Helping K-12 Districts Turn Priorities Into a Facilities Plan

The exercises that connect district initiatives to the spaces that support them. Part of MiniCon 2026 MiniCon is Franklin Interiors' two-day showcase at Bakery Square on November 3 and 4, with our manufacturer partners on the floor, sessions throughout, and a happy hour each day. This session runs during Tuesday's happy hour. About this session Every K-12 project starts with priorities that are hard to put on paper. Engagement, belonging, school culture, a wider range of learners in every classroom, and buildings that were never designed with any of it in mind. Getting from there to a facilities plan takes its own kind of work: the right people in the room, the right questions, and agreement on what matters most before anyone starts drawing. Steelcase's Applied Research and Learning Consultant, Marisa Sergnese, will review the workshops, activities, and discovery exercises she uses with K-12 districts. She'll share examples from districts she's worked with, showing how the insights that come out of these exercises become a roadmap for campus-wide initiatives, and what that has meant for students and educators. Come see what these exercises look like in practice. Who this is for Architects, interior designers, and district leaders working on K-12 projects. Your speaker Marisa Sergnese is an Applied Research and Learning Consultant at Steelcase and an EDmarket Certified Learning Space Planner. She is an experienced school administrator and adjunct faculty member, and she built these exercises around the problems her own teams were up against.