MANSFIELD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Mansfield, CT

The underlying mission of Mansfield Public School is to ensure that 'all children acquire the knowledge, skills, and attributes essential for personal excellence in learning, life, and work within the global community'. The new elementary school combined three existing schools into one larger school with a student enrollment of 600 in grades PK-4. Younger children coming from neighborhood schools into one larger school need to have a sense of being part of a community. As the Mansfield community is environmentally conscious, connections to the outdoors were designed throughout the school. As the State's first new Net Zero School, the new school was designed to increase student comfort, and decrease maintenance and operating costs. Solar orientation, surface-to-floor ratio, window-to-wall ratio and building systems were studied during the design phase. No fossil fuels are used for normal building operations.