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Back to a new school
(by Kara Krekeler - September 16, 2009)
Since school started Aug. 26, the halls of Crossroads College Preparatory School have been filled with 230 students, bustling back and forth between classrooms.
But they’ve also been filled with visiting university administrators and teachers from the School District of Clayton, Washington University and places as far-flung as Ohio, Florida and even Korea. The visitors are all there to check out the school’s environmentally friendly renovations and 10,000-square-foot addition.
Over the past several months, much of the school has undergone a makeover — widening corridors, adding skylights and eco-friendly lighting, tearing up a parking lot to create green space and adding three science labs and a library that is removed from the hustle and bustle of the main school. The completed project, which cost the school $5 million, is on track to receive LEED platinum status — the highest available — from the U.S. Green Buildings Council.
“It’s already made a difference. The building feels healthier,” said Billy Handmaker, head of the school. “Kids are just hanging out here. They’re happy being in these spaces.”
Among the environmentally friendly changes are an increase in natural light through skylights, walls of glass in the library and science rooms and a series of light-sensing fixtures that become dimmer as natural light increases; a vegetable garden that has supplied daily tomatoes for the cafeteria; and porous surfaces throughout the exterior. Also, a rain garden will be planted with native Missouri plants later this month.
The building is also responsive to the people working and learning within it. Lights go off at 6 p.m. as people exit the building, while each thermostat has a carbon dioxide sensor that allows for an optimal balance of CO2 and oxygen to keep the students and staff from feeling tired, Handmaker said. A flat-panel screen just inside the front door gives constant updates of the building’s energy consumption.
A team effort
Handmaker said that the initial spark for the project came several years ago when Crossroads added on its gym and cafeteria. At that point, the school’s board of directors realized that several other additions were necessary, including new science classrooms and a new library, and wrote them into the school’s master plan.
At the same time, Handmaker and a handful of Crossroads administrators went to a conference hosted by the U.S. Green Buildings Council, an experience Handmaker described as “life-changing.”
“All these things came together,” he said, noting that green renovations and additions would respect the school’s three founding principles of scholarship, imagination and responsibility. Students would be able to learn from the process, which would creatively address problems while remaining environmentally responsible, Handmaker said.
Before starting the design process, the Crossroads board decided on three “non-negotiables” — that the project would include a new library and science spaces, that it would not go over its $5 million budget and that it would be green, Handmaker said.
“We didn’t have the choice of backing off of those” three criteria, Handmaker said. “It had all the potential to be acrimonious and difficult, but it was fun. This building is a model for collaboration.”
Indeed, everyone from architects and environmental consultants to teachers and students were involved in the planning process to turn the former Kroger grocery store into an environmentally friendly educational space. Two students, both of whom graduated before the construction was completed, were involved with the design process from the beginning, weighing in on how students would — or wouldn’t — use the new space.
“They met with the architects, picked out furniture and consulted the whole way through,” often pointing out design flaws that hadn’t occurred to the adults involved, Handmaker said. “You don’t do stuff for kids without knowing how they’d use it. If it doesn’t work for kids, why do it?”
Crossroads senior Lauren Fields said that even though she wasn’t involved in the design process, she likes that students had some say in their new building.
“It’s nice to know that it wasn’t just adults, that it was people who know how we use the building every day,” she said, sitting in the new library, which she described as more organized, bigger and more comfortable for studying than the previous library. The old library is now a Mac computer lab.
“It was interesting to see the [school’s] transformation. At one point, all of the ceiling panels were out,” Fields said. “It’s a lot different now. One of the halls was more cramped and congested, the library was a lot smaller and there weren’t as many places to sit.”
Eventually, the plan is to demolish the older portion of the building and construct a new two-story wing, Handmaker said, noting that while the green thing to do would be reusing the building, its foundation wouldn’t support a second story. For that reason, the older wing hasn’t seen many upgrades during the process and it is easy to see where the new part ends and the old begins.
“If you want a good school, you need great teachers and excellent kids. We just needed the space to accommodate that and now we have that,” Handmaker said.
Green learning
Even before the renovation and addition, Crossroads was already home to several environmentally conscious academic programs, including advanced placement environmental studies and student “stream teams,” which study and clean streams in Wellston and out state Missouri and report to the Missouri Department of Conservation.
But this year, the school will further incorporate environmental responsibility into its classes as biology students manage the rain and vegetable gardens on campus and other classes occasionally venture outside to a new gravel-based outdoor classroom.
The entire eighth grade has started a sustainability project in its social studies class. Last year, the same 44 students conducted audits of the LEED construction and started carpooling, recycling and composting projects. This year they’ll apply that knowledge by creating individual projects that they’ll hone through peer-based think tanks, said middle school Director John Merritt.
“By the end of the year, they’ll have created something tangible and real that can make a difference in the world,” Merritt said. “I can’t even tell you what they’re going to do because they’re still working on ideas.”
Merritt said that he hopes the students take inspiration from the green portions of the building and include everything from vegetable gardens to monitoring energy output. After brainstorming ideas, the students will work on the logistics of their plans, including how to accomplish their goals by reaching out to local businesses and politicians.
“If nothing else, we’ll teach them how to manage their time and how to follow through on tasks,” Merritt said. “But hopefully, we’ll have plans that are sustainable and maybe even bigger than the eighth-graders.”
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