Five of the seven Portland Public Schools board members directed the district Tuesday night to continue working on scenarios that could close up to 20 schools.

Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong had asked the board to weigh in as the district’s school closure and consolidation plans move into a critical stage over the next three months. If the board’s preference was to scale back the scope of the proposed changes, Armstrong said district staff needed to know, so they could adjust their work accordingly.

"One might call it Christmas in September" - that's what Adelup says with Guam now expected to receive over $105 million in remitted federal income tax and fee collections. Senators are now looking at ways those extra funds can be used to fill in critical funding gaps, from directly providing relief to working families to making sure our children have a safe learning environment to call home.

Guam's Treasury is set to receive more than $105 million from the U.S. Government on September 15 through Section 30 or "cover back" funds, which reimburse the territory for the local impact of federal activities. Lawmakers note that means the island will be getting nearly $20 million more than the original $85.2 million that was expected.

Douglas County School District is grappling with a change in law in one of its most populous communities. The Castle Rock Town Council passed an ordinance Tuesday night changing the way land and funds dedicated to schools are allocated.

Historically, developers have dedicated land or funding for future public schools. The town holds these assets until the district is ready to build a school, but now the district will need to meet certain conditions and timelines, or the land may be used for other purposes.

Educators, lawmakers, students and architects gathered in Boise and Star Wednesday to celebrate the groundbreakings of two new schools.

The projects will give hundreds of students in the West Ada and Middleton districts new classrooms in 2027 and 2028 — and get some of those students out of portables.

(The West Ada School District serves parts of Boise, Star, Garden City, Kuna and Eagle, as well as Meridian. The Middleton School District covers Middleton as well as the portion of Star that lies in Canyon County.)

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WSYX) — Columbus City Schools is launching an LED lighting conversion project across 10 school buildings to reduce utility bills and redirect the savings to classrooms, according to a joint statement from the district and community advocacy groups.

District officials say the switch will save $59,480.38 in energy costs during its first year, with savings projected to climb as utility rates increase.

In K-12 school architecture, a shift is occurring. For years, school-safety discussions focused on reactive, visible reinforcements. The immediate response to security threats involved retrofitting schools with steel bars, security shutters and windowless concrete entryways. While these measures were intended to protect, they frequently transformed centers of learning into cold, institutional spaces. Today, educational architects and school districts recognize that physical security must coexist with a student’s psychological well-being. 

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Richmond Public Schools (RPS) has kicked off its series of community meetings on Tuesday to help determine which of its aging school buildings should be prioritized for immediate investments.

On Tuesday, Sept. 1, parents, community members and RPS staff took part in an interactive exercise to assess the conditions of the district’s 50 school buildings and rank them based on their needs.

 With 60% of its $75 million solar energy system down, Mount Diablo Unified School District is left with questions about maintenance, repairs and financial losses.

For years, the district has operated what it says is one of the nation’s largest solar energy systems for a kindergarten-12th grade school district. Installed in 2010 using bond money, the system has generated about 11 megawatts of energy annually and saved the district about $17 million in general fund dollars.

A recent inspection by SunUp Solar Tech Service, a solar operation and maintenance company, found that 43 of the district’s 77 inverters are offline. Inverters are key elements of a solar energy system that take direct current electricity and turn it into alternating current electricity, which is the type of energy used by the power grid, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Without the 43 inverters, the district is losing out on about 7,860 kilowatts of electricity, or nearly eight of the 11 megawatts promised in the past.

A Vermont school has spent millions of dollars toward eliminating toxic PCB contamination, but the problem hasn’t gone away.

The solution in Burlington was a new school building that opened this year and that may be an option for North Country Union High School, but the big question remains: Who would pay for it?

School officials have worked to keep PCBs out of the air students are breathing, but the fixes can only go so far and they are turning to the state for help.

North Country High School Principal Chris Young said the district added air purifiers in classrooms after PCB contamination was discovered at the school in 2024.

“As we took more and more tests, we realized the scores and the results coming back were worse and worse, especially when we were testing in the summer months when the PCBs seemed to be at the highest levels,” Young said.

The Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) Board of Education met on August 25 with one item on the agenda.

That one topic of discussion was the Resilient Schools Proposal. With declining enrollment for some years and more projected in the future, BVSD is looking to make changes.

The board made no decisions at this meeting. The meeting was planned to hear the proposal developed by staff and for the board to ask questions. 

Superintendent Dr. Rob Anderson spoke first, saying that he is proud of the process they have developed. “We listened first to our community, and in the world of school closures and consolidations unfortunately that is unique.”

Assistant Superintendent of Operational Services Rob Price led the presentation on the proposal. He said, “This is not about failing schools. It is about adjusting our systems to better serve our students.”

Guam's public schools are facing an estimated $427 million in repairs and improvements, a backlog that lawmakers say underscores problems that go far beyond getting classrooms ready for another school year.

The figure emerged during a legislative oversight hearing on the Guam Department of Education, where lawmakers pressed department officials on aging facilities, sanitation inspections, maintenance staffing and whether schools are getting the long-term attention they need.

GDOE's Facilities and Maintenance Division has about 72 employees and remains largely reactive, responding to problems as they arise rather than having enough personnel to perform preventive maintenance.

The New Haven Board of Alders is requesting citywide inspections of New Haven Public Schools after direct site visits and mounting reports of health and safety hazards, according to a letter sent out Friday.

The board has submitted a formal request to the New Haven Health Department, Office of Emergency Management and New Haven Fire Department urging health, fire and emergency preparedness inspections of the school district’s facilities.

Committee members observed non-functioning HVAC systems and extreme temperatures, active leaks and water damage, visible mold, rodents, damaged exit signage, missing stairwell railings, non-functioning doors, utility outlets and eyewash station problems, unsafe exterior sidewalks and curbs, and persistent bathroom and odor problems, according to the Board of Alders letter.

There's a high school in Boston that continues to struggle with renovations.

A window project at English High School in Jamaica Plain was supposed to be finished in the fall of 2025. It dragged on into the school year. Now, as another school year is about to begin, the project still isn't done.

Scaffolding and cranes continue to line the streets around the school, where natural light has been blocked from some classrooms. Window coverings have been added for safety.

Within more than $313 million of statewide school debt that went up for sale Thursday, Rock Hill school officials have a plan they believe will save taxpayers money and improve aging facilities. The Rock Hill school board approved a plan Tuesday to borrow nearly $33 million as part of a South Carolina Association of Governmental Organizations bond package. That program allows school districts to borrow up to 8% of their total assessed property value without needing a bond referendum.
While that debt typically goes to capital and maintenance needs, the Rock Hill district intends to use it to pay off long-term debt. Coupled with a new maintenance reserve fund policy, district CFO Kevin Madden sees a more nimble and less costly way to fund school capital needs moving forward.
 

Moscow patrons will have the long-awaited chance to overhaul their schools this fall after trustees put a seven-year, $9.37 million per year plant facility levy on the November ballot Wednesday night.

The vote followed decades of complaints over the nearly 90-year-old high school, years of discussion over how to update facilities, months of planning by a facility committee, and weeks of presentations to the school board.

If the levy, totaling $65.6 million, passes, it will kick off the first phase of a decade-long plan to convert the district’s middle school into a high school. The second phase, building a new middle school, would require a second ballot measure.

City leaders say passing a 1% sales tax could be “transformational.”
The first day of school brought the usual excitement for Richmond Public School students and families. But for school leadership, it underscored the long-standing challenges of maintaining an aging school division with a limited capital improvement budget.

Across the city, children are learning in buildings that range in age from decades to centuries old. 

In the city’s Northside, the RPS community is dealing with a delayed start due to mold found at Barack Obama Elementary, and suspected mold at both Frances McClenney and Bellevue elementaries. Meanwhile in the city’s Southside, on top of aging infrastructure, schools there are facing continued overcrowding. 

Several schools will lack proper air conditioning by the start of the school year on Monday, meaning some students may have to be moved to temporary classrooms, as temperatures for the first week are projected to reach the mid-80s.

Chief of School Operations Paul Whyte disclosed the information Wednesday at a Board of Alders Education Committee meeting at City Hall.

The meeting centered around readiness for the upcoming school year. Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller asked Whyte for a rundown of schools without air conditioning.

Whyte reported that Truman School students will continue to learn without air conditioning, noting that the system “has been down for multiple years.”

Today, Mayor Muriel Bowser joined DC Public Schools (DCPS), the Department of General Services (DGS), District leaders, and community members to celebrate the first day of pre-K at DCPS and cut the ribbon on the newly modernized J.O. Wilson Elementary School in Ward 6.

The $90.9 million modernization nearly doubles the size of J.O. Wilson, transforming the original 55,000-square-foot building into a nearly 100,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art learning campus. The project was completed on an accelerated 18-month construction schedule, beginning in January 2025 and finishing this summer.

Durham Public Schools is set to discuss replacing boilers at three schools as aging systems become increasingly difficult to maintain.

Hillandale Elementary School, Oak Grove Elementary School and Riverside High School all need new boilers, according to district information. The existing systems have deteriorated with age, and routine maintenance is no longer enough to keep them operating reliably.

"I think that it's a little old," DPS student Tania Patterson said.

The proposed replacements come as the average Durham school building is 59 years old. Boilers heat water or generate steam to provide heat and hot water for school buildings.

More than 10,800 K-12 schools representing more than 7 million students across the United States now use solar energy, helping schools lower electricity costs, invest more resources in students and strengthen their communities, according to a new report from clean energy nonprofit Generation180.
The sixth edition of “Brighter Future: The State of Solar & Battery Storage in U.S. K-12 Schools“ finds that total solar capacity on K-12 schools has more than tripled since 2016. Together, these schools have more than 2.4 GW of solar, enough to power more than 450,000 homes.