Fast Growth School Coalition’s Dr. Greg Smith wants to shine a light on the work and support of our coalition’s platinum corporate partners. He recently sat down with VLK Architects to discuss VLK’s long-running partnership with FGSC and what VLK considers challenges and opportunities facing fast growth districts.

VLK Architects is a full-service architecture, planning, and interior design firm dedicated to public education in Texas. Passionately serving the best interests of school districts and their students, we are proud of our 37-year history of delivering thousands of successful projects to clients around the state.

Here are portions of his conversation with Sloan Harris, CEO and Partner of VLK Architects:

Dr. Smith: What does your company do and how important is it to your business to connect with fast-growth school districts?

Harris: More than ever, Texas’s vigorous growth is driving both prosperity and challenging demands in our communities.

VLK is in lockstep with the priorities of fast-growth districts and with key data experts who assist community leaders to make the best decisions for the future. VLK’s expertise fuses innovative school design strategies with demographic projections, public involvement, operational capacities, and timelines for building. We’ve united an array of experts to craft processes that align curriculum and instruction, long-range facility and bond planning, and participant-based design to deliver tailored solutions that meet the unique needs of every district client. Across the state of Texas, we live where we work, and we are driven to creating the safest and most engaging learning environments that every young learner deserves.

Dr. Smith: Why do you support the Fast Growth School Coalition?

Harris: VLK Architects proudly supports FGSC’s mission to advocate for the advancement of Texas’s fastest growing school districts. We celebrate FGSC’s role in providing vital resources that sustain a compelling and unified voice for districts striving to meet community demand. FGSC’s work builds unity between fast-growth districts and creates opportunities to share knowledge and resources, and to co-create solutions that benefit every school district. VLK Architects endeavors to serve as a critical resource to fast-growth districts committed to delivering an excellent education to every student despite the challenges of significant growth and limited assets.

Dr. Smith: What do you see as the biggest challenges and greatest opportunities facing public education and fast growth schools today? What are some of the content, events, or products and services that may help them navigate Covid, their next bond election, or other aspects of managing the tremendous growth these districts see year in and out?

Harris: In public education, the challenges can be especially difficult for fast-growing districts in Texas. Perennial funding limitations from the state legislature is a profound issue, as is recent legislation affecting ballot language requirements for bond elections.

Encroaching charter schools are a qualified threat to the enrollment and state funding for an increasing number of districts. Other strenuous challenges stem from growing contentions between school boards and the communities they serve.

Districts must be simultaneously bold and cautious navigating these competitive, political, and sometimes turbulent environments, while also accounting for the speed and scale of their communities’ expansion. Opportunities such as engaging a demographer annually to understand trends, maintaining funds for land purchases, and keeping support facilities in mind (i.e., stadiums, transportation, professional development, among others) can help fast growth districts keep pace with their communities.

VLK exists to serve as a resource in supporting the educational missions of all school districts. We are a compassionate partner in collaborating on solutions to the greatest challenges every public educator faces, delivering results tailored to harmonize with each district’s unique needs and conditions. Honed by decades of experience and leading-edge expertise, our practice is built on flexibility, ingenuity, and devotion to our clients. VLK’s service yields extraordinary solutions enabling districts to plan for growth, thrive in a challenging political context, and stay ahead of demand.

Dr. Smith: As we talked, VLK Architects pointed me to a couple of case studies and overviews of their recent work. You can view VLK’s work on the new Denton High School project online here, and their recent publication, Thriving Through Growth, Creating a Future Together, is accessible here.

Dr. Smith: How has VLK Architects helped fast growth and other clients navigate the Covid pandemic, as well as ongoing new projects in districts across the state?

Harris: VLK’s decades of service to growing communities throughout Texas has informed our team’s profound understanding of the challenges, needs, and priorities of their school districts. Working as a resource and partner, we help districts scale up for the future through a vigorously tested, craft-focused planning process known as VLK | LINK®. This starts with a boots-on-the-ground/fact-based campus analysis followed by focused planning grounded on the district’s educational program, forming the platform for a consensus-based bond plan that aligns with the district’s financial ability and strategic plan. It aligns the community’s expectations with the district’s actions, and comprehensively captures educational needs, physical condition needs, capacity needs, leadership goals, and curriculum plans, resulting in a true long-range plan for future readiness. Whether during the planning or election phase, our efforts are fully coordinated, well thought out, and proactive. Once a bond has passed, VLK utilizes VLK | LAUNCH®, our design collaboration process, enabling a district’s stakeholders to actively engage in the conceptual design of future projects.

Dr. Smith: Sloan, VLK has stood with our Fast Growth School Coalition for years, and we so appreciate your partnership, your expertise and your work with our member districts. VLK clearly understands our issues from the local level on up to the State Capitol.

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