Strongsville Middle School Brings the 21st Century Learning Experience to Students
In 2013, the Strongsville City School District in Strongsville, Ohio, recognized that the two middle schools serving the community had become overcrowded and outdated and did not adequately serve the needs of today’s 21st-century students. In fact, the older of the two schools, Center Middle School, had been built almost 100 years ago!
Additionally, the two existing schools served only grades 7 and 8, and District administrators sought to include all 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-grade students in a single, forward-thinking facility. Ultimately, the District concluded that construction of a brand-new middle school was necessary, and in 2015, development began on the modern Strongsville Middle School.
To fulfill their objective of providing local students with a true 21st Century Learning experience, Strongsville District Administrators knew they would need to partner with a provider to install innovative furniture & equipment throughout the new school. The District was required by the Ohio state mandate to go through a very strict bidding process, which was ultimately won by School Specialty, a premier distributor of supplies, furniture, and both curriculum and supplemental resources to the education marketplace.
Cindy Sakotas, Senior Interior Designer for GPD Group, who designed the interior educational spaces of the new Strongsville High School, had collaborated for many years with Elisa Race, Architect and Design Specialist for the Midwest at School Specialty, on a variety of projects that School Specialty had been awarded after bidding processes similar to the one that took place for Strongsville Middle School.
Cindy had seen firsthand the industry-leading products and professional expertise offered by School Specialty. Additionally, given her successful partnership with Race, she knew that School Specialty would be the right furniture & equipment provider to execute the vision for the new Strongsville Middle School.
In February 2016, School Specialty was awarded an almost $1 million contract to deploy furniture & equipment solutions for the entire facility.
Modern, Flexible Spaces for Everyday Learning
The new Strongsville Middle School was built to offer students the most advanced 21st-century learning experience possible, and to instill in them a love for learning. Supporting this environment, the facility features more circular spaces, which are warmer and more inviting than traditional square or rectangular room configurations. Flexibility is a key theme throughout, and both teachers and students can use spaces in a variety of ways. This adaptability is critical to 21st Century Learning, as it encourages children to be interactive and engaged, and helps them to learn in a variety of ways, such as through group projects.
The Strongsville City School District requested a range of high-quality, state-of-the-art furniture & equipment from GPD, which turned to School Specialty’s NeoClass Line as a solution to meet the District’s needs. NeoClass is designed to meet ergonomic needs, stimulate alertness, and provide optimal comfort for an enjoyable classroom experience. NeoClass desks and chairs enable greater mobility by allowing teachers to quickly and easily reconfigure classroom layouts to accommodate various instructional methods, whether it’s a collaborative discussion, an individual project, or a group lecture.
Additionally, NeoClass seating solutions focus specifically on motion. These unique furniture pieces allow users to move gently (forward, backward, or side-to-side) in their seats, creating a calming effect and helping them to concentrate. The flexibility offered by NeoClass products directly supports the 21st Century Learning setting, and District administrators were so impressed with the line that they ordered approximately 1,900 chairs and 1,300 desks!
In addition to NeoClass, School Specialty also deployed other durable, aesthetically pleasing classroom furniture from its proprietary Classroom Select brand, as well as soft seating, mobile furniture, and teacher workstations with attached podiums. With the school’s contemporary color scheme being red-orange, green, blue, and yellow, School Specialty customized the furniture to fit Cindy Sakotas’ color scheme, ensuring a cohesive look throughout the facility.
Something About Strongsville, MS Looks Familiar!
One particularly noteworthy area of the new Strongsville Middle School is the cafeteria, which is two stories tall. This area is styled like a café, as administrators sought to recreate environments familiar to students and similar to places they may spend time outside of school, such as a mall food court. GPD designed a 61-foot-long, candy-cane-shaped booth that runs through the middle of the cafeteria.
School Specialty worked with a custom booth manufacturer to build a booth that met the unique needs of the District and its vision for the cafeteria, and it is the largest piece of booth seating the manufacturer has ever created for any school. GPD also specified over 500 new “cafetorium” chairs from NPS, a vendor partner of School Specialty, which agreed to make custom-colored chairs to accommodate the building’s unique color scheme.
Another attraction is the media center, which overlooks the cafeteria. This large, glassed-in area is also fashioned after a café. The media center, for all intents and purposes, is a 21st Century Learning space that replaces the traditional library — it has very little shelving, as students largely utilize their tablets for research rather than use physical books.
GPD worked with the District to determine which furniture items would be most useful for the media center and ultimately provided café-style and serpentine seating, as well as mobile furniture, to ensure students had many seating options for research, independent learning, and collaborative group projects. School Specialty worked with GPD to provide the products Cindy Sakotas needed, ensuring the quality and durability she and the District expected.
The innovative, high-quality furniture & equipment designed by GPD and provided by School Specialty have brought a real-world 21st-century learning environment to Strongsville Middle School. The new facility is set to open for the 2016-17 school year, and District administrators look forward to offering local middle school students a modern, exciting, and transformative learning experience not previously available to the community.
Project Photographs
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For assistance with 21st-century learning environment layouts and design, visit www.ProjectsByDesign.com. To contact us, please call 800-305-0174 or email projectsbydesign@schoolspecialty.com.
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