District Administration - June 2007 - (Page 54)

FACILITIES & CONSTRUCTION A high school student helps design a new charter school, converted from a former U.S. post oﬃce in Albuquerque. ing. The average New York City school classroom is about 750 square feet and is designed for 34 students. All classrooms have computer workstations built in on one wall, cupboards, a storage closet, a chalkboard and myriad furnishings. “While it may not be exactly the way it is in our standard room layout, it will contain all of those things that we put into the current up-to-date classroom,” Barrett says. Gran Kriegel has designed several other adaptive reuse projects for school use, including a charter school in the Bronx, which combined a two-story garage and a new four-story structure. The Family Court House building had no spaces that could be transformed into an auditorium or gymnasium without cost-prohibitive structural modiﬁca- replacing the building’s windows, adding contrasting colors into the window system to “give the rather static façade a little bit of life.” The original structure’s deteriorated limestone exterior will be resecured and overclad with a new, thin limestone skin. And some artifacts from the courthouse will be preserved. For instance, the architect is reusing marble in the lobby and will reinstall two exterior bas-relief stone panels that depict ﬁctional families. They will relocate them to the interior and will move a large mural in the lobby to the library. As in most districts, schools in New York City are designed to allow some spaces to be used by the community outside of school hours, so architects strive to place suitable spaces such as cafeterias Local Post Ofﬁce Becomes School House ADAPTIVE REUSE CAN PROVIDE A LEARNING opportunity for students while it provides a much-needed educational facility. Robert F. Kennedy Charter High School in Albuquerque has three campuses. The school, which opened in 2001, found a new location for 80 students in a former U.S. post ofﬁce. According to the school’s program director Robert Baade, the post ofﬁce was sold to private individuals several years ago and became available to the school under a lease program. “This lease-purchase option is the only mechanism that charter schools can use to create public buildings,” Baade says. “Once it’s a public building, we become eligible for state public dollars through the Public School Capital Outlay Council, which identiﬁes critical capital outlay needs for schools.” Through the University of New Mexico’s Architecture and Children program, students helped transform the post ofﬁce into their new high school. The program gives students the tools and background to understand how the buildings and their school affect them. Students, who were supervised by a UNM alumnus, helped plan the design, select design elements and materials, and construct it. They laid 5,000 adobe bricks inside the 7,000-squarefoot building, forming partitions for learning areas, instead of separate classrooms. The students who worked on the renovation have taken great ownership of the space, Baade adds. “We plastered an adobe wall, and the students who helped renovate the building got to write their names in the wall,” he says. It opened in the 2005-2006 school year. Project funding came through the Daniels Fund, set up by local businessman Bill Daniels, which provides money for college scholarships and grants for local community programs and projects. The renovation cost $25,000, with another $50,000 for smoke detectors, an alarm system and other equipment. “We’ve always seen this building as the crown jewel in the center of the downtown Brooklyn civic area.”—Sebastian Crociata, senior ofﬁcer of architecture and engineering, NYC School Construction Authority. tions. So Gran Kriegel opted to create a tremendous multipurpose room that functions as an auditorium and gym on the roof. However, midway through the design process, the SCA discovered that there were deed restrictions that limited the ﬂoor area—and that would have prohibited additional ﬂoor area being added to the structure. The plans now call for the existing sixth-ﬂoor area, which once contained a penthouse with the judges’ chambers, to be removed and the new gym to be added. The ground ﬂoor will house the cafeteria and two suites of principal and administrative oﬃces as well as two small conference rooms for parent meetings. The ﬁfth ﬂoor has individual art studios, classrooms and science labs. But the school lacks outdoor space, which is typical for high schools throughout the city. The architect is changing the entry, expanding it to two stories to allow light into the lobby area. Gran Kriegel also is 54 June 2007 as close to the entrance as possible. In this school, the cafeteria is accessed from the main lobby. The city is seeing a great beneﬁt to reusing the courthouse. “Obviously, you don’t have to do the excavation and put in a foundation or the steel superstructure,” Barrett says. “It’s not as cost-saving as you might think, but there certainly are some cost savings. It’s a good deal for us when we ﬁnd a building that’s suitable.” The newly renovated building will ﬁt in with the neighborhood when it’s completed, according to Crociata of New York SCA. “We’ve always seen this building as the crown jewel in the center of the downtown Brooklyn civic area, which has court houses and a Marriott,” Crociata says. “There’s so much going on in the area, and to be a part of this cultural environment is very exciting.” DA Peggy Bresnick Kendler is a freelance writer based in Connecticut. District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - June 2007

Contents
Editor's Letter
Letters
News Update
Security Update
Technology Update
Curriculum Update
Inside the Law
Admistrator Profile
District Profile
Refreshing the ISTE Technology Standards
Action Teams
RE-Construction
Professional Development for the New Century
Multimedia LIT
New Products
Leadership Books
Problem/Solution
Online Edge
Speaking Out
Supervisor's Opinion
Professional Opinion
Research Corner
Calendar of Events
Understanding the Times

District Administration - June 2007