MKThink CEO Mark Miller will be a guest panelist at SPUR’s “Urban Agents” on Tuesday April, 9th @ 6pm.

Urban Agents

+ Raphael Garcia, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
+ Brad Leibin, Public Architecture
+ Nancy Levinson, Design Observer
+ Mark Miller, MK Think
+ Eric Rodenbeck, Stamen Design
+ Michel St. Pierre, EHDD

This program is co-presented by SPUR and CCA’s Urban Lab.

Click here to visit SPUR’s events page: http://www.spur.org/events/calendar/emerging-professional-design-practice

MKThink was recently featured in the San Francisco Business Times regarding their work with Oakland Unified School District. Here’s the story by SF Business Times Education Reporter Ron Leuty:

Oakland putting local services in underused schools

BY RON LEUTY

San Francisco Business Times
November 2-8 

A dramatic makeover of dormant portions of Oakland public schools could rejigger the sites as neighborhood health centers, gardens, community kitchens and more.

Coming as Oakland Unified School District enrollment plummets and state support dwindles, and three years after the state returned the district to local control, the plan depends heavily on business and nonprofit partnerships and a wider $450 million infrastructure bond measure on the Nov. 6 ballot.

The idea is relatively simple, said OUSD Superintendent Tony Smith: Better schools result from connecting them with services needed in the community. 

Politically, however, the district’s plan could be a challenge. Some buildings could be shuttered, for example, and it comes as a bond measure that would result in taxpayers paying an estimated $39 to $60 for every $100,000 of assessed property value goes before voters next week. A higher-priced parcel tax on the November 2010 Oakland ballot for teacher pay and training, for example, failed to win the required two-thirds vote, and another parcel tax was rejected in 2008. Measure J would need to be approved by 55 percent of voters.

“We’ll keep working, but we’d have less to work with,” Smith said, if Measure J fails.

In the fourth year of an overall seven year plan, Oakland schools’ “Full Service Community Schools” strategy represents a potential answer to a dilemma faced by many urban school districts: In the face of falling enrollment and less cash from state and federal coffers, how do they use, secure and maintain legacy physical properties to free up cash for educating kids?

“You’ve got to start with understanding what you’ve got,” said Mark Miller, principal and CEO of San Francisco based architecture and design firm MKThink.

Those numbers are jarring. From 2000 to the end of the 2011-12 school year, enrollment in OUSD dropped by nearly a third while charter school enrollment has grown from a small base by more than 900 percent. 

Oakland’s school-age population fell 20 percent between the census of 2000 and 2010, and the district has shuttered or

consolidated a handful of its buildings.

In the case of real estate, even California education officials had no firm grasp on how many square feet were in OUSD’s portfolio as they turned over the district in 2009.

Enter MKThink, which has worked with OUSD since 2009 to quantify and study the district’s space.

Using handheld devices and an army of interns, the firm measured every school property and discovered 600,000 square feet less than the 6.8 million square feet state officials said the district possessed. Such work provided data for the district to draw up plans, Miller said.

One of the outcomes is the Full Service Community Schools plan, which calls for opening parts of schools for community-based services while the rest of the campus is secured. Space can be redesigned, for example, for early childhood programs, private rooms for family counseling, clinics for school health centers, garden sheds, community kitchens and more.

Each of Oakland’s 85 schools — part of a portfolio of 328 permanent buildings — would collaborate with community based organizations, city services and other partners.

“Our responsibility with Full Service Community Schools is to create a framework where partners realize where they can plug in,” said OUSD Assistant Superintendent Tim White.

Seventeen full-service health care clinics already operate in partnership with OUSD, but the district’s plan is to integrate those more with the schools’ surrounding neighborhoods, allowing them to serve students and their families even after traditional school hours.

But the plan is not all altruistic; it could save the cash-strapped district money. Instead of having a district nurse in each school, for example, some sites can be redesigned for a health clinic operated by Kaiser Permanente.

But, Smith said, different schools will need different partnerships to cover the needs of their neighborhoods. What’s more, he said, those partnerships will be monitored and judged by how much they help more students attend school more often.

“We want them all to participate as long as they are participating in these things,” Smith said.

Selling school properties, however, is shortsighted, Smith said, and even if putting the district’s properties on the auction block was an option, many of the structures present problems. The average age of Oakland schools is 71 years.

The properties are most valuable in the district’s hands, Smith said. 

“Once it’s gone, it’s gone,” he said.

rleuty@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4939 ■

We’re transforming our parking space (as well as our plaza) into a park for the day. Join us for some drinks, and games on Friday, September 21^st. We look forward to seeing you there!

Date: Friday, September 21

Time:  12-2 PM, 5-6 PM

Location: MKThink (1500 Sansome Street)

From the Parking Day website:

“PARK(ing) Day is an annual worldwide event where artists, designers and citizens transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks.”

To learn more about Park(ing) Day, visit  www.parkingday.org

SAN FRANCISCO—In 70 days over this summer, Town School for Boys, a leading K-8 independent school for boys, dramatically renovated nearly 20,000 square feet and opened today for the 2012-13 school year.

The redesigned sections of the building comprise Phase I of a master plan to enhance and expand the entire facility to support the 21^st century educational program at Town. Completion of this phase increases both the flexibility and specialization of nearly 20,000 square feet of interior space to foster project-based initiatives as well as both informal and structured collaboration among teachers and students across grade levels.

“Boys today learn in an environment which is driven by their own processes of inquiry, collaboration, trial and error and problem solving,” said Brewster Ely, Town School’s Headmaster. “Our new facilities are designed to complement our educational program, which builds skills in order to foster and develop true life-long 21st century learners.”

To realize this program-driven master plan, Town School enlisted the San Francisco-based architecture, strategy and innovation firm MKThink, renowned for their creative work with Stanford University’s highly acclaimed d. School, widely considered the archetype for 21^st century collaboration-based learning.

Highlights of the modernized facilities include an advanced multi-lab Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) center, a new Studio Arts Center, reconfigurable gathering spaces including a “Town Hall” and Commons, and many renovated classrooms. Educational features include whiteboard walls, sliding partitions and mobile furniture and technology to facilitate a wide array of project-based learning and teaching objectives.

While construction was completed at an impressive pace, the preparation was a result of a multi-year effort to align the school’s physical environment with the educators’ prescient educational vision.  A long-range planning study blended qualitative and quantitative analysis of the teaching modalities and facilities scheduling and usage of the building, as well as extensive interviews and collaborative work with faculty and school leadership.

“The vision for the architecture is derived from the educational programs.  For Town School this meant redesigning antiquated spaces in order to make them significant teaching tools,” said Mark Miller, MKThink CEO and founder. “While the renovation was fast, the preparation was long-term and intense.  The results of this effort will be realized for years to come by generations of Town School students.”

About Town School

Founded in 1939, Town School for Boys has long been a premier independent, nonprofit, all-boys school for kindergarten through 8^th grade. Located on Jackson St. in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood, Town School provides high-quality social and emotional learning as a foundation of academic excellence and self-discovery.

MKThink was recently profiled in San Francisco’s 7X7. Check out the story HERE.