Built for learning

HAVING just opened the doors to a new elementary school, I was very interested in your cover article on the architecture of schools being constructed in LAUSD.

While the article did provide background on schools’ design, development and construction, it failed to mention the reason schools are built: “instruction, instruction, instruction.”

I truly understand an architect having a vision, but that vision is for naught if the school does not meet the needs of students, teachers and staff. If the architect has never worked in a public school the architect does not have the experience to make the building address the instructional needs of all of its users.

Recommendation for architects, designers, construction and facilities personnel: Speak to individuals who will use your school prior to designing it.

RICARDO SOSAPAVON

Panorama City

Sosapavon is the principal of Noble New Elementary School No. 1.

*

THANKS to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, LAUSD has been sending teachers and school administrators to the Seattle area to visit schools built to encompass “small learning communities.” These schools have been built with movable walls to creatively use space, are architecturally interesting (at least on the interior) and (according to the architects there) cost less to build than traditional schools.

When I naively asked if LAUSD Supt. Roy Romer had been there to visit, they laughed. I suggested that they could bring every teacher and administrator in LAUSD to visit and it wouldn’t change one thing about the new schools being built in L.A., since no one asks us for our ideas.

Until the top brass at LAUSD starts to educate itself, they will continue to build schools in the same old pattern and wonder why they are unworkable for the newest craze for “small learning communities.”

ALEXA MAXWELL

Los Angeles

Maxwell is a teacher at University High School.

*

I wish you had mentioned High Tech High-LA [www.hthla.org, a public charter school in the San Fernando Valley] in your most interesting article about school architecture.

Having worked with a cutting-edge architect on this project, Richard Berliner, and knowing how difficult it is to build a one-of-a-kind school, I can see how the LAUSD cookie-cutter plan came about.

Our school is a wonderful combination of steel and stucco with soaring rooms, an incredibly interesting environment for our students, but it may well be the last of this type of project unless more dollars can be found.

It is my feeling that more schools should be supported from the outside, as we are. That might encourage architects to dream on should more funds be available above and beyond the district’s budget.

Christopher Hawthorne’s story was a wake-up call.

ROBERTA WEINTRAUB

Beverly Hills