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Home > Issue by Date > February 2008

Put To The Test

An elementary school in southern California faced its fair share of challenges before opening day.

By Anne Vazquez

When Bill Olien, assistant superintendent of facilities for the Murrieta Valley Unified School District (MVUSD) in California, got the news in May 2007 that the utilities infrastructure for his new elementary school would not come to fruition, the project could have been thrown into a complete tailspin. In August 2007, the Lisa J. Mails Elementary School in Murrieta, CA was set to welcome more than 700 students for the new school year, just three months away. But instead of delaying the opening, all the involved parties worked together to face this not so minor setback. Says Olien, “We came up with some interesting solutions. And the school did open in August.”

Currently in the midst of its first school year, the 70,000 square foot facility was equipped with the necessary infrastructure to open on time after the district made alternate plans. The school district commissioned a well for water supply; a propane system was brought in for gas supply; and the phone and data services operate on a wireless system, which is linked to one of the district high schools. Additionally, a dirt road leading to the school was paved by the district shortly before the school year began.

“It’s basically a self-sufficient school,” says Olien, “but we are working with the state and the county to build a permanent infrastructure and road—hopefully in the next year or so.”

Under conditions set by the county, the original plan had been for a housing developer to provide sewer, water, gas, and phone infrastructure for the 1,000 or so homes it planned to build in the vicinity of the school. The new school would use these resources as well. However, a sagging housing market caused the developer to halt its plans after 50 homes were built.

This turn of events occurred at a time when construction of the elementary school was about halfway done. Olien explains that at that time the developer remained committed to building the

infrastructure, since the nearby school would be a selling point for the homes that did exist. However, he explains, “They came to us in May 2007 and said they weren’t going to pave the road or build the infrastructure.”

Build It And They Will Come

Planning for the Lisa J. Mails Elementary School began in 2005 as the district anticipated a population influx into southern California’s Riverside County, largely due to the announcement that 1,000 homes would be built in the French Valley area of the city of Murrieta. “We think of the housing slump now,” says Olien, “but two years ago, the pace of home construction was significant. Riverside County is one of the fastest growing counties in the nation. We had about a 1,000 plus homes coming online, and we needed a school.”

But when the housing developer ceased construction, the school district faced a population issue, since the number of students expected to attend the new school would be much less than originally anticipated. (The infrastructure challenge would occur months later.)

Says Olien, “There were between 250 to 300 students living in the attendance boundary area, which is a pretty small elementary school.” There would be a lot of unused space in the new school.”

The answer was to designate Lisa J. Mails as a school of choice, which means that students from any elementary school in the district and beyond could attend. This was a first for the district.

Along with that decision, the Board of Education determined the facility would also be a school of focus, with the focus on visual and performing arts. Also a first for the district, this meant that students would be privy to extensive and regular experience in the arts, as well as a regular academic program enriched with the arts.

The decisions to offer a school of choice and school of focus solved the issue of a lack of students. Once the announcements were made about the offering, hundreds of parents enrolled their children at Lisa J. Mails. When the school opened last fall, there were 776 students attending kindergarten through sixth grade.

“There are about 150 students who come from outside of the district,” explains Olien. “We also have about 50 children who came here from private schools or home schooling who had never been enrolled in public schools before.”

Olien credits a lot of the interest in the school to the visual and performing arts focus. “It has been a very popular program,” he says.

The school of choice designation didn’t change the facility plans significantly, since the building had been designed for a larger number of students. However, the focus on the visual and performing arts did require changes to be made in some of the spaces.

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Still, Olien emphasizes that the changes were all quite manageable. “We were in the middle of construction, so making major modifications to the facility, in terms of the arts focus, would have been difficult. And for the most part, we didn’t need to make major changes. We did make some sound and lighting upgrades in the multipurpose room. And we dedicated certain classrooms to the arts, which required some alterations. For example, we changed the flooring in the rooms that were dedicated to visual art. We also have a dance room, so we put a different floor in there as well.

“It was fortunate we didn’t have to make major changes,” continues Olien. “Although we may have done some things different from the very beginning if we had known, it’s working well now as it is.”

Time For A Change

The previous several years had been busy for Olien’s department with four elementary schools having been opened during that time period. “All of those schools reflected the same design,” says Olien. “With this school, the superintendent and the Board of Education thought it might be appropriate to consider a different design approach, while also improving upon what we had done in the past.”

The district hired the southern California office of WLC Architects, Inc. to design the campus. Olien notes the district had worked with the firm previously, though not on the four recently opened elementary schools.

Beyond meeting the basic need to provide a facility for an anticipated influx of students, the overall goal for the school was to create an environment conducive to learning. This included attention to instructional technology, rooms designed to foster productivity, and security.

The district created a committee of teachers, parents, and administrators to discuss what would be important to include in the new school. “We had a lot of teacher input throughout the design process. That drove much of it,” explains Olien. “There was also a lot of one-on-one consultation. For instance, if there was a question about a kindergarten classroom, we would go to a kindergarten teacher for input.”

Input from teachers was not only appropriate because they would be the most frequent users of the classrooms, but also because the school was being named after one of their own. Lisa J. Mails, a teacher in the district, had passed away in 2005, and that same year the Board of Education approved the new school to be named in her honor.

The technology aspect was incorporated into every classroom and other educational spaces with an integrated audiovisual system. Each room was outfitted with a control panel that teachers use to coordinate operation of a projector, voice enhancement (microphone), computers, and other audiovisual systems.

“There is always a need for these types of tools nowadays,” says Olien. “This approach takes all of the tools the teachers use and integrates them into an easy push button system.

“We’ve heard positive feedback on the voice enhancement. Many of the teachers have said the students pay better attention, because they are able to hear better,” adds Olien.

A central strategy used to incorporate energy efficiency was the lighting system the school chose. “We had received a lot of feedback from the teachers about wanting more natural light in their classrooms,” recalls Olien.

The dual goal of energy efficiency and an improved learning environment led the district to specify a lighting system that would enable it to achieve both.

The strategy implemented consists of skylights in each classroom coupled with a lighting controls system that senses the natural light levels entering into the room. When the classroom is not illuminated through windows and skylights to the pre-specified light levels, the lighting controls system automatically dims or brightens the artificial lighting.

“This is the first school in which we’ve used a significant number of skylights in every classroom,” says Olien. “And it’s the first time we’ve used this kind of lighting controls system. A teacher can open or close the skylights manually and override the controls system, if necessary.”

Olien and his team also considered other strategies related to energy efficiency and the environment, but some of those ideas did not come to fruition due to cost. “We tried to strike a balance between being energy efficient and environmentally friendly and dealing with the costs,” he explains. “We had gotten significant feedback from teachers about wanting more natural lighting, so that became a focus.

“But we also considered solar energy, since our area is quite sunny most of the time,” continues Olien. “However, the payback—return on investment—would be about 20 years out.”

Olien also notes that how the buildings were sited was a part of the design process. Working with the natural topography, the architects oriented the school to maximize the amount of natural light that would enter its interior throughout the day.

While environmental strategies did not dominate the design and construction of the school, there were some site considerations that did dictate certain aspects of the project. The site, set in a fairly rural area, is part of California’s Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan, which recognizes areas in the state that must be protected for the value of their ecosystems.

“We needed to go through the process of being permitted to build the school there in the first place,” Olien explains. “And there are some blue line streams on the site that we could not disturb.” The architects included a pedestrian bridge spanning one of those streams to enable staff members to walk from the employee parking lot over to the school.

“From the beginning, we were designing around the environment,” says Olien.

The district also included security measures at the Lisa J. Mails Elementary School that were not present in other district schools. While there are video surveillance systems elsewhere in the district, this school is the first to be connected to a centralized system. Olien explains that, over time, the district will centralize all of the cameras in its schools.

“Also, we have deployed a lock and key system in this school that we haven’t used anywhere else,” says Olien. “The keys have a second pin on them, which makes it unique to our district, and it cannot be copied by anyone other than us. We are now going back to retrofit the other schools with this system.

“We have also incorporated electronic badge swipers for the teachers who come into the school after hours or on the weekends,” he continues. “The teachers can swipe their badges, which opens the doors and disables the alarms that are in their areas—such as their particular classroom and the teachers’ lounge, for instance.”

Mission Accomplished

When asked about his favorite aspect of this project, Olien replies, “It is the fact that we faced a whole bunch of challenges to make this happen. And now we have students, parents, and teachers who are excited to be at the school, and we have a great program.

“The facility was not a hindrance to that,” he continues. “They were able to show up on day one and be excited about the program, and the facility was there to be able to help the educational process. We weren’t in the way.”

This article was based on an interview with Olien (bolien@murrieta.k12.ca.us).

To share your new construction or renovation story, send an e-mail to avazquez@groupc.com. Past Showcase features can be found on the Web at TodaysFacilityManager.com.

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