Less building, more results: today's ed specs put more demands on the facility, yet bigger...

Educators say they cannot move into the 21st century without more and larger buildings, yet many school districts cannot afford the exorbitant construction costs. School officials are in the middle sympathetic to education, yet responsible for costs. It's an untenable situation.

Solutions to this seemingly unsolvable problem do exist. In fact, there are at least four ways to build the facility your district needs for the 21 st century, while saving construction dollars:

* Clustering fewer but larger learning "neighborhoods" can substantially reduce hallway circulation areas. Lots of small spaces require a greater percentage of hallways and increase building area.

* Traditional industrial arts programs are being replaced with technology education programs that require less space and are cleaner and quieter.

* Common-use resource areas can create "halls" of learning rather than just corridors.

One holistic example of educational change and creative design is the new George Washington Bush Middle School outside Olympia, Wash. A district strong on strategic planning, the Tumwater Schools aligned the design directly with the district's exit outcomes. Each instructional goal produced a "facility belief statement" that translated into detailed architectural design strategies, executed by BJSS Group Architects in Olympia.

Planning for Student Learning

The planning process, instituted by Franklin Hill & Associates, targeted attitudes, behaviors and skills that were the result of the district's goals for student learning. For instance, one exit outcome was to maximize learner performance. This outcome encompassed a list of desired student attitudes, behaviors and skills, such as:

* Seek information logically and apply where appropriate in a discriminating and applicable manner.

* Understand theory and transfer it directly to problem-solving situations.

* Demonstrate learning through modeling, cross-curricular examples, and individual or group activities.

This exit outcome was central to our decision to build a school that would accommodate a design and technology program, rather than a traditional industrial arts program typical of most junior high schools.

We clustered the general classrooms to provide independent classroom instruction combined with access to common-use resources and technology. This arrangement demanded that general classrooms be enlarged to approximately 1,100 net square feet. Since most middle school classrooms approximate 850 net square feet, this goal was unusual.

Yet by restructuring the size of the media center, redistributing space commonly associated with industrial arts, and incorporating hallways effectively into resource areas, the typical general classroom approximated 950 net square feet, with an additional 150 net square feet of common resource area available on a joint-use basis.

Critical to the design success of Bush Middle School was coordinated development of the educational specifications and the strategic architectural design concepts. A creative case in point is the high, open ceiling space above the centralized resource and technology education areas of each neighborhood. This space allows students to conduct unique physics experiments. For instance, they can mount heat sensors at various levels within this large space and monitor the increase of temperature toward the ceiling peak as the hot air rises. Operable clerestory windows demonstrate natural patterns in air drafts. When the rooms are ventilated naturally, sensors monitor the otherwise invisible air flow in through the classroom windows and out through the high-ceilinged vents.

Thus the building itself has become a three-dimensional learning tool.

Maximizing Cafeteria Use

Many educators still believe cafeterias are for eating. Occasionally these spaces are used for exercise classes or an evening meeting.

But schools can no longer afford to devote this much space to an area with limited flexibility. At Bush Middle School, the cafeteria was planned as part of a building-wide electronic network, including computers and instructional television. The cafeteria can now double as a weekend science fair location and a summertime science and technology demonstration area. It can even be used as a quality overflow classroom for teams of students working on independent projects.

Because we included a few perimeter sinks, the cafeteria can also be used for other activities, such as art, after-school theatrical productions, and some science education functions.

A separate entrance allows easy community use.

Connectivity Cuts Media Space

A building-wide commitment to information management reduced the size of the core library by more than 40 percent. This left substantial square footage available to enlarge classrooms for networked computers that are part of the everyday curriculum.

The same information is accessible via these classroom computers as when they were housed in the library itself.

Too often, educational space planners try to retain the traditionally larger library based on central access to printed information while also increasing the classroom size to allow for computers and group activities there. Trying to do both often causes budget overruns.

When a district makes a systemic shift in its approach to information, square footage can be reallocated to new locations. In many schools, this may actually result in a net reduction in total building size.

The design of the Bush library was tightened so it now accommodates small groups only, not large-group instruction or multiclassroom utilization. Books still exist, but students can access additional texts electronically from the county or other district libraries. Thus, every possible volume need not be immediately accessible at this particular site.

In short, the whole school - even the community - is the library. The school's media center is not just a traditional, oversized book depository.

Of course, the media center is still centrally located for easy access from the classrooms as well as the general public for evening use.

Trading Industrial Arts for Technology

Restructuring the traditional industrial arts areas enabled the middle school to embrace design and technology programs.

Traditionally, industrial arts areas are located at the rear of school buildings because they are noisy, require vehicle access for deliveries, and are usually dusty and dirty.

On the other hand, design and technology education areas can provide clean, hands-on applications of real-life skills, including robotics, laser studies, hydroponics and even wind tunnel studies.

Usually these instructional labs operate on a standard 4x6-foot table and serve four to six students. Fume hoods, dust collectors and band saws are no longer required.

In addition, the hands-on applications of a tech ed program can be integrated into the science curriculum or the environmental studies aspects of a social studies program. Students can even create an animation model to coincide with a script created in English or creative writing classes.

In short, technology education, the sciences, and core curricula become part of an integrated learning neighborhood.

At George Washington Bush School, technology education and information resource areas are located centrally to a cluster of eight general classrooms. Quiet tech learning activities allow half walls, simplified mechanical systems, appropriately located natural lighting, and an exciting, flexible, but integrated learning environment.

Dr. Franklin Hill is principal of Franklin Hill & Associates, an educational facility planner in Kirkland, Wash.