CEFPI Offers Up a Winning Guide

Just like the first Cracker Jacks’ box of the baseball season, I ripped open the package to devour the contents of the binder entitled "Creating Connections: The CEFPI Guide for Educational Facility Planning." I dove into the middle of the document. It was evident that this edition was more than just an update. It takes a refreshing, useful, appealing approach utilizing best practices, case studies and a suggested reading list with web citation. In Chapter 7, I found a new approach to answering a standard and typical question: How much land do we need for a new school?

At first it brought back memories of standing in front of a school board meeting reciting the old guideline, "10, 20 or 30 acres depending on the type of school – elementary, middle or high, plus one acre for every 100 students to be housed." This answer had always seemed to be overly simple and awkwardly incomplete. There always seemed to be a series of follow-up questions: Does that include a football practice field for the varsity? How many tennis courts are there? Does the marching band have its own practice area or do they have to use the student parking area? Do the teachers have a separate parking area? All of these normal reasonable questions were always left hanging with my overly simplified response.

This new handbook takes a different approach and according to the Guide’s co-author, Sue Robertson, REFP; "Chapter 7 – Conducting Site Evaluations and Selections identifies the ways in which the school site relates to the educational program, the importance of school siting in creating walkable neighborhoods, considerations for selecting a school site, and criteria for site evaluation."

"One of the most widely debated and costly issues in selecting a school site is the amount of acreage required. Creating Connections discusses an additive or functional approach to this issue. Using this approach, the educational program and functional requirements, such as size of the building’s footprint, number of parking spaces, amount of car drop off/pick up queuing, number of buses, number and size of play fields, etc., are used to determine the square footage required. These program and functional requirements are summed and a Net to Gross Factor (10%-30%) is applied to provide walkways and buffers between activity areas. This yields the total usable square footage that can be converted to usable acres by dividing by 43,560 square feet/acre. The actual site size may be larger, since the property may contain features such as easements, environmentally sensitive areas, and extreme slope changes that are non-usable areas."

To me, this functional approach is professionally more responsible. I reflected back to my years on the Board of the Council of Educational Facilities Planners International and the desire at that time to update the "Guide." My hat is off to the CEFPI Board, the staff and all who contributed to this success. In all significant publications, there is always a project champion. Co-author Nancy Myers, Ed.D., REFP, shared with me that Steve Young, immediate past president of CEFPI was "instrumental in ensuring that the direction of the new Guide would establish CEFPI as the planning organization. It was through his tenacity and can-do attitude that the new Guide became a hallmark piece for the organization."

Jim Brady AIA, REFP, is the executive director for the America’s Schoolhouse Council, which is dedicated to excellence in planning, building, and maintaining our nation’s schools. Jim resides in Austin, Texas, he can be reached via e-mail at JimBradyASC@aol.com.

For more information about Creating Connections: The CEFPI Guide for Educational Facility Planning, visit www.cefpi.org/pubs.html