LITTLE FALLS – When students and staff walk the halls of Little Falls Community High School each day, they see lockers, classrooms and familiar corridors. What they don’t see is a mechanical system that has been quietly working and straining for more than half a century.

Constructed in 1972, the high school’s heating, ventilation, electrical and plumbing systems are now more than 50 years old. According to district officials and maintenance staff, those systems have far outlived their expected lifespan and are increasingly difficult and costly to keep running.

That reality is one of the primary drivers behind the upcoming Little Falls School District referendum, which would fund major mechanical upgrades at the high school as part of a broader facilities plan.

To better understand what’s at stake, the Morrison County Record spent time with the people who know the building best: head custodian Craig Gruber, boiler specialist Kevin Keeton and Executive Director of Operations Mark Diehl.

Under the bill, $100 billion would be provided through formula grants to the states. Ninety-five percent of the funds would go to districts based on criteria that include the poverty level of children in the school district, fiscal limitations to raise funds to improve facilities and the severity of the facility needs.

An additional $30 billion would be provided in bond authority for two types of bonds: qualified school infrastructure bonds and qualified zone academy bonds, both of which were eliminated in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The bond authority would be spread out in increments of $10 billion for each year between 2027 and 2029. 

“Local communities have shown us time and time again that they support investments in modernizing our schools, as evidenced by the overwhelming support for bond initiatives to address these issues,” said Talcott. 

For lower-income areas, which lack the tax base to get bonds passed as frequently as wealthier areas, inclusion of the qualified zone academy bonds in the bill could become an important tool; they’re targeted to low-income areas and, in rule changes the bill makes, school districts wouldn’t have to put up as much matching funds and there’s more flexibility in what the money can be used for.    

Virgin Islands Education Department officials warned lawmakers Thursday at the Senate Education and Workforce Committee hearing that public schools are facing chronic absenteeism as they struggle to keep aging buildings powered, connected to the internet, and safe for students and faculty.

Craig Benjamin, executive director of the Bureau of School Construction and Maintenance, said 90% of schools have air-conditioning issues that affect air quality. While most schools are impacted, Bertha C. Boschulte Middle School, long plagued by air quality complaints, now operates on a shortened instructional day from 7:20 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., which began Nov. 17, 2025.

“The school has faced significant instructional challenges due to ongoing infrastructure and resource constraints,” Education Commissioner Dionne Wells‑Hedrington said. Older HVAC units were replaced with split systems that fail to provide adequate air exchange. “I like to start out by saying, we don’t [just] have a mold problem. We have an air quality problem. Mold is just one of the results of poor air quality,” Benjamin said.

TRENTON – To ensure every student and educator has access to a safe, supportive learning environment, Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz introduced legislation that would renew New Jersey’s commitment to repairing and replacing aging school buildings across the state.

“This bill marks the start of a broader conversation about how we can modernize our public schools and provide students with an education that meets the demands of the 21st century. While this approach may be one path to address the issue, the need for action is clear,” said Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex/Hudson). “Inadequate funding for school facility upgrades has left students from one corner of the state to the other learning in outdated, crumbling buildings, some more than a century old. Year after year, leaky roofs, faulty heating and ventilation, mold, overcrowding, and a lack of air conditioning disrupt valuable classroom time and jeopardize students’ health, safety, and academic growth. Schools dating back to the time of Abraham Lincoln lack the infrastructure necessary to support a modern-day curriculum for today’s students and educators.”

To address these urgent needs, Ruiz introduced S-3382, which would ask voters to authorize new state bonds for school construction, expansion, and renovation projects in both School Development Authority (SDA) districts and Regular Operating Districts (ROD). The School Development Authority, which was established following the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Abbott v. Burke decision, oversees and fully funds approved school construction projects in New Jersey’s 31 historically underfunded districts. New Jersey’s roughly 500 traditional public districts are also eligible to apply for state-funded construction grants through the authority, where the SDA typically contributes at least 40% of construction costs.

Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, the House Education Committee chair, on Thursday introduced the first concrete proposal presented this legislative session to consolidate Vermont’s dozens of school districts.
The proposal would merge the state’s 119 districts — and the 52 entities that govern them — into 27 supervisory districts, each with student populations between 2,000 and 4,000, Conlon said.
The proposal would end non-operating districts, discard supervisory unions in favor of supervisory districts and introduce an updated statutory framework around Vermont’s school choice system.
The map, by Conlon’s own admission, is “faulty” and “fraught with political decisions.” But he told fellow committee members the proposal was “not meant to be the end-all be-all.”
“It’s not perfect, and it’s meant as a starting point, not an ending point,” he said. “But even more so, the point is really to give us something to say, ‘Oh I can get behind this concept.'”
Conlon’s proposal signals a ramping up of lawmakers’ efforts to garner some consensus around school consolidation, set in motion last year by the state’s sweeping education reform law, Act 73.
 

The Jefferson Parish school board surprised many families in 2023 when it announced a restructuring plan due to declining enrollment and aging buildings. Several schools would be shut down, students would be sent to new campuses and a few new schools would be built.

Three years later, many of the plans have come to pass. Thousands of students were impacted when the district shuttered six of its schools, mostly on the parish’s West Bank. Most kids were sent to 12 other area schools, while two schools were moved into new buildings. A seventh school is set to shut down at the end of this school year.

As broad as the district’s downsizing has been, it could be just the start. In recent weeks, board members have warned that more closures will be necessary as the district continues to lose students, with enrollment dropping from 50,500 in 2018 to around 45,000 last year. 

Ten years ago, a big crowd of Detroit teachers and their supporters marched down Jefferson Avenue toward Cobo Hall, where the annual auto show was being held, to draw national attention to the substandard conditions inside city schools.

The Detroit Federation of Teachers timed another rally later that afternoon outside Cobo (now Huntington Place) to coincide with the arrival of President Barack Obama at the auto show, whose appearance drew journalists from across the country.

The protests on Jan. 20, 2016, which closed most schools that Friday, produced stunning headlines that explained why teachers in Detroit Public Schools had called in sick en masse multiple times in that month.

“Rats, roaches, mold – poor conditions lead to teacher sick-out, closure of most Detroit schools,” a Washington Post headline said. “These Photos Will Make You Understand Detroit’s Education Crisis,” a HuffPost headline read. “How Detroit’s teacher ‘sickout’ cast a spotlight on unsafe school conditions,” was a Guardian headline.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WNCN) — Cumberland County Schools is considering possibly closing eight schools as part of a long-term effort to address aging buildings and rising repair costs across the district.

The discussion follows an independent school consolidation and redistricting study completed last year by MGT of America Consulting, a third-party firm hired to evaluate building conditions, enrollment trends, capacity, and long-term maintenance needs.

According to the study, closing the eight schools could save the district an estimated $31 million in repair costs tied to the aging facilities.

The schools identified in the study include:

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Could crumbling schools across Virginia soon be getting the help they need? 

“We have schools that are over 100 years old, even, and what we’re worried about, the health of the student, not only mold and crumbling situations, but just the impact that it has, sitting in that classroom all day. We need to be able to do more to help localities that want to help themselves,” the bill’s author, Delegate Sam Rasoul (D-Roanoke), told 8News. 

On Tuesday, Jan. 27, the Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill that would allow localities to impose an additional 1% sales tax if voters in the locality approve the increase via referendum, with the money going toward school construction and renovation. 

According to a 2021 state report, more than half of Virginia’s schools are more than 50 years old, and the cost to replace those schools is nearly $25 billion. 

During a Yelm Community Schools (YCS) Board of Directors meeting on Thursday, Jan. 22, Chris Woods, superintendent of YCS, told board members and those in attendance that the district will be looking to pay for some expenditures with money from its capital fund in order to stay on track, financially, in its general fund.

Woods, during the meeting, said that the district has continued to meet with the Educational Service District (ESD) and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) amidst financial troubles in YCS. He noted some of the meetings are formal check-ins on the district’s binding conditions, while others are informal meetings “in between.”

“A couple things we are going to do financially to help offset the deficit that we have this year, and also the deficit we have to account for next year — we have expenditures every year that could be expenditures paid for out of capital funds. Things typically around technology,” Woods said. “Now, the reason you wouldn’t do that on a regular basis is because capital funds don’t have revenue coming in on a regular basis. 

We asked, you answered, and the results are in! Last year, we put out a call for submissions to collect our readership’s opinion on trends and predictions for K–12 and higher education facilities in 2026. We received responses from professionals in both groups, ranging from educators to architects to construction management workers to providers of products and solutions; they provided opinions on the areas of focus that they think will rise to prominence this year.

From a sample size of 55 respondents, 21.82% were from architecture firms, 20% from products and solutions providers, 16.36% from four-year higher education institutions, 10.91% from PreK–12 schools, and 18% from “Other,” including nonprofit and federal workers. They were asked to select the top three “trends or areas of focus [that they] anticipate will impact education facilities the most in the coming year.” Their answers included:

PLATEAU VALLEY, Colo. (KJCT) — Plateau Valley School District opened its brand-new school building, which covers more than 250 students and serves students in Pre-K through 12th grade.

The new building holds the vast majority of students in the district, which is why the upgrade was important, officials said.

Superintendent Trevor Long said the district’s old school building served the district for 66 years, but it was no longer modern in terms of safety and technology.

Enhanced facilities and programs
“We did not have classrooms as we do now that are tailored to more of the career tech-ed side. We have a new STEM lab, a new STEM workshop that is in the building, rather than the old regular classroom that we had to makeshift and try to do those programs,” Long said. “We actually now have those facilities that service that, as well as a new ag shop that helps our kids develop some of the agriculture and the FFA interests that we really desire with our kids and our community.”

The state budget proposal released on Tuesday would allocate $4 million in fiscal year 2027 in state funding to replace the Brunswick High School building.
The Interagency Commission on School Construction said the project would receive that much because it will not begin construction next fiscal year. Frederick County Public Schools requested $4 million.
A second school construction project, which is a combined replacement building for Middletown Elementary and Middle schools, was allocated $24 million in the proposed budget.
On Jan. 8, Gov. Wes Moore announced $28 million in proposed school construction funding for Frederick County school projects at a news conference held at Frederick High School.
The Governor’s Office first told The Frederick News-Post on that day that the $28 million in funding would be split evenly: $14 million each to both the Brunswick and Middletown projects.
Alex Donahue, the executive director of the IAC, later clarified that since the Brunswick project will not begin construction in fiscal year 2027, and to accommodate Frederick County Public Schools’ specific project level requests, the project would only receive $4 million.
 

With the vast majority of K-12 students attending public schools, it’s crucial to continue expanding school choice in ways that benefit them. Since 2020, states have significantly expanded K-12 open enrollment laws, allowing students to attend public schools other than their assigned school. Eleven of the 17 states that strengthened their open enrollment programs in the past five years codified statewide programs so that all school districts must accept transfer applicants so long as seats are open in their grade level.

Strong open enrollment laws give students and their families agency in school selection, letting families choose other public schools when a student’s assigned school isn’t a good fit. Overall, these new open enrollment laws are a major victory for students, whose public school options are no longer limited by where they live.

However, a common weakness pervades these policies: States’ laws generally don’t include a standardized definition of “capacity.” This gives significant discretion to districts, letting them set inconsistent definitions of capacity that can unnecessarily limit options for families

(The Center Square) - William Penn School District led the charge of school districts, parents, and community organizations in a legal battle for education funding that lasted nearly a decade.

Thursday, House Speaker Joanna McClinton, D-Philadelphia, met administrators and other elected officials at Penn Wood 9th Grade Academy to talk about the investments made in the district and education across the state.

“Notwithstanding all the walls we ran into in Harrisburg, called the Senate Republican Caucus, we have continued to fight every year since our chamber has flipped,” said McClinton. “Every year since we have been in leadership, you have seen more tax dollars finally returning to the William Penn School District.”

With extreme cold expected to overtake a large swath of the United States in the coming week, school districts are bracing for a fresh round of freezing temperatures, snow, and potential building closures.
Some areas of the Midwest, Great Lakes, and East Coast can expect up to a foot of snow, according to local forecasts.
Even for areas that aren’t blanketed with snow, cold could force students to stay home—an increasingly common phenomenon as aging national school infrastructure meets a changing climate increasingly dominated by extremes.
Meteorologists project some areas can expect “feels-like” temperatures to drop as low as minus 50 degrees in some areas of the eastern United States, and the National Weather Service warned on Wednesday that a “dangerously cold Arctic air front” will settle over most of the East Coast by Sunday.
The winter weather system could affect many schools well into next week.
It’s become commonplace for schools with inadequate or no cooling systems have to close when the weather gets too hot, which is happening both earlier in the spring and later in the fall—particularly interfering with the start and end of the school year.
But the other end of the temperature spectrum can also tax schools’ aging heating infrastructure.
 

Feedback period open for shaping high-quality and effective school facilities
The Ohio School Design Manual serves as the statewide guide for designing effective, efficient, and future-ready school facilities. Updated annually, it defines the spaces, systems, and standards required for state-funded classroom construction.

The Ohio Facilities Construction Commission is inviting feedback for the next edition from industry partners and stakeholders. Industry insight is essential to shaping a manual that supports high-quality learning environments across Ohio.

CHESTER – Chester ISD passed a bond election in May 2023 in the amount of $5,315.000. The district was subsequently awarded safety grants through the Texas Education Agency for $750K. The election bond narrowly passed by a vote of 159 for and 138 against.

Prior to the bond election, the district formed a long-range planning committee, made up of employees, parents, and taxpayers. The committee toured buildings and reviewed TASB (Texas Association of School Boards) and GLS facility assessments. The committee considered TASB’s finding that renovation would cost 160 percent more than demolition and new construction. The committee ultimately decided to move forward with the bond election. The board ordered the election in February 2023.

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — A school garden at Chollas Mead Elementary is transforming into something much bigger than flowers and vegetables — it's becoming a sanctuary for students and soon, an innovative outdoor classroom.
Tucked between the walls of the elementary school, the garden serves as more than just a learning space about plants and nature. For many students, it's become a place of comfort and peace.
"A really relaxing place because the garden is like my safe space," Amarie Angulo, a student gardener, said.
Arielle Angulo, another student, marveled at the unique setup, noting they had never seen a school "with a garden in the middle of it."
The garden's significance to students became clear in December when the school gave personalized rocks to student gardeners. The children placed their named rocks throughout the space, creating a sense of permanence and ownership in the garden.
 

Turner Construction, in partnership with Junior Achievement, opened the doors to give students a “behind-the-scenes” look at the project in December. As part of the capital improvements approved by Jamestown Public Schools voters in 2021, the JHS cafeteria has undergone a total metamorphosis since crews closed the space in the middle of the 2024-25 school year. As JHS students and staff have adapted to these temporary adjustments, the experience also provided students the opportunity to learn about the people behind the work: project managers, engineers, master tradespeople, and more.