As resilient design takes center stage, the demand for life-safety structures is reshaping how public buildings are planned, especially in regions vulnerable to high-wind events. Architects and engineers are increasingly tasked with integrating safe spaces into everyday environments, balancing code requirements, funding opportunities and functional design. The issue hasn’t gone unnoticed by the K-12 educational community. Across the U.S., more K-12 schools are incorporating storm shelters into their designs. Wells alone has built more than 50 storm shelters throughout the Midwest in the last four years. In addition to meeting 2018 IBC building code requirements, schools are also addressing concerns of student and staff safety, with the growing frequency and severity of extreme weather events like tornadoes and hurricanes.��

The Growing Threat of Tornadoes and Hurricanes

Each year, hundreds of tornadoes and severe storms impact the central and southeastern regions of the country, threatening communities and the infrastructure that supports them. Schools play an important role in supporting the community; many are particularly vulnerable, operating in older buildings without adequate protection.��

Quick Facts:��

• The U.S. experiences more than 1,200 tornadoes each year, which is more than any other country in the world, according to the US National Science Foundation.��

• There is a significant upward trend in tornado frequency in portions of the Southeast, Midwest, and Northeast portions of the U.S. since 1979, according to NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science��

• Hurricanes are becoming stronger and more destructive, with the most damaging U.S. hurricanes being three times more frequent than 100 years ago, according to the Environmental Defense Fund��

These realities are prompting a shift: More districts are investing in storm shelter spaces that can protect students, staff and the community when disaster strikes.��

What’s Driving the Trend Towards Storm Shelters?

The increase in storm shelter construction in K-12 schools isn’t coincidental. It’s the result of evolving building codes, expanded funding opportunities, growing climate concerns, and a stronger commitment to occupant safety from both public and private stakeholders.��

Updated Building Codes: With the advent of the 2018 IBC Code Requirements for ICC 500 Storm Shelters, all Group E occupancies in designated risk areas with an occupant load of 50 or more are expected to have an extreme-wind storm shelter that can withstand winds speeds of 250 mph.����

Federal and State Funding Initiatives: At the same time, funding mechanisms have expanded to support resilient infrastructure. Programs like FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM), and the newer Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) initiative offer critical financial support for school districts looking to offset the cost of storm shelter construction. These grants have made it possible for many communities—especially in rural or lower-income districts—to implement safety measures that may otherwise have been financially out of reach.��

Climate Awareness and Risk Assessment: The increasing frequency, intensity, and unpredictability of severe weather events has raised public and professional awareness. Tornadoes in non-traditional areas, shifting hurricane paths, and longer storm seasons are pushing school districts and other public support entities (like ) to rethink how buildings are designed and used in emergencies. What was once considered an isolated risk has now become part of long-term planning for educational and civic infrastructure.��

Community Dual-Use Planning: More jurisdictions are creating storm shelters as multi-functional community assets. These spaces—often gymnasiums, cafeterias or auditoriums—are designed to serve both day-to-day educational needs and emergency preparedness functions. When designed properly, they meet life-safety standards without compromising programmatic space or aesthetics.��

Prefabricated Concrete Storm Shelters

There’s a clear rise in the number of K-12 projects requesting storm shelters across the central and southeastern U.S., and for many school districts, prefabricated concrete has become the most practical solution for creating a building that lasts.����

Even before the 2018 IBC code implementation, prefabricated components were a material of choice for school systems in more northerly climates. In Minnesota, for example, precast has been a popular building material in educational settings for nearly 30 years. Voter referendums are typically passed in November, giving contractors a short 19-month window to complete the project, sometimes less. Precast enables them to work through the winter season, since manufacturing occurs indoors, and installation can take place in any weather. The same can’t be said for cast-in-place, brick, and block construction, as wrapping and heating the worksite, often necessary in colder climates, is cost-prohibitive.����

In part due to the ICC code, precast is now making significant inroads into other regions that have historically relied on other building materials. Schools such as Roosevelt High School in Hays, Kan.; Maple River K-12 in Mapleton, Minn.; Life School in Carrollton, Texas; and Valley Southwoods Freshman High School in West Des Moines, Iowa, all chose a total precast solution for their storm shelters in a departure from more traditional materials.����

What did they get in return? In short, a stronger and more durable, sustainable concrete roof and wall system that offers wind and fire resistance, superior thermal performance, design flexibility and greater control over the schedule.������

Standard prefabricated concrete safe rooms can easily and economically be designed to exceed the 250-mph windspeed requirement. The standard panel already comes close to the ICC storm shelter code, as they’re typically designed to a 7,000-psi standard, which can exceed 10,000 psi after curing. To comply with the ICC code, Wells increases the size of our insulated panels from 12 inches thick to 14 inches thick—all prestressed with vertical strands to compress the panel. NOTE: Variations in the design might be necessary when windows are present, as the glass transfers additional wind load into the precast. Along with prefabricated wall panels, Wells can manufacture Double Tee roof panels with up to 100-foot spans for a high school gymnasium.����

Usually, the gymnasium is designated as a school’s storm shelter. While it may seem counterintuitive to design such a large space to storm shelter requirements, the reasons are grounded in the ICC code itself. Beyond the obvious fact that gymnasiums can hold more people and are easily identifiable, a storm shelter must be capable of taking the collapsed load of any taller structure nearby. Smaller spaces can be more difficult to design to the ICC standard, making them less feasible.����

As weather events become more frequent and severe, school districts are responding by investing in resilient infrastructure. The rise of storm shelters—particularly those built with prefabricated concrete—is a trend rooted in safety, durability and smart design. Ultimately, they’re successfully achieving the dual goals of protecting students and responsibly managing public funds.��

Learn More About Wells

Visit the to learn more about the company’s education expertise and to see featured K-12 projects including:

Gary Pooley is a regional sales manager for Wells and has been in the precast industry for nearly four decades. With a wealth of experience, including thousands of projects, he brings a unique and valuable perspective to the industry with inventive solutions for finish designs. Pooley is actively engaged in various construction organizations, currently serving as a board member of Minnesota Prestress Association.��

The post Why Storm Shelters Are Becoming Essential in K-12 School Design�� appeared first on �Ӱ�ԭ��ҕ�l.

The post Why Storm Shelters Are Becoming Essential in K-12 School Design�� appeared first on �Ӱ�ԭ��ҕ�l.

By Lindsey Coulter��

Clayton County Public Schools will unveil a first-of-its-kind educational facility for Pre-K students at the start of the 2025-2026 school year. Designed by the nation’s largest K-12 architecture firm,��, the��Riverdale��Early Learning Center (Riverdale ELC) introduces new opportunities for young learners in the Atlanta metro area.������

Tailored to early learners,��Riverdale��ELC is designed to provide students with a safe and secure space that is accessible and functional, while also remaining playful. Offering��outdoor learning opportunities, the campus will include an accessible playground, amphitheater and four classroom clusters—each focused on a different geographical region in Georgia.��In addition to a media center, STEM lab and rooms dedicated to art, music and play, Riverdale ELC will even offer wraparound services for community members such as vision and dental care, employment services and social services. This inclusive approach meant the PBK design team needed to carefully balance safety and security for students and educators without compromising a playful and nurturing environment.��

“We were approached by Clayton County Public Schools to help get their enrollment rates back up,” said Bayleigh Kempainen, AIA, managing principal of PBK’s Sugar Hill, Ga. “The district lost a lot of students during COVID, and they found that a lot of their students weren’t graduating.”��

As research shows that early exposure to fun and engaging learning environments increases the odds that students will successfully matriculate from high school, Kempainen explained, the purpose of the early Learning Center was multi layered. The project aims to meet the county’s pre-kindergarten education needs while reengaging students that had fallen off the radar and increasing their long-term educational success. The 24-classroom facility will serve an estimated 500 students; however, the project won’t just focus on young learners

“It’s more than just a Pre-K center,” Kempainen said. “It also includes wrap-around community services.”��

These services include a daycare center, health clinic, counseling services, observation rooms that allow parents to watch their children engage in play therapy sessions and more. However, with the additional focus on community engagement and creating a true community resource, safety and security for students specifically was key.

The PBK design team took a multi-pronged approach to security, creatively working safety considerations into the structure without making the campus feel like a fortress. This included an awareness of sightlines into learning areas, integrating security technology and durable door hardware, and building discrete layers of security around students, starting at the classroom level and moving outward to the six-classroom pod level. The team considered how individual pods could be locked down to prevent access, if necessary, but maintained a sense of the pods as being a sort of welcoming home base for students. ��

“[Safety] was one of the top priorities, but we also balanced it with our interiors, creating engaging spaces where students can use their imaginations, get outside and have fun at school,” Kempainen said. “We were very careful not to allow any access to the Pre-K center from inside the building. From the outside, it all looks like one campus, but on the inside there’s no path from one [area] to the other.”��

Additionally, the building’s angles create interior playgrounds, which further helps to control access, and most windows are positioned to look into the interior play spaces rather than to the building’s exterior. These spaces are also directly viewable from the principal’s office and teacher work rooms for added monitoring.��

According to Kempainen, many of these safety and security tactics are client driven. ��

“Our responsibility as designers is to bring up the latest and greatest and trends that we see. That might be security detectors or double doors. We recommend these things��but ultimately, [the client is] going to tell us what sort of technologies they’d like us to use. I feel like as we progress in the safety and security world, it is all becoming more technologically advanced.”��

Learn more about the project in the , which focuses on more safety and security topics and trends.��

The post PBK on Designing Supportive and Secure Early Learning Spaces appeared first on �Ӱ�ԭ��ҕ�l.

The post PBK on Designing Supportive and Secure Early Learning Spaces appeared first on �Ӱ�ԭ��ҕ�l.

You know the scenario: A small geek gets shoved into his locker by some meathead only to suffer the further indignity of being locked inside of it. It’s a staple sight gag of movies and TV, but does it really happen — can a student really get locked in a locker?

That would be an emphatic “Yes!” if you believe the posts at the self-billed “front page of the Internet,” Reddit, an online, crowdsourced news site, qua bulletin board, that has long been a repository for teen angst. One headline says says it all: “.”

Apparently, a petite young woman in the 1990s, who identified herself online as “Nixie97,” decided to prank her boyfriend by leaping from his locker when he next opened it. She knew his combination and let herself in, closed the door and waited. The problem was it that was a Friday afternoon and the boyfriend never returned to his locker. In fact, no one came near it until the following week. She survived but not before enduring 60 hours of unimaginable discomfort. Beyond the cramped space, she had no water or food, or convenient way to relieve herself.

Such experiences can be as harrowing as they are preventable. Obviously, students shouldn’t lock themselves or others into school lockers and not just for the mortal danger it presents. There are legal considerations as well, according to , J.D, the executive director of Legal Kid Inc.

“As funny as this may be in a movie, the physical act of throwing, pushing or stuffing a human being into a locker can lead to criminal charges carrying the potential of prison time. Then come the ‘what ifs’ — meaning what if someone gets seriously hurt, lands in the hospital or even dies as a result?’” asked Matulli, author of the children’s legal-themed book “Plessy: A Shoemaker Makes His Mark.”

When it comes to law, an analogous issue, being locked in a car trunk, resulted in car manufacturers being required to feature a standard glow-in-the-dark trunk-release lever to open the trunk from the inside. Since 2002, whether someone has been kidnapped or a child unwittingly traps themselves while playing, the mandate has seen preventable deaths drop to 20 per year —��and those are in cars with trunks that predate the 2002 order.

This begs the question, why are there no interior mechanisms to release a locker if a student is trapped inside and what can they do to get out?

Richard Shaffer, business development manager of Digilock, a global leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance electronic locks and locker security solutions, asked his colleagues and none of them had had any experience with the scenario.

“The solution is going to be the same whether the lock on the locker is mechanical or electronic — some facilities person with a master or override key will have to be summoned to let the kid out of the locker,” said Shaffer.

It seems the only recourse besides hoping a school staffer or a heroic schoolmate comes to their rescue is to prevent students from getting trapped in a locker in the first place.

“We teach kids sports, instruments, dance, etc., but each and every day we fail in schools to teach them law, we are failing them,” said Matulli. “How can one be a conscious citizen without the basic understanding of the essential laws meant to keep order in our society? This example of being placed in a locker is an excellent opportunity to do so.”

Ever have any insights from inside or outside the locker? Let us know below!

The post What Do You Do if a Student Gets Trapped in a Locker? appeared first on �Ӱ�ԭ��ҕ�l.

The post What Do You Do if a Student Gets Trapped in a Locker? appeared first on �Ӱ�ԭ��ҕ�l.