Education is slowly changing.  By 2050 it will look substantially different, but the buildings we are building today are expected to last forty years or more with little or no change.  This presents a challenge to anyone concerned with how facilities facilitate education.  It presents a mandate of responsibility for anyone concerned with bringing the greatest amount of long term value to students, to educators, and to communities.

Future-proofing meets that mandate.  To bring lasting value, a facility must be sustainable.  We tend to think of sustainability in terms of material resources and technology, but sustainable educational delivery is just as critical. This is a human resource issue, made visible through facilities. Ironically, planning for changes in educational delivery is not clearly understood among educators and facilities managers. Too many buildings designed today are just new versions of the same old thing, meeting today’s perceived needs, but destined to hamper education in the long term future.

If school districts are not careful, they will build just as many future restrictions into their new buildings as they have in their current buildings. Inappropriate and old fashioned buildings can limit innovation in educational delivery and discourage even the most determined leaders and optimistic teachers from breaking out of the box.

The past forty years have seen a slow but steady shift in educational delivery. School is now more personalized, delivery is more varied, and educators work less in isolation. Indeed, teaming adds expertise and sophistication to everything from delivery of fifth grade math and science to determining the most effective educational interventions based on test data analysis. The shift from the teacher as holder of knowledge to facilitator and guide for students actively engaged in projects is upon us.

Critical thinking skills and emotional intelligence are recognized key measures of student success. Students work collaboratively, undertake project-based learning, have regular exhibitions of their work, and lead parent conferences. Parents and business leaders are actively sought out as essential supporters of learning.

Middle schools were invented as an educationally-driven restructuring of junior highs. School structure is again being challenged but now across the K-12 spectrum, and particularly at the high school years. Where we once created large schools for their efficiency in operations, we now often create small schools for their effectiveness in learning. Technology, the defining characteristic of a future school, promises to steadily challenge the basics of educational delivery now that our younger teachers are on the same side of the digital divide as our students.

Virtually all of these changes have facilities implications. While these changes may not be evident in all schools, they are highly visible as a pattern in many schools across the country. They promise to redefine the nature of school over the next several decades. We must anticipate them, and learn from them, and in doing so future-proof our buildings

Future-proofing
A future-proof facility anticipates and supports educational change without expensive remodeling. It is inherently a flexible building that can be used as appropriate today, but allows future reinterpretation and reassignment of programs and functions. A future-proof building is the escort to a probable future.

Future-proofing has several challenges. Many practices which may be the new standard for the long term future may be nonexistent or only embryonic in some school districts, and therefore may not be visible to those planning new facilities. Many districts will not be building for the next several decades; thus the issue of future-proofing is one of planning regular upgrades and improvements, not necessarily new construction.

To prepare for facilities for an uncertain but probable future, one must have some sense of the range of possibilities of that future. Looking at examples of national emerging best practices helps. More importantly, however, the best tool for future-proofing facilities is not something physical but something intellectual.

Attitude
The best future-proofing is achieved by changing attitudes.

• Think successors. Plan your building for the successors of the successors of all involved in the process today.
• Anticipate change. Most participants in school design processes have a tendency to define needs based on current educational practices, not anticipated future practices. Teachers tend to want to get all the stuff they haven’t had for the last 20 years. Thinking this way almost guarantees that any new building will not be future-proof.
• Be critical. Many states have lists of spaces to be used as a basis of school construction. Most lists have frozen traditional educational practices into the names and sizes of spaces. Collaborative, flexible spaces for teaching and learning rarely appear. Nor do effective spaces for parent engagement. Using such state lists as “the standard” can lead to a false sense of security and future-unfit buildings.
• Beware of turf. While we like to think that planning of school facilities is for the benefit of students, it is often more for the benefit of adults. Schools, especially high schools, are often places of teacher turf wars which limit long term flexibility for change. Collaboration and sharing are the guidewords of the future. Turf gets in the way.
• Think flexibility not specificity. Ask that every space conceived have several alternate uses. Name rooms broadly to encourage future reinterpretation instead of using narrow terms that lock them into a fixed use.
• Think mitten not glove. A good long lasting building is not a tight fit to a single idea of school, but a platform or container that allows “wiggle room” and lets school evolve. A future-proof facility must support several ideas of educational delivery. Chances are, since change is usually step change, any future facility will be asked to serve those several ideas simultaneously.

Next month I will show examples of how these changes of attitude lead to successful innovative future-proofed facilities. Plus, I’ll cover a few tactics for existing buildings.

Dr. Frank M. Locker consults as an educational planner and school designer from a base in the greater Boston area.  He was the 1999-2000 Planner of the Year of the Council of Educational Facilities Planners, International (CEFPI).  This national award recognized his achievements over twenty-five years of educational planning, school design, and service to the profession. A frequent speaker at regional and national conferences, he was cited for his research in classroom design and participatory planning.  Current projects are in Kent, England; Cayman Islands; Machias, ME; S. Burlington, VT; Battle Creek, MI; Middletown, RI; and Bethel, AK. Know any good swiss cheese examples? Try fl@franklocker.com.