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When I started college in the '70S, I wanted to be an architect. I studied architecture for two years before switching majors to English and education. What goes around comes around. As a high school principal, I have spent countless hours during the past decade with architects and design teams, first renovating a 70-year-old high school building, then leading the planning of a brand new high school. Both of these major construction projects took place in the Puyallup School District, 30 miles southeast of Seattle. Between them, a yearlong stint at the U.S. Department of Education gave me the opportunity to work at a national level with government officials, architects, and citizens on issues related to school design and construction and the way school facilities impact both student learning and community health.

The story of the renovation of Puyallup High School (PHS) began in May 1991 when Puyallup voters passed a bond issue allocating $12 million to give our old girl a makeover. A team of architects was hired, a design was developed, and in spring 1993, we began to turn that design into timber, steel, and concrete. To make way for the reconstruction, we packed up everything and moved into temporary quarters, consisting of 47 portables and three churches, where we ran a school of 1,600 for 15 months.

We taught classes in church social halls, put on plays without a stage, tried to get hundreds of high schoolers to obey crossing lights even at risk of being tardy to class, gathered in the rain, and tramped through the mud. Our top priorities during this reconstruction year were twofold: (1) to renovate our school in a way that enhanced safety, maximized use of space, made way for new technology, and restored historic features of the architecture; and (2) to maintain a quality educational program for the students who would spend a third of their high school careers in a PHS that meant Portable High School.

The story of the creation of Emerald Ridge High School (ERHS) is a longer one. We began our planning in 1992 by forming a committee and hiring a team of architects to design a third comprehensive high school to house Puyallup's growing population. The bond issue that allowed us to begin construction, however, was not passed until 1997, after three failed attempts, the involvement of a second team of architects, and creation of a scaled-down building plan. Finally, in July 2000, our $29 million, 204,000-square-foot facility, all under one roof, was completed — just in time to open its doors to students in September.

From my work on these two projects, reinforced by what I learned during my year in Washington, D.C., I have developed a profound belief that a facility really can facilitate effective education. While I know that a school is way more than the place in which it exists, I also know how much easier it is to provide a 21st century education in a well-designed, well-equipped, 21st century building. Therefore, when the opportunity presents itself to improve our school facilities, we need to be poised to take full advantage of it. Although the renovation of PHS and the new construction of ERHS were different in many ways, some of the lessons I learned were the same. They include the following:

1. A vision of teaching and learning must come first.
First and foremost, the school facility must support teaching and learning. It is a tool. It can even become part of the curriculum. Therefore, planning must proceed from well-thought-out educational outcomes. A school design must emanate from a clear vision of teaching and learning, not from some architectural vision of art or our grandparents' memories of the way things used to be.

The planning committee for Emerald Ridge took to heart the research that says students do better when the learning situation is real, when the context is real, when the audience is more real, and when communities can interact in ways that directly impact learning. Based upon this research, they settled on four themes to drive the design of our new school building: collaboration, integration, application, and community connections.

The Emerald Ridge facility supports collaboration through numerous flexible common spaces, both large and small, for students, staff, and others to work together in various-sized groups. It supports integration through its nondepartmentalized arrangement of learning spaces. It supports application of learning through its inclusion of a variety of areas for students to do authentic work, such as three large project rooms; a fully-equipped 3,000-square-foot science laboratory; six production-type areas with garage-door access to the outside; and accommodations to allow nearly every aspect of the facility to function as a part of the curriculum itself.

The 550-seat performing arts center, for instance, has been created as a showplace for student performances and also as a laboratory for students to study the technical and artistic aspects of theater. The on-campus health club and weight room provide spaces for students to pursue personal health and fitness and also a context for those in the sports medicine program to apply their learning.

Finally, the building design supports the kinds of community access and connections required by a society that promotes lifelong learning. Realizing that in schools of the future, such concepts as "after school" and "before school" may become as meaningless as ditto machines and flash cubes, the design team equipped Emerald Ridge with a designated parent room, a career and counseling center with spaces for business and university partners, and multiple options for the building to serve as a community hub.

2. All stakeholder groups deserve a place at the table.
People tend to support what they help to create. Therefore, wide-spread community involvement in the school planning process is vital to success. A recurring theme among representatives of the 10 Creative Solutions Schools featured at a 1998 national school design symposium in Washington, D.C., was the way they had involved their constituents in planning schools and connected their plans to the priorities of their communities. Broad-based participation of both internal and external constituents is equally important.

During the two years prior to the opening of Emerald Ridge, I took part in approximately 120 meetings with different segments of the community, including more than 30 public forums and more than 20 presentations to service clubs, school boards, and business groups. A task force of student volunteers met with me regularly for 22 months prior to the school's opening. A staff lead team began working 18 months in advance. And an official parent organization was formed 10 months before "Inaugural Day."

3. Working smarter requires a systems approach.
During a passionate conversation about school reform, Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson leaned across the table and said to me, "Linda, I am not telling you to work any harder. I am telling you that we have to work smarter."

"But Terry," I replied, "this is as smart as I am."

Ever since, I have been thinking about what it means to work smarter. And I have come to understand that it has to do with taking a systems approach to our work. If every part of the school system supports every other part, we really can get more bang for our buck.

When designing schools, this means we have to look at everything as one whole, resisting the tendency to parcel out the work to committees of experts. The 12-member lead team that worked with me to design Emerald Ridge put this idea into practice. Although members represented different areas of expertise, they agreed to consider all aspects of our new school together, from the design of its facilities to the design of its programs. By bringing their collective wisdom to bear on issues as diverse as detracking science classes to creating inclusive policies for extracurricular activities, they were able to avoid the creation of a school made up of isolated parts and separate, sometimes even contradictory, functions.

4. Systems-focused planning process takes time.
Unfortunately, planning is often given short shrift in educational circles. Just as teachers are only considered to be working when they are standing in front of a class of students, educators engaged in a complex and therefore lengthy planning process are often viewed as nonproductive by value-conscious taxpayers. In our "show-me-the-money" culture, it's quick fixes and fast results we yearn for. But community-based facilities planning takes time. It takes time to incorporate diverse points of view, forge a shared vision, and develop a collective commitment — all of which are critical to the ultimate success of any project.

5. Partnerships stretch limited resources.
In the process of scaling down the design of Emerald Ridge to garner voter approval, we had to scrap plans for an on-campus swimming pool. To avoid losing the benefits such a facility could provide, we began collaborating with a community group that had its own plans to build an aquatic center.

At PHS, an interagency agreement with the Private Industry Council gave students and staff access to county job search software in the school's career center. In Chicago, the Henry Ford Academy shares facilities and resources with a museum. The Gaylord Community School in Gaylord, Michigan, houses senior activities, day care, performing arts programs, community health care clinics, higher education classes, and even weddings. In each of these cases, community resources have been leveraged to extend both school facilities and learning opportunities for students.

6. Beautiful is not an ugly word.
Too often in the public sector, we confuse lack of aesthetics with economic responsibility. We think bleak designs indicate good stewardship of public funds. But schools should be beautiful places. In fact, I believe they should be among the best examples of public architecture. When school buildings are beautiful, it suggests that those who spend their days in them are valued by the community. And most of us work better in pleasant, attractive environments.

"Beautiful" does not have to mean "pricey." Steve Soboroff, head of the Proposition BB School Construction Committee in Los Angeles, addressed this point by researching the cost of replacing blacktop in Los Angeles schoolyards with lawns and plants. Not only would the outcome be a much nicer environment, but also the reduced cost of air conditioning would more than offset the increased cost of maintenance.

The upshot of the renovation of PHS is a stately, beautiful building. A dramatic atrium allows light to spill into the commons. Expertly applied paint transforms plaster pillars and columns into faux marble. Overall, the facts and data show that we got excellent value for the money we spent on this project, thanks to skilled architects and craftsmen. However, more than once "nice" has been interpreted by some district residents as "extravagant," signaling a waste of public funds.

Critics complain about a glass palace with marble columns. Response to this kind of criticism can take one of two routes: We can work to educate our public with facts, as Steve Soboroff did, or we can jerk our collective knee and resign ourselves to making future buildings less beautiful than they might be, regardless of cost, just to keep some citizens from misjudging our commitment to fiscal responsibility.

7. Change is tough.
Never underestimate how tough change can be. During the design phase at PHS, we battled for three full months over 12 cement stairs leading to the front door of the old school. When alumni got wind that architects planned to remove the stairs to create a more open, handicap-accessible entrance, they became enraged. With memories of class pictures and who-knows-what-else that happened on those stairs, they showed up at board meetings, circulated petitions, wrote letters to the editor, and in the end negotiated a six-stair compromise.

One strategy we used to foster understanding, and thereby mitigate some of the strong reactions to change at PHS, was to build our messages about the reconstruction project around a metaphor. We helped people see the renovation of our old building as a visible symbol of other kinds of educational reform and restructuring going on across our state and nation. We acknowledged that PHS had always been, and remains, a place that honors the richness of tradition and the successes of the past. At the same time, we affirmed that PHS is also a learning community where staff and students grapple daily with serious questions about how to build on the foundations of the past to construct the kinds of educational programs necessary to prepare all students for their future.

In the process of recognizing that the walls and beams of yesteryear — while functional and effective for their time — would not support tomorrow's needs any more than yesterday's curriculum and instructional strategies, many members of the PHS community became more receptive to the reconstruction process.

8. Building a community is as important as building a facility.
A quality high school is more than a place. It is all the people who work and learn there, and all the people who support them in their learning, and all of those who count on them to learn well. Because we knew at a gut level that this is true, we actually launched two building projects during the construction phase of Emerald Ridge. While contractors were busy with bricks and mortar, groups of students, parents, staff, and community members worked on a second construction project: building a school community.

At the outset of our community-building process, the parent of a former student introduced me to the concept of nemawashi, a Japanese term borrowed from gardening. Literally, nemawashi means to dig around the root system of a tree a year or two prior to moving it so that new root hairs will grow and successful transplanting will be more likely. Business leaders use the term and the ideas it represents to think about preparing people to make significant changes in their workplace.

We used it to frame our efforts to make sure that the students, staff, and parents who would be transplanted to Emerald Ridge could make a smooth and healthy transition. We not only needed to make sure the ground at the new high school was ready to receive them, but we also needed to take care of them during the year preceding their move. Such care required plenty of opportunity for conversation and meaningful involvement.

9. A positive approach works best.
As my grandmother used to tell me, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. At least once a week, I hear leadership expert Michael Fullan whispering in my mind's ear that "problems are our friends." When it comes to talking about issues related to school construction, my experience suggests that the "friendship" part ought to be promoted above the "problem" part. A recent market research study conducted by the National Education Association (NEA) led to the same conclusion: Focusing on opportunities is a more effective sales strategy than beating citizens over the head with all of the needs and problems of schools.

At the federal level, former Secretary of Education Richard Riley started his school construction campaign by talking about how "we cannot raise children and standards up in buildings that are falling down." In light of NEA's findings, he shifted his theme to highlight the educational possibilities and opportunities to be realized through modern school facilities. After three failed bond issues, we got the message in Puyallup, too.

10. Selection of architects and ed spec writers is critical.
If our goal is to create facilities that support 21st century learning needs, rather than to recreate 20th century schools, then the process we use to select designers and architects will need to extend beyond looking at what they have already accomplished.

For Emerald Ridge, this meant inviting six architectural firms to respond to a specially designed assignment. We gave them the parameters — an educational vision framed in a series of yin-yang statements and a description of the building site. Then we asked them to give us their best architectural solution to our educational problem — not necessarily a solution that would ever be built, but rather one that would demonstrate their knowledge of educational practice, creativity, and imagination.

Linda Quinn has worked as a public school educator in Washington state for 27 years, 20 of those as a secondary school principal. During the 1996-97 school year, she was the one principal in the nation selected to serve as Principal in Residence at the U.S. Department of Education and as special adviser to then-Secretary of Education Richard Riley. Since her return from Washington, D.C., she has continued to work on school construction issues at a national level and has coauthored a guidebook, Schools as Centers of Community: A Citizens' Guide for Planning and Design, published by the U.S. Department of Education. Currently, Quinn is serving as principal of the brand-new Emerald Ridge High School in the Puyallup School District.

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