Barbara Kent Lawrence is an educational consultant and researcher specializing in small schools and school facilities. Her academic background includes a BA in anthropology, an MA in sociology and an Ed.D. She has taught in elementary schools and a boys' high school, where she headed two departments. For many years she ran a real estate brokerage and construction company in Maine, where she also started an environmental education program for children (Grades K-9), and a foundation for a local school. Currently, Lawrence is an adjunct professor at Lesley University, where she teaches writing, research methods, and an introductory course in sociology. She is the author of many articles about issues relating to small schools and facilities, as well as two books, and is currently working on her third book, a novel set in Downeast Maine.

Paul Abramson is president of Stanton Leggett & Associates (SLA), an educational consulting firm specializing in analysis of long range needs, program change, facilities development and revision, administrative, faculty and support staffing, and the organization of the educational process. SLA helps clients explore ideas and opportunities that open up new directions and provide successful and sometimes unique solutions to school management problems with a particular emphasis on developing facilities to support the educational program.

Mr. Abramson has been editing publications serving school administrators and teachers since 1957 and worked as a consultant and writer for Educational Facilities Laboratories. Since 1974, he has provided an annual study of school and college construction throughout the United States. Data from that study forms the basis for analyzing the cost of large and small schools as shown in this study. Abramson writes a monthly column on planning issues -- A Final Thought -- for School Planning & Management magazine for which he also serves as education industry analyst.

Abramson is a member of the Council of Educational Facility Planners International and was president of the organization's Northeast Region. He is a graduate of Reed College, Portland, Oregon.

Victoria Bergsagel is an educator passionate about designing schools where all students achieve. Harvard-educated, Bergsagel has been a teacher, counselor, principal, community relations director, school district administrator, and adjunct professor. As the director of educational design in a large public school district, Bergsagel led the educational program planning upon which the construction of new schools was based. She has also served as the director of educational partnerships at Talaris Research Institute. Working collaboratively with teams of researchers and educators to conduct, integrate, and interpret some of the world's leading brain research, her team helped connect relevant research findings to practical applications - combining the science of learning with the practice of learning.

Bergsagel is a creative thinker with an unrelenting advocacy for children and a vast knowledge of educational research. She founded and directs Architects of Achievement, a group partnering with the University of Washington Small Schools Project to help educators and architects across the nation integrate the work of facility design into school reform.

Steven Bingler is the founder of Concordia LLC, a community planning and architectural firm with offices in New Orleans, LA, and Pasadena, CA. Concordia's award-winning designs have appeared in national publications, including Architectural Digest, Progressive Architecture, Architecture, Interiors, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. Concordia's projects span a wide range of building types, including the Jackson Brewery Festival Marketplace, the New Orleans Aquarium of the Americas, and the Henry Ford Academy. Current projects are underway in California, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.

Concordia has extensive experience in the planning and design of a wide range of community-based environments for living and learning. The firm's planning and design process employs the Concordia Model, a comprehensive community engagement and systemic planning tool that integrates physical, cultural, social, educational, organizational and economic assets and needs. Research alliances include the MIT Media Lab, Harvard University's Project Zero, the University of New Mexico, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Thornburg Institute, the Appalachian Education Lab, and the West Ed Lab. Bingler's papers have been published in a wide range of books and journals in the fields of urban planning, architectural design, education, public health, and smart growth. Bingler is a frequent speaker at national symposia and conferences related to systems thinking and innovations in community-based planning and design. He served as a special consultant to the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education for policy related to the design of schools as the centers of the community. A new book 2076: A Democratic Revolution in Progress is currently in the works.

Barbara Diamond is the vice-president responsible for one of KnowledgeWorks Foundation's major program areas - Communities and School Facilities planning and design - and for its public policy work. The Foundation is Ohio's largest education philanthropy, with a mission to increase access to education throughout Ohio. Its other major program areas are College and Career Access, and School Improvement.

Diamond received her bachelor's and J.D. degrees from Harvard University. She has been admitted to the bar in Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Ohio and has extensive experience as an attorney and policy analyst. She has served as staff attorney for the Education and Higher Education committees of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and for the committees on Criminal Justice and Ways and Means of the Massachusetts Senate. Before moving to Cincinnati in 1999, she served as Counsel for Policy Development for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, where she oversaw statewide master planning for courthouse construction.

Thomas J. Greene, whose background is in finance and accounting, is the budget consultant on the Dollars & Sense II project team. He is the CEO, CFO, and publisher of Greene Bark Press Inc., and senior consultant for TJGreene Associates, a division of Greene Bark Press Inc. He is the former vice-president of finance and controller of Powerwinch (a Warren Buffet owned company); former business manager of Fortune Magazine (a Time-Warner/AOL company); former controller of RR Bowker (formerly a Xerox-owned company) and former senior consultant with Lucas, Tucker & Company CPA's. He holds a BBA in accounting and economics and a MS in industrial relations and economics. He was an adjunct in accounting at Sacred Heart University, Norwalk Community College, and York Community College in New York City. He has recently cofacilitated several budgeting workshops for small school leaders sponsored by KnowledgeWorks Foundation.

Bobbie Hill is the director of planning for Concordia LLC. Through the Concordia Planning Model, Hill works with communities to help them realize their potential through consensus-building and exploring learning opportunities through collaboration. She is committed to public scholarship by helping communities become healthy civil societies that are interconnected - not homogeneous, but integrated. She has directed projects from the rural North Country of New Hampshire to inner city Cincinnati, OH, urban Los Angeles, and Plainfield, NJ.

She has organized many local and statewide networks and associations concerned with issues related to education, the arts, and community advocacy. Hill has served on regional and state task forces such as the Governor's Education First Committee, which developed policy and consensus-building for education reform in West Virginia. Her work on this committee and other organizations has brought about significant change. For example, Hill worked with government leadership to create legislation that supports community-based planning as a prerequisite for requesting state support for school construction.

Craig Howley has researched rural education and published widely in that field. He has taught mathematics at the University of Charleston and has evaluated mathematics professional development projects in rural schools. He is coauthor of Small High Schools That Flourish (AEL, 2000) and Out of Our Minds: Anti-intellectualism in American Schooling (TC Press, 1995). Howley codirects research efforts of the NSF-funded Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment, and Instruction in Mathematics (ACCLAIM) and is an adjunct professor in the Educational Studies Department at Ohio University. His work for ACCLAIM entails cultivation of research capacity in rural mathematics education. Previously, he directed the ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools. His empirical work is mostly quantitative; it investigates the mediating influence of school and district size on academic achievement. Other studies have examined construction costs of smaller schools, rural school busing, and rural principals' perspectives on planning.

David Stephen's professional life straddles the worlds of architectural design and education reform. As a Registered Architect he has more than 18 years of experience in building design and construction. As a teacher and education reformer, he has worked with high schools nationwide to envision, develop, and implement innovative practices in teaching and learning. Increasingly, Stephen's focus has turned to the design of school buildings that explicitly address and support their program's curricular goals. During the past five years, he has facilitated the architectural design process for a wide variety of new and reforming schools.

At present, Stephen works as program officer and director of facilities design for High Tech High Learning, the replication branch of the nationally acclaimed High Tech High (HTH) charter school in San Diego, CA. He led the architectural design effort for the HTH campus's three school buildings: High Tech High, High Tech Middle, and High Tech International. The HTH facility received a 2001 Educational Design Excellence Award from the American School & University Architectural Portfolio, and an Honors Award from the School Construction News and Design Share Awards 2002. Stephen also works with Architects of Achievement, a group partnering with the University of Washington Small Schools Project to help educators and architects across the nation integrate the work of facility design into school reform. He received his B.Arch from Rhode Island School of Design, and an M.Ed from Lesley College.

Elliot Washor is the cofounder of The Big Picture Company and The Met. He has been involved in all aspects of school reform for more than 30 years as a teacher, principal, video producer, and developer and director of small school networks. As a practitioner he is particularly interested in real world learning and literacy, from kindergarten through college, in urban and rural settings, and across all disciplines. His work concerns what it means to be "smart" in a given situation, both alone and in a group, and how learning is amplified when hands and mind are used in tandem. He has served as a consultant to schools throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, and has written on many topics, including leadership to learning. His professional development programs won an Innovations in State and Local Government Award from the Ford Foundation and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. In addition, he has been at the national forefront of thinking about small schools and their facilities design within communities, and was recognized by DesignShare (The International Forum for Innovative Schools) with an International Award of Merit for the design of The Met.

The Dollars and Sense team wishes to express its appreciation for the contributions of the indispensable Frances Saad to this project. She assembled the original data base of schools, made travel arrangements for all the site visits, organized team meetings, tracked the budget, matched captions to photos, proof-read every copy, and performed other tasks too numerous to name – all with grace, intelligence and good sense. Without her, this publication would not exist, and the team’s admiration and gratitude are boundless.