Revisiting the Cardenas Center -- No Response to this Posting Required

Somehow I did not address the facility issues related to the Cardenas Center. Most importantly was the national impact that Mr. Jose Cardenas and Gus Garcia have had on school finance. The area of San Antonio we visited, quite modest by any measure, was in stark contrast to the Stone Oak neighborhood we crossed on our way to Jose Lopez Middle. The fact that we continue to see inequities may attest to a failure in the equalization formula used by the state to distribute resources more fairly across districts. The early childhood facility was state of the art and would be in modern times. It gave us a glimpse into how much schools are becoming integrated with social services to ensure that children in schools come from families that are healthy and stable...to the extent that this is possible. The Headstart Program will be a very significant part of reaching PK children early so that they will have a greater shot at staying in school throughout their youth. Thank you Gloria for connecting this school facility with the movement is associated with its namesake.

For more information on the famous Walkout of 1968 see the following link:For m

http://www.eisd.net/20141072717435667/blank/browse.asp?A=383&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&C=56203

For more information on Head Start at Edgewood:

http://www.eisd.net/20141072717435667/blank/browse.asp?A=383&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&C=56205

The Final Post -- Reflection on the Traveling Seminar for Facility Planning

From your own perspective please list the top 1o things you learned about facility planning in this course. Please provide a unique and thoughtful summary to the findings from the semester site visits. I will respond to your responses. dh

Jim Martin Elementary -- The Green School

I invite your responses to the Jim Martin Elementary Visit with a posting of your thoughts, observations and reflections on that visit. I will respond to your responses and invite one other person to respond. Postings should exceed four linear inches and should reflect some original and thoughtful thing that you learned from this experience. dh

East Central High School & Jubilee Academy

We had the privilege of visiting two sites on Saturday. It is always interesting to see how school mission and the contemporary times influenced the amount of space allocated to various missions of the school. Most striking was the allocation of space to Special Education, Vocational Education, and Alternative Education, including content recovery and other creative approaches to addressing the needs of students that otherwise would drop out of school. The use of simple materials and the allowance for technology infrastructure were striking. The diverse community served by the school was also addressed in the design of the facility...urban, suburban, and rural...all seemed to have some part that addressed community need.

Jubilee Academy was much a simpler facility. As we came to understand, so too was the mission of Jubilee Academy much simpler. Mr. Israel Rios and team he serves with were of one accord, and very articulate in their understanding of the misssion of the school. The TEA designation of Recognized School District was not an accidental thing. What was impressive was the mastery of principles of finance, facility planning, and the clarity with which these leaders of the Board President and the CFO about these things. All-in-all, the day was pretty amazing in terms of what you were called upon to learn.

Please respond to this post with three to four inches of thoughtful text summarizing your own thoughts about each of these facility experiences. Please identify things you noticed that I did not mention, nor did anyone else mention. (Those who post later will probably have a tougher time, but let me see some reflection here regarding these two facility design experiences.)

Jose Lopez Middle School

If Ms. McAnelly gave everyone a sense of what it took from the school administrators role, we certainly got a vision of the role of the architect with Mr. Frank Amaro's tour and presentation. This is a case where the architect was in love with education and knew a lot about it and also in love with his work. You had to respect his integrity as described his role in managing the construction process from beginning to end. The experience was made even richer by the role that Debbie played and also Jeff who could tell the story from beginning to end. You were all treated by a sense of how a collaborative project is managed. The role of the relationship among all parties was critical...not just the educator or architect but the team approach to addressing and resolving issues from the planning at the outset, through construction, and eventually occupancy and closing out the project.

What impressed me most was the extent to which current educational philosophy of small communities in schools drove the design of the facility. When you see this in a facility, you know that architects are truly listening to the professionals. The Cardenas Center was another great example of this....the design of the two-way mirrors and reading pits as well as the original open design reflected a demonstration/teaching of teachers approach to education that was big in the 1970's.

What was touching was the connectedness that Lopez middle school still maintains with its namesake, Mr. Jose Lopez. What a treat to see the interview of this remarkably courageous man. Take the history, the planning, the educational philosophy, the architect-educator collaboration and you have one very special experience. Thanks Jeff and Debbie for your hospitality and access to school facility. Please respond with an aspect of your experience or observation at Jose Lopez Middle School that has not been mentioned previously by me or any of your colleagues who also took the tour.

Retrospective: A day in Devine

Our first site visit was to Devine ISD. Scott, thanks for taking care of us down there. It was extraordinary to learn of a bond issue passing in a conservative rural community and we were able to listen first-hand to how Linda McAnelly, by power of will and determination, armed with commitment to get the job done right, to learn all the intricacies of getting the job done where she had not previously been knowledgeable. I think all of were struck by how completely she mastered herself first, knew her people, learned what she had to learn, set boundaries where she had to set boundaries. She demonstrated what happens when a thoughtful, fair-minded individual can do when the situation came up. She knew how to convince all stakeholders that the bond elections were in the best interests of them all.

When new facilities cannot be built, it is possible to be creative. Small towns do not have the luxury of condemning an old building. Those buildings were the center of community life for so long. So rather than see a landmark come down these communities, Devine is not exception, chose the keep the older structure and retrofit, often at greater expense than a new facility would have costed. I noticed that each classroom in this 1954 structure had an overhead digital projector and had connectivity.

Back to the bond experience. Ms. McAnelly had a valuable list of steps that she took with recommendations for how to conduct oneself in the role of superintendent. I invite responses from of you, something unique about that experience that you took away from it besides the wonderful meal Scott provided. dh

Educational Facility Planning Introduction

This initial posting is for post-graduate students enrolled in my Saturday morning graduate class to prepare for the superintendency. This blog with be used in connection with Blackboard, the official on-line site for courses at Texas A&M University San Antonio. As professor I will use this site to introduce topics for discussion, websites to check out, observations, and in general, supplemental readings that are relevant. I will blog regularly and invite comments from the members of the class to each blog. Comments should be kept brief. This is an effort by the professor to integrate technology into teaching and to increase the intereactivity of the class. This is a emergent course design which ultimately should lead to greater and more effective use of official and unofficial uses of technology in teaching the course. The websites and articles used in this course will eventually be used to create an e-book for use in this new course at this new university in South Texas. The "Green" format has been selected to underscore a theme that has become central to 21st Century school facility planning.