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.)
