Schools in the 21st century will be specialized, personalized and more like colleges, said Prakash Nair, principal of Prakash Nair Consulting, a school planning consulting firm.
School stockholders and community leaders met at the 21st Century School Design Workshop Monday at the Livingston Student Center. The workshop focused on education reform, design and redesign issues facing American schools today.
There is a "need to go back to the drawing board and make sure these strategies are implemented," said Phillip Cacossa, director of Design Resources Group, an architect organization.
Jeff Lackney, principal of investigations for Great Schools New Jersey said school buildings often use the same designs over and over again, so the workshop Great Schools New Jersey, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant Initiative, looked at state-of-the-art building designs to fit students' needs.
Representatives from Camden, Elizabeth, Paterson, Jersey City, Newark and Plainfield - all Abbott Districts, attended the workshop.
It is important to "make a school conducive to the environment," said Gary Cleveland, senior project officer for NJ Schools Construction Corporation, who recently announced the allotment of grants to six Abbott Districts to build new schools in areas - including New Brunswick.
One SCC initiative includes designing Science Park High School in Newark to have solar panels and making it energy efficient.
Schools need not be stand-alone buildings like fortresses, Lackney said. Students should be able to take ownership and pride in schools connected to the community.
The Health and Related Professions Academy in Paterson sent students on a camping trip to foster team building. Before they left, they were told, "Whenever you go somewhere you represent yourself, family and HARP academy," said Isabelle Grassi, vice principal at HARP.
Studies show theme-based schools, like HARP, are more successful, Nair said.
The HARP academy is a medical and arts school that began in 1994 as a small school within a large high school, Grassi said.
The school is currently at a temporary off-site location that educates about 141 students. The new site, which will be built by 2006, will house 300 people and will be in an L-shaped building. At the workshop, plans for the school - including getting further funding from non-profit organizations - were discussed.
"[Our] vision is not only to assist [with] young people's education for the 21st century but to educate the community and parents," as well as partner with medical facilities, Grassi said.
HARP is located in one of the 28 urban school districts considered an Abbott District. They receive funding for their new school from the state's budget.
The Abbott Schools Initiative provides the state's poorest school children with funding to close the learning gap between urban and suburban schools.
The 21st Century School Fund was founded in 1994 to aid communities in creating healthy and safe learning environments.
The current national budget for public school facilities is greater than it ever has been. In 2001, the budget for school capital projects was $26.8 billion, according to a report by Citizen Oversight of Public School Construction Programs.
In Plainfield, meetings are held weekly with parents and students to facilitate the schools' progress, and help parents "visualize what's happening," said Amy Decker, associate planner in regional design at the Regional Plan Association in New York, a non-profit organization.
The project in Plainfield includes making the area safer and more pleasant for the community and children who walk to school, said Robert Lane, director of the design program at Regional Plan Association.
"Kids who are healthy perform better," Lane said. Sidewalks and bicycle paths are important in making the environment pleasant for residents, he said. "By redeveloping a community that already exist you're ... making a better place,"
Route 30, the Delaware River and Cooper River bound North Camden. Within the area, there are four schools in the process of being redesigned.
"You're not going to have a teacher standing right in front of a chalkboard," said Cacossa. There will be larger classrooms and personalized learning.
Some of the grade levels will be changed in these schools so the middle school can take in all of the seventh through ninth graders.
Robert Hammond, the director of Fair Share Housing/Northgate Park, has worked on the Camden project for a year and a half. The plans include shutting down the use of 6th Street, which currently blocks one of the schools from a park, he said.
