Ohlone College Newark Center for Health Sciences and Technology Archives - School Construction News

NJ Schools Receive Funding to Improve Facility Safety

Bayonne, N.J. — As a reward for the Board of Education’s commitment to risk management, the New Jersey School Boards Association Insurance Group granted the Bayonne Board of Education $70,000 for improved safety measures throughout the district.

The grant will go towards the installation and maintenance of a basketball winch system and backstops in the high school, replacement of locker room floors and tiles at Lincoln School pool, replacement of floor tiles in ice rink lobby, and eight pedestrian cross-walk signs, according to the district.

The Burlington, New Jersey-based nonprofit Insurance Group awarded a total of $5 million in safety grants to member districts across the state.

"I commend and congratulate School Business Administrator Leo J. Smith, Jr., and his entire staff for this exemplary award," said Dr. Patricia L. McGeehan, Superintendent of Schools. "We are very grateful for the additional funding during these difficult

economic times."

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Oklahoma Schools Ready Safety Projects

ENID, Okla. — Construction will begin this summer on a student drop-off and loading zone at Longfellow Middle School, officials announced. A blinking stop light at Randolph and 10th and a mid-block crossing in front of the school will also be installed.

The project is being funded by a $200,000 grant from the 2009-2010 Safe Routes to School Program awarded to middle schools to teach students safer ways for getting to and from school every day.

The city of Enid also committed $28,000 and engineering services to the project. The Enid Police Department and Enid schools are planning to promote awareness about walking and bicycling safety using these renovations.  Another construction project in the city, on the sidewalk from Cleveland to Oakwood at Waller Middle School, will also begin in 2011. That project was funded by a 2008 grant from the Oklahoma Department of Transportation.

The improvement projects are a result of the 2010 bond issue.
Safe Routes to School is a network of more than 500 nonprofit organizations, government agencies, schools and professionals that promote pedestrian travel and safety, reduced traffic congestion, improved air quality and neighborhood safety.

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New Calif. Law Requires Inside Locks at Schools

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a bill that requires new school construction projects in the state to be outfitted with modern door locks that lock from the inside.

The bill, AB 211, which was proposed by Assemblyman Tony Mendoza (D-Norwalk), aims to create safer school facilities that better protect students and staff in the case of a violent incident.

"Many school staff members keep their keys in areas where they do not have immediate access to them," Mendoza says. "The locks in many school classrooms, offices, and other rooms where students and school staff gather can only be locked from the outside."

The law goes into effect Jan. 1 and requires that all new construction projects submitted to the California Division of the State Architect include inside locks for rooms with occupancies of five or more people.

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School Safety & Security

One of the fundamental goals of school planning is to provide students a safe and secure learning environment. In the past decade a great effort has been made nationally to outfit schools with high tech electronic surveillance systems to actively monitor and control school access and security. Discipline problems and crime can also be deterred by removing the inherent negative opportunities created when areas of schools are concealed from public view. While technology-based systems greatly improve school security, there are many opportunities for making school sites and buildings more naturally secure by carefully planning and organizing the physical environment.

When given the opportunity to renovate or construct new facilities, a process called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, or CPTED, can lead to learning environments that naturally discourage crime. Site design and building organization can have major impacts on student behavior and can help alleviate many safety concerns. CPTED principles that can be applied to school site and building design include: territory identification, natural surveillance and access control. In effect, creating a natural sense of student identity and ownership of the school, and providing a sense of transparency and observation throughout the school community.

Site Design

Conflicts in the flow of cars, buses, bicycles and pedestrians can cause safety and security problems on school sites, where hundreds of students converge during daily rush hours. Safety can be improved by directing different types of traffic into separate zones on the site, with safe paths for student foot traffic to converge at building entrances. Car and bus drop-offs need to be connected to entries with wide, open, observable walkways. The total number of active building entrances can be minimized to help consolidate supervision and security points, but entrances need to be planned with ample exterior and interior space to avoid congestion of student traffic. The sense of “natural surveillance” is increased at building entrances when populated active spaces like commons and cafeterias are located within view of the entry areas.

Building Design

Inside school buildings, the careful planning of activities and the flow of students contribute greatly to the climate of safety and security. Discipline problems tend to occur most often during transition times when students move from one area to another. This movement can be eased when the school is organized into small learning communities or teams. When teams of 100-200 students and teachers have an identified place or “house” within a larger building, including the majority of daily learning spaces, the need for mass movement throughout the school during the day is reduced. These houses also help to foster a familiar relationship between students and teachers, and a common sense of territorial ownership leading to natural surveillance and improved security.

In 2009, Chanhassen High School opened in Chanhassen, Minn. The new high school was designed using many CPTED principles. Several key goals were identified early on to improve the safety and security of the site and building:

• Minimize the number of building entrances for students and the community

• Increase supervision and access control of the building entrances and public spaces

• Allow separate and secure access to the academic, athletic, and performing arts areas internally

• Provide small learning communities of students and staff

• Provide free flow of student movement without congestion

The CHS site was planned with separate zones for automobiles and school buses. Cars and buses enter the site from two separate signalized intersections. Cars flow to the west side of the building, buses flow to the east. Students approach the main entrance from parking areas without crossing any bus traffic. Buses can load and unload on a drop-off loop that is free of all car traffic. Students enter the school’s central commons from either the west car drop-off or the east bus loop. At the end of the day student movement is reversed with vehicle traffic dispersed to the two separate intersections.

The central commons space at CHS acts as a “great room” for the whole school. It is directly observable from both the principal’s office/reception area and the activities office that are staffed throughout the day. During school hours, visitors enter the commons only after routing through the principal’s office for check-in. The flow of students can be easily monitored from the central commons to the three other main building areas: academic, physical education, and performing arts. The commons is a highly active open space with no concealed areas that could provide opportunities for negative behavior. The commons includes student cafeteria seating, an open informal stage for performances, access and views to the adjacent major building areas, as well as functioning as a lobby and break-out space for auditorium performances and athletic competitions.

The academic area at the school was intentionally designed to reduce the feeling of a 2,000-student high school by creating flexible team areas for groups of 250, or 500, students. The team areas are gathered around open common circulation space that extends from the central commons. Each of the 250 student team areas has a visible entrance from the common space, dedicated classrooms, open resource/project areas, staff offices, convenient restrooms, and student lockers — the sum of which creates an identifiable place and a sense of shared ownership for the team. The smaller-scaled team learning environment reinforces the school’s focus of thematic based interdisciplinary learning and creates a secure environment where students can thrive.

Electronic surveillance and security systems are also employed at CHS to help manage the few negative incidents that occur. But the positive learning climate and sense of ownership that exists between students, staff and community is directly related to the physical environment of the school. Results like these reinforce the idea that environmental design has a profound effect on student behavior and the general sense of safety and security in schools.

Steve Miller, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, has specialized in the planning and design of educational projects since 1984. He leads the K-12 market sector at Perkins+Will’s Minneapolis office.

Perkins+Will

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Campus Wayfinding

“Wayfinding” is an age-old term that describes the various techniques used by travelers to find their way from place to place. Think of navigating by stars, or with a compass.

Wayfinding is also a concept that architectural firms and urban planners are increasingly taking into account as they design modern buildings. The reasons have not just to do with logistics, but with the safety and security of the people that use these buildings. Proper wayfinding can help individuals successfully navigate office buildings, hospitals, government centers and even entire towns and cities.

Modern wayfinding techniques, when applied to a college campus, offer the same logistical benefits plus a few added bonuses — including augmented security, according to Barbara Martin, CEO of KMA Design, in Canonsburg, Pa., and Mark VanderKlipp, president and principal at Corbin Design in Traverse City, Mich., a pair of wayfinding experts with experience on campuses around the nation.

Since founding KMA in 1996, Martin and her staff have coordinated well over 40 campus wayfinding projects at an array of schools, including the University of Pittsburgh, Stony Brook University, and Seton Hill University.

Modern wayfinding technologies include touch-screen kiosks, programmable LED signs and cell phone map applications. Many of these tools allow for greater interaction between security forces, campus residents and visitors.

Corbin Design has conducted more than 30 wayfinding projects on campuses like the University at Albany-State University of New York, Pennsylvania State University, and several other Big 10 schools. Drawing from experience, VanderKlipp says that modern wayfinding tools can augment existing campus safety systems and security forces during emergency circumstances. Net-worked interactive digital kiosks, for example, can be programmed to display information and announcements, including campus maps and emergency evacuation notifications. Students can also check their debit card balances.

“In regards to security, campus wayfinding focuses largely on helping people stay away from places that they shouldn’t be in, and letting visitors know building hours and rules,” says VanderKlipp. “Campus wayfinding typically supports security by communicating rules rather than reacting to emergency situations, though technology has evolved to support both objectives in new ways.”

KMA’s Barbara Martin says that many colleges are today adding LED electronic messaging boards, designed to convey emergency and non-emergency information to students and campus visitors.

“These signs are often tied into the police departments for [use] in the event of an emergency or evacuation,” Martin says. “Typically, the signs will be managed by the marketing department or similar agency, but the police or campus security will have an override system to control them during emergencies.”

Vandalism to these signs is an emerging threat to wayfinding that campus facilities managers frequently deal with. However, Martin says that new materials are being used in sign manufacturing, making it more difficult for vandals.

“For example, with an aluminum sign we might use a hard-finish paint, something similar to what’s used on a car,” she says. “Plus, we’ll add clear-coats on top of that, reducing the porosity and making it easier to wash off graffiti.”

The Science of Wayfinding

“Two of the many things we have to consider when laying out a campus wayfinding plan are branding/marketing and the convenience for first-time visitors,” says Martin. “A big impression is made on a person within the first few seconds of them entering a campus in regards to whether or not they want to attend that school or whether they want their child to attend it.”

On top of labeling spaces and buildings, campus wayfinding provides interconnectivity between destinations, often taking visitors from large places to smaller and less obvious areas.

“For instance, campus signs will direct individuals to a general area where they are to have a meeting,” Martin says. “Once we get them to the building and the entrance, we provide them direction to their interior destination. That flow of signage has to go from one point to the next, then back out the building to where they parked.”

During the design stage of a project, wayfinding systems are often integrated with the college’s master plan and marketing objectives, ensuring that the scheme requires minimal updating in the decades after it is installed.

“We often begin campus wayfinding projects by conducting surveys,” Martin says. “We’ll survey staff, students, and visitors to find out some of their concerns with the campus and to determine problems that they have had in locating destinations. Based on their responses, we’ll develop an analysis that incorporates problem areas, places that lack signage, code violations, and other elements.”

From Charts to Apps

Smartphone applications that produce campus maps, and provide information about college historical sites and attractions, are some of the latest technologies in an ever-expanding arena of university wayfinding.

“The University of Texas at Austin utilizes an amazing iPhone app that provides a tremendous number of resources,” VanderKlipp says. “One of the best parts of the program is its mapping capability, which allows users to search for specific buildings on campus and make use of their Smartphone’s GPS capabilities to coordinate directions from place to place.”

Other schools are investigating the capabilities of the barcode application in physical spaces, VanderKlipp says. With barcode technology, campus visitors could photograph barcodes on informational signs using their phones and bring up websites with further background or history on the building or attraction.

VanderKlipp predicts that sometime in the not-too-distant-future, students, staff and visitors will hold their cell phone cameras up to a campus landscape and instantly receiving feedback on their phone’s screen about building names, where building entrances and offices are located, and other pertinent information.

Already such tools — known as “augmented reality applications” — are in use by the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City, and for commercial purposes, such as real estate listings.

“I think in the future, augmented reality locators will be an expectation that students, staff and alumni all have for their campuses,” VanderKlipp says.

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Progress Report: Ronald Stephens

VITAL STATS
Name: Ronald D. Stephens
Position: Executive Director of the National School Safety Center
Years in the Education Field: 35
Previous Posts: Chief Operating Officer for Columbia Christian Schools, Chief Business Officer and Vice President of Administration at Pepperdine University
Achievements: Named to Marquis Who’s Who in American Education, Marquis Who’s Who in the West, Marquis Who’s Who in California and Marquis Who’s Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities. Recipient of the American Spirit Honor Medal. Testified on school safety matters before the United States House of Representatives and U.S. Senate committees.

Among the accolades that he has received for keeping schools safe, Ronald Stephens has been described as “the nation’s leading school crime prevention expert” by the Denver Post newspaper.

Since 1984, Stephens has served as Executive Director of the National School Safety Center, an advocacy group for school safety worldwide that was established that year by President Ronald Reagan. Prior to the appointment he had served as vice president of administration at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.

“At the time the center was started, the field of school safety was relatively new,” says Stephens. “In 1984, the state of California had just passed Article 1, Section 28C [of the state constitution], which basically said that all students, staff and faculty have the inalienable right to attend schools that are safe, secure and peaceful.”

Stephens says that Article 1, Section 28C, put school safety measures on the educational map not only California, but across the United States. The concept of school safety soon began to spread, encouraged by a number of high-profile incidents of campus violence in the 1980s and 90s, most notably the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999.

“Columbine was America’s wake-up call – it was, so to speak, the public schools’ 9/11,” Stephens says.

After Columbine, schools nationwide began looking at school safety issues more and more, Stephens says. K-12 and higher education institutions increased their interagency agreements with local law enforcement, and more schools began adding metal detectors and closed circuit television systems to their infrastructures. Greater emphasis was placed on developing threat assessment protocols, allowing educators, mental health professionals and law enforcement to better react to campus threats and violence.

“As tragic as it is, often times it does take a school crisis or tragedy to get school officials to become more serious about putting their plans together,” he says.

Since taking the reins at NSSC, Stephens has facilitated the growth of security systems and programs at schools across the U.S. Originally a federally funded entity, NSSC is now a nonprofit that conducts fee-based services ranging from school site safety assessments to customized school safety and training programs.

Other focuses of the organization include providing expert witness and trial consultant services, and producing publications that report on research and trends in school safety best practices in campus security.

The NSSC works with approximately 80 school districts and organizations per year, providing assessments and training, Stephens says.

“Over the past 25 years, we have conducted more than 2,000 training programs nationwide,” he says. “We were asked by the U.S. Department of Justice to develop the federal training program for 10,000 federally funded school police officers. We created the curriculum and developed the training program, and provided that training throughout the United States to both educators and school resource officers.”

Stephens’ journey from educator to school safety expert began on a traditional path that was soon disrupted by the Vietnam War. Earning both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Pepperdine, Stephens was in the midst of his first teaching contract when he was drafted into the United States Army. He rose to the rank of sergeant and served at Fort Hood, Texas, and in Vietnam. Stephens later returned to the West Coast, where he eventually worked as a teacher, assistant superintendent and school board member. He received his doctorate from the University of Southern California.

During his career, Stephens says that he has worked with legislators and educators at almost every level on school safety reform, including testifying before the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee, the House Committee on Education and Civil Rights, and other House and Senate committees. Much of the educational materials and training programs that NSSC develops is based upon the personal experiences of school security officers, administrators, and teachers.

“What we have done since the beginning of our operation has been to suggest model policies and practices that will enhance safe schools,” Stephens says. “We have always had a bias towards what works. We want to find out the common practices that help school administrators to be more effective in their work.”

Stephens added that over the years, the NSSC has held post-crisis meetings with educators and administrators after violent encounters to determine what changed within their schools systems following the situations. These meetings have produced valuable lesson plans, he says.
While policy remains an important facet to reducing school security threats, another factor is the school’s design, Stephens says. Most schools were not designed to be defended against, while others actually encourage campus crime through architectural barriers or areas that are difficult to supervise.

“If you were designing a facility where you wanted to control visitor traffic, you would want to minimize pedestrian and vehicular entrance and exit points,” Stephens says. “You visit some of these high schools and they have over 100 different points of ingress and egress and it’s an enormous task to try and control all that.”

Though the use of surveillance cameras and other technologies have become more prevalent in school security, it’s the changing attitudes of students – and the utilization of a strong supervision plan – that remain two of the greatest factors in school safety, he says.

“An interesting study came out of the University of Michigan almost ten years ago that basically said despite all the high-tech strategies that address school crime prevention, the single most effective strategy for keeping schools safe is the physical presence of a responsible adult in the immediate vicinity,” Stephens say.

“Since Columbine, there has often been this idea that if we just use more high-tech strategies we can prevent crime,” he adds. “All we know is that the high-tech strategies can be helpful in crime prevention, but it is still about how you address and change the attitudes and actions of young people.”

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