Managing the successful start of a new school - School Facilities - Brief Article

School Administrator, May, 2002 by R. Lawrence Pettersen

"We build buildings, then buildings build us."

Frank Lloyd Wright

When I was named the principal of the new Tualatin High School in suburban Portland, Ore., and learned I would be assigned as the planning principal during the year prior to our opening, I began with research.

I had just attended Harvard's Principal Center the previous summer, so I set about calling people I had met in the program. Through these contacts, I was able to talk with several principals who recently had opened new high schools. Only two of these schools had been physically complete when opened and most had a fairly rough time during their first year of existence, owing to avoidable mistakes during planning and construction. These tales were chilling. I resolved to avoid many of the mistakes that I heard described.

Educational specifications are your architect's guide for designing your school. It is the district's responsibility to provide both the process and the product by generating such specifications. Before the architects put pen to paper, they need to know the educational philosophy and the programs their lines will enclose.

If your staff planning team has decided on cluster offices rather than departments to foster interdisciplinary instruction, the architects must understand what this means to the school's climate. If your media center is going to serve International Baccalaureate candidates and advanced technology programs, your architects need specific background information.

Even program decisions on a smaller scale, such as the decision to serve a high-needs population at your school, become important. I have seen a $200 sink become a $2,000 sink on a change order because of poor communication and a concrete bearing wall! Change orders go before school boards, which hate them because of the massive and often unnecessary expense.

If your change orders exceed 1.5 percent of the construction cost you have wasted money that could have been used elsewhere. Your goal may be a 21st century high school, but if the critical players are not consulted, communication is poor and research is not done, you will fail. One school surveyed was inexplicably completed without the aid of educational specifications. The result was more recognizable to a student of the 19th century rather than one from the 21st century.

Boundary Recommendations

If there ever is a time to hire the proverbial "expert from out of town," it is when you face the inevitably acrimonious boundary battle. You can hire individuals with credentials in demographics and skills handling public meetings. Superintendents who take on the boundary decision themselves acquire enemies unnecessarily.

I have compared the outside expert to the "sin eater at a traditional Irish wake--the individual not known to the family who enters the party quietly for the sole purpose of eating a small plate of food placed on the casket, thus symbolizing the removal of the deceased's transgressions. It should be noted that the sin eater leaves immediately.

After presenting an array of logical recommendations to a few hundred agitated parents, processing the aired concerns and making a school board presentation about a proposed boundary change, your demographer also should leave immediately.

Diffusing Communication

A district administrator, conversant with facility, curriculum, budgetary and athletic issues, needs to be the nexus of all communication and decision making during the life of the project. Your planning principal is going to be busy hiring faculty and pressing the flesh in the new attendance area. The central-office project administrator usually has many other responsibilities and is tempted to spread coordination among subordinates. This often happens and the results are never good.

The planning principal, however, needs to be present at all meetings between architects and teachers, board members, central-office staff and whoever else becomes involved. He or she serves as the recorder, the translator and the mediator and, as such, must possess a breadth of school experience.

The planning principal must encourage the staff to dream, yet still be guardian of the budget. From the time the architects are selected until opening ceremonies, this individual needs to have ready access to the superintendent and be a deciding factor in the project at all levels of decision making.

Fighting Battles

The image of a successful, progressive school should exist in the minds of the parents and the students long before the date of the school's opening ceremonies. This is a job for a highly enthusiastic, well-prepared team headed up by the principal. The team should hit the road with a portfolio case full of beautiful artist s renderings of the school, with the attendant materials describing how the school's vision and mission statement will be realized.

Prior to opening Tualatin High School, I attended 18 coffees in homes in every part of our attendance zone, reaching 240 parents. We also involved 300 students on committees dealing with atrium planting, student uniforms, school mascots, colors, coat of arms, projects to "humanize" the school and other programs. We used many students in opening ceremonies--a formal event featuring prominent local speakers that attracted more than 2,000 people.