Creating Collaborative Spaces to Support Student Achievement | OMNIA Partners

Farmington School District embarks on new project to create collaborative spaces. ODP Business Solutions™ Workspace Interiors helped the district take full advantage of the unused spaces, transforming them into special areas for everything from teamwork to quiet reading. With some of the district’s buildings dating back to the 1940s, the administrators try to optimize areas that are underutilized. Administrators chose Warner Middle School as the first facility for the new collaborative spaces. Particularly for this school, the new spaces would give students and staff additional working areas, empowering everyone to gather in new places.

When they began the project, they started with three goals: 

1. Efficiency: Foster imagination and creativity in spaces where students and teachers can collaborate more effectively than in traditional classroom settings
2. Control: Enhance the school’s interior environment to energize teachers and students and yield greater learning integration
3. Cost savings: Maximize each school’s real estate by doing more with the spaces they have. 

The transformed spaces include:  

• An empty space in the hallway, which now has soft seating, modular tables, and storage 
• A hallway recording space where students record videos on a new curved green wall for computer-generated backgrounds 
• Added soft seating and tables along the walls
• The gym hallway, which had minimal seating and a large, underused space and is now one of the most prized areas for gathering before events or in breakout groups

Workspace Interiors leveraged the Region 4 cooperative contract to provide strategic value and time savings to the district. The cooperative contract is the result of a bid from this lead agency and includes language that enables the school district to use compliant bidding processes that meet the procurement standard. It provided significant time efficiencies and reduced the cost of goods and services for this project. 

Effective collaboration delivers for the school community. 

Warner Middle School was ideal for new collaborative spaces, so it was the first of the schools where the district will create them. Workspace Interiors team members are already visiting other schools to begin planning. At Workspace Interiors, we have the unique ability to offer OMNIA Partners members increased purchasing power through our partnership. Alongside OMNIA Partners and our key manufacturing partners, Workspace Interiors delivered excellent value overall by providing innovative product solutions and exceptional service, all under the OMNIA Region 4 contract.

"ODP Business Solutions™ Workspace Interiors provided us with flexible, warmth, and welcoming spaces for our students to be comfortable in their learning," said by K elly Kaminski, Principal of Warner Middle School, "which allows teachers to be innovative with their collaborative groups." 

To view full case study, click here. 

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This article was originally published by ODP Business Solutions, a Public Sector Company.