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Quick Poll on what local residents think of saving money for new schools (Wakefield High just came in at a record 115 million dollars without any land cost). Schools are getting more expensive in this area what are your thoughts of incorporating highschools into high rise office in cooperative projects with developers?
- Worst idea ever because...
- I don't know if it will work because...
- Skeptical, but worth giving it a shot...
- Good idea if ...
- Great Idea all around because ...
$115 million for one high school? Heck, even if you gave 2,000 kids $20,000 each to go to top notch private schools, that would still only cost $40 million. I say we just hand out checks to the parents and save a boatload. My nephew goes to a crazy-good private school for about 12K.
$115 million for one high school? Heck, even if you gave 2,000 kids $20,000 each to go to top notch private schools, that would still only cost $40 million. I say we just hand out checks to the parents and save a boatload. My nephew goes to a crazy-good private school for about 12K.
Maybe look at it this way. High schools go how long until they get renovated? Have no idea, but would guess at least 25 years. 2,000 kids *25 years = 50,000. $115 million / 50,000 is $2,300 per child per year. It costs less to rennovate a school than build a new one, so this number would actually be less.
Your blog post suggests the renovations at Wakefield have been completed. I think they just broke ground a few months ago and have much work to do before they finish.
I think the article was actually referring to the recently completed Washington-Lee High School. In fact, the urban model that the article is describing is W-L, a 4 story school with public recreational and educational facilities (pool, fields, gym, planetarium) two blocks away from the subway, and near an area of density. The new B-CC High School in downtown Bethesda also fits that prototype.
The population at Wakefield High School has declined quite a bit and is currently about 1300, far below what the article stated. W-L, is close to 2,000 and adjacent to one of the redeveloped neighborhoods the article mentions indirectly. It will grow to about 2,600 students within the next five years with projections for further growth beyond that. 30+ years ago W-L was over 3,000 students, so that's not out of the question. Yorktown High School is also experiencing very similar growth with no end in sight. So I find it odd that the article used Wakefield as an example. I think it was a typo.
Unfortunately the county's three new high schools were planned for an official capacity of 1,600 students and so the new facilities are smaller than the ones they replaced. The old gym at W-L, which could seat over 3,000, was replaced by a gym with a capacity of 1,600 max. The new Yorktown gym, while nice, is also much smaller than the old one. One recent plan to deal with the growth was to convert the old Wakefield building into a new secondary school program, but that idea was quickly shot down due to fears about boundary changes, and it will be demolished when the new Wakefield is complete.
It will be interesting to see what the school system will propose. I believe the superintendent will unveil his staff's report sometime this year.
The population of the school may be decreasing but the building was created to be able to house 2000 students. Frankly based on 404,000 sf the building could house far greater than 2000, this puts it as one of the largest square footage per student high schools in the world. Wakefield also has many of the designs that the other urban "renovations" have. I highlight the word renovation as other than the fact that the property remained in tact on this project essentially all components of the old school will be demolished and a new structure will be put up.
The story uses this as a litmus of what is likely in FFX county with its new urban centers. The greater danger in these areas is that FFX does not own any lands in the TOD districts even close to the size of these Arlington Highschools, and to date these are the most urbanized highschools in this region (ie in the worst case scenario if the FFX model is used even greater pieces of land will be needed).
At the end of the day, even without the building considered, just the land for such a school could set back the county 100 maybe even 200 million dollars. So the blog intended to reanalyze what it is to be a school, space requirements, and the idea of cooperative development with the private industry to remove the cost of land from the equation.
I hope this helps explain some things, keep the questions coming, we love talking about the future of this region.
Quick Poll on what local residents think of saving money for new schools (Wakefield High just came in at a record 115 million dollars without any land cost). Schools are getting more expensive in this area what are your thoughts of incorporating highschools into high rise office in cooperative projects with developers?
- Worst idea ever because...
- I don't know if it will work because...
- Skeptical, but worth giving it a shot...
- Good idea if ...
- Great Idea all around because ...
- Good idea if ... They figure out how to hand the physical education requirements. A lot of the land cost for public school goes towards athletic fields and general physical education requirements. However, we also have a lot of high-quality park space in this area. School boards need to start collaborating with their peers at Parks and Recreation services to best use these facilities.
I work in Ballston, and there are now a plethora of higher education institutions in the area. Marymount University, George Mason, Carnegie Mellon, George Washington, and Westwood College have campuses within walking distance of the metro. My son goes to a private elementary school nearby, where they have a gymnasium built on the top floor of the building. When it warms up they also use nearby Quincy Park. Teaching needs a classroom, it doesn't matter if it's in a sprawling 2 story building or an 11 story highrise.
Overall, our schools need to get away from the suburban ranch model and adopt to our circumstances.
I tried to read the article, but had a hard time following the flow. Could be that the engineer should team up with an English or journalism major and join forces.
The main issue that I have with your piece is that, while it purports to be Tysons-focused, the discussion seems fairly generic. Yes, schools in urban areas might be more than two stories. Why not look at some specific examples in NYC like the current Stuyvesant building and discuss how they function. And, in discussing what may happen in Tysons, why not flag that FCPS has already noted in planning documents that it may need to consider alternatives to the traditional model in the future; why not acknowledge that FCPS is fortunate enough to own the Marshall HS site on the outskirts of Tysons which, unlike the Arlington high schools, is being renovated to accommodate more, not fewer, students; and why not discuss some of the county's historical experience with student yield from multi-family units vs. single-family developments and whether that might change (i.e., the yields might increase) if Tysons becomes an attractive urban destination in the future. Instead, the piece seems to take it as a given that the "new Tysons" will be so fantastic that families will flock there.
No time to read the article, so I may not understand your question correctly. Are you asking if a school should be incorporated into an office building? Hmmm.... it might be handy for parents dropping off kids at school if they worked in the same building. OTOH I would NOT want to work in a buildings that shared a parking lot with high school students, and I probably wouldn't want to share elevators with them, either. It might be too easy to cut class if a school was in an office building, and some kids could get into serious mischief right there in the building. Also, I think schools should have lots of playing fields and (if possible) a wooded/natural area as part of the campus. It's hard to find those things in an office building. Some of my best biology lessons took place when the class went down to the stream near my high school. We had some good art courses out there too.
To JEB77, I understand what you are saying, although I don't understand the confrontational tone to your statements. While providing extremely indepth views from several perspectives is always the most defining method for discussing a subject, it also detracts layman readers from grasping the main points. The implied reason for the article is because FFX has guided that planning of schools will require alternatives, however to date Fairfax has not communicated nor discussed what they really intend to do... just that they intend to do something, with that said this would be step 1, an alternative option for thought.
As for the other examples, you would be surprised how few truly urban type highschools exist in the world (I appreciate you telling me about one and I will definitely research it). Most were constructed in the early 20th century and had the luxury of being sited on previously owned government land. The main dilemma in this scenario is the lack of FCPS property within TOD regions, and the cost for taxpayers if these lands were bought... and even when bought, how to best utilize the space to not waste the land with unnecessary bells and whistles that are evident in new school projects.
As far as George Marshall and the other school facilities in the region, it would be against the goals of the Comp. plan for FFX to create a highly urbanized region supposedly for multi-modal design, and then ship all students out to the outskirts of the city. We could save millions in transportation cost by allocating these schools where residents will actually live which is noted within the story and provide a higher level of service and returning more time back to residents. In this county too much of our school decisions come down to rush hour, we force high schools to start at 7 am because of it, we force them to close at 2 because of them, which gives too many highschoolers an empty house or town to run free in without supervision. By taking buses out of the picture inside of these dense centers we can benefit a lot of parties all at once.
The story also is not meant to say that tomorrow we should build this school nor that as of today Tysons Corner is a place where every suburban family is now moving to, the point is in the next 50 years the area will attract more people. Even if only 3-5% of the population felt the need to return closer to the city towards Tysons, that would entail 250,000 new residents moving closer to the city. This does not even include that this region has continued to draw from other areas of the country as well. As was found in Arlington, eventually a large constituency of this population will have children of highschool age and that it is an issue that should be anticipated and planned for. We will try to do better in other stories.
Caladium, I absolutely agree that natural environment is extremely important to assisting in education, however, when a class is studying civil war history they do not create an in depth model re-creation of the battlefield to explain the feel of the battle, they take a field trip to see the sites where it occurred. To this point it is not always efficient to create natural settings in their facilities, to the same point that it is not the local governments role to create a skyscraper to teach children about physics. The locality should therefore analyze each situation on its effectiveness to reduce public cost burden while providing the functions of an educational system.
This example of course would not be applied to areas where land cost can allow for open greens, the point is when you are in a dense city, what can you do to create a cost efficient school, allowing to save money on capital cost to be used on more field trips, more on-site studies, and better materials. I think we would all agree that a 25 acre "natural" school just couldnt be possible in a city where land costs exceed 7 figures per acre, and the alternatives are to either ship kids out of the city to places where they can have these types of facilities or to overpack fewer schools to make up for the higher cost.
I do appreciate the criticism, I hope JEB77 that I havent offended you with my retort, from the sounds of it you are very knowledgeable on the subject and maybe I can bounce more ideas off of you going forward.
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