Aspen School District’s new facilities master plan outlines both small deferred maintenance work and largescale capital projects the board of education will use to inform future bond planning.

The combined cost of the projects — identified in a master planning process with administrators, staff and community members — is $72.6 million. The district worked with a team of consultants to identify high-level costs of the individual projects and what phasing of them could look like.

The document will help the school board begin planning for a bond that could go towards major capital projects. The board decided against pursuing another bond measure last November to avoid placing the question on an already crowded ballot. But if the district wants to continue building and acquiring housing, and addressing capital projects like a District Theater upgrade or a new athletics fieldhouse, another bond will be necessary.

MOSES LAKE, Wash. – Groff Elementary School in Moses Lake is closed for the remainder of the school year due to electrical issues, district officials announced. The closure affects more than 400 students.

The school, which opened in 2021, was deemed unsafe after electrical problems resurfaced. The issue first reported in April 2024. Superintendent Carol Lewis emphasized the importance of safety, stating, “We need to, for the safety of staff and students, leave Groff Elementary closed for the remainder of the school year.”

Ryan Shannon from the district assured the community that efforts are underway to ensure the facility is safe before reopening. “We're gonna make sure that facility is safe before we step foot back in it,” he said.

BAY COUNTY, Fla. (WMBB) – Tyndall Academy parents arrived at the school’s town hall meeting Wednesday night, ready to get answers on the existing school facility’s conditions. Many left satisfied after hearing that the district is in the process of answering their concerns.
Many parents were concerned about non-operational water bottle dispensers and bathroom facilities, storage space, leaks, and other infrastructure failures.
Superintendent Mark McQueen says while the district is looking for a space for their new facility that is planned to be completed in 2028, they will maintain the current school’s infrastructure.
Parents arrived to Tyndall Academy’s school town hall meeting with many questions for Bay County Superintendent Mark McQueen. Many of their questions and concerns regarded the school’s failing infrastructure.
The school district is currently in the process of finding a new space for a facility to house more students near Tyndall Air Force Base. Parents say while the district is working towards that goal, it is imperative to maintain the failing infrastructure in the existing facility.
“So obviously it’s painful to see that Tyndall has come to grips with some crumbling infrastructure. It’s a very old school, and like anything else, communication is key. And I think when you’re in a military community, inherently it’s hierarchical, and so I think folks are hesitant to speak truth to power and let folks know, hey, the drinking fountains are starting to stop working or the plumbing is not working any longer,” Erica Clayton said.
 

Every school benefits. Every student wins.
The route upcoming April 8 bond issue election has gone through many months of community open houses, meetings with local stakeholders, feedback sessions with parents and staff, and student town halls around the district. In all, the district hosted or attended 120 meetings, speaking with over 3,700 stakeholders throughout the process.

The school board and district administration — with the support as well of public charter schools in Kansas City — believe the time is now for Kansas City schools to seek KCPS’s first bond issue since 1967. Those many decades included many years under federal court supervision during a long running desegregation case. Now more than two decades since the court case ended in 2003, Kansas City’s bond and levy assessments rank among the lowest in Jackson County.

Now, since January 2022, Kansas City Public Schools are fully accredited and continuing to improve in its performance on the state’s district report card. In November 2024, the school board approved the plan of proposed projects for the district and set in motion to seek its first bond issue in 58 years.

The district needs the funding to deal with more than $1 billion in deferred maintenance and renovations.

Under the plan more than 40 schools will benefit from:

Enhance security for a safer environment

Enhance spaces for better learning, including special education spaces

More science labs + tools to expand opportunities

Improved facilities and classrooms to support learning and safety

Promoting the health of our children

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Representatives of several different Anchorage charter schools gave public comment at Tuesday’s school board meeting, imploring the board to grant them the buildings of the recently closed Nunaka Valley and Lake Hood elementary schools.

One of the items on the agenda was a recommendation from the district for Highland Academy Charter School to occupy the Nunaka Valley building, and for Rilke Schule German Immersion School to occupy Lake Hood. The school board would have to approve and authorize the superintendent to begin moving forward with that process.

“It gets decided tonight, so I really couldn’t say,” said Anchorage School Board President Andy Holleman prior to the meeting. “I do think there’ll be amendments that may change it and I really couldn’t predict how that’s going to go. There are different reasons for each of the buildings. Each of the programs wanting to move and it’s something we’ve not confronted before.”

Students, parents and staff from Rilke Schule and Highland Academy spoke during the public comment period.

Minnesota families can now access a new interactive map showing lead test results for drinking water in public and charter schools, as well as licensed child care centers. The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) developed the tool to increase transparency and help parents understand potential lead exposure risks.

The map is part of a new law that took effect on July 1, 2024, requiring both schools and licensed child care centers to test for lead in drinking water and report their results to MDH. While the map is not yet fully populated due to different testing cycles, facilities that have completed recent tests are already included. “The new map lets you search by the name of the facility, the school, or the licensed child care center, and you can see if that facility has reported results to the Department of Health,” said Anna Schliep, MDH’s Lead in Drinking Water Coordinator.

According to Schliep, lead is rarely found in Minnesota’s source water or the fresh water from public utilities. Instead, contamination typically comes from plumbing materials containing lead, particularly in older buildings. “Lead can impact all age groups. Infants and children are most primarily at risk, but it can cause difficulties with damage to the brain, kidneys, and nervous system or cause slowing of development in learning, behavior, or even hearing problems,” Schliep explained.

In Nevada, the construction of new schools is typically decided and funded at the local level, using property taxes. That has made it mathematically impossible for poor rural districts to build new schools, regardless of how badly they may need them.

Assembly Bill 224, which received a hearing Monday in the Assembly Committee on Government Affairs, could change that. The bill would dedicate $100 million in state general obligation bonds for high-needs school construction projects in low-population counties that cannot fund them through typical means.

The bill was designed to address the needs of White Pine School District, which has the two oldest public school buildings in Nevada, but it could eventually help additional schools in rural counties with fewer than 15,000 residents.

Assemblymember Erica Mosca, the Las Vegas Democrat sponsoring the bill, said the funding mechanism established by the bill is a “creative” solution to the growing problem of replacing dilapidated school buildings, which in some rural counties are more than a century old. In 2023, a bill to appropriate $100 million to White Pine SD for school construction failed to advance. AB 224, Mosca emphasized, is “not an appropriation” and the money would eventually be paid back.

“We have to do something,” said Republican Assemblymember Bert Gurr, whose expansive district includes all of White Pine County. He described the physical conditions as “the scariest thing I have seen for our kids in Nevada.”

Gurr, who Mosca noted helped on her bill, is sponsoring a bill this session to appropriate $100 million to White Pine SD. He acknowledged his bill is unlikely to pass. “We all know where that’s going to go,” he said.

The Cabarrus County Board of Education on Monday approved the district’s 2025 Long Range Capital Plan, which focuses on the projects, including the funding for new schools and revocations of several others, that are deemed the most urgent for CCS to address in the years to come.
The plan, which will be sent to the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners, is comprised of 12 capital projects that are sequenced according to their current level of priority.
At the top of the list is a replacement for Northwest Cabarrus High School, which would have 1,800 seats and cost roughly $130 million. That is followed by a new 940-seat elementary school in the northwest part of the county, which is projected to cost $50.6 million, and a replacement for Central Cabarrus High School, which is projected to cost $140 million.

Surry County Schools commissioned a ten-year facilities plan using the services of Bill Powell, who previously conducted such a study for the district. Its findings helped guide the last round of school renovations at Mountain Park, Dobson, and Franklin Elementary schools.

Last week, Superintendent Dr. Travis L. Reeves informed the board of county commissioners that Powell’s new study was complete. Funding will be needed to advance the study toward a plan of action. Reeves requested no funding but was setting expectations for the board going forward on the looming specter of renovations of the three county high schools.

Powell said the new facilities study was, “A little more extensive than the previous one.” The evaluation reported that there are 51 buildings at 18 schools in the district. Of those, 14 scored in either Adequate (with numerous needs) or the worst ranking Poor which is subtitled “consider demolition.” The majority of county school buildings, 26, were ranked as Good with normal life cycle needs.

Nearly two dozen children in the tiny village of Sleetmute, Alaska, arrive for school each morning to a small brown building that is on the verge of collapse.

Every year for the past 19 years, the local school district has asked the state for money to help repair a leaky roof. But again and again, the state said no. Over time, water ran down into the building, causing the supporting beams to rot. A windowpane cracked under pressure as heavy snow and ice built up on the roof each winter. Eventually, an entire wall started to buckle, leaving a gaping hole in the exterior siding.

In 2021, an architect concluded that the school, which primarily serves Alaska Native students, “should be condemned as it is unsafe for occupancy.”

The following year, Taylor Hayden, a resident who helps with school maintenance, opened a hatch in the floor to fix a heating problem and discovered a pool of water under the building, where years of rain and snowmelt had reduced several concrete footings to rubble.

“Just like someone took a jackhammer to it,” Hayden said.

The Sleetmute school, nestled on the upper reaches of the Kuskokwim River, amid the spruce and birch forest of Alaska’s Interior, has few options. Like many schools in Alaska, it’s owned by the state, which is required by law to pay for construction and maintenance projects.

Yet over the past 25 years, state officials have largely ignored hundreds of requests by rural school districts to fix the problems that have left public schools across Alaska crumbling, according to an investigation by KYUK and ProPublica.

Legislation with the potential to significantly change Florida’s educational landscape has cleared its first House hurdle after its sponsor heard concerns about its potentially negative effects.
The Education Administration Subcommittee voted 13-5 on party lines to advance the bill (HB 123), which would exclude School Boards, teachers and school administrators from votes over whether to convert public schools into charter schools.
That decision would fall instead to parents with children enrolled at the school in question, whom current statutes already give a vote. Approving a charter conversion would require a 50% vote by parents, the same threshold given to teachers now.
Pensacola Republican Rep. Alex Andrade, the bill’s sponsor, said parents — not elected officials or unelected educators — are “the most reliable metric for a school’s performance.”
“Who cares more about that child than that child’s parents?” he said.
Local governments would still have some say. Andrade’s measure would create a new provision under which cities could — but wouldn’t have to — seek a charter school conversion for any public school that has received a grade below an “A” from the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) for five consecutive years.
The bill would also restrain school districts. It would require School Boards that want to buy or acquire real estate property to submit a five-year plan for it at a public meeting.
More notably, if a school district has seen its enrollment decline over the preceding five years, it would be prohibited from buying more property and must instead sell land or buildings the State Board of Education deems surplus.
 

To modernize the Boston's only vocational school, the city is looking at a $700 million renovation or rebuild of Madison Park Technical Vocational High School.

Boston.com reports that decades of disinvestment have resulted in an aging campus that struggles to support its educational programs. 

“The cost estimates are quite high,” said Superintendent Mary Skipper. “Vocational schools, in general, are the most expensive schools to build because they generally need the most space, and we expect Madison Park’s redesign to be the most expensive capital project in Boston’s history."

Skipper said that to meet the full vision for the school, the city is looking for funding from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) to offset the high costs. 

Historically, said Dion Irish, Boston’s chief of operations, the city has received about 30% of the funding from the MSBA for project costs. 

After exploring different options to reduce costs, Irish said the city doesn’t believe it can deliver the project using only city resources without significantly scaling back the plans. 

BRIDGEPORT, CT — Bridgeport Public Schools (BPS) is providing an update on the progress of its Facilities Master Plan, a comprehensive long-term planning framework that will guide the district’s capital investments and facility improvements for the next decade and beyond. This updated plan is crucial for modernizing BPS facilities, addressing compliance challenges, and aligning schools with current and future enrollment needs.

The Facilities Master Plan is driven by the findings of a recent, month-long facilities study, which revealed that the city’s aging school buildings will require up to $709 million in repairs and infrastructure upgrades over the next decade. The study is vital in helping the school board develop a 10-year roadmap for the district’s 37 buildings, including potentially closing some schools and replacing dilapidated structures.

A bill to recharge a rural school facilities fund is heading to the House. 

The House Education Committee Monday unanimously advanced House Bill 338. The bipartisan legislation attempts to spark a dormant facilities fund that could offer gap financing for school construction projects. 

The Salmon School District is again serving as a poster child — as it did a year ago, when lawmakers passed a $1.5 billion facilities funding bill. Salmon voters in May approved a $20 million bond for a new school building while a group of volunteers led a fundraising effort for the remaining $9 million balance. 

Breann Green, a leading member of the volunteer Salmon School Needs Assessment Committee, told lawmakers Monday that the fundraising effort has come up about $3 million short. The committee supports HB 338. “It will be a tool that we may use to finish our school.”

HB 338 would increase the “school facilities cooperative fund” from $25.5 million to $50.5 million, and the bill would remove an existing requirement that recipients surrender to state supervision for the duration of a construction project — if they ask for $5 million or less. 

SODA SPRINGS — During the fifth of his seven years as Soda Springs High School principal, Jess McMurray went fishing and caught several big ones during his quest to improve education in welding, auto mechanics, construction and bench carpentry.

Given the dearth of people to fill needs in most employment sectors, McMurray opted to focus on providing students the chance to quickly enter the workforce in specialties available right where they live – at Caribou County’s mines, construction and agriculture.

“Thirty-five percent of those holding college degrees do not find employment in their field of study,” McMurray said. “We need practical skills – no matter what our educational background may be.”

So he grabbed the phone, submitted applications and threw out his line.

“Money is tight,” he said as he described how he envisioned expanding, “but my philosophy is the sky’s the limit.”

Through nothing less than serendipity, he came upon R&M Steel Company, a Caldwell firm specializing in pre-engineered metal buildings, who asked him three simple questions:

What do you need?
What would you like?
What is your fantasy?
His pragmatic Montana roots notwithstanding, R&M awarded the district even more than McMurray’s wildest fantasy – a new 7,200-square-foot building through a grant, to be used for career and technical education (CTE).

Local contributors such as Bayer and Simplot covered new welding equipment. High school students performed interior finish self-help to add insulation and plywood walls covered in corrugated steel with restrooms, classrooms, storage and tool spaces. The school district’s $75,000 helped defray material costs. All tolled, the completed structure and contents will exceed $1.2M, banked via donations, additional grants and the community’s considerable largesse.

With property and casualty insurance costs rising for coastal schools, one local school district has opted for financial savings at the cost of losing some coverage.

The Flour Bluff Independent School District board of trustees approved property, windstorm and flood insurance plans Thursday evening. The decision comes months after the district raised the alarm on the issue with local lawmakers, though the district was able to find additional savings.

But for the future, state lawmakers are currently considering a bill that could provide some aid to coastal schools.

Flour Bluff ISD is a coastal school district. Though all of the district's current schools are located on the mainland, the facilities are sandwiched between Oso Bay and the Laguna Madre. Many students live even farther out on North Padre Island, a barrier island bordering open Gulf of Mexico waters.

RAVENNA, Neb. - A Central Nebraska School District is proposing a bond project which will go towards upgrades that officials say will make the school safer and more modern.
The Ravenna Public School District is asking residents to vote in March on a proposed bond aimed at improving the school’s facilities, with a focus on safety, inclusion and modernizing learning spaces.
The targeted areas include the career, agriculture, and technical education classrooms in addition to a new weight room and improved special education facilities. 
The proposal also includes the construction of a central, more secure entrance for students which will greatly limit the travel between buildings during the school day.
Ravenna Superintendent Ken Schroeder says about 150 students travel back and forth several times a day between the main building and detached classrooms.
He said the entrance and construction is a priority because "if we're having any type of a situation where there might be an unwanted guest on the grounds and we need to secure our perimeter it's a lot more functional to do that if we're all under one roof and we don't have that separation between the current north buildings and the main building.”
Schroeder says residents would likely see a slight decrease in the school district's tax levy rate for the first year after the bond passes.
The district’s levy rate is expected to drop from 71 cents to around 68.8 cents due to the removal of funds from certain accounts used for building improvements.
 

The Archuleta School District (ASD) Master Plan Advisory Committee (MPAC) recently discussed the pros and cons of a major renovation versus constructing a new building for the district’s master facilities plan.

Representatives from RTA Architects, as well as ASD Superintendent Rick Holt and MPAC chair Lisa Scott, facilitated the most recent committee meeting held on Monday, Feb. 24, in which committee members discussed in groups the pros and cons of either a major renovation or a new construction project.

Scott clarified that the MPAC is an advisory group, and that the ASD Board of Education will make the final decision as to what the district will pursue in terms of a renovation or new construction project and the appropriate funding needed.

“We are an advisory committee to the school board,” Scott said, explaining the committee’s purpose through the end of this spring is to “understand the status of our school facilities and the options for … remedies. These buildings are old — doesn’t mean they’re horrible — but we do seriously need some remedies.” 

INDIANAPOLIS - Indianapolis Public Schools is calling for a moratorium on new schools as state lawmakers advance legislation that would force the district to share property tax revenues with dozens of charter schools.

The statement from the school board last week also calls for a limit on the ability of authorizers to allow new charter schools to open — by only allowing the Indianapolis mayor’s office to give new charters the green light. Right now, seven authorizers have the power to let new charters open in Indianapolis.

“There is no way to create a sustainable system if the number of schools within the IPS boundary continues to grow,” the school board said in its Friday statement. “For at least the next two years, as we work toward a collective community vision, no new schools should open. We do not need more schools.”

The demand came shortly after the Indiana Senate passed Senate Bill 518, which would require the district to share revenues from property taxes and referendums as early as 2026. The bill compounds the long-term pressure on IPS — where enrollment declined by over 3% this year — and has led IPS officials to publicly lament the new charters officials have allowed to open within IPS borders. Combined with proposed property tax caps, IPS has said the legislation would force it to close schools.

Charter advocates, however, oppose such a moratorium on new schools and object to changes to restricting authorizing power for now.

White Bear Lake High School junior Lauryn Belz said she and many of her fellow students don’t feel safe at school, citing numerous lockdowns at schools throughout Minnesota.
“As a student, I believe that it is of the utmost importance that students feel safe in their schools,” she said, calling for funding to create safer school environments.
Rep. Elliott Engen (R-White Bear Township) believes the Legislature should be protecting the safety of all students and school officials. He’s calling his bill, HF15, the "Safe Haven In Every Local District (SHIELD) Act."
“We are talking about something that is really meaningful, and it is a generational impact. And I think that what you’re doing here to protect kids is important,” said Rep. Heather Keeler (DFL-Moorhead).
The House Education Policy Committee approved the bill, as amended, on a voice vote Wednesday and sent it to the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee.
The SHIELD Act, in part, would fund the commissioner of public safety to issue school security grants to school districts and charter schools for the purpose of installing comprehensive, multilayered and integrated security systems, including an evaluation of a school’s current security systems, and training for school staff on using the security systems.