To the editor:

I attended the new South Junior High open house. Worries about security appear to be taken care of. What perplexed me was that the classrooms received very little of the daylight from corridors. Were the architects, the school board and the administration not aware of the benefits of daylight where students study?

Looking online in “American School & University” (asumag. com/mag) in an April 1, 2006, article, I found these statements: “a 1999 study by the Heschong Mahone Group : found that students with the most daylighting in their classrooms progressed 20 percent faster on math tests and 26 percent faster on reading tests than students exposed to the least daylighting.” : “For daylighting to have the desired effect on learning and energy costs, designers and educators must plan carefully. There are different kinds of daylight and different ways to bring it into a school.” These include light shelves and skylights, designed to diffuse the daylight throughout the room. With better planning we could have given students and teacher a boost, and saved some money by having lights off much of the time.

Mark Larson,

Lawrence