Mead Learning Lessons About New School Designs

Twenty three years ago, Mead School District built the high school of the future. The design was based on a hot educational concept that called for schools without walls.

The school district is now looking for money to remodel the school because the design has proven a disaster.

“People say if there’s the biggest mess they have ever seen, it’s trying to live in that space,” said Mead Superintendent Bill Mester.

In designing the new high school currently under construction and expected to open in fall of 1997, Mead administrators drew from the mistakes made in the early 1970s.

Schools designed around revolutionary teaching philosophies are suspect. Internal structures such as the heating system, inadequate at the existing school, should be set up for conventional buildings.

“We started out from the negative standpoint, saying what do we not want to do,” said John Keith, a district administrator who headed the school design committee for the new school. “We were not going to design the school based on specific instructional strategy.”

But the building is designed with a couple of prevailing teaching trends - instructional applications for technology and “integrated curriculum” - in mind.

With integrated curriculum, students learn about a subject from several perspectives. For example, a lesson on fiber optic cables would include the physical laws governing the technology, the business applications, and the social impacts of the Internet.

Keith said the district tried to design a building that was visionary but also one that could accommodate various teaching methods.

“We designed a school that would be here for 50 years,” said Keith. “We tried to take a bit from both worlds.”

That balancing act is common, said Alberta Mehring, director of facilities for the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

“We all go in thinking of some new thing,” said Mehring. “We all have high hopes for that thing.

“We get into it for a while and find holes in that theory.”

The new Mead school costs about $104 per square foot, a little below the statewide average for high schools, according to Mehring, who sees plans for all new public schools. Kamiak High School in the Mukilteo School District north of Seattle, with its gothic architecture, cost almost $150 per square foot.

For the cost, Mead’s new high school will have several gee-whiz, technologically advanced features. All classes are wired with fiber optic cable for phone and computermodem connections. Several rooms in different parts of the building having wiring bundles necessary for computer labs.

One room will be a computerassisted design lab, similar to what is used in most architectural companies. Next door will be a computer-driven manufacturing center, equipped to handle hydraulic, electronic or aerodynamic projects.

“We wanted to take the traditional shop and bring it up to date,” Keith said.

Rather than having the traditional cafeteria, the school will have a 15,000-square-foot student mall, which Keith calls “a family room notion.” There will be windows for hot lunches and an area for mobile food carts, which will offer students a greater selection.

The student mall will have the capacity to be sectioned off, allowing for several activities at once.

, DataTimes