Planning and Managing School Facilities

Theodore Kowalski addresses the administrative procedures associated with planning and managing school facilities. As noted at the outset, practitioner interest in school facilities has been growing rapidly in recent years because decades of neglect, poor planning, and cost cutting have created a situation in which large numbers of America's school buildings are in need of major repair or replacement. At the same time, the realization that costs related to repair and replacement have escalated significantly has fueled a new concern among school facility planning and management. Writing for school administrators, superintendents, and board members as well as graduate students in education, Kowalski discusses planning from the perspective of both individual facility projects and more comprehensive district-wide efforts. The responsibilities associated with administering school buildings are also approached from the individual school and district program perspectives.Following an introductory chapter that sketches the history of school facilities and the evolution of planning, Kowalski examines contemporary issues in school facilities planning and management. The remaining chapters are divided into two groups devoted to planning and the management of existing facilities, respectively. Turning his attention first to planning activities, Kowalski advocates a system-analysis approach that is based upon high levels data integration and used in conjunction with a vision-driven model of goal development. Particular attention is given to the potential participants of planning, alternative planning paradigms, and the potential pitfalls of various approaches. In the section on administering school buildings, an overview chapter is followed by separate treatments of school district maintenance, managing the individual school, and major contemporary problems associated with school facility management. Taken as a whole, Kowalski's work fills a major gap in the field by focusing attention on a key aspect of school administrative responsibility that, until now, has received little attention in the professional literature.