Our blogs are often inspired by questions we are asked. When conducting community meetings, this questioning is just a daily part of the job. Some questions are popular, like this one, "How did we get here?" and going unstated is "with so many schools that need so much work?" This is a very common question, especially in California. The question refers to the current state of the school facilities. Normally, this is followed by our school facilities are unacceptable, deplorable, inadequate, unsafe and out of date. We have heard these descriptors from so many community members, administrators and teachers in every district that we conduct meetings. Can we answer this question? As in every problem that has taken our society decades to create, a complex system of circumstances and hard choices lead to our run down, out of date and generally uninspiring school facilities. Although every school district has unique factors that contribute to the condi...
Reflections on the built environment, how we interact with it and the process of planning and designing from someone who grew up with educators, goes on assessments and tours and facilitates the planning process for many schools and other organizations.