You asked if any states require municipalities to use a generic building plan for their schools. You also wanted to know if any Connecticut legislators have introduced recent legislation on this topic.

SUMMARY

No state requires its municipalities to use uniform building plans, but several states recommend certain plans or guidelines for public school construction projects. Florida and North Carolina's statutes encourage their respective education departments to develop "prototype designs" to reduce school building costs. Arizona's laws specify permissible cumulative classroom square footage for each grade level. One bill on uniform school construction was proposed in Connecticut's 2000 legislative session, but failed to make it out of committee.

FLORIDA

Florida's legislature asked the SMART Schools Clearinghouse to come up with Frugal Construction Standards for school construction. SMART schools are "Soundly Made, Accountable, Reasonable, and Thrifty. " Among the legislature's criteria were maximizing cost- and energy-efficiency, potential for design-build or performance contracting, and following appropriate industry standards. The legislature concluded that following a set of standards for building SMART schools could significantly reduce the cost of building and maintaining school facilities, while ensuring a high quality learning environment for students and teachers.

NORTH CAROLINA

North Carolina's statutes require its Department of Public Instruction to create a centralized clearinghouse of prototype school designs accessible to local boards of education. Architects and engineers registered in North Carolina may add their plans to the computerized database, which the general public can access. The law allows the original architects or engineers to retain ownership of their designs. The database, accessible at www. schoolclearinghouse. org, provides information on the schools; their construction, costs, and designs; the number of other recent projects involving the same prototype; floor and site plans; and comments from the schools' builders and owners.

ARIZONA

Arizona's laws specify the cumulative classroom square footage for each grade level in order to ensure uniformity and equality in the state's public schools. These specifications are listed in Table 1.

Table 1: Classroom Square Footage Requirements

RECENT LEGISLATION

Senator Judith Freedman introduced SB 188, An Act Concerning Costs in the School Construction Program and Model School Building Plans, during the 2000 legislative session. This bill proposed to "require the Department of Education to maintain files of architectural plans for different types of school buildings for use by school districts in order to reduce costs in the school construction program. " The bill was referred to the Education Committee, which took no further action.

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