I’m going to come right out and say it: Building a green school doesn’t have to cost a penny more. You’ve heard that green schools save money over time, reducing energy, water and even healthcare expenses. What you may not know is that, these days, a green school can be built for a price comparable to a conventionally designed facility.
I don’t have to prove it. Your peers have done it for me.
Kenneth Trump, president of Cleveland-based consulting firm National School Safety and Security Services, has 25 years of experience at public and private schools in urban, suburban and rural settings. He has worked with jurisdictions in all 50 states and has authored several books and articles on school safety. He discussed the topic with during a phone interview.
Every year the Modular Building Institute sponsors an awards program that recognizes the best projects in commercial modular building design and construction.
The ceremony to present the awards was held earlier this year during MBI’s annual convention and tradeshow in Las Vegas. Each entry was reviewed by a panel of industry and non-industry construction and code experts, architects and engineers, and marketing professionals.
A full list of awards and case studies are available at:
Ted Howard remembers the good old days and the not so good old days at Seattle’s Garfield High School.
Since opening its doors in 1923, it has always been an ethnic melting pot unlike any other in the city — a place where students learned to accept and respect individual differences. At the height of the civil rights movement, it was the only Seattle venue where Martin Luther King, Jr. chose to speak.
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In the pursuit of knowledge, today’s students sometimes want to put their feet up and lounge with a café latte, while they express fresh epiphanies on a blog or live Internet chat as robotic arms pass research materials to them.
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The school construction process is full of potential pitfalls, but projects become exponentially more complex when an American architectural firm works in a country that is thousands of miles away, where the language, culture and construction protocols are different.
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GREENVILLE, S.C. — After years of struggling with access and mobility issues, officials at Greenville County Schools opened J.L. Mann High School, a magnet school that puts an emphasis on science and mathematics and can accommodate all of the district’s special-needs students.
ATLANTA — The DeKalb County School System started construction of a new high school that is expected to achieve LEED silver certification and set new building standards for the district and the state.
Arabia Mountain High School, scheduled to open in January 2009, will be the first LEED-certified public school in the state of Georgia, according to reports.
Sustainable design concepts can take hold in a variety of different ways. Some school planners are forced to take a subtle approach, incorporating design techniques that offer the most cost-effective solutions for communities that are still not sold on the legitimacy of the green building. Other planners have the luxury of stretching their arms and grasping new ideas that push the boundaries of what can be done to produce high-performance, sustainable schools.
