Learning from Mt. Vernon: One school district makes a place for the students of

Learning from Mt. Vernon: One school district makes a place for the students of the future

By EDWARD PETERS
Director of Facilities, Mount Vernon School District

The Mount Vernon School District has just completed a major construction program that demonstrates the value of intensively managing the planning and design process.

The Mount Vernon School District saved money by building one library (left) to serve elementary and middle school students. All of the buildings were designed by The Henry Klein Partnership.
Photos courtesy Henry Klein Partnership.
Two weeks ago, the school district celebrated completion of its $38 million first phase of construction. This program provides both new and modernized facilities as well as new District-wide data and voice networks, a renovated High School athletic field, and purchase of more than 100 acres of new school sites.

The district has exceeded all of its objectives, opened its schools on time, and kept several million dollars for future projects. The centerpiece of the program is a combined elementary/middle school campus that establishes new standards for sharing facilities among educational programs and with the community.

The highlight of this effort is the new Little Mountain Elementary/Mount Baker Middle Schools campus, the largest single project the District has ever constructed, and one of the largest public buildings completed this year in Washington. This unique project provides separate classroom buildings for grades K-6 and 7-8 and a shared facility, the Cascade Commons, which houses the library, cafeteria, gymnasia, and music facilities for both schools. Only two other school districts in the U.S. are known to have constructed such facilities.

Mount Vernon's new middle school.
Three years ago, the Mount Vernon School District faced problems familiar to many Washington School Districts:

The Middle School was so overcrowded, grades were split on a double shift; the eighth grade started at 6:45 a.m., and the seventh grade didn't leave until after 5:30 p.m.

All five elementary schools were operating beyond capacity at every grade level. Three of them, each designed for 550 students, had enrollments approaching 700 students. Every campus had several "portable" classrooms, totaling the equivalent of another school.

Only one of the District's seven schools rated "good" on the State's Building Condition Evaluation Form. Two were rated "poor" to "unacceptable" and the rest barely made it into the "fair" category.

These ratings were not merely statistical: roofs leaked, rooms were the schools were drafty and stale, walls lacked seismic stability, boilers were worn-out.

The District was $90 million short of the funds needed to correct these conditions. Three previous bond issues had received 55 percent to 58 percent voter support -- but not the 60 percent needed.

This is how one district met its educational and budget goals.

First, the District gave the community a voice in determining the scope and the cost of the bond program.

Throughout the 1993-1994 school year the District conducted a massive effort to involve the community. Five community wide forums explored the need for new and renovated facilities and different strategies for providing them.

A "blue ribbon" citizen's committee recommended the size and content of the September 1994 bond issue. The District's Board of Directors approved the Committee's recommendations for a $29.5 million bond measure and the District's voters approved the measure.

In the bond resolution, the District committed to renovate Jefferson Elementary, expand Washington Elementary, construct both a new elementary and a new middle school, and purchase property for future expansion. All of these projects posed special challenges, which were compounded by extremely tight budgets. Early cost estimates, conducted without any design, indicated that implementing the educational programs for the four schools would cost $35 million to $40 million. The "Blue Ribbon" committee was emphatic that $29.5 million was the maximum feasible local support.

The District was eligible for approximately $8 million in State matching funds, but the State was emphatic that there was no guarantee when those funds might be available, if ever. These circumstances meant that throughout the planning, design and bidding of each job both the cost and the revenue available were in flux.

Space, time and money

It was essential that the District find solutions for each project that did not compromise the success of the other projects.

Besides money, the District faced challenges of space and time on all four schools. Because overcrowding was so severe, there was no opportunity to relocate students from Jefferson and Washington while the buildings were being gutted for remodeling. For the new schools, the District needed two sites, but rapid residential development had consumed most large, buildable properties. The District had identified one site large enough to accommodate two schools, but it wasn't for sale. Eighteen months of negotiations for this site culminated in a purchase just before passage of the bond measure. Running four different bond elections used up so much time that all four projects were at least two years overdue before they started design.

Student safety is paramount;
Educational program determines building design, not vice versa;
The major opportunities to add value and save money occur in the planning and design phases;
Educational Program and Budget must be kept in balance at every stage;
Aesthetics can lead but not exceed community standards;
Savings on any one project accrue to the overall program.

The District was convinced that sharing facilities between schools would enhance educational programs, provide more opportunities for community use and save money. In addition, the District defined its educational program space requirements -- and their costs -- very carefully so that it could keep the project within budget.

Little Mountain Elementary and Mount Baker Middle Schools are the first all-new schools the District has built since 1987. The District "backed into" the shared facilities concept for these schools because it was able to secure only a single site. The District already had a very successful student tutoring program in which middle school students went back to their old elementaries. This experience argued for locating the schools close together. There also seemed to be an advantage in building one large library rather than two smaller ones. Because a kitchen is some the most expensive space in a school, it made sense to build one, not two.

Sharing and value

This level of facilities sharing was carried into the initial architectural programming, for which the District retained an independent consultant, Advanced Planning and Research for Architecture. That firm's detailed examination of all functions revealed a number of other opportunities for sharing. Among the most successful were the sharing of music and physical education facilities.

The integrated education complex.
The Cascade Commons features a band room, a choral/orchestra classroom on the cafeteria stage, an electronic keyboard classroom, and an elementary classroom for general music. Although most of these facilities are designated primarily for middle school use they are also available and used by the elementary school.

Similarly, the P. E. facilities provide a large gym having a maple floor, a smaller gym having a resilient floor, and mat room, having a vinyl tile floor and a full size wrestling mat. These three rooms provide four teaching stations and four different floor surfaces that can be used by any grade level for a variety of activities. Another benefit of sharing that arose at this stage was that a kitchen large enough to serve two schools is large enough to serve several others as well, at no extra expense. District food service was able to obtain many of the economies of a central kitchen for the District.

Although facilities sharing was a major interest, architectural programming focused principally on middle and elementary curriculums.

Both schools were designed to serve 550 students. The district and its consultants determined that this size was the best compromise between educational program and capital cost.

Mount Vernon has a well-defined middle school curriculum that groups students and teachers into "cores." In each core, four teachers -- science, math, language and social studies -- share the same group of 120 students and coordinate academics. "Encore" or enrichment classes include music, art, life skills and technology. This educational approach lent itself to clear spatial definition at both programming and design.

Because the District had five elementary schools to its one middle school, there was greater variety in the elementary curriculum and greater need to accommodate different and changing educational programs.

By tying the architectural program to a space and dollar budget the district established cost control from the beginning. The next task was to translate the hundreds of individual spaces defined in the programming phase into coherent structures that could be built on the available site.

The District and its design team, led by the Henry Klein Partnership, constantly balanced functionality, appearance and budget throughout all design phases.

During the Design Development phase, the District determined that it needed to cut $2 million to keep the project within budget. With the assistance of an outside value engineering team, led by Gary Morgan, the design team reduced the size of the cafeteria/auditorium, forcing the district to commit to staggered lunches between the schools, or use of common areas or classrooms for eating. Although this was not ideal, it was the only non-educational space that could be reduced. The other major savings came from consolidating all of the P. E. rooms into a single "big box" structure, and simplifying the roofs and mechanical rooms.

This intense design process has produced buildings that met all of the District's goals.

Mount Baker Middle School is a two story, wood-framed building using ground-faced masonry veneer and stucco, and a metal roof. Clerestory windows provide light through a series of curved wells to the lower floor corridors. The corridors are offset between the two floors so that both floors can have natural light in the corridors. The building provides classrooms for four "cores" and for encore and special education programs.

Each core has one set of classrooms joined by a movable partition to permit larger group activities. Each core includes a science laboratory and these rooms abut a shared storage a preparation area.

The Cascade Commons is four separate buildings joined by an enclosed lobby or mall area: library, cafeteria, gymnasia, and music. All four buildings use ground-faced masonry walls, steel trusses, pan deck and metal roof.

The masonry block for each building, and the two schools as well, is a different, but related color, to create a village atmosphere. Each building, except the library uses a relatively conventional rectangular form. The four buildings are set slightly off-square from each other to conform to site contours and to create a more natural and interesting space for the mall area. The library is sited to provide a clear view of Mount Baker from the reading area and uses a semicircular curtain wall to offset the simple mass of the gym building.

Little Mountain Elementary is a single-story building, arranged in three classroom wings and an administration wing, that uses the same exterior materials as Mount Baker. All of the wings radiate from the "Great Hall," an area about the size of two classrooms having a high, sloping ceiling and clerestory windows. This space at the center of the school functions as a small auditorium, indoor recess area, display space and general gathering spot.

Each wing has different colored corridors and has seven classrooms, an activity area and a conference room. Two sets of classrooms in each wing are joined by double-doors and windows to permit team-teaching. Currently, the school is organized by grade levels; grades K-2 in one wing, 3-4 in another and 5-6 in the third. However, each wing could house grades K-6 for "school within a school."

The District opened the schools for students on September 3, 1997. Little Mountain is already operating near its enrollment capacity and Mount Baker is using all four core areas. Staff and students are still learning how best to use the facility and initial reactions are very enthusiastic. The Washington Chapter of the Council of Educational Facilities Planners International has scheduled its March meeting at the new schools.

Edward Peters has managed the Mount Vernon School District construction program since 1993. He has been a project management consultant, business development manager, public works official and budget analyst.

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