Educators and furniture makers are gathering this week in Houston for the EDspaces event, a nice blend of learning sessions, speakers and a furniture expo held to connect the A&D and education communities with the latest in classroom design.

It’s another one of those vertical markets that deserves a look if you are not already involved in it. For dealers, it is not too far afield to consider it as a new market to explore.

The education market was markedly changed by the pandemic as schools struggled to figure out how to keep learning moving forward while students were at home. The pandemic also caused schools to rethink classroom design in a broader sense. And with the help of pandemic support from the government, which continues to flow into the market, schools are making some profound changes to their classrooms.

While you might think that government spending has dried up, schools are still working through the pandemic aid. Schools received $13.2 billion from the CARES Act in March 2020; $54.3 billion, from the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act in December 2020; and $122 billion from the American Rescue Plan, March 2021. In total, schools received more than $190 billion in aid.

That’s a lot of potential office furniture and classroom design work.

According to an article by Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research, the money helped students gain some academic ground and made the biggest difference for the nation’s poorest schools, which received the most money. Schools spent on summer programming, tutoring, additional staff, and building upgrades, among other things. From what I hear from companies that specialize in educational furniture, that money continues to flow through the system.

The pandemic changed K-12 classrooms through new technologies, instructional practices, and parent-teacher communications, along with an emphasis on social-emotional learning.

Educators across the country, from preschool to college, are finding new ways to spark their students’ creativity, harness technology and provide the services they need to succeed.

Classroom redesign is a big part of that. Educators continue to change the way learning happens, so much so that someone who hasn’t been in a classroom in a while might not recognize it. From the high-tech screens that teachers use to present information to the pods of seating designed to support peer-to-peer learning, education has changed.

That makes it a good time to explore the market if you’re not already in it. And if EDspaces is any indication, more and more dealers are getting into it. Dealers make up a good chunk of the visitors here in Houston and they are at EDspaces with school districts in tow. And what they are seeing displayed is very different even from recent school furniture shows.

Classroom furniture looks a lot more like corporate these days. And classrooms are organized more like collaborative offices as well. The library and labs segment are also expected to grow.

So for smart dealers, it’s back to school. Time to start exploring this vertical market.