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CID "Quiet School"
Designed with input from parents,
teachers, audiologists and other professionals, the Central Institute for the
Deaf school is a warm, comfortable private auditory-oral school nestled within a
university campus community dedicated to education, research and clinical
services to benefit children and adults who are deaf and hearing-impaired. The
state-of-the-art CID "quiet school," designed with superior classroom acoustics
for optimal auditory-oral deaf education, opened in January of 2000.
To take optimal advantage of the school children's residual hearing and to
eliminate distractions to learning, the CID school was meticulously engineered
to exceed ASHA-recommended national acoustic guidelines and to incorporate
state-of-the-art speech-enhancing technologies. Measures included relocating the
school building away from a U.S. interstate highway and using landscaping as a
sound buffer. Construction strategies and materials were selected for their
ability to reflect sound away from the exterior and to absorb sounds in the
interior. Noise-reduction measures also were designed into the floor plans as
well as into the heating and air-conditioning systems.
The two-level, 42,000-square-foot CID school features distinctive masonry towers
and Romanesque masonry arches and contains 20 classrooms, a library, music and
drama room, art room, computer lab, discovery rooms, school offices and a
gymnasium with a regulation-size basketball court. The facility also houses the
Joanne Parrish Knight Family Center, offering a homelike atmosphere for families
with newly diagnosed hearing-impaired infants making their first contact with
CID. The facility is both child- and parent-friendly, featuring one-way
observation rooms, colorful, child-sized furnishings, and living room, dining
room and kitchen space.
The CID school building received a 2000 Regional
Excellence Award from St. Louis Construction News and Review and a 2000
Construction Keystone Award for Partnering Excellence from the Associated
General Contractors of St. Louis. In 2001, the Landmarks Association of St.
Louis named the CID campus one of the city's Eleven Most Enhanced Sites. In
November of 2003, the CID school received an Impact on Learning Award from
School Planning and Management magazine.
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