Gene Dalton | The Roanoke Times

The Pulaski Elementary School that opened in January 2005 uses bright colors to create an engaging environment for students and faculty.

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• Improvements expected: Map pops up to detail schools in the New River Valley where at least partial funding for renovation or replacement has been approved.

Pulaski and Riverlawn elementary schools are separated by a 20-minute drive and more than half a century of developments in school architecture.

Pulaski, which opened two years ago last month, was built with computers and other modern teaching technologies in mind. It's wired with security cameras, has air conditioning and is built on one level so people such as Emily McGrail can get around easily.

"I have no constraints here at all," the wheelchair-using teacher recently said while watching her second-grade class in the cafeteria.

McGrail would not be able to say that at Riverlawn, which opened in 1949 and has so many sets of stairs that the rooms to which disabled students can be assigned is limited. The older school's outdated wiring does not allow for as many computers as are desired, and the lack of air conditioning means "the temperatures on the second floor are an issue in the fall and late spring," said John Bowler, Riverlawn's principal.

But if all goes according to plan, that will no longer be the case 19 months from now.

Riverlawn is expected to have a new building for the 2008-09 school year. Together, the Riverlawn and Pulaski elementary schools will reflect the first wave of new school construction for the county in more than 30 years.

Elsewhere in the New River Valley, Radford is planning to build its first new school since 1979, and Montgomery County is deciding which of its several "critical" projects to do first. Floyd County has no active projects but in 2005 completed a 10-year renovation program that cost about $19 million and affected all five of that county's schools.

Giles County is consulting with an architectural firm about possible renovations to Eastern Elementary/Middle School and the Giles County Technology Center. The last school renovation projects in Giles County were in 2000 when $15 million was spent on two high schools.

Parents whose children get a new school can expect a very different-looking building from the one they attended a generation ago. If Riverlawn, with its dimly lit, tile-lined hallways reminiscent of a subway station, represents the school of yesterday, then Pulaski, with its dramatic glass atrium and brightly colored interior, illustrates current trends.

Technology and accessibility are two major concerns driving today's school architecture, but not the only ones, according to educators and architects specializing in schools.

Flat roofs are out of vogue because they tend to leak. Larger classrooms, more storage space, energy-efficient construction and more natural light are all goals that have been adopted in many school projects.

"Studies prove that natural light increases student attentiveness and test scores," said J.D. Price, an architect with Oliver, Webb, Pappas & Rhudy Inc. of Blacksburg, who designed Pulaski Elementary and is working on the new Riverlawn.

Rather than a one-size-fits-all classroom, today's schools are likely to also have smaller rooms suited to tutorial programs, English as a Second Language or special education, said Ben Motley of Rodriguez Ripley Maddux Motley Architects of Roanoke, which is designing the replacement for Radford's Belle Heth Elementary.

Regular classrooms, on the other hand, tend to be bigger.

"The older schools in general have smaller classrooms in the range of 600 to 700 square feet," said Dan Berenato, facilities and planning director for Montgomery County Public Schools. "They really used to pack them in, and there wasn't a lot of room to do projects and things like that. Nor was there a lot of room for technology, because there was no technology. Now we have four or five computer stations in a room."

In Montgomery County the goal now is for elementary classrooms to be from 800 to 900 square feet.

Many older schools have a single cavernous room used as a gym, cafeteria and, sometimes, the auditorium. Newer schools tend to separate those functions, which makes scheduling easier and prevents the chaotic situation that can arise when students are eating on one side of the room and playing ball on the other.

Schools are also increasingly being looked at as community assets and being used by their surrounding communities. Blacksburg officials actually chipped in money to make the gym bigger at Kipps Elementary so the school would work better for recreation programs.

Increased interest in green building techniques can be seen in the school construction industry as well, said Vijay Ramnarain, Virginia chapter president for the Council of Educational Facility Planners International. He attributed that to concerns about fuel costs and worries about emissions from products such as paint and carpets.

Riverlawn is expected to be built with a geothermal climate control system that runs a closed loop of pipes deep underground to take advantage of the earth's ability to keep water cooler in summer and warmer in winter. The system would add about $450,000 to the school's projected cost of $19 million to $20 million, but is expected to pay for itself in eight to 10 years through lower energy bills, said Ron Nichols, facilities and transportation director for Pulaski County Public Schools.

Radford schools Superintendent Chuck Bishop said energy-efficient building methods would be investigated for Belle Heth's replacement. Land constraints mean the new school will have to be two stories, but it will be fully handicapped-accessible, he said.

When possible, today's elementary schools are usually built on a single level, both for accessibility and because "it's best when you can keep small children out of stairwells and out of elevators -- they're small and they fall down in those kind of things easily and get hurt," said David Bandy, a principal at Spectrum Design of Roanoke, the architecture firm under contract for the Price's Fork and Elliston-Lafayette elementary school projects that top Montgomery County's to-do list.

Bishop said that having two stories is less of a concern for Belle Heth's replacement because it will only house grades three through six, the older portion of Radford's elementary population.

One school design idea that is increasingly popular is exposing structural elements of the building in the hopes students can learn something from them.

For the award-winning Roanoke Academy for Mathematics and Science, Spectrum Design left interior support structures visible to help students "understand how post and beam works, which they study in fourth- and fifth-grade math," Bandy said.

Motley, of the architectural firm working on Belle Heth, said, "I've seen [schools] where they actually have an electric display of how much energy the building is using."

One apparent trend in new elementary schools in the New River Valley: bigger buildings with more students.

Pulaski Elementary has more than 600 children and absorbed students from three schools that were closed. Belle Heth's replacement is taking on an extra grade and is expected to have room for 500 students.

Montgomery's projects aren't as far along, but the replacement for Price's Fork may be redistricted to ease crowding at Kipps and possibly Belview elementary schools. Discussions of the Elliston-Lafayette project are expected to include whether to consolidate with Shawsville Elementary.

Montgomery County's preliminary cost projections account for replacing Price's Fork and Elliston-Lafayette with 600-student schools -- about three times larger than the current schools. Statewide, the average capacity of the 14 new elementary school projects put under contract in fiscal 2006 was 838.

When planning construction, officials in Pulaski's school system looked at research into the effect of school size on test scores, said Libby Vansant, the school division's assistant superintendent of administration.

"The research is certainly mixed," she said. "What we found was that the demographics in the school population certainly are more reflected in student achievement, rather than the size."

Riverlawn's replacement will have room for 600 students. The old school was built to house 245, has more than 300, and is using four trailers for extra classroom space.

Teri Lewis' son in one of the trailers.

"Yes, we need a new school over here," she said while dropping him off recently. "The school is pretty much outdated. It's hot in summer and cold in winter."

Other parents said they look forward to the new school but are not unhappy with the current situation.

"This is a great school," said Karen Frazier, whose son is in the first grade. She said the building's age "hasn't interfered with his learning."

Despite their old school's visible flaws, which include a chronically leaky roof in one fifth-grade classroom, a higher percentage of students passed math and English in the Standards of Learning exams last school year at Riverlawn than at Pulaski Elementary or in Pulaski County as a whole.

While dropping off his daughter at Riverlawn, Matt Sexton said the old building had sentimental value for him because he was schooled in it himself.

He said he would not mind his daughter going to go to a newer building "as long as the teachers are the same."