Page 14 - School Planning & Management, April 2017

MAINTENANCE&OPERATIONS| JOHN A. BAILEY Building Condition and the
Influence on Student Learning
THE TIME IS NOW FOR A NATIONAL STUDY ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN PUBLIC SCHOOL BUILDINGS AND LEARNING.
THE NATIONAL School Plant Management Association (NSPMA) and SchoolDude are partnering
for a comprehensive research study that will examine student academic performance of mean scaled math and language arts standard- ized test scores, while taking into account
the condition of school buildings around the
United States. There is a need for further study of the correlation between students and their learning environment. There have only been fragments of studies performed and there is a need for a comprehensive study across the country. Several research studies have been conducted in Virginia, through Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, which have revealed clear evidence that school building condition does have an impact, with other controlled variables, on student learning.
There has been much discussion about how to truly identify the best method to measure the school building condition. Dr. Carol Cash, professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univer- sity, developed a very concrete tool that allows the school building administrator or principal to conduct the physical assessment
of the school building. This assessment has been used in many research studies in Virginia. There is also building maintenance software that can assist operations departments in tracking key building performance maintenance indicators.
SchoolDude has served public schools for over 13 years through their software programs supporting maintenance operations and the tracking of key performance indicators such as reactive and preventative maintenance, deferred maintenance backlogs, energy consumption and conservation an safety as a few examples. Their software is used in operations management in school districts in more than 35 percent of the United States. Schools in several states including Arkansas and New Mexico use their facility management software statewide. This type of software can provide an unique opportunity to track how well school buildings are maintained through general and preventative maintenance. This may provide the needed tool to standardize a true measurement that defines whether a school building is deemed standard or substandard.
There have been seven states identified where SchoolDude’s
Facilities matter. There has been research that concludes that physical environment plays an important part in how well children learn. There
has been much discussion about how to truly identify the best method to measure the school building condition. Dr. Carol Cash, professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, developed a very concrete tool that allows the school building administrator or principal to conduct the physical assessment of the school building. There is also building main- tenance software that can assist operations departments in tracking key building performance maintenance indicators.
software is predominant as the program used for schools opera- tions maintenance. These states include Arkansas, Michigan, New Jersey, California, Virginia, New Mexico, Texas and the state of Washington. A random sample will be taken in each state and the building condition will be evaluated through preventative main- tenance statistics, completion rates of work orders and deferred maintenance. Once the building condition is defined by measur- able performance building indicators, the mean scaled scores
in language arts and math will be evaluated for the randomly selected schools in each of these states. Several controls will need to be in place to make the research findings valid. Socioeconomic status and other variables will be controlled to make the research as robust as possible.
The physical environment in which children learn is still of com- pelling interest, especially in correlation to the influence of student learning. Funding must continue to be appropriated to maintain and enhance our school buildings so our students and teachers have a suitableenvironmentforoptimalacademicachievement. SPM
>>John A. Bailey, Ph.D. is the director of School Plants for Chesapeake Public Schools, in Chesapeake, Va., the National School Plant Managers Association past president, and the Virginia School Plant Managers Association president, in Virginia. He can be reached at john.bailey@cpschools.com.
14 SCHOOL PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / APRIL 2017 WEBSPM.COM