Creating a Green Schoolhouse

The Odyssey of Odyssey Charter School

By Mark Anderson

The Odyssey Charter School in Palm Bay, Fla., is providing a lesson for educators in how to build good environments - in a bricks and mortar sense - for learning.

The six-year-old Montessori charter in Palm Bay Fla. opened its almost $6 million school building this winter, showcasing many of the latest features in healthy and environmentally friendly school design.

That "healthy and high performance" Odyssey school campus grew from a vision shared by founder and head of school Constance Ortiz and a long list of the school's friends.

"Our mission statement says that we'll work together to help our children reach their full potential in all areas of life," Ortiz says. "Part of our dream has been to design a school building that contributes to that by giving them a healthy environment for learning."

The many components of that environment were chosen during lengthy consultations between school staff and architect Larry Maxwell, a "green building" design specialist and founder of the firm Spacecoast Architecture. "Larry had been itching to find a client" who would allow him to apply healthy design techniques in a comprehensive way, according to Ortiz.

The results show up in details throughout the 47,000 square-foot school. Window placement and design combined with the building's north-south orientation means each room is illuminated with indirect, natural light, giving students more energy.

Materials of all kinds, from flooring to furniture, were chosen to reduce or eliminate toxins. State-of-the-art circulation and ventilation systems keep the interior air fresh. The building and its playgrounds are situated in a wooded, 9.4 acre setting, with a nature trail surrounding the school for outdoor studies - and for calming time away from school stresses, for students and teachers.

"Our goal is to educate hearts as well as minds," Ortiz says, and that meant taking the environmental program even further to support "a respect and reverence for life." For instance, the background music students hear in the halls is probably by Mozart or Bach. And by next year when the new high-efficiency kitchen is completed, school lunches will be nutritious, featuring fresh - and probably organic - fruits and vegetables. The soda vending machines are already gone.

There's another important side to Maxwell's high-performance design. The architect estimates that the new Odyssey will consume only 25 percent of the energy used in comparable traditional schools.

Those savings played an important role in wrapping up an affordable bank financing package, and they should help persuade other schools that "green" school design can be practical.

It's all a dream come true for Ortiz and much of the Odyssey community, but she acknowledges the dream was hard-won and relied on some local angels.

One of those angels was residential real estate developer Cole Goatley, who donated the school's new site - worth $1.1 million - a gift that got the project up on its feet.

Goatley is a major developer in the south Palm Bay community, which was growing rapidly but whose schools were filled far beyond their enrollment capacity.

The developer was acquainted with Odyssey's program, which was leasing space in a church a few miles north of Goatley's Bayside Lakes development. He liked the program, and believed that families in his 2000-acre planned residential community would welcome Odyssey as an alternative for their children.

Goatley's gift provided an effective launch for Odyssey's fundraising campaign, but there was still more to do, in part because Florida provides only about half the capital funding to charters that it provides for regular public school construction.

Ortiz and her team knocked on doors, talked to groups large and small, and spent days on the phone to fill in the funding gap. The result was another $1 million in cash and in-kind gifts. Contributions came from school families, from the teaching staff - who contributed a year's salary increases to the campaign - and from the nearby Kennedy Space Center, which provided $175,000 worth of reconditioned computers. Maxwell also provided his services at a deep discount.

"I think the lesson is that when your motives are pure, and you're asking on the behalf of children, good things happen," Ortiz says, "if you're willing to turn over every stone."

The scale of the expansion exceeded what the Odyssey community first expected. After long hours of research and financial modeling, Ortiz and her board and staff concluded that the school should more than double in size to serve its growing community and to make best use of its building opportunity.

That meant an enrollment campaign and countless meetings and conversations with families. Student population jumped from 181 to 375 in the 2004-2005 school year when Odyssey moved into 18 double wide trailers next to the new school's construction site. Enrollment reached its capacity of 515 this year.

And Odyssey's teaching staff had to grow from 25 to 70 to meet classroom needs.

Hiring that many teachers with Montessori backgrounds meant advertising and interviewing across the country, and Ortiz was on the phone many nights till 11 p.m. talking to candidates.

But the results have been heartening. Candidates from around the country responded to the school's Montessori and holistic curriculum and to its healthy environment commitment, and Ortiz is excited about the veteran, enthusiastic staff that is settling in from as far away as New York City and Seattle.

One major step still remains in the financing quest. The Brevard County Commission awarded Odyssey a $2.24 million grant from its community impact fund, a revenue tool that levies one-time residential assessments in fast-growing areas to help pay for the new roads and schools those communities require.

The Brevard County School District disagreed with that decision however. Its board said the commissioners were wrong to give close to 40 percent of the county's entire impact revenues to the charter, and should reserve more for regular district schools.

The two sides are in mediation over that decision, and Ortiz is keeping her fingers crossed that the grant will stay intact. The full gift would pay for the school's energy-efficient kitchen - enabling the school to start its healthy lunch program - and for completion of the school's playground and soccer field.

At this point, Ortiz's planning energy has moved beyond construction, though, and back to life inside the school now.

"We had a reputation for having a very warm, comforting culture." But moving into a large new building with a majority of new faces in the community disrupted that," Ortiz admits. "We're really starting all over in trying to create the right emotional environment. That will be our grand experiment for the next two or three years."

For more information on the development of Odyssey Charter School's new campus, or for information on employment opportunities at the growing school call school director Constance Ortiz at (321) 733-0442 ext. 107.