The Maryland Reporter‘s coverage of MACo’s recent School Construction Symposium focuses on a discussion about increasing requirements for schools as the reason for some of the size and cost increases of schools over the past several years.

As described in the Reporter, in a presentation at the Symposium by David Lever, Executive Director of the Interagency Committee on School Construction,

Factors driving more space include:

• Universal all-day kindergarten, and growing pre-kindergarten in many jurisdictions;
• More special needs students requiring Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) and the rooms to implement them;
• Early childhood intervention space;
• More “itinerant” support staff, teachers and counselors;
• More computer labs and science labs, even at the elementary level;
• More storage space because “There’s simply too much stuff in classrooms;”
• Oversized gymnasiums for community recreation services;
• Fire codes that have become more stringent.

For more coverage, see the Maryland Reporter, Is Maryland building ‘Cadillacs or Buicks’ for its new public schools?