Learning to Share: Filling Empty School Seats by Coordinating Facilities Planning

Abstract

    Introduction

What comes to mind first when you hear the word “school”? Is it the building itself, or the educational programs inside? The man, woman or child in the street tends to think of the facility, while education reformers often think of curriculum, faculty, children and learning. The physical facilities are the stage for the interactions of teachers and students. The stage should be comfortable, dry and conducive to learning; once these prerequisites are achieved, the educational program is far more important than the physical plant. Even in a school whose architecture inspires (for its beauty, for the history witnessed by its old stone walls, or for the technological savvy promised by its ultra-modern design), what matters most is the reading, writing and arithmetic, not the building itself.

Once upon a time, most children attended the closest school, their neighborhood school. Today, students and parents face a wide variety of choices—public, private, parochial, charter, remedial, magnet or special-themed. A school building and the program it hosted used to be one unit, located in the middle of the neighborhood served, but today that restriction has been blown open. More and more students are served by alternative models. School programs are more varied, and can change relatively quickly. Yet school buildings, made of brick and mortar, cannot immediately adapt.