Cookie Cutters

   The debate on "cookie cutter" schools has gone on, but I'd like to take a look at the talk from maybe another angle. If you look historically, we have been making duplicate schools for a long time.

For example:

Lincoln (1926) and Lovettsville (1927)

Lincoln Elementary School

From "Beacon," Lovettsville HS's 1954 yearbook

Ashburn (1945) (aka the Staff Training Center) and Banneker (1947)

Banneker Elementary

Staff Training School
(Formerly Ashburn Elementary School)

And then there is the Carver School (1945/1946), which used a school blueprint from Clarke County, Boyce Elementary School (which is still in operation)
 

Boyce Elementary School.
Image courtesy of the Clarke County Historical Association.

Carver Center
(Formerly Carver Elementary School)

   The first modern "cookie cutters" were Guilford ES, opened in 1966, and Sully ES (1968). A year after Sully, Broad Run HS opened, using Loudoun Valley HS's blueprint (1962). And so, with a few exceptions, every new school design had at least two schools use it. That's how things went until the 90's, where we hit the BIG population boom. Since 1995, we have had built 31 elementary schools, 10 middle schools (including J. Michael Lunsford MS, opening this fall), and 8 high schools. That is a total of 49 schools, all of them has in the very least four or five other schools that look like it.

   Since 1995, we are now on our fourth generation of elementary school cookie-cutter, middle schools are on their 2nd or 3rd generation, and, after Potomac Falls HS, high schools have more or less stayed the same.

   So, we have had cookie cutters in the past. Never on the scale we have now, but in the past we weren't growing as fast as we have been recently.

   Just wait until Heritage and Freedom get additions. Loudoun Valley HS and Broad Run HS started out the same, but the schools have had very different expansions that make them different from each other.

   Personally, I don't like cookie cutter school. I think every school should be unique to its community to be special. But it is a cost-efficient necessity we have to work with or the population can easily overwhelm the school system.

Sources:
Boyce ES
Blueprints
CIPs