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Back to School: Smaller schools are safer schools, experts say Last in an eight-part series Sunday, August 29, 1999 By Carmen J. Lee, Post-Gazette Education Writer
At the School of Environmental Studies in Apple Valley, Minn., no surveillance cameras peek around corners, no security guards patrol the halls.
Principal Dan Bodette boasts that since the 400-student high school opened more than four years ago, not one fight has marred its familial intimacy. He can count on one hand the times a student has been brought to his office to be disciplined.
Bodette says the school's small size creates a feeling of closeness that helps reduce tension, and its design fosters a sense of security. The building's features include the placement of the office near the main entrance and the division of the school into four houses of 100 students each who stay with the same teachers all year.
This is the last article in an eight-part PG series examining a range of educational issues.
Previous articles:
Part I: A shortage of principals.
Part II: Non-Catholic families are finding Catholic schools a blessing
Part III: Ninth grade proves to be a pivotal year for youths
Part IV: Building good character through just a trait a week
Part V: Science classes trade textbooks for a hands-on approach
Part VI: D.A.R.E. is easy and free, but does it really work?
Part VII: Scheduling can be a monumental task
"When you warehouse 2,000-plus kids in a building, they feel disconnected," Bodette said. "Within our houses, each student has a workstation with cork areas where they can put up photos and [display] their hobbies.
"You learn about students by walking by their desks. This defuses problems because no one is anonymous. The kids are connected to each other and connected with the teachers. It's kind of like a family."
Spurred by shootings at schools in Littleton, Colo., and other towns, schools across the country have focused on making their buildings more secure by hiring security guards and installing surveillance cameras and metal detectors.
But several architects and security experts say the design of a school's building and grounds can also help deter violence by helping students feel comfortable and making dangerous intruders easier to spot.
And while school officials in the Pittsburgh area may not buy into every line of safe school design theories, parts of the message seem to be getting through.
"Obviously, this is a high priority, and in light of what has happened this year, we are very sensitive to the issue," said John Walluk, facilities director for the Pittsburgh Public Schools. He cited as an example the $25 million renovation at Westinghouse High School in Homewood that included constructing a security station at the main entrance and installing security cameras and monitoring devices.
"A lot of school officials think closed circuit television is the answer to all their problems, and it's not," said John Reginaldi, a crime prevention specialist from Baltimore with nearly 20 years' experience in law enforcement. "You have to address the culture of violence in the schools."
While the approaches and terminology may differ, architects and security experts who focus on designing safe buildings agree on several features that can help or hinder a school's security.
Maze-like hallways; narrow, enclosed stairwells; blind corners; and hidden nooks and crannies should be avoided, they said.
Among the recommended design characteristics were:
Fences, trimmed bushes where intruders can't hide and lighting that meets the standards of the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America also help by improving "natural surveillance" by school staff, Reginaldi said.
Bruce Jilk, an architect with the Cuningham Group in Minneapolis, said certain building designs could help students feel better about themselves and their school, thus helping to reduce friction that can lead to confrontations.
Integrating school buildings into the community, including in downtown areas, helps youngsters feel more a part of society rather than isolated from it, he said. Jilk believes such buildings are preferable to "citadel" schools that are prevalent across the country, where large schools are placed on a hill and surrounded by parking lots and playing fields.
Workstations can foster a sense of identity and control, Jilk said. Small schools or groupings help students feel rooted and connected rather than alienated and alone. Commons areas encourage relationships with others and help reduce defensiveness.
"People can't learn in a hostile environment. Those who shoot others are usually the recipients of bullying. They're outsiders who've been picked on," said C. John Malzone, spokesman for Shuller, Ferris, Linstrom & Associates, an architecture firm in Fayetteville, N.C. "We try to create an environment where students and teachers are working together."
Malzone's firm has received awards for its design of the Jack Britt High School in Fayetteville, which opens in fall 2000. It has as its central focus a two-story, naturally lit atrium that serves as the student commons, cafeteria and lobby for the auditorium.
School staff can easily monitor the commons because of its openness. Four other North Carolina schools are being built based on the layout of Britt High School.
Jilk designed the School for Environmental Studies, which, in addition to the four houses, has workstations and a large commons area near the entrance where students eat meals, attend assemblies and hold dances.
Although Jilk believes the 400-member student body at the Minnesota school is the ideal, he said he was able to apply the same principles when designing Heritage High School in Newport News, Va., which has about 1,400 students.
The two-story school is divided into three houses of about 460 students. Each house has upstairs and downstairs commons areas, and classroom windows look out onto those spacious rooms.
Unlike the School for Environmental Studies, however, Heritage High School has surveillance cameras and security officers.
While some schools in Pennsylvania have been stocking up on electronic monitoring devices to help deter violence, some also have or will have at least a few of the recommended safe school design features.
Daniel Dancu, vice president of Ingraham Planning Associates, an educational facilities planning group with offices in Butler and Fairfax, Va., said his firm worked with architects in developing the award-winning designs of two schools in the Millcreek Township School District -- Belle Valley Elementary School, which has a 1,000-student capacity, and Walnut Creek Middle School, which can house 750 pupils.
In both cases, the Erie County schools divide the student body into clusters that help pupils and staff become better acquainted, Dancu said.
As part of the renovations at five elementary schools in the North Allegheny School District, the office in each building is being moved close to the main entrances so that administrators can better monitor who enters them.
Walluk said some lockers at Brashear High School in Beechview were being moved to eliminate hidden nooks and blind corners and to give teachers a clearer view down hallways.
But even the most well-conceived designs are no guarantee that violence will be averted.
It was in the large commons area at the front of Heritage High School in Conyers, Ga., that Thomas Solomon, 15, shot six classmates in May after hiding a rifle in his pant leg.
Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., had a commons area at one end of the school that also served as a cafeteria. The young gunmen, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris fired shots and threw a pipe bomb into that room, but school officials said no one was killed or injured there.
"None of these things are going to stop something like Columbine," said Jim Biehle, president of Inside/Out Architecture Inc. in Clayton, Mo., and chairman of the American Institute of Architects' committee on education architecture. "When somebody is nuts, there's nothing we as architects can do to stop that."
Still, Biehle said because a school's design can affect how students think of themselves and relate to others, incorporating designs that promote safety is worth the investment.
He and other architects said that, too many times, schools were renovated later at a higher cost to include such features, which would have been cheaper if school officials had been willing to pay for them in the beginning.
"One of the things I'm trying to do as committee chairman is to tell [school officials] that fast and cheap isn't the way to do it," Biehle said. "The gist is pay me now or pay me later."
Some changes were made at Columbine before classes resumed last week. Last year, the 231,000-square-foot building had 20 entrances. About 2,000 students in grades nine through 12 attend the school, and there are no divisions into smaller clusters or houses.
Now, most of the entrances to the school are locked, leaving access through five, said Marilyn Saltzman, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County School District, where the school is situated. Security doors and 16 surveillance cameras were installed. An additional staircase was constructed and other changes were made for psychological rather than safety reasons, Saltzman said. "It's an educational process," Biehle said of the efforts he and other architects are making to encourage their colleagues and school officials to consider building features that promote safety.
"We're trying to create a sense of pride of place, a sense of self-worth. More people are building with these considerations in mind and some of the designs we're seeing are pretty neat."
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School size limited to about 400 to 450 students, or dividing a large school into clusters to create the feel of small schools.