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Vancouver School District has embarked on an ambitious building campaign to bring its school facilities up to date. But there's more involved than bricks and mortar. A forward-looking design process unites the whole community.

By Suzie Boss

Discovery Middle School/Ed Vidinghoff

VANCOUVER, Washington—Late on a weekday afternoon, a school district conference room begins to buzz with conversation. The atmosphere feels a lot like a class on the eve of a much-anticipated show-and-tell, except that the 60 or so folks gathered here are nearly all adults — teachers, parents, and district administrators. A middle-aged principal leans over to another onlooker and crows, "Wait till you see our team's drawing. It's so cool!"

For two days, these community members have been playing the role of visionaries: imagining a school that will still feel inviting and innovative 50 years from today. Now they're here for the unveiling of preliminary architectural sketches for a building to replace 47-year-old Salmon Creek Elementary School. They didn't get to hold the pencils in their own hands, but their words and ideas have shaped the images that architects have put down on paper.

"They're here to look to the future," says Todd Horenstein, assistant superintendent for the Vancouver Public Schools and an architect by training. For the better part of a decade, Horenstein and his colleagues have been conducting design symposiums as a way to bring the community's perspective into school architecture. Participants take their assignment seriously. Says Horenstein, "People seem to understand that you don't get the opportunity to do something like this very often."

Indeed, at a time when the typical American school building is more than 40 years old and falling into disrepair, Vancouver is rebuilding its entire infrastructure. Since 1989, the district has moved forward with renovations and new construction in every corner of this fast-growing community in southwestern Washington. The building boom — 17 remodeled or rebuilt schools and five brand-new ones to date — fits the district's long-term strategic plan for delivering high-quality education. If a single lesson has emerged from the process, it's this: "Building a new school takes the entire community coming together over time to make it the best it can be," says Vancouver Superintendent Jim Parsley.

The OOOOOH! factor

Architecture is often called frozen music. That metaphor rings true at Vancouver's Discovery Middle School, a school that practically sings. The facility was showcased at the National Symposium on School Design hosted by the U.S. Department of Education in 1998 and has been visited by a steady parade of dignitaries, including former Secretary of Education Richard Riley and Senator Bill Bradley. Discovery has won a host of awards since its completion in 1995, including the Learning by Design Grand Award bestowed by the National School Boards Association, the James D. MacConnell Award from the Council of Educational Facility Planners International, and the prestigious Shirley Cooper Award presented by the American Association of School Administrators and the American Institute of Architects.

Although Discovery Middle School backs up to busy Interstate 5 near central Vancouver, the campus feels like a neighborhood park. Mature trees form an evergreen curtain where the property dips toward the freeway. Outside, the building sports a clock tower, peaked roofline, and streetlights that give it a village feel, echoing the "academic village" theme that organizes the 800 students into smaller learning communities. Inside, the school is packed with three floors of unique features that enhance the learning process while also serving the needs of the larger community. "When people walk in here," says Principal Susan Cone, "we always get that ooooooh! response."

While visitors rave about the school's inviting physical space, they are often equally impressed to learn about the planning process that went into creating it. "The people who contributed ideas for this building," including architects, principal, teachers, district administrators, and community members, "started with a good understanding of what kids need," says Horenstein. "They were out front with design that takes good educational ideas and helps them go even further."

When planning for Discovery Middle School began in the early 1990s, lead architect John Wyckoff of LSW Architects brought what could best be called a fresh perspective to the design table. "This was my first school project in 20 years," he admits. But at a series of design symposiums, he listened closely to what educators were saying about the benefits of smaller learning communities, the need to make schools more personal, the desire to offer a sense of "smallness within largeness." He heard Superintendent Parsley ask for a building that would make technology "as common as a pencil." He paid attention to requests for work spaces that would allow students to learn individually, in small groups, and in larger assemblies — what the district calls its "1/3, 1/3, 1/3" approach.

Wyckoff translated that research into practice when he designed a three-story building to fit onto a sloping lot. Each story is designed to operate as an independent academic village. Classrooms are clustered around central plazas instead of being lined up along corridors. The plazas provide flexible common areas for conducting small-group work or spreading out messy, hands-on projects, as well as places where students and staff from the same academic village can mingle informally.

Other aspects of the design also support good teaching: flexible classroom walls that open for team teaching; a learning center on each floor where students can receive the extra support they need to be successful; a large, open room called the Toolbox, equipped to accommodate integrated instruction, online and print research, science labs, and art projects; technology woven seamlessly throughout the building; and a sun-drenched room called the Loft that houses the school's fiction collection along with couches and comfortable chairs for curling up with a good book. There's also a well-equipped staff work space in each village that makes life easier on teachers. They don't have to trek a mile to the office to telephone a parent, photocopy a class assignment, or use the restroom, and they don't have to go out of their way to connect with their colleagues.

"The building makes it inviting for students and staff to stay together as a group," notes Cone, who took over as principal when the school was a few years old. As an administrator, she appreciates how the building supports sound classroom practices. "It's easy to do teaming, project-based learning, small- and large-group work." Those approaches build cohesiveness that's especially important for young adolescents, she believes. As students make the transition from cozy elementary schools to larger secondary schools, "it helps to keep personalization at the forefront." Discovery enrolls several hundred students of diverse backgrounds, but within each academic village, Cone says, "it's still a place where everybody knows your name."

Open-door policy

Almost since the day it opened, Discovery Middle School has thrown open its doors to the larger community. Cone's secretary keeps a special appointment book just to log requests to use the Gallery, a large room outfitted with multimedia equipment (including a broadcasting booth) that was designed for showcasing student projects and presentations. The staff loves this room, too, with its tranquil view of evergreens and even a barbecue grill on the balcony. And so do community groups, who have used the space for receptions, lectures, art shows, and a variety of other functions.

Most days, Discovery stays busy 'round the clock. At this Title I school where more than 50 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, breakfast and lunch are busy times in the Commons, a multiuse room adjoining the cafeteria. Later in the day, the round tables might be rearranged for a performance on the Commons stage that backs up to two music rooms. In the evenings, the room provides a popular meeting place for parents and community groups, and can be closed off from the classroom wings to ensure security. Windows from the Commons frame a view of the gymnasium on the floor below. It's big enough to hold two PE classes at once during the day and recreational basketball leagues or fitness classes at night. Back up on the ground floor, a counseling facility nicknamed the Green Room (because of the comfortable green sofas and high wall of glass block) is booked day and night with small-group sessions and parenting classes.

"Build it and they will come!" laughs Cone about her facility's popularity. "You can never plan for enough places for community use," she adds. "This school probably has more flexible meeting places than any other school in the district, and they're all busy, all the time. Nothing sits idle here." But she isn't complaining. "Any time you can bring the community into your school, you'll benefit. The kids will benefit," she insists. "Community members won't realize the value of their schools unless they see for themselves how their buildings are used, how wisely money is spent, and the quality that comes back to the whole community when people support their schools."

Discovery's open-door policy started back in the planning stage, with widespread involvement of the public. That involvement not only led to a better design, but also has helped to build community ownership of the school. "People need to believe that the school belongs to them, not only during the years when they might have children enrolled," Wyckoff says.

No cookie cutters

After producing a school as successful as Discovery, a district might be expected to crank out carbon copies. But in the Vancouver School District, there's no cookie-cutter approach to school design. "We want each building to have its own signature," explains Assistant Superintendent Horenstein. In a district with demographics as wide and varied as Vancouver's, he adds, there's no master blueprint.

Each project "starts with a blank sheet of paper," says architect Wyckoff, whose firm has enjoyed a long-term relationship with the Vancouver district. Sometimes the symposiums generate what Wyckoff calls "wild hiccups. Someone suggests an idea like putting an environmental lab on the roof — something no one's thought of before." Community involvement has become such a critical element of school planning that Wyckoff's firm has shared the symposium concept with other clients. "We try to do it on every project," he says.

In a couple days of brainstorming, the symposiums manage to capture a theme for each site, whether it's a remodel or brand-new construction. Skyview High, for example, Vancouver's newest secondary school, is designed to foster hands-on learning. The high-tech building features open learning areas where students operate enterprise projects such as a credit union and food court. Those concepts, Wyckoff says, emerged during the initial design symposium.

Although each school is unique, collectively they fit the district's strategic vision of sound educational programming. And they share one more feature: a tight budget. Good design doesn't mean sky's-the-limit spending. "Our average cost per square foot is consistently below the state average for school construction," Horenstein points out, even for stellar buildings like Discovery Middle School. One cost-containment strategy has been to increase the efficiency of buildings. As Wyckoff explains, that means designing schools where all spaces are used actively and effectively. Doing away with long corridors, for example, can free up the funds for a school to invest in a state-of-the-art auditorium. That strategy worked at Skyview, a facility that Wyckoff estimates is "95 percent efficient, compared to most schools in the 75 percent range." Careful fiscal planning has been a strong selling point for voters, who have approved $180 million in bonds since 1990 to upgrade district facilities and technology.

Expanding the Vision

At the start of the recent Salmon Creek School symposium, participants spent the first morning trying to capture the essence of their school. Despite its outdated facility, this is a school with a lot going for it: a stable community, high parental involvement, and an experienced and cohesive teaching staff. "Salmon Creek is about stability," Principal Bill Nicolay realized as he listened to the discussion. "It's stable for kids, for parents, for relationships. Our parents feel like they go here, too, along with their kids. It has a family culture, and we don't want to lose any of that when we move into a new building."

It's also a school with a strong focus on literacy, and participants kept circling back to that idea during the discussions. As Superintendent Parsley listened, he suggested that participants expand their vision. "He reminded us that literacy is bigger than literature," recalls Nicolay, "and that's when a light went on for me. We want our students to realize that all of literacy is open to them when they walk through our doors. That means art, science, literature, math, technology — to be literate, you need to understand all these things." But the principal was still perplexed. How could a building convey that message?

After the first day's discussions, Nicolay went home "and didn't sleep well." But while he tossed and turned, the architect who had been listening to the community's input worked late into the night. When Nicolay saw the sketches the next morning, he was amazed. "He captured all our ideas on paper. It's all right there," the principal said, including a multimedia space called the Literacy Center at the heart of the new building and a "river" (made of floor tiles) running from the entryway to an aquarium. For years, Salmon Creek fifth-graders have been raising hatchery salmon as a community service project. The architect found a way to make that project part of the school's signature.

A long-time Salmon Creek teacher who was part of the planning process saw that her comments had shaped the design, too. "Right now, we teach in self-contained classrooms that are walled off from each other. We want more flexible space to do the collaborative things we struggle to do now, because we don't have room for it to happen." She was delighted to see cooperative work spaces included in the preliminary plans. Another teacher, however, fretted when she saw that the sketches didn't include sinks and storage space in each classroom. "Weren't they listening to my suggestions?" she asked.

Tom Olson, an experienced facilitator (and former NWREL staff member) hired by the district to lead the design symposiums, used that pointed question to remind participants that designing a school is a long-term process. The symposium is just the starting place — a chance to lay down a melody line, he explained, for all the improvising that will follow. "We'll get to the little details, eventually. But if you start with the sinks," he added, "you'll never get to the bigger picture, like what a school with a literacy theme might look like."

As the symposium wound to a close, Horenstein offered some final words of reassurance: "We won't forget what you've told us. All your ideas will go into a binder, and that will be our reference book throughout the design process," he told the group. At each step of the way — from drafting more concrete specifications to presenting the final design to community groups to lobbying for voter approval — the participants' forward-looking vision for Salmon Creek School would remain front and center. That's just the way it works in this community that has learned how to build for the future, one school at a time.

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