Students at Lake Worth Junior High School near Fort Worth have for years been learning the hard way. Their school lay directly in the approach path of SAC's Carswell Air Force Base, and every day there was a 10% loss in teaching time as the B-52 jet bombers thundered over. Last week Lake Worth had a clever solution to the problem:
a brand-new, $495,000 school entirely underground.
Since it would have been more expensive to buy a new surface site, explained Architect Thad Harden, "we just dug a big hole and built the school in it." Two stories deep, the building has 18 classrooms, all completely soundproofed. The air is changed every three minutes, and with the elimination of dirt, windows and exposed walls, maintenance costs are drastically reduced. The school, which is also tornadoproof, looks best from the air. Zooming in to land, SAC pilots see only a neatly landscaped plot beneath which 475 pupils peacefully study, full time.