Josh Grenier got a powerful lesson in the benefits of revitalization when he was a high school art teacher in Edina, Minnesota. He was teaching ceramics and photography in a dull classroom in the basement. No windows. Poor ventilation. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an old, underutilized, leftover space down in the bowels of the building,\u201d Grenier says. <\/p>\n
Worse, the dreary room seemed to reflect an unspoken, but obvious, negativity directed at the people who used it: \u201cI think the program and the students who were involved with it were not perceived particularly well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within a few short years, though, the school went through a major renovation, which included a new, stylish fine-arts wing at the front of the existing structure. Grenier and his art students moved from \u201cthe worst space to the best space\u201d in the building, a shift that transformed how others perceived the arts program, and how the students perceived themselves and their place in the school. <\/p>\n \u201cFacilities investments are really expressions of what a community values,\u201d Grenier says. \u201cI think the people who are in them feel that; I witnessed that firsthand.\u201d<\/p>\n The experience so moved Grenier that he left his nine-year teaching job to become an architect. Today, he\u2019s an educational practice leader and educational planner in the Denver office of Wold Architects & Engineers, where he works with communities across Colorado that are trying to shape their school needs for the future. Sometimes they choose to build new schools. More often, they revamp old schools that have been around for decades, but lack the space or mechanical systems to meet the demands of modern learners. <\/p>\n Grenier and his design peers are part of a pivotal moment in education. Shifting populations have left cities and towns with unused school buildings in zero-growth areas and too few classrooms in high-growth areas. Many schools still in use were constructed in the boom years after World War II and don\u2019t meet today\u2019s building codes<\/a>, some dangerously so<\/a>. A 2020 report by the Government Accountability Office<\/a> found that more than half of the nation\u2019s 100,000 K-12 schools need to replace heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems or plumbing to mitigate health hazards. <\/p>\n At the same time, the amount districts have to spend on school renovations has dropped by about $85 billion a year nationwide since 2016, according to a recent report<\/a> from the American Institute of Architects. This despite research of the past 20 years showing a strong link between unhealthy school buildings and poor learning outcomes. The Harvard School of Public Health concluded<\/a> in 2017 that by failing to modernize old schools \u201cpolicymakers and parents may be missing one of the largest health and safety issues affecting students daily.\u201d On the other hand, the study\u2019s authors wrote, \u201cproperly designed, maintained and operated school buildings\u2026have been shown to prevent cognitive deficits, optimize student and teacher performance, and create a thriving learning environment within the school.\u201d<\/p>\n In Colorado, about 85 percent of the population lives in urban areas<\/a>; its small plains and mountain towns struggle to keep their identities<\/a>. Grenier has worked with districts of all sizes in the state, including Manzanola School District, with fewer than 200 students; the eight-school district in touristy Ca\u00f1on City, southeast of Aspen; and St. Vrain Valley Schools, the state\u2019s seventh largest district. <\/p>\n Grenier spoke with EdSurge about the challenges of rebuilding old schools \u2014 and how his experience as a teacher informs every aspect of his job.<\/p>\n This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n EdSurge: When you talk about how depressing it was to work in a basement, I think many people would identify with that. There are thousands of offices and schools where only a select few have access to light.<\/strong><\/p>\n Josh Grenier: <\/strong>You\u2019re pointing to something that I was very conscious of. Spaces communicate something to us about where we sit in a hierarchy of the world and how we\u2019re valued and perceived by others. Schools are very much that way, too.<\/p>\n In that [Edina] school, we had a front that was nice and well invested in, and it had a back with dumpsters and a loading dock. The buses dropped the kids off in the back by the dumpsters. The people who owned their own cars and could drive themselves to school would park in the front, and they\u2019d walk in the nice front door. And I remember thinking, \u2018what is that saying?\u2019 If you don\u2019t have a car and you\u2019re of lesser means, well, you come in the back door by the dumpster. That\u2019s the kind of thing that if you\u2019re not thinking about it, the buildings themselves can communicate that. <\/p>\n Did that orientation change when the school was renovated?<\/strong><\/p>\n No. That project was not perfect. That was another reason why I thought that I could contribute by joining the architecture side. We were winners \u2014 the arts program. But there were others who were not. There were other parts of the building that could have been thought about more deliberately. <\/p>\n What\u2019s involved in designing for modern learners?<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s so much variety from student to student of what they\u2019re doing throughout the day, when things are happening, how things are unfolding. There are far more moments of independence, informal opportunities. <\/p>\n That\u2019s another part I like about having been a teacher. I\u2019m pretty good at imagining what\u2019s going to happen, and I like doing that. You\u2019re working on a floor plan, you\u2019re working on a space, and you\u2019re trying to just imagine, well, there\u2019s that kid and there\u2019s all those backpacks, and here he goes doing this, and there she is doing that. They\u2019re gathering over here, and the teachers are walking from here to here, and they\u2019re stopping here. <\/p>\n That\u2019s always been something that I find a lot of pleasure in, just imagining what\u2019s going to happen. <\/p>\n I had a teacher in architecture school who encouraged [us] to try to make it so that people feel they\u2019re being embraced by this space. If you can\u2019t find in yourself some fondness for whoever is going to be there, well, what are you doing? <\/p>\n Many kids today have conditions that hadn\u2019t been identified when these old schools were built. How do you accommodate them?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s not a revolutionary idea, but allowing spaces to be used in a variety of different ways helps. You don\u2019t have to make everything dedicated to one function. <\/p>\n Furniture is a huge part. It is the furniture that can help make those flexible spaces work. Things that are on wheels to support different uses or subtly separate one space from another. <\/p>\n You see a lot of modern furniture that has a \u2018fidget component\u2019 built into it so a kid can kind of vibrate. You know, a lot of times, kids just have extra energy; they\u2019ll stay more engaged and more present if you just let them fidget.<\/p>\n It\u2019s complicated and costly to renovate a school. How does it begin? In Ca\u00f1on City, for instance, you took on four schools at once.<\/strong><\/p>\n Mostly we just listen. People are pretty quick to talk about what\u2019s wrong. We also try to lean into \u2018what are you proud of? What are you really good at?\u2019 We try to find a few things that they can rally around and then build a list of possible projects at each of the four schools.<\/p>\n One of the complexities of planning with large entities is that you\u2019re trying to navigate lots of different individual stakeholders and everybody has their own unique point of view. You\u2019re trying to help [them] see bigger picture things. But that\u2019s another benefit of having been a teacher. I feel like [teachers are] pretty good at facilitating those kinds of conversations. <\/p>\n The featured project was the high school. Like so many of our public schools, it was built in the post-World War II era. Most schools start there. And then it\u2019s been added onto, like, 10 times.<\/p>\n They become Franken-buildings\u2026?<\/strong><\/p>\n [Nods] They become mazes. The circulation becomes overly complex. They\u2019re disorganized and confused. But that school, Ca\u00f1on City High School, was really proud of its CTE programs. They\u2019re a model in the state for allowing student choices to define the educational path that each of those students is going down. And they have a lot of specialized spaces already in place. But what they were lacking was a central part to the building that reinforced and supported all these piecemeal things that had been cobbled together.<\/p>\n We really focused on creating a new core to the building that felt like it reflected the pride they had in their programs.<\/p>\n How do emotions and nostalgia play into design? How did it work in Manzanola?<\/strong><\/p>\n The town is around 400 people. In communities like that, the school really is the heart of the town. With those small communities, one of the first things we hear is that they\u2019re afraid if the school goes away, the whole town will go away. <\/p>\n Athletics are huge, and it\u2019s not just Friday night football. Members of the town and the outlying areas will attend athletic events even if they don\u2019t have kids in the school system. In addition to athletics, performances are huge. [The school gym] is usually the biggest space in town. When a prominent member of the community passes away, they have the funeral in the gym. People get married in the school.<\/p>\n That alone makes it fun because it\u2019s just such a key element to that community. <\/p>\n [We knew] it was going to be a public-facing building off-hours because of so much of the community use. It really needed a public side and a learning side with a pretty clear boundary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Renovation and repurposing of existing schools is happening at all levels of education. California State University, Fullerton, reimagined its campus<\/a> to accommodate a changing demographic of commuter students. Oklahoma City Public Schools repurposed unused elementary schools<\/a> into early learning centers. What\u2019s next?<\/strong><\/p>\n Our facilities are aging and our communities are aging. In a lot of the communities, the bulk of the build-out was post-World War II. We see a lot of consolidation happening. <\/p>\n There was a model that was really common across the country: a school that was designed to have about 300 kids in it. When you looked at the map, they weren\u2019t particularly far apart and everybody could just walk to their neighborhood elementary school. <\/p>\n Now a lot of those schools are half full. I think, yes, we\u2019re seeing people trying to be creative about how buildings can be used. Some outright just need to be sold. <\/p>\n When done poorly, a district can make a big mistake and have a vacant building that\u2019s a blight. [One city we worked with, southeast of Colorado Springs], they originally had two elementaries, a middle and a high school. And before we got there, they closed one of those elementaries. They put it up for auction and somebody from out of town bought it, I think as a tax write-off. But it just sits there to this day, abandoned, with transients moving through and building little campfires inside. The worst thing you can imagine. <\/p>\n So if you\u2019re going to leave a [school] building, we are very strong advocates that you either tear it down or you have a vetted proposal for reuse. Build some criteria for what you\u2019re willing to sell to, so that you know that it\u2019s actually going to be used.<\/p>\n As a former teacher, what specifically do you think about when designing a school? What is top of mind based on your experience in the classroom?<\/strong><\/p>\n There are a lot of different little examples, but the one that comes to mind for me a lot is acoustics. The design of spaces, in the end, is a lot of very tangible things that are just sort of specific. And one of those is how well [a space] does or doesn\u2019t perform acoustically. As a teacher, I remember very clearly being in some spaces that were loud, chaotic. They made engaging with the students challenging and problematic. I remember wanting to have confidential conversations and not feeling like [we] had the spaces for that. <\/p>\n You want to be specific and intentional about designing things that function well for people, even if they don\u2019t know or perceive that you even did it. <\/p>\n You know, it\u2019s nice to walk around the school and have it feel\u2026 quiet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Josh Grenier got a powerful lesson in the benefits of revitalization when he was a high school art teacher in Edina, Minnesota. He was teaching ceramics and photography in a dull classroom in the basement. No windows. Poor ventilation. \u201cIt was an old, underutilized, leftover space down in the bowels of the building,\u201d Grenier says. 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