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Tag: School Planning

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Lumpkin, 2013

In Florida, public K-12 students are being educated in two conditions, old and new school buildings, those erected prior to the statewide implementation of the State Uniform Building Code for Public Educational Facilities Construction (UBC) in 2000 and those constructed after.

One research question guided this inquiry. Does the aggregate percentage of fourth, eighth, ninth, and tenth grade students passing the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) mathematics and reading subtests increase after transitioning from an old school building to a new facility? A causal-comparative research design was used to determine if the academic achievement of students as measured by the mathematics and reading subtests of the FCAT increased after relocating from an old school building to a new 2000 UBC compliant facility. Two preexisting groups were used. The control group was two cohorts of students attending school in old buildings. The experimental group was two cohorts of students attending school in new buildings. The treatment was the transition from an old school building to a new 2000 UBC compliant structure. Results from this study indicated that the mean percent of students passing the FCAT mathematics subtest increased from M = 48.11in the old school buildings to M = 54.67 in the new school buildings. The mean percent of students passing the FCAT reading subtest increased from M = 41.25 in the old school buildings to M = 44.28 in the new school buildings. The evidence from this study suggests that the quality of the school environment is important to student academic achievement.

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Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability, Florida, 2006

The state’s current processes to select and fund higher education facility construction projects include multiple levels of review and ensure that institutional requests for new construction are coordinated with the state’s higher education goals, local strategic plans, and community development plans.

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Virginia Department of Education, 2010

The Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code regulates the general health, safety, and welfare of building occupants of public educational facilities in Virginia. Also, public school sites and buildings, new or renovated, as well as all educational programs, activities, or services offered at school facilities must meet the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). While the building code addresses life safety design issues, it does not offer any design guidance to school planners and educators as to how to meet their educational program needs. Various requirements contained in the Regulations Establishing Standards for Accrediting Public Schools in Virginia and in the Standards of Quality, such as required program offerings, pupil-teacher ratios/maximum class sizes, and administrative staffing, guide school facilities design in the context of minimum standards. The Virginia Public School Facilities Guidelines are intended to provide more detailed guidance for the planning and design of local public school facilities.

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Florida Department of Education, Office of Educational Facilities

As of July 1, 2002, the Department of Education replaced all bulk communications with the Paperless Communications System. In order to be notified of changes in the State Requirements for Educational Facilities and other communications from the Department of Education, interested parties are now required to subscribe to the Department’s Paperless Communications System.

The Department developed this electronic means to notify interested parties when official correspondence is posted on its website to communicate with Florida’s educational community in a timely and cost-efficient manner. By signing up at the address below, and indicating topics of interest, subscribers will receive email notices containing links to messages, reports, legislative updates, technical assistance papers, newsletters, the State Requirements for Educational Facilities, and official memorandums issued by the Department of Education. All messages will link to PDF files that may be viewed, downloaded and printed.

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Florida Department of Environmental Protection, 2007

Hazardous materials can be found in many programs and areas within a school. These include art classrooms; science stockrooms and laboratories; auto, metal and wood shop classes; photography darkrooms; printing rooms; and grounds maintenance and custodial departments. Mercury thermometers or mercury blood pressure sphygmomanometers may be present in nurses’ offices. Often, these chemicals are not well managed: they are stored in the wrong place, in decrepit containers, and alongside other chemicals with which they are incompatible. Because staff often does not know what to do with old chemicals that are no longer used, the chemicals are kept, sometimes for decades, after which time many chemicals deteriorate, become contaminated or even unstable.

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Guardino and Fullerton, 2010

What impact does the classroom environment have on overall class behavior and learning?  Many teachers face disruptive behavior in their classrooms.  How can they target and change problem areas in the classroom environment?  By collecting data on students' engagement during instruction, disruptive behavior, and teacher observations, teachers can identify which physical aspects of their classroom need to be improved.  Changing the classroom environment can increase academic engagement and decrease disruptive behavior.

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Klatte, Bergström, and Lachmann, 2013

The present paper provides an overview of research concerning both acute and chronic effects of exposure to noise on children's cognitive performance. Experimental studies addressing the impact of acute exposure showed negative effects on speech perception and listening comprehension. These effects are more pronounced in children as compared to adults. Children with language or attention disorders and second-language learners are still more impaired than age-matched controls. Noise-induced disruption was also found for non-auditory tasks, i.e., serial recall of visually presented lists and reading. The impact of chronic exposure to noise was examined in quasi-experimental studies. Indoor noise and reverberation in classroom settings were found to be associated with poorer performance of the children in verbal tasks. Regarding chronic exposure to aircraft noise, studies consistently found that high exposure is associated with lower reading performance. Even though the reported effects are usually small in magnitude, and confounding variables were not always sufficiently controlled, policy makers responsible for noise abatement should be aware of the potential impact of environmental noise on children's development.

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School Planning and Management, 2015

Access Control is the way an organization manages credentials and the access and egress of staff and visitors on a daily basis. In the event of an emergency, though, access control is not enough. Although this article cites schools in specific, the information covered is pertinent to any organization.

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School Planning and Management, 2015

n February, SP&M’s 20th Annual School Construction Report noted that of the $14 billion in school construction during 2014, $6.3 billion of the total (45 percent) was spent to enlarge and upgrade existing buildings, roughly half of that for retrofitting and modernization. The report, which also announced a fourth consecutive year of school construction growth, followed the October release of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s first ever Energy Savings Plus Health guide, subtitled Indoor Air Quality Guidelines for School Building Upgrades.

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School Planning and Management, 2015

Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S) has two sides, care of the environment and safety of people. Paying attention to EH&S is important to school districts for three reasons. “The first is it protects the people who use your buildings,” says Mike Halligan, president of The Halligan Group, based in Salt Lake City. “The second is complying with EH&S standards reduces your liability if there is an event, such as a fire. Third, we are stewards of the buildings and the environment, and following EH&S standards when building a school is one way a district can be a good community partner.”

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