities through cracks and openings in building foundations. A nationwide survey of radon levels in schools estimates that nearly one in five has at least one schoolroom with a short-term radon level above the action level of 4 pCi/L (picocuries per liter) — the level at which EPA recommends that schools take action to reduce the level. The only way to determine if your school building has elevated radon levels is to test for it. Testing is simple and unobtrusive and every school should have a plan to manage radon. Winter is a good time to test for radon because cold weather and the heating season can elevate radon levels in a school. It is also easier to maintain proper testing conditions in the winter because doors and windows are closed except for normal entry and exit, which helps in determining the maximum radon level.

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Mary Filardo, Jeffrey M. Vincent, Marni Allen, and Jason Franklin, 2010. In this paper, the 21st Century School Fund and the Center for Cities and Schools at the University of California Berkeley provide a conceptual frame for the joint use of PK-12 public schools. There is a growing conversation about and demand for joint use as a way to provide services to children and families in convenient locations, improve opportunities for physical activity by increasing use of school recreational and outdoor spaces, leverage capital investments, and more. However, engaging in joint use, particularly intensive sharing of space or use by multiple parties, presents ongoing challenges to school and community leaders. In this paper, we frame the basic challenges and opportunities for joint use to facilitate better conversations and planning for these type of collaborations.

This conceptual paper serves as a companion to a set of tools for practitioners and policymakers for implementing and sustaining joint use and joint development of public school facilities. Other tools available from the 21st Century School Fund and the Center for Cities and Schools on joint use and development include:

  • Examples of joint development and joint use;
  • Catalogue and analysis of state policies and model school district and state level policies to support joint use and development (See: http://www.BestSchoolFacilities.org);
  • A “joint use calculator” tool for computing the real costs associated with the use of school facilities; and
  • A database template for including community use data and information in a facility information management system.

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21st Century School Fund, 2011. There is no national database of information on public school facilities. Some states collect information and some do not. The 21st Century School Fund and its Building Educational Success Together (BEST) partners have worked to understand the scope, scale and condition of public school facilities. This is important to building our nation’s public will and our government’s capacity to provide high quality public school buildings and grounds for all children in all communities.

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