voice hello welcome to another installment of the kilum community meeting series um thank you all for coming tonight I'm Jenny Kaki I'm the project maner for Lali brensinger with the Architecture Firm um have with us also uh Mike Carol um own project manager call yours International thank you um and as has been our tradition at these meetings we'll just pass the mic around the room for everyone to get a chance to introduce themselves start with Susanna hi Susanna um International hi good evening Cara deles I live on Dana Road and I'll have a kindergartner in the fall good evening Karen har R select board and um Vice chair of the building committee and um former or proud parent of an RPS graduate I'm Lee Sherwood architect I'm Carla Naro I am the chair of the K school buard committee I'm on the school committee too school committee chair uh Ray Porter the clim advisory committee chair but I guess I should also full disclosure and out commissioner on the read Municipal L Melissa Murphy town meeting member Miss haly ready La Stella butter mikees butter nany Tumi member of the um School building committee um resident of reading town and also an architectural lighting designer great welcome thanks um all for joining us a lot of familiar faces uh that I've seen a few times and a few new faces as well um so first I want to review our schedule we hav't looked at this um in the last couple meetings and um we're kind of coming to the end of this first phase of the feasibility study this is called the oh m i always forget PDP means preliminary design preliminary design program anyway PDP um so we um will start our cost estimating of that this piece um next week um and so we're submitting all this material to the cost estimators that's um it's a little there's a little signs over there Mike's going to try to find a point for thank you Mike um and then we'll be submitting the PDP package to the msba on May 20th and we're going to have a little low in our series of community meetings so we've been meeting every couple of weeks um and during this interlude while we're waiting for comments to come back from the msba um we're going to have a little pause in the regularly scheduled meetings and our next Mee will be in July so tonight we're going to talk about the educational visioning process that we went through with um our consultant um MLP um which is my Learning Place um integrated design um and then we'll talk a bit about how that educational visioning process has informed the design of the school um in the organizational design and how the building is laid out and adjacencies of different spaces and then we're going to show you the four schemes that we um uh in terms of site planning that we will be um including for the PDP and including in the cost estimate basically the four schemes of where we're at right now with the design at this early stage so the educational visioning um process was um probably took 2 months and involved a ton of different people um from staff um and the principal at the kilum the superintendent and other people from the district level um we brought in the school resource officer and the recck department like all and students and teachers and parents all these different people that we want to hear from um to really understand the kilum school Community to understand the priorities um of the community um and to understand um the the learner the teaching and learning that's happening the educational process and then how we can design a school that best meets all of those needs so these are some of the activities that we did we did a day of shadowing here at the kilums we walked around Lee and I and and Mike and um we talked to all different people in the building and kind of saw what happens here we um toured three different schools um with a group of people to uh three recently completed elementary schools one was in Ashland one was in tar and one was in Danver um to for us to see and for the folks on the um educational visioning group to see what new schools look like these days and kind of open their eyes because we're building schools quite differently than when this building was built in 1969 and then we held a series of educational visiting workshops with different groups of people um and the goal there was to develop that understanding of what of of the type of learner um of um and develop a picture of a Learner in our minds um to the next slide to talk about this this kind of a summary of the educational visioning process um so it's kind of bringing together these four things understanding the learner understanding the learning that's happening in the classroom understanding the teaching that's happening in the classroom and then how the learning environment can better support those three things and that's an educational Vision process so here's what we found um we found um these are kind of the the priorities that came out of the process what's important what do we need to make sure that we achieve in the new building we need to have a variety of safe and flexible spaces to support inclusivity community and choice and to support those abs and flows of students needs um in different years and then in cble years we have you know four second grade classrooms this year and next year you have two and we need a new mechanical system new mechanical syst the SM love all SCH for what I can't hear old bdac we want to be showcasing student work to really put on display the great work and the teaching that's and learning that's happening in the school um and that also helps students to have a sense of belonging because they see you know there's my beautiful alphabet rainbow or whatever it is you can tell I'm not educated um we want to support passionate and self directive learning also curiosity and purposeful play speak um Elementary School play is such an important part of the experience and and of learning we want to support opportunities to experience nature we have Community areas for all kinds of different groups to compete whether it's small groups of two or three students the grade level to get together or community at large with folks from outside the school and create different kinds of spaces to support all those different activities and um we talked about having a variety of sensory opportunities and caling opportunities throughout um so that students who have all kinds of different needs and staff as well um can have the the space that they need to kind of take breaks and you know kind of collect themselves come back to the other um and then from those priorities we kind of developed a a a series of um say strategies and tactics like moves that we want to make sure we make in the new building so now we're going to kind of like goals to like design ideas so we want to have flexible small learning communities with like a group of classrooms that are together around a shared space um with shared breakout space we would have um spaces to support the community and create that sense of belonging a really important thing that came out of the the process was the idea of the library at at the heart of the building just like it is here and that's a really important that came out it's a really important part of um what has made Joma such a warm and welcoming Community the sense that there's a center to the building and the center and the heart is the library so we're really are really going to try to um recreate that but maybe in a way that also allows a library be a little bit more functional as a library um we need to have embedded special education services that are close to classrooms but have their own dedicated space which is really lacking this have uh we will have small group spaces between classrooms um to enable um different kinds of group activity push in pull out and also those sensory opportunities throughout [Music] okay so what this is I'm going to try to navigate here one handed um this is an organizational diagram so uh from the educational visioning then we wrote a program which has is just a list of every space that you're going to have in building from the program we did this organizational diagram which is trying to show how each of those spaces relates to the others so we're not in a plan yet we're just trying to diagram it figure out how relate to one another so see here if we have main entry read that so from the best of VI so one thing that came out is the importance of separating the prek especially this diagram shows the large prek the full District prek which is 12 classrooms having them have their own space their own place right it's a little bit separate from of the school um and then having a kind of zone of public spaces with the gym cafeteria having those all in their own little Zone and near the entrance so that the school can kind of um use those spaces for Community activity off of school hours without having people wandering into like the Librarians like we have here um and then here you can see the media center which is just struggling here the media center which just means it's just a different word for Library you see the media center at the center of all the classrooms and here you can see those kind of neighborhood grade level neighborhoods that we were talking about so you have kindergarten classrooms four kindergarten classrooms cluster with a kind of flexible shared space in between some of those small group rooms um and then each of those neighborhoods this is LC that's a Learning Center that's the special education classroom so they're kind of in um two one one um special ed classroom for every two classroom hoods and then those are all kind of come together into the media center so that's kind of the organization that we're trying to create and um then when we brought that to the site plans and dealing with the constraints of the site see um the you know we start to push and P against some of the constraints that we have and then um we have these two enrollment options right we've been talking about so in the existing School these are the square feet of the existing school so the net square feet the net Square ft here of the existing net just means like we add up all the spaces inside each room so the inside measurement inside the walls of the cafeteria and offices and the classrooms but we're not counting the corridors the toilet rooms the C spaces that's just n and Bros I don't know but need to that I just AR let's talk about n and Bros all the time it's seemed important at the time um okay so this is the existing uh existing grow square feet is about [Music] 61,000 um of this building and then including two little modulars out there and um the in school will be around somewhere between 103,000 and [Music] 12,600 and those are the two options depending on if it's the partial prepaid program the four prepaid classrooms or the full districtwide prepa program so we're continuing to look at those two options and um I'm going to turn it over to my friend Lee to talk about some schemes um sure as long as I don't have to do the but to you'll have to do the SL oh um I have us this made out thank you thank you so um that organizational diagram that you saw is what the inside of an architect brain looks like you know that one with all those little boxes it's basically it's the program and all of those pieces are are the are the sizes and the adjacencies and the dimensions a lot of it has to do with how teachers and parents and children use the building first they come here they drop up they get their mail they go to the classroom they do this those things are really essential to a really good elementary school or any school working so it may be more important to us than it is to you but if you do it right it will work it will function and there's no reason to do a school if it doesn't function most of you have been at other um ones of these meetings before and we're doing the things a little differently the educational showing the educational planning um but you've all seen this and you know that we've been working with a traffic consultant and we've had meetings talking and eliciting your comments about the site and the neighborhood and all of that and we have listened good about this for us is we've established a program for the inside of the building and how it should function even if it's two or even three stories it still has to be able to function working with you with the traffic but also understanding fields and flow parking and draww we're establishing criteria and program for the outside of the building give a very specific site here there's no site like it on some people live next door and um you don't live in any other place as far as I know so it's really important for us to drive around walk around really understand this site but the real trick comes in taking that program understanding that there's an existing building here which you've just seen and then trying to put a new building on the same site so it works better maximizes the amount of sare that you have and all of that and as you know we've been really really focused on trying to help the parking at especially at pickup in the afternoon people are parking all over the place we care a lot about safety of the kids crossing walks and all of your you know all of your sidewalks that are blocked off by parked cars and our traffic engineer had a lot of really good ideas about that and we're utilizing all of that some of the biggest things we're doing if you look at the right side which is kind of a new building is the idea of getting as many cars off the street for queuing so you don't have backups and all of that and then even have flexible parking for events cuz you can parkle around that Loop so we have our parking but we also have um kind of a a flexible site we could come in here and pave the whole site you could park everywhere but that's not good for a little kid to play so we kind of have to try to find the right balance um so I just wanted to show you you know we're still working on this it's not totally figured out you gave us some really good suggestions I remember everything you said so what we're going to show you today um part of our work with the msba and the town is to put together a range of options that represent let's say a renovation of a piece of the building and an addition you remember that idea the idea that we're supposed to look at this building as just a renovation although it's way too small and then we're supposed to see if we can renovate some of it what happens when we add on and so that's one of our options and I won't say much about it here second option that we're looking at remember we're doing a full range is the idea of doing a three story building remember the existing buildings about right here so if we're going to leave that open while we build a new building which is the least expensive way to do this there's disruption but it's also the least expensive unless you have some free screen space that anybody has maybe you open up all your own but um building a three-story building has pros and cons um and we're going to look at that and we're looking at the building lay out for that as well I will say one of the problems is when I drive down the streets on uh neoral I don't see any three-story buildings do so that's a thing to think about that's called scale and that has to do with fit there a fit for neighborhood and all of that it's very important to us and that it's important to the people who live here and then we were challenged to look at creating for c a two a full twostory school not fre story that held all of the programs where footage gross of that larger version on the site without tearing down any of this building while we build it and this scheme right here you can see how it jogs a little bit CU that's the shape of the existing building it actually is a two-story building and it's we have laid we've done like layouts and things like that on it and it actually works it has attributes and then D the idea was if you could take down pieces of the existing build right say a few classrooms that there is a way to do that what would you do differently would you re Invision a different kind of layout a different kind of scheme that might create more opport on S next so what we're doing tonight is just giving you a glimpse kind of a your uh heads up I'm glad there are people here from the select board and people like that because you're going to see this come back to you over and over and over or develop we're just taking the inside and the outside of the building putting them together so you're just seeing the very first things this is the idea of an ad Rena and if you look up here you see that there's o two there's one which is A1 gold PR that's the larger version you know that this right here is a on story this is where all the classrooms are that's the existing Wing but it's one story when you have a small site at something is one story and you have to maybe double the square footage we can all do the map and realize that it's not going to be much land so that's what you see here is you see a lot of footprint even when we build a new building here and it go two or three stores High to fit the length of the queuing is quite short and we've been trying to get people off the streets the size of the the um parking lot along the edge here has a lot of spaces but actually not as many spaces as everybody the play areas are kind of dispersed and limited we're we are challenged with getting buses in and out and service and all of that and look at this field I have a hard time even calling it a field because it's like 100 by 106 or something like that um even I pr fall across this F and and so it's not one of the things we learned from our um W uh people was that it would be really nice to have a J12 bu which is really really usable for weekends and soccer and things like that for your community and so that is a goal that we have um so this is a building that we uses some of the existing building um it fits on the site you can build it and also though you can imagine if you build a new building here a piece of building you do have to come back and tear this down but also renovate and we're talking about a major renovation not just you know like scrubbing the walls of paint um so that's called phasing that means that those that piece of school is going to have to be shut down for a while the kids are going to be moved around many times believe it or not when you do a renovation addition like that it generally takes longer to build in terms of General conditions than building a new school because you have to keep coming back and keep coming back it it's extended there's more disruption uh to the kids there's more safety issues as they get moved around and all of that and it's something to keep in mind for all of these what we're doing right now is we're actually doing a very preliminary pricing square footage pricing we have a really good cost estimator who can look at diagrammatic things and tell us about what it might cost so that'll be part of all of your decision-making process but if anybody ask me tonight how much is it going to cost I'm going to say I don't know because I don't cuz that's the process next this is so interesting to challenge yourself to build say a three-story Elementary School I kind of noticed a thing when I'm want driving around my town and I see the Old Brick they're always condos now but they used to be schools they like three stories tall they used to do it all the time on the other hand then they then in the 50s and 60s everything behind one story maybe they had more land back then and now there's not as enough um there is a real Trend now to build two or three story schools again even elementary schools for a number of reasons one sustainability wise it takes up less footprint and you have more green space and more absorption water for land for natural stuff um it's also better for energy because if I draw if I have a three- story box versus a two story spread out then I'm going to have less surface less you know for for energy to to lose heat and all of that so it's it's a good approach we should look at it you should price it and understand how it works but often times it doesn't work as well for elementary schools when we talk about Jes and the kids go up and down it becomes more vertical and it's something for our Educators to know about to tell us if that's the right pi and I already mentioned that when we meet again you will see more threedimensional things on the site we'll even show you kind of like preliminary things where you see kind of this the height of the building in context with the street my intuition tells me that a three-story building too close to the street could be a little overwhelming and we'd have to either step it or employ other tactics for scale and to make it feel welcome and appropriate that all make does that all make sense I'm telling you things that we think about because this is a holistic process we don't just say okay here's a building we did this one over at this town and flop it on we just don't do that so the next one is so go back one time look at the side oh sorry sorry um look at the size of that footprint okay now bam next so that's the same thing but two stories you you can see how that footprint really grew and really expanded we're trying to stay in this one still away from the existing edge of the building so it could be built without tearing it down or or impacting it but see how it's getting closer to the edges to the street those proximities and those distances are important right I mean you live here this is your your your streets this is your world but on the other hand it's a whole twostory building and when you're within a two-story building especially for an elementary school you kind of understand it's very easily the second is threee stories you have to go up to supp to can't see it do you know mean you don't know where you are as well so um actually our superintendent challenged us to do a full two story schem like this and said see if you can fit it on the site as he knows his kids and he knows his families and he knows education this is really interesting because at least in this scheme um it's only two stores there are ways to kind of avoid hail but still create play Space this is actually a huge amount of space believe it or not I think that's like 6,000 square ft or something like that um you're going to ask questions like this later on like how much square footage do you need for child um I'll tell you that it's about um 75t for a kid who's going to be on the playground but obviously you don't bring all the kids out at the same time it since you have a third I like to get more like a half imagine a half the kids are out there just to have some wiggle these play spaces right here this for 3K for the for the K through five the wow Center which is that cour guard space which wants to be somehow replicated and used again those are actually um pretty good size play areas and what I like about them is that they're adjacent to the building so you don't like cross a street or cross a parking lot or anything like that people have asked about um parking spots we need the equivalent of about 125 spots on this on this site for it to work well for um all of the staff and the people who would use it on a daily basis and we try to limit it but the truth is that on the weekends if there's an event it handle those of you who've been at the traffic meetings you know that we're trying to do a long queue on the site with a a safe drop off out and what's cool about this drop off with our Traffic Engineers is that in the afternoon or in events it has parking it's wide enough to have parking all the way around like that all those people can get off the street kind of it doesn't d D your amount of par but it greatly increases the amount of spaces that we have plus as you remember they're really working on tle street and other places to make it safer to make do all the things that we talk um this field right here is stes about 220 by 160 ft which I believe is a J12 field which is a wonderful large field that that re use it's for gids all of that and that is our goal to try to get that safely on the site make it really work well because it's a very important GRE um so it's not a bad scheme and especially if you want to leave the building there throughout the whole construction it works it pulls away from Charles and we are still fairly dedicated to the idea that April is a fast dangerous scary Street and even if we did have play a fence right here you know maybe a for foot fence but very protective fence um that's kind of the pressures that we feel on this site between safe and and ail again those of you who were here for the traffic study heard what they observed on here next and then we have this idea where we were asked one more time to do a two-story scheme but this time instead of making so kind of wide and Compact and those those wider schemes kind of bring light into the middle sometimes maybe there libraries in the middle and it's that kind of space this kind of space is it doesn't have exterior windows you don't want to do that for classrooms and we never do but for certain spaces we might be doing that on a WID sche but on a scheme like this where we have rings we can actually have our neighborhoods you know for the gr based small learning communities in areas like this with classrooms maybe have a u Media Center here and then the gym and the cafeteria over here and you can see just by the shape of the building it's starting to create scale this Edge right here is is much broken down from holl students so you really know there a w there's a facade and it pushes with that and all of that those are real things to me they are and I think You' observe them but the challenge of this one right now is that you probably impact piece of the existing um classroom wing and maybe we take out a little piece of a wing six classrooms if the district and the superintendent and others can figure out what's a really viable way to do that we will always to a scheme where we say where we might as our as our manager he knows to do this we will always do a spei where we say Hey what if you tear down this building and you have a totally clean sight what would you do and that's because if you had a place to put the kids for two years which is a challenge it is um but if you did uh and you could and it was acceptable that it was thought through then you would have an easier time building the building and it would probably go faster and the money that you spent on temporary classs and conditions and things like that might actually balance out with the length of time and the flexity it takes to build and have a active school on site so we want to explore that and understand the costs the um and all those issues and that so we'll have one scheme where we can just think that way most of that is kind of you know um temporary conditions and stuff it doesn't really say the school itself probably won't cost much different does that make sense but you could see that once we let go here a little bit and push and pull there's a very different shape you can do here um but the phasing is a little bit different I like this one because it has this wonderful play Space here quite large and it has some place space here have you ever been to an elementary school where there's some place space almost right where you drop off and get out there it is and it's kind of continuous with the school I think that's very a very good spirit for an elementary school Thomas to save and protect and the field fits and there are different ways to do this for example I could actually put the field here and put the parking here like that and in some ways that might be better because it kind of connects every where all the kids are running around so there are great ways for us to flip things around so we wanted to show you give you kind of a a first look at some of these things that we're doing we've done little sketch floor plans of all these for you know for the educational people who looked at them to make sure that the shades that we showed here actually are appropriate footprints for the buildings that we're talking about um but that's we want to talk to you about education the inside of the building a little bit about the out and then just hear some of your comments so we can go we can go off and and continue to try to solve problems next time we meet we'll have a very different set of problem of um plans of 3D drawings still options there we are not selecting a building for like an option selecting an option for a few months right August or so that's so it's a it's a really long process and none of you are voted until about a year from now right if if even that more so we are being very deliberate and we're talking a lot about traffic and safety and kids and education to make sure that we get it right as best as we can does anybody have any questions I'm sorry does anybody else have any questions I wonder if you could talk maybe take one or two options and talk about how light and sun and heat uh move in for example in what you showed you kind of put the large spaces the gymnasium to the more south side of that layout I see a North Arrow but how does light and heat and and stuff shape your building and design and thinking that from the St ability guy so it turns out that 2,000 years ago they used to build buildings based on the sun and then somewhere in the in the last century everyone forgot about it and now it's a big deal again and they're right all should be properly oriented I'll start with this one what we'd like about this idea is that the wing where all of the kids are imagine this all the classrooms classroom rooms classrooms classrooms like that the South it the sun's coming in like this the perfect way to do a series of classrooms is to orient them all South and all North Believe It or Not North light is a nice light it's very consistent South light you have to kind of control and if you can it's nice to bring lighting you know to S some light down into the middle of a building especially it's getting very thick and Shar some like even so this building actually orients really really well it doesn't have to be on the south side of the site or the North side and we could flip this whole thing but it worked better this way it's more about F also so these are really well oriented for the sun in my opinion and there's a teacher in here West light is the worst kind of light for a Clos I've learned that from faculty years and years and years because um if you think about the afternoon it comes straing in really low you can't control it you can pull down the blinds it creates um what is there flare on the screens kids can't see anything there's a Heat game that comes from that so if you're ever doing a school try not to put your classrooms on the left side the East is is lighter it's not as bad but this is like rules of thumb and they're really important for a school like this because it has different um edges here it's not as bad in terms of um getting daylight into the middle of the building probably don't need a lot of skylights or anything like that it's pretty nice but if we go back one what no I don't think so if we go back one you see that this actually is a building where we actually have classrooms like this wrapping this which isn't bad I mean there are some facing west and I'm not particularly happy but we have to do Provisions for that but because this is thicker and we have the the uh the media center in the middle we want to have a big old Skylight or a scoop or FL story BR light down into the building and sharing it back cuz that's actually quite thick and so when we do a building like that we save money on Perimeter but we really want light into the middle this isn't so bad actually you mean this High these clear stores right here they block this one off cuz it's prob the south is yeah that's the South so they they blocked it off and it still has light coming through they even did out is what they did um this is pretty well daily during the day when you come in here there's a lot of natural light it doesn't feel good not to be able to see outside you know but um It is Well day so you can see that that's when you you compact it like that all of a sudden you have to just think of it as more of a donut and that's how exactly we would approaching um daylighting is super important now why is that important also for heat and for electricity if we can day l a space or you can take a gymnasium and have their stories around it during the day and you don't have to turn on the lights you just save a whole bunch of electricity more than you'd think um and so daylighting is really importance and the quality of daylighting is important too so we can spread the light and say it classroom back is that the kind of thing you're ask let's let's hear oh our lighting expert is next I just I wanted to add to your point about daylighting and being important in classrooms from a climate standpoint I mean it's important to shield and to push the daylight further in from a learning environment um um presence of daylighting for students is so important because we have studies and I'm happy to share them later where um researchers have showed that the right kind of daylighting and lighting inside of learning spaces helps with alertness our children and it helps the learning in L so you can imagine like the opposite expect it's dingy you're not excited but if it's nicely balanced live without the and Sun then that stimulates to so I agree with you I think that tremendous that's been your experience yes absolutely work on schools as well are you a plant a plant means that we put you here I'm a supporter for good environments I love them so anybody have a question yes coming Clos to sorry your comment about switching field and parking yeah my only concern with that would be the people who take thees that are [Music] prob with a big the Feld is I like where the field is that we T to drop off to have parking there already right so that's just just put that out there um my question is what are you going to to be open or going to be likeall things I'll tell you why I'm asking you mean like artificial term tennis courts be field I don't want go wall courts this is like Elementary School I live across the street I don't I want to listen to that but I also why I'm [Music] czy Pap ball um so thank you for saying that about cuz we'll show options where we flip things around a little bit and there are pros and cons to either way with the parking maybe you move them but we can overcome the issue that you're talking about but right now um we have not been asked to do a turf field an artificial turf field we've been actually told that especially for a smaller school like that one that's very expensive uh and two um people are worried about artificial turf fields and I'm not a scientist about it but I just heard both sides of it and um it's an elementary school and grass is probably okay the field that you have out there right now right this is pretty much that the grassy field Feld well irrigated you know like we can actually dig up and we can build a good base a good get you know good water irrigation out of there and stuff like that CU you're kind of starting with a new base on the site does that answer it I don't think anybody was no one has asked us I heard no now I I will say that when you look at a those play areas they're actually quite large imagine those play areas I'm going to make a guess here see one of those play areas like where it says Play 3 through five that's about twice as big as this room that's one player so I want to give you a sense of scale here I just did that in my brain but it's about like that well you have that kind of play area and now we do it with a lot of board surface cuz it's much you know you don't have stuff fly you know the maintenance and all that um we'll often have basketball like a like a nice half court basketball and stuff I play at my kids elementary school all the time cuz I can dunk cuz they lower the things so that's the only reason I go but um there'll be a lot of what we will program with you guys we'll ask you what are the kind of amentities that that you're missing pick a ball out there there's not enough room for a tennis court yes it doesn't have to be a long meaning we're just kind of unveiling something to you does anybody have any questions about educa about the educational stuff did it sound did it seem like it was the right approach I mean it actually did represent like all bunches of hours um and I do want to give credit to um the facult there certain people from The Faculty who have been involved in all of this throughout but also all of the faculty we actually meet with every single person who uses this building and sit down with them and we talk with them and we go over their program and what works what doesn't work what they can see for the future and there will be more um School tours that we're taking the um the committee on select I think some of the select people are being invited to a couple of these tours it's really good to see what a new a brand spanking new you know Elementary School looks like because when you work with the msba um they reimburse a lot of money so for example you went through this process and you got this building um um accepted there's only about 15 schools every year that get accepted into the MSP program for A4 that means that this building those of you who went on the tour this building is one of the 15 least desirable maintenance buildings that you might have in other words it qualify and we're not saying that means you should just tear it down and not think about it we're just saying it qualify and they're very particular because there's a lot of competitions from your towns I I I say that uh because it's a real um it's a real opportunity to work with the msba of the states to have them get us fancy Architects to come in but to all the educational programming so you really understand how you're teaching to do all the site work and you know we're digging at the site and understanding what the St surface we really understand this building all that work is because this the state requires us do all that but you're getting the benefit because the truth is they will reimburse a certain amount we don't know the exact amount it has to do with the town and all of that but it will be a substantial amount of money and we want you to be uccessful so a year from now if you're voting we want you to be able to say no problem yes you know I mean it benefit I don't live here so it doesn't benefit me that way but my job is to listen and to put together a school that you feel like you can support and that's why we're going through all of these different processes um to find the right answer that's right for read because there's no place like this I do this is kind of going backwards a little like thinking about how people currently this kind of a traffic thing all over the place you use the word they take Liberties something that well use that how do you prevent people from using the helping spots to drop off and pick up kids because it be e there trafficky things that no I think want try yeah I think um as with so many traffic things there's only so much that can be done to control people's behavior and um I think you're right that some people you know probably there's not going to be like a staff person out there to make sure that you know aren't going into the staff parking lot there will be a sign that says staff parking only um but I think you're right that you know if there are empty spots people will probably come up and use them on the other hand um you know staff are usually staff will typically all be here by the time of drop off swing first like they make it another oh make it another I don't know just PO for thought if somebody does that oh my goodness come on no I know I I totally agree so thought I didn't know if there were Park trafficking things or parking things one one of the things I I remember I was talking about this one of the situations you have right now that we do want to remedy that's related right now you come in to drop off and the parking lot is beyond that which means if you're a teacher and you're trying to park or you are trying to park you literally have to wait in that long line in order to get past that so that's why we separated also for safety and that's why we also take the buses and try to have them also Park along a different place so that's why it's separated how do you get people not to drive through the parking lot you're just going to have to try to enforce it and have signs that say don't do this you're being you're being a an unfriendly neighborhood neighbor um or during the day they can always put at the gate I mean people do that all the time they'll say we'll put a gate there and people come in and they Park but there has to be other parking spaces that people can access and it's kind of tough good other questions [Music] sure so these options the four options of them one was the one um I was just wondering the above down below that maybe thre in the Shing study like at no spring summer winter it would really help make the case for story shadow [Music] yeah um we will be doing a couple of uh site things that you may not that you may ask later about one we'll do a sound study that's required so that can't make more sound than what's already there that's very important to their neighbors right next door and we will do light studies shading studies from the sunlight to make sure that we're not blocking well there'll be a there'll be sunlight studies to make sure we're not blocking light to your house um and the next one though is also we do photometric studies of all of those of you who've seen developments who see this we have a bunch of Lights say we have lights on campus they all have to be dark sky covered lights that shine just down and we have to prove through a photometric study that no light is spilling off into any other neighborhood or you know anybody over our property but in terms of that it's very interesting because sometimes you find something you wouldn't expect this building right here is one is um is twostory but it's kind of L lengthwise and it's a little closer to the edge so if we do a study you might find that that even though it's two stories it's one thing but if you go back to you see the the three that's a three story building but it's much further away it's three stories but it's much further away from the property one so you might find interesting um things with that cuz I can't imagine you know so it it sometimes it so that's a good one we will do [Music] that we didn't have much more I hope we didn't disappoint you she's not done not done yet um I just have a final slide here just to talk about our next steps um which I actually started with so maybe I've already said all these things you don't know we just say we um so we're going to be doing us um preliminary squ foot cost estimates um starting next week we're going to continue to develop these um schemes and these site plans and these building designs and next time uh that we come to see you we're going to have some some of those 3D views that that Lee talked about so we'll show how the building looks at least in mass and 3D how it looks from the street um also have cost information to share I know everyone's very eager to learn about that so that'll be July 8th and hope uh you make it and we'll all hang around for a few minutes so if you have other questions you want to ask or just uh Shake our hand or slap us upside the head welcome come on thank you good night [Music] [Music] stage no I'm not hello welcome to another installment of the kilum community meeting series um thank you all for coming tonight I'm Jenny Kaki I'm the project Manor for laali fringer with the Architecture Firm um with us also uh Mike Carol um project manager call yours International thank you um and as has been our tradition at these meetings we'll just pass the mic around the room for everyone to get a chance to introduce themselves start with Susanna hi Susanna um International hi good evening Cara daas I live on Dana rad now have a kindergarten good evening Karen har r s for and um Vice chair of the building committee and um former or proud parent of an RPS graduate I'm Lee Sherwood architect I'm car Naro I am the chair of that kill on school I'm on school committee too my school committee chair uh Ray Porter the climate advisory committee chair but I guess I should also full disclosure our commissioner the read Municipal leg Melissa Murphy uh meeting member Chris haly R laella butter my home Nancy Tumi a member of the um School building committee inia um resident of reading town and also an architectural lighting designer great welcome thanks um all for joining us a lot of familiar faces uh that I've seen a few times and a few new faces as well um so first I want to review our schedule we have't looked at this um in the last couple meetings and um we're kind of coming to the end of this first phase of the pability study this is called the oh Mike I always forget PDP means preliminary design preliminary design program anyway PDP um so we um we'll start our cost estimating of that this piece um next week um and so we're submitting all this material to the cost estimators that's um it's a little there's a little dollar signs over there Mike's gonna try to find a PO for thank you Mike um and then we'll be submitting the PDP package to the msba on May 20th and we're going to have a little low in our series of community meetings so we've been meeting every couple of weeks um and during this interlude while we're waiting for comments to come back from the msba um we're going to have a little pause in the regularly scheduled meetings and our next meeting will be in July so tonight we're going to talk about the educational visioning process that we went through with um our consultant um MLP um which is my Learning Place um integrated design um and then we'll talk a bit about how that educational visioning process has informed the design of the school um in the organizational design and how the building is laid out and adjacencies of different spaces and then we're going to show you the four schemes that we um uh in terms of site planning that we will be um including for the PDP and including in the cost estimate basically the four schemes of where we're at right now with the design at this early stage so the educational visioning um process was um probably took two months and involved a ton of different people um from um staff um and the principal at the kilum the superintendent and other people from the district level um we brought in the school resource officer and the recck department like all and students and teachers and parents so all these different people that we wanted to hear from um to really understand the kilum school Community to understand the priorities um of the community um and to understand um the the learner the teaching and learning that's happening the educational process and then how we can design a school that best meets all of those needs so these are some of the activities that we did we did a day of shadowing here at the kilums we walked around Lee and I and and Mike and um we talked to all different people in the building and kind of saw what happens here we um toured three different schools um with a group of people to uh three recently completed elementary schools one was in Ashland one was in tar and one was in daners um to for us to see and for the folks on the um educational visioning group to see what new schools look like these days and kind of open their eyes because we're building schools quite differently than when this building was built in 1969 and then we held a series of educational visiting workshops with different groups of people um and the goal there was to develop that understanding of what of of the type of learner um of um and develop a picture of a Learner in our minds um actually I'll go to the next slide to talk about this this is kind of a summary of educational visioning process um so it's kind of bringing together these four things understanding the learner understanding the learning that's happening in the classroom understanding the teaching that's happening in the classroom and then how the learning environment can better support those three things and that's the educational Vision process so here's what we found um we found um these are kind of the the priorities that came out of the process what's important what do we need to make sure that we achieve in the new building we need to have a variety of safe and flexible spaces to support inclusivity community and choice and to support those abs and flows of students needs um in different years and then in couble years we have you know four second grade classrooms this year and then next year you only have two and we need a new mechanical system new mechanical system the SM as all speak what I can't hearb we want to be showcasing student work to really put on display the great work and the teaching that's and learning that's happening in the school um and that also helps students to have a sense of belonging because they see you know there's my beautiful alphabet rainbow or whatever it is you can tell I'm not educator um we want to support passionate and self-directed learning also curiosity and purposeful play being um elementary school plays such an important part of the experience and and of learning we want to support opportunities to experience nature we have Community areas for all kinds of different groups to compete whether it's small groups of two or three students the grade level to get together or community at large folks from outside the school and be different kinds of spaces to support all those different activities and um we talked about having a ride the sensory opportunities and calming opportunities throughout um so that students will have all kinds of different needs and staff as well um can have the the space that they need to kind of take breaks and you know kind of collect themselves come back to the other um and then from those priorities we kind of developed a a a series of um say strategies and tactics like moves that we want to make sure we make in the new building so now we're going to kind of like the goals to like design ideas so we want to have flexible small learning communities with like a group of classrooms that are together around a shared space um with shared breakout space we would have um spaces to support the community and create that sense of belonging a really important thing that came out of the the process was the idea of the library at at the part of the building just like it is here and that's a really important that came out as a really important part of um what has made J such a warm and welcoming Community the sense that there's a center to the building and the center and the heart is the library so we're really are really going to try to um recreate that but maybe in a way that also allows the library to be a little bit more functional as a library um we need to have embedded special education services that are close to the classrooms but have their own dedicated space which is really really lacking now uh we going have small group spaces between classrooms um to enable um different kinds of group activity push in pull out and also those sensory opportunities [Music] throughout okay so what this is I'm going to try to navigate here onehanded um this is an organizational Di so uh from the educational visioning then we wrote a program which has which is just a list of every space that you're going to have in the building from the program we did this organizational diagram which is trying to show how each of those spaces relates to the others so we're not in a plan yet we're just trying to diagram and figure out how things relate to one another so see here if we have main entry read that so from the best of you so one thing that came out is the importance of separating the prek especially this diagram shows the large prek the full District prek which is 12 classrooms having them have their own space their own place right it's a little bit separate from of the school um and then having a kind of zone of public spaces so the gym the cafeteria having those all in their own little Zone and near the entrance so that the school can kind of um use those spaces for Community activity off of school hours that having people wandering into like the library like we have here um and then here you can see the media center which is just the strug [Music] here the media center which just means it's just a different work for Library so the media center at the center of all the classrooms here you can see those kind of neighborhood grade level neighborhoods that we were talking about so you have kindergarten classrooms four kindergarten classrooms clustered with a kind of flexible shared space in between some of those small group rooms um and then each of those neighborhoods this is LC that's a Learning Center that's the special education classroom so they're kind of in um two one one um special ed classroom for every two classrooms and then those are all kind of come together into the media center so that's kind of the organization that we're trying to and um then we brought that to the site plans and dealing with the constraints of the site and see um there would you know we start to push and pull against some of the constraints that we Happ and then um we had these two enrollment options right we've been talking about so in the existing School these are the square feet of the state school so the net Square ft the net Square ft here of the existing net just means like we add up all the spaces inside each room so the inside meas are inside the walls of the cafeteria and the offices and the classrooms but we're not counting the corridors the toilet rooms have spaces that's just that I don't know but need I just arkitect let's talk about n and grow all the time it's seemed important at the time um okay so this is the existing uh existing grow square fet is about [Music] 61,000 um of this building and then including two little modular out there and um the new school will be around somewhere between 103,000 and 120 to6 and those are the two options depending on if it's the paral prepay program the four prepa classrooms or the full District live prepay program so we're continuing to look at those two options and um I'm going to turn it over to my friend Lee to talk about some schemes U sure as long as I don't have to do the but you'll have to do the SL think right ahead this I fig it out thank you thank you so um that organizational diagram that you saw is what the inside of an architect brain looks like you know that one with all those little boxes it's basically it's the program and all of those pieces are are the are the sizes and the adjacencies and the connections a lot of it has to do with how teachers and parents and children use the building first they come here they drop up they get their mail they go to the classroom they do this those things are really essential to a really good elementary school or in school working so it may be more important to us than it is to you but if you do it right it will work it will function and there's no reason to do a school if it doesn't function most of you have been at other um ones of these meetings before and we're doing things a little differently the educational showing the educational planic um but you've all seen this and you know that we've been working with a traffic consultant and we've had meetings talking and eliciting your comments about the site and the neighborhood and all of that and we have listened and what's good about this for us is we've established a program for the inside of the building and how it should function even if it's two or even three stories it still has to be able to function working with you with the traffic but also understanding fields and flow parking and raw up we're establishing criteria and the program for the outside of the building we have a very specific site here there's no site like it on Earth some people live next door and um you don't live in any other place as far as I know so really important for us to drive around walk around really understand this site but the real trick comes in taking that program understanding that there's an existing building here which you've just seen and then trying to put a new building on the same site so it works better maximizes the amount of square footage of land that you have and all of that and as you know we've been really really focused on trying to help the parking especially a pick up in the afternoon people are parking all over the place we care a lot about safety of the kids crossing walks and all of your you know all of your sidewalks that are blocked off by parked cars and our traffic engineer had a lot of really good ideas about that and we're utilizing all of that some of the biggest things we're doing if you look at the right side which is kind of a new building is the idea of getting as many cars off the street queueing so you don't have backups and all of that and then even have flexible parking for events cuz you can park all around that Loop so we have our parking but we also have um kind of a a flexible site we could come in here and PVE the whole site you could park everywhere but that's not good for a little kid to play so we kind of have to try to find the right balance um so I just wanted to show you you know we're still working on this not totally figured out you gave us some really good suggestions I remember everything you said than so what we're going to show you today um part of our work with the msba and the town is to put together a range of options that represent let's say a renovation of a piece of the building and an addition you remember that idea the idea that we're supposed to look at this building as just a renovation although it's very too small and then we're supposed to see if we can renovate some of it what happens when we add on and so that's one of our options and I won't say much about it here the second option that we're looking at remember we're doing a full range is the idea of doing a three-story building remember the existing building is about right here so if we're going to leave that open while we build a new building which is the least expensive way to do this there's disruption but it's also the least expensive unless you have some free swing space that anybody has maybe over all your owns but um building a three-story building has pros and cons um and we're going to look at that and we're looking at the building layout for that as well I will say one of the conss is when I drive down the streets on uh neoral I don't see any three-story buildings to do so that's a thing to think about that's called scale and that has to do with fit as a fit for neighborhood and all of that it's very important to us and let it support to the people Liv and then we were challenged to look at creating for c a two a full twostory school not three story that held all of the programed square footage grow of that larger version on the site without tearing down any of this building while we build it and this scheme right here you can see how it jogs a little bit cuz that's the shape of the existent building it actually it's a two-story building and it's we have laid we've done like layouts and things like that of it and it actually works it has attributes and then D the idea was if you could take down pieces of existing build say a few classrooms that there is a way to do that what would you do differently would you re Envision a different kind of layout a different kind of scheme that might create more opportunity on the site next