Raise the Floor Campaign launches to equitably scale high-performance schools
PRESS RELEASE — November 30, 2023 — Washington, D.C. —Today, the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) with the support of Perkins&Will and Sourcewell is launching the Raise the Floor Campaign to fundamentally change how the public, private, and non-profit industries collaborate to support public schools to ensure every student in America has access to facilities that bolster their learning and wellbeing.
“We are calling this campaign ‘raise the floor’ because the U.S. has some of the world’s best school facilities — state-of-the-art learning spaces that ‘raise the ceiling’ for what is possible for our educators and students. However, these best-in-class schools exacerbate the social inequities between our highest- and lowest-performing schools,” said Craig Schiller, Executive Director of CHPS. “The fact is, as a country, our education infrastructure needs to be upgraded to meet even basic student needs as evidenced by the D rating for school facilities from ASCE’s Infrastructure Report Card. We need collaboratively-designed, whole systems solutions to ensure that we have a complete reset in what school buildings should and must provide to all students, regardless of their geographic location or economic status. We need a moonshot so that, within one generation, every student thrives in the best schools in the world. This is our vision for raising the floor.”
There are numerous programs and entities or organizations that are focused on improving school building performance — CHPS being one of them — in a variety of different ways. Yet, current efforts are siloed. Addressing the quality of America’s school facilities is so urgent, the need for improvements is so widespread, and the barriers that must be overcome are so complex that no one entity can tackle this system on their own. Schools need a concerted and coordinated nation-wide effort to better construct and maintain school buildings for the long haul.
This campaign seeks to lay the groundwork for this multi-year effort. CHPS will start by actively recruiting partners and will be engaging nonprofits, entrepreneurs, NGOs, school districts, government agencies, philanthropists, change agents, solutions providers, and subject matter experts who share a commitment to this common vision and bring diverse expertise and perspectives in the areas of systems change, all aspects of design and construction of learning environments, student performance and health, school and district facility planning and operations, policy, procurement, fundraising, scaling impact, and much more to:
Align on the current state — what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s needed;
Map the dozens of programs supporting K-12 school facilities across a multitude of organizations;
Learn from and leverage successful impact models from nonprofits in other sectors such as affordable housing and climate change;
Participate in a change lab which will be designed to create an actionable “moon shot” for our nation’s schools: getting public school facilities to a B+ grade or better within one generation.
“Perkins&Will is a proud supporter of CHPS’ Raise the Floor Campaign. CHPS is catalyzing a critical national conversation among healthy school champions so our students and educators can occupy the highest performing schools,” says Dr. Erika Eitland, Director of Perkins&Will’s Human Experience Lab and a CHPS board member. "This campaign will pave the way for a future where every school can efficiently and equitably improve facilities to benefit all students and teachers."
“CHPS and Sourcewell both understand the direct correlation between high-performance school design and good indoor air quality which positively influences the health and well-being of students, teachers, and staff. This purpose-driven partnership is important as scaling better building practices to reduce energy consumption and improve indoor learning environments leads to long-term cost savings for schools and communities,” said Katie Alba, Sourcewell’s Director of Partner Accounts.
To build momentum for this campaign, CHPS encourages individuals and entities that share a vision of scaling better schools and raising the floor across the U.S. to sign a statement of support — sending a clear message to industry leaders that this needs to be a priority and calling upon all to collaborate.
Please contact CHPS if you are interested in learning more and exploring partnership opportunities.
About CHPS
CHPS is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering industry collaboration amongst diverse experts to deliver better buildings for better students. Their mission is to improve student physical health, academic performance, mental well-being, and environmental stewardship by creating the best high-performance school environment. Founded in 1999, the organization maintains the first and only building performance standard developed to meet the unique needs of PK-12 school districts centered on student outcomes. Today, CHPS criteria is used by more than 70 school districts and has influenced over 750 projects nationwide. Learn more at chps.net.
About Perkins&Will
Perkins&Will, an interdisciplinary, research-based architecture and design firm, was founded in 1935 on the belief that design has the power to transform lives. The firm is committed to creating a better, beautiful, more equitable world through Living Design, an approach that integrates environmental, social, and design considerations to advance ecological health and well-being. Architizer named Perkins&Will the world’s “Best Sustainable Firm” in 2023, and Metropolis named it “Firm of the Year” in 2022 for its industry leadership in advancing climate action and social justice. Fast Company named Perkins&Will one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies in Architecture three times, and in 2021, it added the firm to its list of Brands That Matter—making Perkins&Will the first architecture practice in the world to earn the distinction.
With an international team of more than 2,500 professionals, Perkins&Will has 30 studios worldwide, providing integrated services in architecture, interior design, branded environments, urban design, and landscape architecture. Partners include Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects; Portland; Nelson\Nygaard; and Pierre-Yves Rochon (PYR). For more information, visit www.perkinswill.com.
About Sourcewell
A self-sustaining government organization, Sourcewell has over 40 years of dedicated service helping government, education, and nonprofit agencies operate more efficiently through a variety of solutions.
Contract purchasing solutions that are competitively solicited nationally, offering over 400 awarded contracts.
Technology solutions for schools that are created for educators, by educators.
Learn more at https://sourcewell.org/