A four-decade legal battle over public school funding has landed back in the New Jersey Supreme Court, with a prominent watchdog group accusing state officials of again ignoring a constitutional mandate to repair and replace aging and shoddy school buildings in many of the state’s poorest communities.

The motion filed by the Education Law Center (ELC) on Friday claims that since 2014, neither the governor nor the Legislature has provided any additional money toward the court-required funding. That has left the Schools Development Authority (SDA), the state agency tasked with compliance in this matter, virtually broke and unable to initiate any of the dozens of “urgently needed” construction projects it identified in 2019. The solution ELC seeks is that the court order state officials to come up with a spending plan by June 30.

“It’s too bad we have to regularly go back to the Supreme Court to make the state fulfill its obligation to provide a thorough and efficient education to our students,” ELC Executive Director David Sciarra said in an interview Friday. “Unfortunately, this administration has been no different in this regard than its predecessors.”

The lawsuit cites the SDA’s own report from last year, which noted there are 18,000 students “who don’t have the seats they need” in overcrowded schools, as well as 7 million square feet of school space in poor districts that is more than 90 years old.

For Farah Despeignes, the choice of whether to send her children back to New York City classrooms as the coronavirus pandemic raged on last fall was no choice at all.

Ms. Despeignes, a Black mother of two, watched in despair as her Bronx neighborhood was devastated by Covid-19 last spring. She knew it would take a long time for her to trust that the nation’s largest public school system could protect her sons’ health — and by extension her own.

“Everything that has happened in this country just in the last year has proved that Black people have no reason to trust the government,” including public school systems and her sons’ school building, said Ms. Despeignes, an elected parent leader on the local school board who has taught at several colleges.

She added, “My mantra is, if you can do it for yourself, you shouldn’t trust other people to do it for you. Because I can’t see for myself what’s going on in that building, I’m not going to trust somebody else to keep my children safe.”

Even as more districts reopen their buildings and President Biden joins the chorus of those saying schools can safely resume in-person education, hundreds of thousands of Black parents say they are not ready to send their children back. That reflects both the disproportionately harsh consequences the virus has visited on nonwhite Americans and the profound lack of trust that Black families have in school districts, a longstanding phenomenon exacerbated by the pandemic.

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WMBB) — After more than two years, a local building that became symbolic of the destruction of Hurricane Michael has been restored.

The Jinks Middle School gymnasium officially reopened on Monday as Bay District Schools held a grand reopening ceremony celebrating the rebuild.

“To see this rebuilt, kind of makes you say ok, ‘we’re starting to come out of that terrible time we were in,’” said BDS Superintendent, Bill Husfelt, who attended Jinks Middle School in his youth.

In the days following Hurricane Michael, he said photos and drone footage of the gym became synonymous with the destruction that the storm left behind. 

“It was just like a bomb blew up inside of it,” he said. “This became a symbol of just how horrible Hurricane Michael was.”

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — It will once again be a very competitive process to see which county school systems get some of the $51.4 million available from the state School Building Authority in Needs Grant funding.
The SBA has received information on proposed projects from 30 counties totaling $248 million. The deadline to submit projects was last Friday.
SBA Director of Architectural Services Ben Ashley said nine of those counties are seeking funding for new schools which is nearly triple those type of requests when compared to recent years. Ashley said that tells a story about the kind of shape some school buildings are in.
“There’s a lot of facilities out there that are just old and in need of replacement,” Ashley told MetroNews Monday. “Many of them have gotten to the point where it’s just not worth sinking a whole bunch of money into fixing them up.”
Summers County is one of the county’s seeking funding. Superintendent David Warvel said his county needs money for a middle school addition to the existing Summers County High School.
“We’d like to get 15 classrooms, a gymnasium and a cafeteria,” Warvel said.
 

MANCHESTER SCHOOL OFFICIALS still are trying to verify data behind a controversial facilities study that recommended closing several Manchester schools because of declining enrollments and $150 million in deferred maintenance and other costs.

A facilities study by MGT Consulting Group recommended closing four elementary schools and one high school and merging two other high schools.

Superintendent John Goldhardt told school board members last week he had “a very productive meeting” with MGT staff that focused on two items — the legitimacy of the data and questions board members have about the study.

“Based upon my own reviews and a meeting I had with MGT, I do believe their data is sound,” Goldhardt said. “However, we have to remember their data is based upon national standards for school capacity. Based upon your feedback, my understanding is that this body wants MGT to use the Manchester school board capacity numbers. They are (now) doing that.”

According to the audit, the average age of Manchester school buildings is 70 years.

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) - Back in February, voters said no to a Rapid City Area Schools District bond issue. The district said they needed the money to fix the infrastructure of some of its schools. Now the district has to get by until they can bring a bond proposal forward again.

And Superintendent Dr. Lori Simon says they have about $200 million in deferred maintenance needs.

“Every year we look at that deferred maintenance list and we say ok given what we know now about all of these buildings and needs what are the priorities with the dollars we do have available this year to enact those projects and put them into place and so that is what we will continue to do,” says Simon.

Simon says the district just had one of their best summers yet when it comes to fixing the infrastructure, but there is still more to do in the schools.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – With local school districts facing increased costs, aging school infrastructure, and an urgent need for schools and classrooms to alleviate crowded classrooms and ensure adequate fresh air ventilation to help reduce COVID-19 transmission, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, D-OH, joined Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, and Senate Democrats in introducing the Reopen and Rebuild America’s Schools Act. The bill would invest $130 billion in modernizing classrooms across the country and would help schools upgrade their physical and digital infrastructure. This Reopen and Rebuild America’s Schools Act builds off of Sens. Brown and Reed’s Rebuilding America’s Schools Act of 2019 and the School Building Improvement Act of 2017.

Crumbling, outdated school infrastructure makes it tougher for students, teachers, and staff to safely return to school for in-person instruction. Comprehensive school modernization planning is a critical component of helping post-pandemic K-12 public schools become stronger and more sustainable than before the COVID-19 crisis. A June 2020 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that over half (54 percent) of school districts nationwide need to update or replace multiple systems in their schools, such as heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), or plumbing.

“Ohio students deserve to go to school in a safe environment that helps them learn and grow,” said Brown. “For years, state and federal governments haven’t provided the necessary investment in our school districts that are now put under further financial strain by the current pandemic. We must invest in our public schools and help them meet the needs of the whole child and the communities they serve.”

U.S. Representative Bobby Scott, D-VA, the Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor Committee, introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives.

After embarrassing revelations about deferred maintenance, New Haven plans to launch an annual check on its schools to make sure multi-million-dollar buildings are being kept up.

New Haven Public Schools administrators revealed this plan after a night of tough questions at a hearing Wednesday night.

The questioning took place during a Zoomed meeting of the Board of Alders Education Committee.

The meeting followed on the release of a report by the engineering firm Fuss & O’Neill that showed widespread maintenance problems in school air systems. The New Haven Board of Education asked for the inspections as part of school Covid-19 safety precautions; the final report came out on Monday.

“I cannot remember a time when we’ve had such a comprehensive analysis done in the schools of our ventilation systems,” said Assistant Superintendent Keisha Redd-Hannans. “As we’ve been discussing, this is something we should do regularly, to make sure maintenance is up to par.”

While the district has managed to check through and fix nearly all of the urgent issues Fuss & O’Neill identified, two schools — West Rock STREAM Academy and Quinnipiac Real World Math STEM School — are too far gone to fix, according to health officials and school administrators. So the city is closing those two schools permanently.

The alders asked how those two schools got to such a state of disrepair and why poor maintenance seems to be an issue across the board.

Washington Teachers’ Union and D.C. Public Schools representatives spent Thursday in front of a mediator weighing charges that the city breached its agreement with the union over how to reopen schools.
A ruling in the union’s favor could jeopardize parts of the city’s already complicated push to resume in-person learning on Monday. Both groups said they expect a ruling before school starts.
The union alleges the District has not met all safety guidelines outlined in the agreement signed last month, and it also says the city needs to share more school-specific data on the number of students returning to campuses. The union fears the city is calling for more teachers to return than necessary. Under the agreement, schools that do not adhere to the guidelines that cover safety and staffing issues are not allowed to reopen.
D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee called it the union’s “last-resort effort to prevent schools from reopening” and said the complaints were “meritless.” He has said schools will reopen Monday.
“We have spent many months and millions of dollars to prepare,” he said in a statement. “We know our students are ready, we know our buildings are ready, and we know our staff is ready and efforts to reopen schools on Monday will continue as planned.”
If the arbiter does not rule in the union’s favor — or takes too long to rule — Washington Teachers’ Union President Elizabeth Davis said she is considering seeking an injunction, which she believes could delay the reopening of schools.
The city does not need an agreement with the union to reopen, but an agreement would make it more likely that teachers will show up to school buildings Monday. The city canceled its November reopening plans after it failed to reach an agreement with the union.
How D.C. and its teachers, with shifting plans and demands, failed to reopen schools in the fall
Davis said calling for an emergency hearing with an arbiter was a necessary step to ensure that school buildings are safe for students and staff. She said some of her members have found violations on walk-throughs of the buildings, including inadequate supplies in bathrooms and HVAC systems that lack documentation showing they have been repaired and upgraded.

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - Canyon ISD is currently in the process of renovating and creating seven different facilities.

The construction is part of a $196 million bond passed in November of 2018 and could soon be coming to an end.

“Canyon ISD alone has seven projects that are going at this time. We have Randall east and west which will be Randall High and Randall Jr. High. We also have Heritage Hills Elementary, Spring Canyon Elementary, we have a maintenance facility we are working on and we are trying to complete the new Happy State Bank addition as well as West Plains High School,” said Heather Wilson, assistant superintendent of business and operations, Canyon ISD.

Seven projects in the works and almost all of them projected to be complete this year.

“We just want to create great opportunities for our kids in school buildings that have some space to allow for that ongoing growth that’s happening all across Canyon ISD,” said Darryl Flusche, superintendent, Canyon ISD.

New boundaries for the elementary schools and new high school have already been updated.

“With the opening of the new schools, we’ve already set the attendance boundaries so, we know for each school, which residents go to particular school buildings in Canyon ISD as we open the new schools,” said Flusche.

Just down the road from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a community flush with resident health professionals, the Decatur, Georgia, school system had no shortage of expert input on whether to resume in-person classes amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Scores of public health and medical professionals from the affluent, politically liberal Atlanta suburb have weighed in about what's best for their own kids’ schools.
One emergency medicine doctor said initial reopening plans for the district's 5,000-plus students weren’t safe enough. A pediatrician doing epidemiology work for the CDC advocated delaying. Others, including a leader of the CDC's COVID-19 vaccine efforts, argued the district could get students back in classrooms safely — and that not doing so jeopardized their development and mental health.
“The challenge for me has been trying to weigh all of these things that I’m being told by experts and non-experts alike to try to make the best decision that we can,” Superintendent David Dude said. “And that’s what I, and I’m sure other superintendents, have been struggling with.”
Each side argued data and science supported their view in a debate over reopening schools that sometimes veered into vitriol. The division in Decatur illustrates the challenges U.S. schools — many in communities without so much expertise — have faced in evaluating what’s safe.
 

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — Schools at all but one U.S. military base in Germany will continue remote instruction through at least Feb. 12, officials announced Thursday.
Schools at Spangdahlem Air Base are the sole exception, the Department of Defense Education Activity-Europe said.
“We will continue to work with military and public health officials to monitor the situation and will provide updates as necessary,” DODEA-Europe said in a statement. “The health and safety of our students, staff and community is our top priority.”
DODEA’s 34 schools in Germany have been closed for in-class learning since mid-December when Germany shut down its schools as part of strict lockdown measures.
DODEA officials had considered reopening classrooms as early as Monday.
The Bitburg-Pruem district, which includes Spangdahlem, had a relatively low average of 51.5 daily coronavirus cases per 100,000 over seven days as of Thursday, according to data posted by Germany’s Robert Koch Institute. That’s just above the average weekly rate of 50 new cases per 100,000 residents that Chancellor Angela Merkel has said must be reached in Germany before restrictions can be eased.
The incidence of new cases is higher in other parts of Germany where there are DODEA schools. According to RKI, the rates in the city of Kaiserslautern and the district surrounding the city were both above 90 per 100,000; Wiesbaden averaged 82.6 new cases in one week and Stuttgart, 70. The district housing Grafenwoehr averaged more than 155 new infections over the last week while Bavaria, which houses several U.S. military installations, including Grafenwoehr, averaged 97 new cases per 100,000.
 

STANWOOD, Wash. — It’s been a dramatic week for the staff at the newly built Stanwood High School in Snohomish County.
This week Principal Christine Del Pozo watched the demolition of the former school while welcoming back a very small portion of students to begin in-person learning.
Students who have special needs, require language assistance and students whose families are experiencing homelessness are back to the classroom this week. That's around 60 students.
Teachers have been moving into their classrooms and Del Pozo says around 25 teachers are coming in daily and several are teaching online students from their new classrooms.
Until COVID-19 restrictions are lifted the massive student body of more than 1,200 will continue to learn virtually. The new school replaces the original campus that was built in 1971.
The building was designed with safety measures in mind. A big part of the new design is having all of the students in one building that features a single entrance that locks each morning when school begins.
Lockers are also mostly a thing of the past. Only a few dozen are available. That's another safety effort as the school is designed with massive open spaces and emergency situations in mind.
The school itself is around 260,000 square feet and has state-of-the-art facilities like a wood and metal shop, performance theater, and a multi-level gymnasium.
The construction pays tribute to the past with a two-story wall where much of the original gym wood flooring is displayed vertically.
 

SOUTH BEND — South Bend schools Superintendent Todd Cummings announced plans Monday evening to “rightsize” and “reorganize” the district by closing two school buildings at the end of this school year, creating an “Innovation Network Zone” that would give autonomy to two other schools, and potentially closing one high school in 2022-23.

The recommendation calls for closing Hay and Tarkington elementary schools and creating the “Innovation Zone” for Muessel Elementary School and Marquette Montessori Academy. It will be up for a final board vote on Feb. 22.

The second part of the plan, which involves students in sixth through 12th grades, will be studied and voted on by the school board by the end of 2021 and will take effect in the 2022-23 school year. The first option is to create two junior-senior high schools for sixth- through 12th-graders.

This plan would involve three “underperforming middle schools in the district that would be absorbed into two underutilized high schools.” A second option is to reconfigure an existing high school into a career and vocational center. The final option is to close one high school.

MARYLAND, USA — Schools and universities across Maryland will receive a combined $1.17 billion as part of the pandemic relief package passed by Congress in late December.
According to a spokesperson for Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the money can be used to improve school facilities ahead of reopening and to address learning losses for students. 
In total, Prince George's County Public Schools will receive $122 million while Montgomery County Public Schools will receive $112 million. 
The announcement came as debate continues in Maryland over whether to reopen schools for hybrid in-person learning.
Last week, Gov. Larry Hogan pushed for schools around the state to open their doors by March 1st.
"There is no public health reason for school boards to be keeping students out of schools," he said. "It is abundantly clear that the toll of keeping students out of school far exceeds any potential risk of having students in school where they belong.” 
During the announcement, Hogan pointed to other areas in the country that have compelled teachers to return to schools. In Chicago, the governor said, pay has been cut off for teachers refusing to come back to classrooms. He added that South Carolina has threatened to take away licenses for teachers who make a similar decision, while Ohio will only offer vaccines to instructors in school systems that commit to continuing or beginning in-person learning.
"If school systems do not immediately begin a good-faith effort to return to the classrooms, we will explore every legal avenue at our disposal," Hogan said. "The time has come to get all of our kids back into the classroom and to reopen our schools.”
School districts receiving this federal funding can put the money toward repairs and improvements,  including heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems projects to improve indoor air quality in school facilities. 
Among the groups targeted to address the learning, losses are low-income students, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care.
 

Despite halting planning on new capital projects, St. Paul Public Schools plans to borrow $67 million this year to pay for ongoing construction at several schools.
The school board already has signed off on $15 million in bonds covered by the annual property tax levy. In the coming months, they’ll be asked to consider an additional $52 million for several projects.
That’s actually far less debt than the district has been taking on of late.
Under plans initiated by former superintendent Valeria Silva, the school district since 2016 has been spending $112 million a year on building maintenance and capital projects, up from around $30 million before then. The idea was to improve the look and function of the district’s aging schools, not necessarily to increase capacity.
But those projects have cost far more than anticipated.
Following a Pioneer Press report detailing how much the estimates have grown, Superintendent Joe Gothard in 2019 put a stop to pre-design work on any new projects, further delaying improvements that already had been pushed back because of a lack of funds.
However, several projects, including renovations at American Indian Magnet and Frost Lake, were approved last year because preparations already were well underway when other planning was stopped. The $67 million in borrowing this year will help pay for work at those schools as well as projects near completion, such as renovations at Humboldt and Como Park high schools.
Gothard’s administration was expected to release a new five-year construction plan last spring but postponed it because of the coronavirus pandemic. That plan finally is set to go before the school board in February, with a vote expected in March.
School district spokesman Kevin Burns did not say Monday whether the district intends to go back to borrowing $112 million in future years.
 

In response, CPS officials said they will delay the scheduled return of thousands of teachers and staff until Wednesday “to ensure we have the time needed to resolve our discussions without risking disruption to student learning.”
Chicago Teachers Union members have voted to defy Chicago Public Schools’ reopening plans and continue working from home Monday because of health and safety concerns.
City officials had said in recent days they would view the collective refusal of in-person work as a strike, but in response to Sunday’s vote results said they will delay the scheduled return of thousands of teachers and staff until Wednesday “to ensure we have the time needed to resolve our discussions without risking disruption to student learning.”
The CTU’s move to reject in-person work marks the culmination of a months-long fight between the union and the nation’s third-largest school system over how and when to reopen schools during the pandemic — a disagreement that threatens to plunge the city’s education into deeper turmoil if a deal isn’t reached over the next few days.
“So what does this mean? It means the overwhelming majority of you have chosen safety,” the union told teachers and staff as they announced the vote results. “CPS did everything possible to divide us by instilling fear through threats of retaliation, but you still chose unity, solidarity and to collectively act as one.”
About 86% of the 25,000 rank-and-file CTU members participated in the electronic vote over the past three days, with 71% favoring the rejection of in-person work in an unusually close vote for CTU labor actions. When the CTU voted to strike in 2019, 94% of members who voted chose to walk out.
 

CHEYENNE – The city’s growth has pushed Wyoming’s largest school district to build another new school building, called Coyote Ridge Elementary, to serve 556 fifth and sixth grade students.

Earlier this month, the Cheyenne City Council annexed from the county a 24-acre plot of land at the corner of Powderhouse Road and East Carlson Street in Laramie County School District 1’s Central Triad. But that was simply a rezoning effort designed to put the property under the city’s jurisdiction.

The steadily expanding district bought the land in 2014 in anticipation of the need for a new school building in the future. Last year, the Wyoming Legislature approved the construction of a $24 million building, which is set to open in August 2022.

What does it mean to go to public school in the United States during the pandemic?
The answer looks so different in different parts of the country, it is hard to tell that we are one nation.

In some rural and suburban areas, especially in the South, Midwest and Great Plains, almost all students began the 2020-21 academic year attending school in person, and they have continued to do so, except for temporary closures during outbreaks.

In many cities, the bulk of students haven’t been in a classroom since March. And in some districts, like New York City, only younger students have the option of going to school in person, with many attending only part time.

With little guidance from the federal government, the nation’s 13,000 districts have largely come up with their own standards for when it is safe to open schools and what virus mitigation measures to use. Those decisions have often been based as much on politics as on public health data.

Through all of this, there has been no official accounting of how many American students are attending school in person or virtually. We don’t know precisely how many remote students are not receiving any live instruction or how many students have not logged into their classes all year. Nor has the federal government tracked how many coronavirus cases have been identified in schools or which mitigation methods districts are using.

With more money and fewer restrictions on the second round of federal COVID-19 relief funding, all three local school districts are planning to spend at least some on capital improvements.

The coronavirus relief act signed into law Dec. 27, 2020, includes $54.3 billion for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, referred to as ESSER II.

School directors are awaiting details but have previewed their plans based on the information they have received so far.

Blount County Schools Director Rob Britt expects to present a plan for the district’s $7.5 million to the school board at its February meeting.

BCS plans to focus the funding on three areas: learning loss, health and safety, and facilities for deferred maintenance, Britt emailed The Daily Times this week.