Enclosed find "raw data" from brainstorming session conducted April 8, 1992, with Oyster River High School staff. The purpose of the session was to identify facility needs for serving the "a turn of the century" educational programs. While the "brainstorming" was conducted to provide input to the architects for establishing optimum conditions through renovation and additions on the current site, the input can be equally useful to the design of a new high school. An estimated 200 responses were recorded in less than an hour's brainstorming and then reported to the full staff. I trust staff will file additional ideas with their building principal for architectural study as planning continues.

On the attached pages, I have deleted no suggestions. While some suggested details are not useful at the moment, they can serve as a useful checklist when we reach the design/development phase of high school construction.

While deleting no suggestions, I have reorganized the data into three groupings; namely, program, climate, and "user friendly." Program is defined as design features to serve what today's staff sees as facility needs to serve their instructional practices at the turn of the century. Climate is defined as design features that accommodate student/staff needs for going about their daily business in an atmosphere conducive to academic, civic, and social development. "User friendly" is defined as an array of items that can only emerge from today's users of the facility, i.e., and the frustrations they face from a building constructed in the late fifties and sixties under different codes and for a very different time period in student growth and development.

Surely in your perusal of the attached lists you will find duplication and you will question certain classifications, e.g.,why is an item "user friendly" vis-a-vis climate or why is an item classified as program vis-a-vis "user friendly." The answer is -- "I don't know!" It represents a judgement at the moment that certainly can be corrected.

From a cursory review of the staff input, certain commonalties and features stand out. Below are a few of the features I see as important to address at this stage of building planning.

Program Related

1. Clusters of classrooms around a common space which offer storage, conference/professional library space, faculty work space.

2. Classroom clusters with easy access to support facilities, e.g.; core disciplines to library, art to technology/industrial arts, health services to physical education and related arts.

3. Flexible space for large instructional group/small group independent work. Accommodations for interdisciplinary work.

4. Health and student services center.

5. Added facilities for physical education, auditorium, drama, et al. including auditorium.

School Climate

1. Inviting public entrance/reception area.

2. "Easy" circulation patterns.

3. Wider corridors/locker accommodations (more lockers, smaller units, different configurations?).

4. "Think beauty of surroundings!"

5. Cafeteria access to outside.

6. Faculty room(s) need to be "central," bigger and adjacent to outside.

Many more climate ideas are listed for continued study, when appropriate.

User Friendly

1. Some rearrangement of bathrooms so that there are more of them, smaller (so they don't become congragation places) and located for better (easier) supervision (e.g., spaces between classrooms.

2. See array of ideas for later use.

Again, this input to date is to support your work in answering whether a functional and -state of the art--turn of the century" high school can be achieved on the present site, recognizing limitations from the current building footprint.

C: Board Facilities Committee
High School Principal/Staff

Last update on 31-Mar-99 at 10:07 PM.

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This page is edited by David K. Taylor. Please send questions or comments to editor@orol.org.