JCPS discusses open-concept spaces at high schools

Crews continue construction for Capital City High School near Mission Drive on Thursday, June 14, 2018.
Crews continue construction for Capital City High School near Mission Drive on Thursday, June 14, 2018.

With just over a year before students enter the hallways of Capital City High School and a renovated Jefferson City High School, Jefferson City Public Schools is discussing how best to use and keep students and staff safe in the open space design concepts depicted in renderings.

As early as last year, preliminary architectural renderings of CCHS and JCHS showed design concepts incorporating lots of open or transparent space for collaborative work inside and outside of classrooms. Those concepts were even more realized in more recent design renderings unveiled last month.

"That's the direction that education is going in," JCPS Chief of Learning Brian Shindorf said of shifts toward critical thinking and group work for students. "Sometimes, being confined in four walls, it's tough to do that effectively."

"It's no longer a student taking notes and a teacher talking," but "it's an educator facilitating learning among students," The Architects Alliance's Principal Architect Cary Gampher said last year.

Gampher said then that faculty at the high school had requested mid-sized spaces bigger than, but close to, their classrooms that would allow students a place to work on group projects together.

Shindorf referred to such areas as "flexible spaces" that will "allow teachers a whole lot of flexibility in how they design their classroom."

Classrooms adjacent to flexible spaces would have direct lines of sight through glass-paneled walls facing the hallway, so teachers in the classrooms still can supervise students in both areas, Shindorf said.

"We've got some work to do to help support teachers and do that effectively," he said in terms of preparing teachers through professional development for open-concept classrooms and learning areas.

Gampher said last week that when renovations on the top floor of the east wing of JCHS are completed at the end of the summer, what students, staff and visitors see once school starts will give them a representative preview of what the rest of the building will look and feel like inside once all renovations are planned to be finished by January 2020 - about when the construction of CCHS will be fully completed, although students will attend both schools at the start of the school year in fall 2019.

Gampher said the caveats this fall to the look and feel of the renovated third floor of the JCHS east wing are that the classrooms will probably continue using existing furniture - the new furniture will be in the process of being manufactured - and the top-floor space was unique to begin with because it didn't have any solid interior walls designers had to work around.

"When it was first built, it was just concrete up there. They actually had shuffleboard games painted on the floor," Gampher said. Carpet and relatively thin interior walls were added over the years to divide the space, he said.

All the open lines of sight, glass walls or lack of walls in interior design renderings for CCHS and JCHS have led to discussions about balancing needs for spaces to be pleasant and practical but also secure.

"We've had ongoing and appropriate meetings to blend security both from a personnel, faculty and law enforcement standpoint, but also a technology standpoint," Gampher said.

Gampher didn't want to share specific details of security measures that have been discussed, but he said "there are ways for faculty, administrators and law enforcement to control the building" in a physical sense.

"We have the capacity to lock down corridors," Shindorf said of being able to limit mobility throughout a building with doors that automatically shut and lock in a few seconds upon being activated, giving time for people in classrooms to take further security measures.

Other new schools around the country have incorporated similar features into their designs.

"It's evolved over the course of my career. School security systems are very sophisticated," Gampher said, adding: "You still want an open, welcoming environment."

The auxiliary gyms at Jefferson City's public high schools are planned to be tornado shelters - despite there being some glass windows in the most recent rendering of the new practice gym at JCHS.

Those impact-resistant windows would face a hallway that doesn't have any exterior windows and is still "inside the shelter envelope," Gampher said. The interior windows will let people see between the gym and the hallway.

"It's good for security," he said.