What if every sixth grader had a laptop?  What if every seventh grader knew they had college paid for?  What if every K-12 student could walk to school and back home?

It’s happening here and there, and hopefully it’ll all come together at one school.

- The state of Michigan is seeking a contract to provide all 130,000 of its sixth graders with laptops to be used in classrooms with wireless internet by January 1, 2004.

- The Department of Education is establishing a national program to

read more…

What better way to get a community involved in its schools, than to transform its schools into community centers.  Here are some examples across the country:

-The K-5 Tenderloin Community School in San Francisco has medical and dental facilities, counseling rooms, adult education facilities, a family resource center, and a community garden and kitchen.
-High school academies in Michigan and Arizona are built within museums that provide real-world applications.
-The Big Lake Public School

read more…

While kids love people-oriented*, walkable, entertainment-rich towns, their “bosses” (parents) won’t have any of it if the schools are sub-par.

CoolTown prosperity revolves around lasting community building bulit through relationships (e.g. guilds, third places), and good schools are no different.  Just as guilds focus on groups of people with common interests, so are the “academies” at Edison Schools, where groups of kids are taught by the same four-six teachers over two-three years in

read more…

Can a town designed by and for creatives, gen xers/yers and knowledge workers be any good for kids?  Actually, very much so.  Not only is this audience ready to have kids on their own, they were kids themselves not too long ago, and the following guidelines for children can apply to them as well.

Given a fair start, kids above all need to be able to freely explore their environment and learn how to spontaneously relate to other people of all ages in order to develop happily and healthily,

read more…

Sometimes, even better than those who are making decisions in how we plan and build our communities.  The more we listen to a diversity of people, including age and gender, the healthier our places will be.  For instance…

In the industrial age, mass production allowed only a few lucky managers to make the decisions of many.  This is quite evident in one of the greatest mass production results of all time:  suburban sprawl - which has little reflection of the needs of children, teens, the

read more…