The cost of school construction is going up with no end in sight, leading to continued pressure on school districts' --- and taxpayers' --- pocketbooks.
That's according to state data and data compiled by the Wake County Public School System, which is set to present its findings to the Wake school board's facilities committee Tuesday.
The committee was scheduled to discuss the findings last month, before a power outage at the school district's headquarters canceled committee meetings for that day.
School systems are now paying tens of millions of dollars more for every new school and replacement school than they did just a few years ago.
The rising costs are adding up to rising bond requests that taxpayers ultimately foot the bill for. The school board voted in April to ask county commissioners to put a $680 million bond issue on the November ballot, though school leaders believe they have more than $830 million in needs, mostly for renovation, during the years of the bond, the 2028 and 2029 school years. It's likely to require a property tax increase, though it's unclear how much.
 

Across the country, Transitional Kindergarten is moving from pilot to policy, from niche offering to a foundational layer of public education. As districts expand access, a practical question comes into focus: where do four-year-olds fit within systems built for older children? 

The answer is beginning to reshape the physical environment of schools in ways both subtle and consequential. Transitional Kindergarten is not a program that can simply be absorbed into existing classrooms. It asks for spaces tailored to a different stage of development, where independence is emerging but not yet assumed, and where the first experience of school can shape a child’s long-term relationship to learning. 

Design, in this context, becomes less about accommodation and more about calibration. 

A Different Kind of Classroom  
Traditional elementary classrooms are organized around independence and routine. Transitional Kindergarten operates on a more fluid threshold. Students are learning how to be at school, and the environment plays a central role in that transition. 

Classrooms are larger, more flexible and intentionally zoned. Distinct areas for quiet reading, active play, group instruction, and sensory exploration allow students to move between modes of learning with clarity. Fixtures, storage and visual cues are scaled to a child’s perspective, supporting autonomy without overwhelming choice. In-class restrooms reduce disruption and reinforce independence, while material shifts from soft flooring to durable surfaces support a range of activities throughout the day. 

These intentional adjustments shape how students navigate space, build confidence and begin to understand the rhythms of school. 

Ashley Gardner’s classroom is often overwhelmingly hot or uncomfortably cold. Sometimes it smells like sewage. When it snows, the roof leaks.
It’s where the Wooster High School teacher works – alongside an occasional mouse and endless ants – while expecting her students to show up ready to learn.
“Could you effectively learn in that environment?” Gardner asked Washoe County School District's capital funding protection committee at its April 30 meeting. “These are not minor inconveniences. These are daily conditions that affect learning, teaching, safety and student dignity.”
The future of Wooster, built in 1962 and one of the district's oldest high schools, remains uncertain, even after being "promised" a new school.
"We had originally planned for a rebuild," Trustee Beth Smith said at an April school board meeting.
She said she knows nothing is set in stone, but the Wooster community believed a new school was coming. So did the school board. A new building was as close to a promise as one could be, she said.
 

Plans to redevelop the Claude O. Markoe and Alexander Henderson schools on St. Croix are moving through the review process, but Thursday’s public meeting before the Coastal Zone Management Commission made clear that the projects are being shaped by three major pressures: student and community safety, rising construction costs, and the challenge of managing work around active school operations.

The meeting focused on federal determination applications for both campuses. Officials from the Virgin Islands Department of Education, along with representatives from the master planning and contracting firms working on the projects, presented an overview of what the new schools are expected to look like and how they are intended to function.
 

Superintendent Tony Watlington reiterated in a Thursday statement that the purpose of Philadelphia’s school facilities plan has been to address “the challenges of aging, underutilized, and overcrowded school buildings,” while also expanding equitable access to high-quality academics and extracurricular activities. 

Though the district’s overall enrollment slightly increased by 106 to a total 198,405 students between the 2024-25 to 2025-26 school years, those figures vary by the type of school, including traditional, charter, alternative, and cyber charter schools. 

Last year, the district noted a 12% enrollment decline — amounting to a loss of 15,546 students — between the 2014-15 and 2024-25 school years. That dip comes as the School District of Philadelphia’s alternative school enrollment rose by 3.1%, its charter school enrollment decreased by 0.5%, and its cyber charter school enrollment jumped over 2,500%, with 13,705 more students in the same 10-year period.

Public school systems across the country are entering a period of sustained enrollment decline, driven by a convergence of demographic and behavioral shifts, particularly evident along Colorado’s Front Range. Over the next five years, the state is projected to lose more than 15,000 children ages 0–17, as persistently low birth rates, high housing costs, an aging population and slower immigration reduce the number of school-aged students. 

With more families considering online programs, private schools or homeschooling, public schools across the country are facing declines in student enrollment, accelerating enrollment losses that exceeded 10,000 students this year alone, the largest drop since COVID-19. According to projections from the National Center for Education Statistics, this downward trend is expected to continue nationally, placing increasing pressure on district funding, staffing and long-term planning, especially in high-poverty communities where per-pupil revenue is critical. 

Public school systems are moving beyond one-off solar installations, folding distributed generation into broader infrastructure strategies. A recent partnership between Ameresco and Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) shows how districts are aligning clean energy goals with long-term facility planning.
Two rooftop systems—installed at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School and Germantown Elementary School—are expected to generate nearly 1 million kilowatt-hours annually. While modest on their own, they represent part of a wider push to reduce operating costs and increase on-site energy production.

From Pilot Projects to Portfolio Approach
What sets this effort apart is its scale and structure. The solar installations sit within a $23 million energy savings performance contract (ESPC) covering 25 schools. Rather than focusing only on generation, the program integrates multiple upgrades, including advanced energy management systems and LED lighting retrofits.

Dallas voters have just approved a massive $6.2 billion school bond, the largest in Texas history.

The voters approved four separate propositions that cover new school construction, safety and security campus upgrades, and technology, as well as buses and playgrounds.

The largest part of that money is going towards fixing up aging schools as some of the schools were built more than 50 years ago.

The district says 26 schools will be entirely replaced.

"Excited about it, but now the hard work begins. We want to be great stewards for the citizens of the city," said campaign co-chair T. Dupree Scovell. "We're teaching in buildings that are fifty, sixty, seventy years old. So not only is the technology inadequate, but I mean, it's old lighting. It's smaller classrooms. There are no lab stations there."

Portland’s three public high schools. A consortium of coastal schools led by Ellsworth. Wiscasset and Boothbay. These are some of the schools competing for capital funding to build a first-of-its-kind regional high school in Maine.
Eight groups of school districts, career and technical education centers, colleges and businesses submitted the first part of a funding application for a Maine Department of Education pilot program last fall.
The Bangor Daily News obtained all eight applications this week through a Freedom of Access Act Request, revealing the scope and ambition of eight consolidation efforts that have largely remained below the public radar. You can read them here.
District leaders view the program, which will fully fund the construction of an “Integrated, Consolidated 9-16 Educational Facility,” as an opportunity for school systems battling rising costs, declining enrollment and aging buildings to reshape the future of local education without asking local taxpayers to raise the necessary capital.
 

With total costs coming in at nearly $86 million, about $16 million over budget, Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School officials are working with architects to reduce costs for the planned $70 million facility project.
On Thursday, the BBCHS District 307 School Board’s operations committee reviewed construction bids and project costs with BLDD Architects and PSI Construction.
After receiving construction bids in March and April, the subtotal cost for the project is $76,360,389.
The total base project cost — including a 4% construction contingency of about $2.7 million, a 2.75% construction management fee of about $2.2 million, a design fee of about $4.2 million, and a $500,000 furniture allowance — is approximately $85,936,679.
 

Pink basketball courts, a hair braiding station and a butterfly garden. These are just some of the innovative ideas that New York City schoolchildren came up with when they were actively engaged in the planning and design process to transform their schoolyards into vibrant public spaces that better serve themselves and their communities.

Anyone familiar with NYC knows that while it has some of the most iconic green spaces in the world, from Central Park to the High Line, it also has a shocking number of neighborhoods with almost no green space at all.

This is where schoolyard transformations come in. Every NYC neighborhood has a public school, and most of them have outdoor yards. For years, various initiatives have taken those city-owned spaces, often covered in asphalt, and opened them up to millions of students and nearby residents for recreation and relaxation.

The Glendale Unified School District is considering placing a $690 million bond measure in the Nov. 3 election ballot, which if voter-approved, would help cover facilities-related needs. However, full support of a bond is limited among Glendale voters, according to data from a recent poll.

At a meeting on Tuesday, April 21, the GUSD Board of Education unanimously approved the 2026-2036 Facilities Master Plan, which identifies $2.2 billion in need across the district over the next 10 years, recommending projects focused on enhancing safety, modernizing aging building systems such as plumbing, aligning with programmatic needs, and improving outdoor environments, according to a board report.

The board also heard a presentation on survey results from the public opinion poll, conducted by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates (FM3) from March 26 through April 2, regarding the potential bond and other related matters.

FM3's survey of likely November 2026 GUSD voters garnered 615 responses, with 62% of respondents saying they'd pass a bond and 31% saying they would not. 

Of those 62% of respondents, 35% were a definite yes to a bond measure. 

San Francisco’s superintendent of schools is putting a new timeline on two major changes for the district: an overhaul of its embattled “lottery” enrollment system and a long-delayed plan to close some schools.
In a message to families on Thursday night, Superintendent Maria Su said a new school assignment system should be in place by fall 2028. The district confirmed it plans to complete any school closures or mergers two years later, by fall 2030.
The San Francisco Unified School District board put both initiatives at the top of Su’s list when it made her the permanent superintendent last fall, and neither is expected to be a light lift.
In fall 2024, a botched plan to close or merge more than a dozen schools led to the resignation of former Superintendent Matt Wayne — and Su’s appointment as his replacement.
While school closures are almost always contested and emotional for families, Wayne’s proposal was criticized for lacking transparency and engagement, and for disproportionately affecting Chinese and immigrant students.
 

The remote Washington County town of Topsfield voted Thursday to close its five-student school, opting to send a shrinking student population elsewhere.

Residents voted 42 to 18 to shutter the East Range II School after high costs began to drive students from out of town elsewhere, bringing the number of students down from 25 in 2023 to the small total it has today. Turnout was robust in a town with only about 175 residents and 130 registered voters.

School district officials projected that the school, which had once served pre-K through eighth grade but would have been left only with pre-K through early elementary school students, would teach no more than seven students at a time over the next five school years. They also expected it would cost nearly $500,000 per year to keep the school open.

“I had no idea how the vote was going to go,” Eastern Maine Area School System superintendent Amanda Belanger said Friday. “I’m glad that a decision has been made and that we can move forward.”

NORTH CHICAGO, Ill. (WLS) -- A first-of-its-kind elementary school is opening in the Chicago area.
A ribbon cutting ceremony was held Friday for an elementary school located at Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, but the school is not just for military families.
The new Forrestal Elementary School is designed to mimic a children's storybook, taking not only the students but their families on a journey that is safe and welcoming for those that serve the country.
It's a new era for families at living at Naval Station Great Lakes.
"If you're planning for a year or plan to garden, planning for a decade, plant some trees, planning for a lifetime, build a school," Illinois 10th District U.S. Brad Schneider said.
That's what they did. With a grant from the Department of Defense, the new $72 million building will hold up just over 600 students K-5, meant to make them feel like they are inside a storybook.
 

Charlotte is in the midst of one of the most significant school construction efforts in its history. Backed by $2.5 billion in bond funding, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) is advancing dozens of projects, from new campuses to major renovations, to keep pace with a fast-growing region.

But this moment is about more than adding capacity. It’s also about how those schools will perform for decades to come. They must be safe, durable and factor in operating costs. And that comes down to decisions that are often overlooked: the materials that form the structure itself.

One material continues to stand out in school construction: concrete masonry.

Concrete masonry units (CMU), commonly known as concrete block, provide multiple layers of protection in a single system. Reinforced masonry walls not only offer inherent resistance for a number of safety concerns, but come in beautiful architectural finishes, while helping create learning environments that are both durable and easy to maintain.

RICHMOND, Va., May 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Building Hope, in partnership with the Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts (PHSSA) — Virginia's first charter elementary school — today announced the reopening of its historic top floor, the culmination of a decade-long, phased restoration of its nearly 100-year-old building on Semmes Avenue. The space has remained closed since 2007, when the building last operated as Patrick Henry Elementary School, and its reopening this school year welcomes third, fourth, and fifth grade students into newly revitalized classrooms designed to support innovation, collaboration, and academic growth.
The newly opened floor reflects Patrick Henry's mission to cultivate a culture of literacy through environmental science and arts education. The space will be home to a new "Learning Lab," equipped with digital microscopes, science lab tables, and interactive math and literacy resources.
 

With the voter rejection of Cambridge-Isanti Schools’ bond referendum last November, the district is being forced to pick and choose which long-term facilities maintenance projects will be tackled, plus when such projects will take place.

According to Finance Director Chris Kampa, at the time of the referendum, the district was looking at $45 million in LTFM projects, with the district only receiving approximately $1 million per year from the state.

“LTFM funds can only be spent on deferred capital expenditures for fixing old buildings,” Kampa explained. “Think leaky roofs, HVAC units, updating plumbing, or carpeting. What they cannot be used for is new construction, remodeling, or operating expenses.

“If you are doing the math, wondering how we can adjust $45 million in needs with $1 million per year in funding, the answer is we can’t. Therefore, we prioritize.”

I used to teach high school science in Oklahoma, and one day I brought in a stalk from a cotton plant with bolls of cotton still attached. Students asked me why I glued cotton balls to a stick.

My students and I lived in a rural town surrounded by pastures of cattle and goats and fields of wheat, soybeans and cotton. I was amazed to learn how little my students understood agriculture. After a few related incidents, I started incorporating agriculture into my science classes.

When the United States was formed, about 80% of the population lived and worked on farms. Within a century the number had fallen to 40%. Today, less than 2% of the population lives on farms.

When most Americans lived on farms, agriculture was part of daily life. Most kids did farm chores, and planting and harvest seasons dictated the schedule of the school year. Today, most Americans are several generations removed from agriculture, and agriculture is seen as a career instead of a part of daily life.

As an agricultural extension specialist focused on horticulture, I’ve found that gardens can be an excellent teaching tool. By integrating gardens into schools, students can grow up learning about agriculture and the food systems that shape their daily lives.

Many researchers have cataloged the benefits of school gardens, and they go far beyond seeing how food grows.

School closures are an incendiary issue in nearly every corner of California, as enrollment declines and expenses climb. The topic has sparked parent revolts, teacher strikes and school boards’ desperate attempts to keep districts financially afloat.

And then there’s Orick.

The picturesque town in northern Humboldt County has a historic school with five classrooms, a gym, a vegetable garden and an expansive play field. Its current enrollment: nine. Its expenses: $118,000 per student per year, more than five times the state average. 

California has dozens of school districts with enrollments under 100 and higher-than-average expenses. Most of these districts are in remote areas miles from the next nearest school. But as urban districts grapple with the threat of school closures and the inevitable backlash from families and staff, rural schools face an even more heart-wrenching scenario: close the school and decimate the town.

“Close the school? It comes up all the time,” said Orick Elementary School District Superintendent Justin Wallace. “But I’d say it’s an equity issue. We have families who can’t afford a lot, and this school provides the most consistent setting for our kids. They’re safe, they’re well fed, they’re learning.”