Best university/school facility: F.J. Gaenslen School, Milwaukee.

What kid doesn't love learning fractions... when they can do it in the pool anyway? At Milwaukee's F.J. Gaenslen School, boys and girls get a chance to work on their flutter kick while boning up on their long division. But that's not all that makes this aquatics program special.

The only elementary school pool in the city, F.J. Gaenslen was originally established as a K-12 special education facility for orthopedically impaired children. In 1982, the school broadened its mission to include nondisabled kids as well. Today, approximately 700 students fill the halls, 40 percent of whom are still special ed.

Of course, its aquatics program also expanded beyond the adaptive curriculum to accommodate the entire student body--and in more ways than one. After the city's test scores began to decline, the school district targeted math and reading skills for improvement. To play her part, Carrie Patterson, a physical education teacher and the school's aquatics director, found a way to incorporate that curriculum into her swim classes. Now the kids are holding spelling bees and memorizing multiplication tables in the pool.

Patterson says her multidisciplinary approach has helped justify the aquatics program while the core academic courses still face funding challenges. In fact, funding shortages are such a constant concern, some of the adaptive kids hold their own swim-a-thons to ...