Durham schools look to add outdoor classrooms for pandemic and beyond

The Durham County Board of Education is expected to consider a proposal from Pittsboro-based Hobbs Architects at its Thursday meeting. Board Chairwoman Bettina Umstead said Wednesday that the district has been looking at the idea of outdoor classrooms for a while, but the pandemic "pushed that conversation to the forefront" because health experts say the risk of contracting the virus is lower outdoors.

"We want our students to have superior educational learning experiences, and that includes having spaces outdoors to learn. That is even more vital right now in this pandemic," Umstead said. "It creates a different type of learning experience to be able to interact outside, to use the outdoors and the nature to also support the lessons and instructions that’s going on."

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Once a contract is signed, the architects will look at schools across the district for ideas tailored to specific sites, she said. Officials don't yet have any cost estimates for the project – each space is supposed to be 600 to 1,000 square feet – but Umstead said the district will tap some of the $150 million in federal pandemic relief aid it expects over the next three years to pay for them.

"We’re excited to start this process and have some designs get drawn up for each one of our schools so this can become more than just idea and a value of the district, but it can become a reality for our students and our teachers," she said.

Parents and teachers also are excited about the plan.

"Outdoor learning is unmatched," teacher Turquoise Parker said. "Educators love to get creative and to give our kids opportunities to get out of those walls of the classroom and the building and to get them outside.

"COVID has allowed a lot of our 'we should have done this' [ideas] to happen now," Parker noted.

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"Just to get kids outside, it’s good," Van Voorhees said, adding that the district needs some more immediate options in addition to the long-term, permanent structures officials envision.

"The one concern I have about doing that in such a grand way as hiring an architectural firm is that COVID, and particularly the Delta variant, is happening now, and children are being affected by that now," she said.