Build A Better Classroom Schools Take A Clue From Casinos; Build A Place Where Kids Can Focus

From the outside, River Ridge High School does not look like a particularly revolutionary design, with its ordinary concrete walls, asphalt roof and nondescript characteristics.

It is what’s inside this Lacey, Wash., school that has drawn visitors from as far away as Japan.

Instead of opening out into a hallway like a row of boxes, classrooms in four of River Ridge’s six buildings are grouped into triangular clusters, or “houses.” Along with a common open area that can be exposed to four adjacent classrooms, each house also has its own offices, its own counselors and a dean of students called the house facilitator who knows everyone by name.

Movable walls transform the heart of a building in minutes from a rousing 300-student assembly hall to quiet learning areas of different sizes. In one, two teachers working as a team can give lessons in U.S. history to about 64 students while next door a colleague leads a class of about 32 in a literary discussion - their words inaudible to five neighboring students who comfortably share a smaller space while working individually on projects.

Since River Ridge opened in 1994, it has been an example to educators and architects searching for a design that would enhance learning, not just house it. Teachers say the new design ideas help carry out new teaching strategies and philosophies, such as large and small group instruction, building portfolios of student work and working in partnership with parents and professionals.

Not everyone is enamored of the new ideas. Those who lived through the “open concept” schools of the 1960s remember buildings with no walls or useless accordion dividers and lots of noise and distractions. That, too, was supposed to be a way of integrating disciplines and encouraging teachers to work together. Instead, walls went up, and teachers were again fragmented.

Today, with enrollment surging thanks to the baby boomers’ children and an influx of immigrants, experts are urging districts rushing to build new schools to invest the time to do it right.

“There are still a lot of architects and designers building beautiful buildings that look wonderful but are still the same old school,” said Rainer Houser, planning principal for the new Edmonds-Woodway High School in Washington’s Edmonds School District, which is scheduled to open in 1998.

In an effort to truly build a school of the future, the team that worked on preliminary building design in Edmonds spent three months brainstorming with parents, students, teachers and community members.

The team incorporated the district’s educational goals into design goals.

“Our casinos are designed better than our schools,” said Franklin Hill, a consultant with advanced degrees in education, design and administration.

He means it literally. Casinos balance lighting at slot machines so as not to cause headaches. Blackjack tables have subtle grooves that act as arm rests.

Yet schools are over-lit with high-glare surfaces and semigloss walls, said Hill, who has helped plan schools all over the world.

Details such as light, color, texture and sound are particularly important given recent research on how students learn differently. Some respond more to visual stimulus, others to sound, still others are particularly responsive to touch.

But building a school of the future costs considerably more than today’s school buildings.

High-quality movable walls generally cost about $25 to $35 per square foot, said Bassetti’s McConachie, compared to a typical classroom wall at about $1.50 to $2 per square foot.

But it is possible to recapture some of that added cost elsewhere, said Hill and others.

For example, getting rid of lockers can save space and maintenance costs. Most students carry book bags anyway, and lockers often are the home of everything else imaginable, including drugs, underwear, pornography, yesterday’s lunch and sometimes weapons. With more technology, integrated classes and longer class periods, students use fewer textbooks and do not change classes as much.

River Ridge cost about $118 per square foot to build two years ago - not cheap, relative to other schools built at the time, but also not outrageous. That is because designers limited the innovation to the inside, and saved money by using less expensive building materials for the outside.