Planning tomorrow’s learning environment...TODAY!
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Services - Educational Learning Environments

Oversight Support Consulting Services

To avoid tunnel vision, an objective second opinion and experience-based alternative perspective can be of tremendous value-added benefit to particularly large or uniquely complex educational projects. Dr. Frank Hill provides strategic analysis, oversight, and consultation to assist architectural or district staff members. Hourly, daily, or weekly involvement may be all you need to double-check and confirm the best decision for your situation.

District Master Planning

Experienced senior-level oversight can ensure that your comprehensive master planning of educational facilities provides an objective district-wide tool for educationally appropriate capital resource management. Dr. Hill’s involvement can validate your master plan properly by assessing present and future trends in learning as they apply efficiently, equitably, and effectively to all facilities in a school district.
Experienced consulting support can assure your Comprehensive District-wide Master Planning becomes a fundamental first step in building strong community support and a basis for successfully passing a bond referendum. In the end, a master plan must be logical to the average citizen, educationally inspiring, architecturally practical, futuristically flexible, and accomplishable within a realistic budget. Dr. Hill is experienced and successful in all of these elements of a successful master plan.

Individual School Master Planning

An individual school-specific master plan should precede any proposed design and construction project. Too often, a master plan simply consists of identifying currently perceived unmet needs for classrooms, storage, or community-use facilities. This is a short-sighted perspective of building resource management.
An individual school master plan should thoroughly consider enrollments, current educational methods, trends for program delivery into the future, and the most efficient and effective use of all current educational spaces. Only then can a properly balanced long-term solution be identified and applied to the entire facility. Such an approach is often more cost effective and can be phased in a manner that is much more affordable and sensible to the community and staff. Our consulting supports this end.A building master plan can be simple and quick to complete in the short term, while ultimately saving time and money in the long term. Knowing your options from an objective outside perspective is not always easy to accept, but results in much more informed decision-making by all concerned. Proper participation in the process by staff and community keeps the vision in the forefront and avoids room-by-room personalized decision-making that can miss the “big picture”, a common problem of starting design too early and without forethought.

Educational Specifications

Often considered a pre-design document by architects required for a building design, a complete educational specification should begin and end with a full understanding of curriculum, technology, scheduling, enrollments, and the psychology of learning. An educational specification must accurately include:
  • Complete Building-Wide Summary
  • Detailed Functional Relationship Diagrams
  • Educational Vision Statement
  • Preliminary Cost Estimates
  • Summary List and Size of All Spaces
Dr. Hill has graduate degrees in both education and design to make this document more practical, functional, and educationally focused throughout. Educational specifications can be as detailed as needed, or focused to address the most complex areas, such as small learning communities, science laboratories, technology education/careers, or seamless technology use. Always, such analysis should begin with educational delivery and move to functional design. This approach builds upon what educators are already doing well, and not just adopting trendy, but short lived design solutions.

Community Involvement Workshops – Building Consensus

Successful community involvement is essential to understanding options and making appropriate decisions at all levels of the organizational structure – citizens, staff, and administration. Based on a thorough understanding of local customs and programs, Dr. Hill will customize a specific local community workshop process that is very successful in establishing community support. This requires an understanding of education first and then practical and efficient facility utilization.
Dr. Hill’s workshops can include hundreds of community members at a time and have been influential to numerous successful national bond referendum programs.

Bond Referendum Marketing

During these challenging economic times, passing a successful bond referendum can be very difficult. Franklin Hill & Associates has been very successful in assessing educational needs and presenting solutions in a manner that is logical, practical, and educationally valid. Dr. Hill understands the psychology of change and learning as well as the practical options available during these difficult economic times.
Franklin Hill & Associates has a tremendous track record in posturing school districts successfully for all forms of financial support by the community.
For more information about services and experiences, call (425) 466-5754 or email frank@franklinhill.com.
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