Under the 'green' roof, Radnor's retooled school

The new school sits on 12 acres just a few blocks from downtown Wayne. For more than a decade, a debate raged over whether to build it there or outside of the town, with more athletic fields. Public sentiment favored the downtown site, which had been home to most of the district's educational buildings until the late 1950s.

Despite its obvious drawbacks, many township residents mourn the loss of the old middle school building, a longtime fixture of life in Wayne. "We went to our first dance there and had our first taste of freedom, walking into Wayne" after school, said Laura Foran, a middle school attendance secretary who was a student there in the 1970s.

Foran said she was glad her son, a sixth grader at the new middle school this fall, would also be able to stroll into Wayne at the end of the day. The town center, she said, "was our lives - a kind of miniature adulthood for us. I hope it will be the same for him. He'll have his own memories here that he can look back on."

Radnor Middle School At a Glance

Cost: $48 million.

Size: Four-story academic wing; total area of 195,000 square feet.

Site size: 12 acres, including the district's administration building.

Enrollment: 850.

Capacity: 1,150.

Environmental features

• A "green roof" with plants that absorb stormwater, keep the building cool, and give off oxygen.
• Recycled materials in flooring, carpets, ceiling tiles, counters and tackboards.
• Heat and motion sensors that turn off classroom lights in empty rooms, and light sensors that shut off lights when there's enough natural light.
• Classroom carbon dioxide monitors that trigger the piping in of more fresh air if the level is too high.

Educational features

• One grade per floor. Teams of 100 or so that have core academic classes within a five-classroom "pod." Each pod has its own common meeting space.
• Some rooms are designed for smaller teams of 30 to 40 students who stay together for most of the day and study a theme all year long.