For generations of families, Tomahawk Elementary has been more than a school. Tucked into a walkable Shawnee Mission neighborhood, it is a place where some current parents and teachers once sat in the same classrooms as students. When Shawnee Mission School District set out to replace the aging building, the goal was to preserve that sense of belonging while creating spaces that better support how students learn today.

Completed in summer 2025, the new Tomahawk Elementary opened for the 2025–26 school year on the site of the former school. The two-story, 82,000-square-foot building was the fifth and final elementary school rebuilt through the district’s 2021 bond program. Flexible classrooms, shared learning areas and spaces for hands-on exploration give the longtime neighborhood school new possibilities.

“Of course, as exciting as it is to have a beautiful building, you always want to honor that history that comes with it too,” says Dr. Brittany Gonser, Director of Professional Learning for Shawnee Mission School District. “There are things there that are very sentimental to people, and they are why they return to the community.”

Before plans took shape, the district held a series of community meetings to ask families what they wanted education to look like for their children. Collaboration and flexibility emerged as clear priorities.

Families wanted students to develop skills they would use well beyond elementary school. They also understood that teaching methods would continue to change over the life of the building. The new school needed to accommodate current needs without limiting what learning might look like in the future.

“When you go into Tomahawk, you will notice every space is connected to another space,” Gonser says. “There are no spaces within that building that are islands.”

That vision is evident in Tomahawk’s semicircular layout, which draws people toward a central gathering area and creates visual and physical connections throughout the school. Classrooms open to shared learning areas, allowing teachers to extend instruction beyond the classroom without making a major production of moving students, supplies and furniture.

The building’s compact neighborhood site presented a challenge, but the district did not want the site constraints to dominate the design. Instead, the layout uses the available space to reinforce the sense of connection the community identified as a priority.

A space is only flexible if teachers can change it easily. With the school’s learning objectives guiding the process, Gonser helped select furniture that would make Tomahawk’s classrooms and shared areas functional, adaptable and practical for everyday instruction.

The district invited teachers to participate in a furniture demonstration day, where they could test samples and share what they liked, what moved easily and what they would realistically use. WB Mfg supported that process providing samples and working with the design team to identify appropriate shapes, colors and furniture options.

“There was a lot of conversation about mobility of furniture in their classrooms,” Gonser says. “It’s great to say that you want furniture to be flexible in the classroom. But if it takes a teacher half an hour to move it, it’s not going to move.”

Teachers also reconsidered how much classroom space should be dedicated to a traditional teacher desk. Many preferred multipurpose work surfaces they could use independently or alongside students, leaving more room for instruction and collaboration.

Tomahawk’s classrooms ultimately incorporated a mix of EON™ desks and tables, Sconnie chairs, ELO® horseshoe tables, Appleton teacher desks and Elevate teacher lecterns. Together, these pieces support different instructional arrangements without making the classrooms difficult to navigate or reconfigure.

The furniture plan did not stop at the classroom door. Shared areas were furnished as active learning environments rather than treated as hallways or leftover space.

“We tried to extend that classroom furniture out into those collaborative spaces, pulling people toward that central part of the building,” Gonser says.

ELO® Dreamer XL tables and Sconnie chairs create ready-to-use places for students to meet, work and learn together. Because furniture, tools and materials are already available in these areas, teachers can move a group into a collaborative space and begin working without packing supplies onto a cart.

This approach also helps preserve instructional time. Intervention spaces are incorporated near classrooms, making it easier to bring an additional educator to the students rather than moving an entire group across the building. The rooms are furnished and equipped to support seamless transitions between whole-group instruction, small-group work and intervention.

“It’s a lot easier to move an adult than it is to move a group of kids,” Gonser says.

The media center demonstrates what thoughtful furniture planning can accomplish within a compact footprint. Its west side serves as a teaching area, but the room must also accommodate students reading, browsing, checking out books and working in groups.

WB Mfg modular and mobile bookcases help define the space while allowing it to adapt. ELO® curved tables and HangOut stools provide additional options for individual and collaborative work, while the circulation desk and Stewart workstation support the library’s daily functions.

Movable tiered seating on casters allows a teacher to gather a class of up to 28 students for a story or lesson and then quickly rearrange the area for another activity. Students can also help move the pieces, making transitions part of the collaborative experience.

“That space needed to do a lot of different things,” Gonser says. “Furniture is key in that space to making that layout work.”

Near the school’s entrance, connected art and STEM spaces can operate independently or open into a larger makerspace. Large doors connect the rooms to an outdoor learning area, and durable, movable furniture can travel between the settings as activities change.

Rather than separating art, engineering and hands-on exploration, the design allows the spaces to work together. One class can use the area, multiple classes can collaborate, or the learning can extend outside.

Other areas provide opportunities for students to slow down and regulate. A nature-themed sensory corridor uses softer lighting and a large interactive light wall to create a calmer environment. Students can use the space not only for learning, but also to practice self-regulation skills.

A large tree structure stands at the heart of the school, reinforcing the building’s nature-inspired design. Small nooks, soft seating and floor-level furniture arranged around the area give students comfortable places to gather, work or reset.

“You can’t ignore the giant treehouse,” Gonser says. “We did want that to be a hangout spot for kids.”

The new school was designed for the larger neighborhood as well as its students and teachers. The front half of the building can accommodate community events, with a cafeteria and low-profile stage connected to outdoor space and the makerspace.

A wide central corridor helps welcome and orient families, creating a natural place to gather before moving into other parts of the building. Instead of sending families immediately in different directions, the layout encourages the Tomahawk community to come together.

“It’s not, ‘Walk into our building and everybody spread out and go to your separate corners,’” Gonser says. “It’s, ‘Let’s come together as a Tomahawk community for this event.’”

For Gonser, the purpose of these choices extends beyond the new building. Collaboration, independence, communication and creative thinking are skills the district wants students to develop from their earliest years in school.

“We don’t get to postsecondary readiness in high school unless we start focusing on those career skills in elementary school,” she says.

At Tomahawk, the architecture, furnishings and learning spaces work together to give students opportunities to practice those skills every day. The result is a modern school that honors its history while preparing the next generation of Tomahawk students for what comes next.

Collaboration Spaces

• ELO® Dreamer XL Table
• Sconnie Chair