By Howard Wilkinson
The Cincinnati Enquirer

AVONDALE - When the $8.2 million Harold C. Schott Education Center at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden opens two years from now, school students will have a place to learn about life in rain forests and the importance of conservation.

Zoo officials will break ground this morningon a 31,000-square-foot Education Center, which is expected to open in the summer of 2005 and is being funded largely by the zoo's Circle of Life capital campaign.

"This will be important not only for the zoo, but for the whole community," said David Jenike, the zoo's director of education.

The center will house the Zoo Academy, a joint venture between the zoo and Cincinnati Public Schools that offers a four-year college-preparatory program in which high school students use zoo exhibits as learning labs. Cincinnati Schools is spending $1.5 million on the new center.

The rest of the money is coming from individuals, corporations and foundations, including the Harold C. Schott Foundation, founded by the late Cincinnati business executive.

The education center will be home to the zoo's education programs and a 350-seat general-purpose auditorium. Ten classrooms will encircle a 5,000-square-foot "Discovery Forest," a large, round greenhouse containing plants and animals native to rain forests.

"It won't be like walking into the typical schoolhouse," Jenike said. "It will immerse the student in the subject."

The center will also have a "distance-learning studio" that will be able to feed live and taped programs to area high schools. The new facility will also accommodate student groups participating in the zoo's "Nocturnal Adventures" program.

E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com