News
NEWS ITEM
Frank Locker keynotes at BSEC, The British School Exhibition and Conference, Britain’s largest school planning conference. Frank spoke on the topic “School Transformation Practices, Process, and Places” before an audience of educators, architects, ICT developers, and supply chain vendors in February 2009. BSEC has become an integral part of Britain’s Building Schools for the Future programme, a national initiative with the intent of rebuilding every secondary school in the country. See Frank’s related article “Innovative Schools in Britain, Australia, and the Caymans” in the Company Store (free stuff, instant gratification).
NEWS ITEM
The Met School selected FRANK LOCKER Educational Planning to develop concepts for its East Bay Rhode Island campus. Located in Newport, RI, the East Bay campus is part of a growing group of innovative high schools conceived and developed by The Big Picture Company. Based on personalized learning, strong student-teacher and school-community relationships, and 40% of student time in internships with business and service institutions, the Met schools are highly successful, with college acceptance rates above 95%. HMFH Architects, from Boston, MA, and a host of sub-consultants worked with Frank to further Met innovations through Visioning, Educational Specifications, Design, and Rhode Island Department of Education Part 1 and Part 2 funding applications.
NEWS ITEM
Restructuring Career Technical schools is a hot topic across America. Frank Locker has led the Visioning for four of them in the last year. The projects have covered several issues which are unique to career-technical schools. In Farmington, ME, Frank led Visioning to redefine the relationships between Foster Technology Center and Mt Blue High School, two schools sharing a building but nothing in common but their students. The new concept calls for integration of academic and technical learning. For Todd County High School, in Mission, SD, Frank led the Visioning Team in the creation of a new high school based on Career Clusters. Two Pittsfield, MA high schools were visioned to be consolidated into one campus, with career technical programs available for all students through focused Academies. Most recently Frank led stakeholders from Great Works Technical School, Sanford High School, and from the parent/business community, in a county-wide Visioning Team to redefine the educational approach and facilities for career technical learning in rural York County, ME. This effort resulted in the schools winning a planning grant and funding commitment from the Maine Dept of Education through a special initiative from the state legislature. The Vision created by the Futures Team honors best practices in career-technical learning but challenges current state law. New legislation will be necessary to allow stand-alone career-technical schools in Maine before this new learner-centered school can be realized.