When a school system creates a districtwide long-range facilities plan, it should incorporate key fundamentals to ensure success. To begin, hire an architect/engineer (A/E) school specialist to lead the process.
Organization
Establish an executive and steering committee, receive input from stakeholders, and build consensus with facilities options. An executive committee establishes high-level guidelines and planning criteria for the steering committee to use in crafting a plan. The steering committee leads development of immediate and long-term facilities solutions.
A school district’s executive committee should consist of the superintendent; the district’s business executive, head of facilities, and director of curriculum; a school board representative, and perhaps a community leader. A steering committee should have 20 to 30 members and include community members, parents, business people, students, representatives from municipalities, school board members, district and school administrators, teachers, building personnel, technology staff, and others as needed.
Format
Steering committees usually are responsible for evaluating facilities data (e.g., utilization, equity, standards, capacities); prioritizing the needs of students, staff, and community; correlating enrollment projections with facilities needs for district “right-sizing”; addressing community needs; evaluating operations and maintenance data; and recommending options.
What to evaluate?
Establish benchmarks to compare conditions with standards. Develop building standards for architectural and engineering systems. Set planning criteria for learning space sizes, outfitting spaces, class-size guidelines, grade configurations, and other essentials. Standards may be established using state department of education guidelines, school district policies and guidelines, or industry best practices.
Assess each building’s physical conditions to determine useful life, long-term maintenance costs, and operational energy efficiencies. This includes the building envelope, and mechanical, electrical, technology and architectural systems. Tour facilities, meet with maintenance personnel to discuss priorities, determine costs for upgrades or replacements, and document physical plant deficiencies via a facilities conditions index for comparisons among buildings.
Evaluate educational adequacy to determine if spaces and equipment effectively support learning. This leads to “right-sizing” a district and providing solutions for creating effective learning environments. Gather information from school master schedules, assess core spaces, and analyze extracurricular programs for determining space utilization and student capacity for each building. Evaluate buildings and sites for the physical improvements needed to achieve districtwide educationally equitable “future-ready” facilities.
Obtain staff input on improving learning environments (e.g., for individual study, team learning, project-based work, class instruction, and large group presentations). Solicit ideas to carry out improvements equitably throughout the district. Document educational space shortfalls and discuss approaches to upgrade spaces and equipment to “right-size” capacities at each building. Generate conceptual design options to address shortfalls.
The plan should include organizational structure (e.g., enrollment projections, grade-level structures, interdisciplinary learning, student sections, community expectations), instructional program (e.g., curriculum and educational program, staffing planning arrangements, community education programs), and demographics (e.g., current/projected, attendance boundaries, land-use variables).
Final Step
When the process is finished, the architect and the steering committee compile all pertinent information and submit it to the executive committee. Steering committee members then present the plan to the school board with the architect on hand as a resource to provide information and explain the rationale.
