NEWCOMB — A column of concrete not more than 18 inches wide rises up the north side of Newcomb High School, serving as a buttress against a wall of aging brick to help keep it from collapsing.

Five years ago, school officials noticed the wall was separating from the rest of the building, and an engineer was hired to save it. The solution: Build the buttress and attach steel bolts to it from the wall for stabilization. The cost of the project was around $26,000.

Newcomb Principal Bill McLaughlin said the makeshift piece of engineering has served its purpose.

“I don’t think the state or the [state] regulatory commission would allow us to use it if it was unsafe,” McLaughlin said. “I think it meets the minimum specs and requirements for utilization.”

Such is life for schools in the Central Consolidated School District, which serves the communities of Kirtland, Shiprock and Newcomb. Candice Thompson, the district’s director of operations, said its capital budget of $3.1 million simply cannot cover all the construction and maintenance needs. The shortfall forces administrators to be creative in how they address those issues, she added.

“When we talk to our peers in the southeast corner of the state, and I tell them about our conditions, they’re like, ‘What?’ I tell them, ‘I’ll give you the nickel tour here, and you are going to be shocked,’ ” Thompson said.

Friendswood school officials recently received a pleasant surprise when the bonds voters approved in the November election not only sold at a lower interest rate than anticipated but at the lowest rate anybody had ever seen.
And that will result in a lower tax-rate increase for district residents than had been anticipated.
In a sale completed by an underwriting team led by Stifel, Nicolaus & Company Inc. near the end of January, the district sold $120,455,000 in bonds at an interest rate of 1.823483 percent. The bonds will provide the amount authorized in the election.
According to the finance team, this rate set a new low in the Texas market.
“I was ecstatic when I heard the final pricing of the bond in January,” Friendswood school board President Tony Hopkins said. “I knew that 1.82 percent for a 30-year bond was low, but had no idea it was the lowest priced Texas bond to date.”
 

SALT LAKE CITY — On Friday, state senators voted in favor of wrangling in what they say are unnecessarily high costs to build schools in Utah.
Senate Bill 131 aims to give taxpayers a better idea of how much it will cost to build a school, and perhaps, options for doing it cheaper. However, educators across the state say it’s a bad policy.
Two schools under construction now are slated to top over $120 million — each.
“People see that price sticker and their eyes pop open. 'How in the world is it this expensive?'” said Rusty Cannon, the vice president of Utah Taxpayer Association.
The cost to rebuild Skyline High in Salt Lake is estimated at $124 million. Cyprus High's rebuild in Magna is estimated to cost $147 million.
“We are building buildings to last 70 to 80 years and to meet the needs of future students down the road,” said Granite School District spokesman Ben Horsley.
Bill aims to curb rising cost of Utah schools
State senators voted in favor of wrangling in what they say are unnecessarily high costs to build schools in Utah on Friday.
By: Hailey HigginsPosted at 9:34 PM, Feb 05, 2021 and last updated 11:57 PM, Feb 05, 2021
SALT LAKE CITY — On Friday, state senators voted in favor of wrangling in what they say are unnecessarily high costs to build schools in Utah.
Senate Bill 131 aims to give taxpayers a better idea of how much it will cost to build a school, and perhaps, options for doing it cheaper. However, educators across the state say it’s a bad policy.
Two schools under construction now are slated to top over $120 million — each.
“People see that price sticker and their eyes pop open. 'How in the world is it this expensive?'” said Rusty Cannon, the vice president of Utah Taxpayer Association.
The cost to rebuild Skyline High in Salt Lake is estimated at $124 million. Cyprus High's rebuild in Magna is estimated to cost $147 million.
“We are building buildings to last 70 to 80 years and to meet the needs of future students down the road,” said Granite School District spokesman Ben Horsley.

In response to the significant rise in the price to build schools, Sen. Wayne Harper of Taylorsville introduced a bill Friday to update construction guidelines.
"Are we paying too much for schools? Are we building Taj Mahals?” Harper said.
The bill provisions would require the state board to develop a school “prototype” and publish a range of construction prices from prior years.
 

Ever since the pandemic closed the nation's schools in March 2020, there has been no official national source for understanding where schools have reopened, how many hours of live instruction students are getting online and just how unequal the access to learning has been over the past 11 months.

On Friday, the National Center for Education Statistics, at the U.S. Department of Education, announced a new survey to answer all these questions and more. The survey will be administered to approximately 7,000 nationally representative elementary and middle schools across the country. It follows an executive order from President Biden.

Schools will be surveyed on, among other things:

Whether they are fully remote, hybrid or fully in-person
How full-time, remote and hybrid enrollment varies by student race/ethnicity, income, English learner status and disability status
Attendance rates, whether online or in-person, and by each subgroup listed above
If hybrid, how often students are learning in person
If remote, how many hours of live instruction are offered
Whether certain students, such as younger students or those with disabilities, are being prioritized for in-person classes

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Members of the Philadelphia teachers union aren’t convinced that school buildings are safe enough to reopen for hybrid in-person instruction later this month.
Teachers are scheduled to return to school buildings on Monday for training, ahead of the return of 9,000 pre-K through second-grade students on Feb. 22.
However, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers is taking advantage of a provision in its one-year contract that allows the union to submit disputes over building safety to an independent third party.
Superintendent William Hite said he was expecting the move by the union, but it should not affect the expected return of 2,000 teachers next week.
“Mediation will not delay the return of teachers on Monday,” he said. “It could possibly delay the return of students later, but it will not delay our expectations for teachers to be in classrooms.”

An increasing number of school district leaders are setting up creative partnerships to vaccinate teachers and staff—and now some are pressing local health officials to let them expand to the community at large.

Sprawl, gentrification, and cycles of disinvestment have led to markedly different access to drug stores, supermarkets, and medical facilities across the United States, but nearly all communities still have schools, the leaders note. Centrally located and often at walkable distances for most residents, schools have the potential to serve as powerful vaccination hubs.

It’s unclear how many of the nation’s school districts currently host on-site vaccinations. Partly that’s a function of how much vaccine each state has received and where teachers and other school personnel fall on their tiered plans for rolling out vaccinations.

But if the idea picks up traction, it could increase public confidence in the COVID-19 vaccines and potentially also help prioritize communities that have been hardest hit by the virus—and face the most hurdles in access to vaccinations.

“What’s the one thing more Americans do together every year than anything else? Vote. And where do most people vote? At schools,” noted Austin Beutner, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, who is pushing hard to situate vaccination clinics in some of its more than 1,000 schools. “We’re in the neighborhood. We’re the only civic institution that, by design, is located in communities. Even McDonald’s can’t get the real estate we get.”

Residents of the tiny city of Cudahy, California, located in the industrial southeast of Los Angeles County, are suing to prevent a large charter school from being built on what they claim is toxic land without a proper environmental review. At issue are a state law allowing different building standards for different types of schools, and a planning code, obscure to most local residents, that allows a charter school company to build a new school without thoroughly cleaning up the site’s alleged toxins.

Using a process that allows the company to skirt state environmental rules, KIPP SoCal Public Schools plans to build a new elementary school on land that its own reports show contains toxic substances including lead and arsenic. The company can do that because the regulations for building or renovating charter and private schools are less restrictive than for state-funded district schools, and because Cudahy has, according to critics and plaintiffs in a lawsuit, used the wrong planning code to approve the project.

U.S. school districts are struggling to fund infrastructure needs. Newsy follows one school in Michigan as it tries to rebuild after a roof collapse.

BURLINGTON, N.C. —
The McCray Schoolhouse could be mistaken for a forgettable one-room house on Highway 62 in Burlington. But for anyone who knows the more than a century's worth of history contained inside, it is anything but forgettable.
“The school was built sometime between 1915 and 1919,” said Patsy Simpson, an Alamance-Burlington school board representative.
McCray School educated African-American students until it closed in 1951.
Now, the school board has embarked on restoring the one-room schoolhouse.
"It’s going to be a community project," Simpson said. "One in which we want the community to come together to help raise funds to preserve it as well as those with the skills of renovation to help us."
 

RICHMOND — Isle of Wight could be the next county to raise its local sales tax to fund school construction as legislators continue to spar over how to fund desperately needed school projects.

The Virginia Senate approved a bill Wednesday afternoon in a 31-8 vote to allow the county to raise the tax, if county voters approve it in a referendum. It was the second vote on the bill this week — the Senate defeated the measure in an unexpected move Tuesday before deciding to reconsider.

Isle of Wight would be the tenth locality in the state with permission from the General Assembly to use a sales and use tax to supplement local funds. Virginia has no dedicated state funds for school construction, despite hundreds of schools that need billions in repairs.

“Like many small counties that have a minimal tax base, it is difficult for them to raise the funds within their normal stream of revenue to build new schools if they must,” said Senate Minority Leader Tommy Norment, who introduced the bill.

The state hasn’t had a dedicated school construction fund since the 2010 school year, the victim of recession budget cuts. Even then, state contributions made up only a small part of construction funds.

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — A major announcement was made by the Pittsburgh Public Schools, and you have a chance to weigh in on a newly proposed plan that would reduce and restructure parts of the school system’s footprint.
Pittsburgh Public Schools could be closing several schools within the next two years.
Parents will have the chance to address their concerns during the public comments section of Tuesday night’s special legislative meeting.
Parent Chelsey Farnan is concerned about her son Glenn, a first grader at Woolslair — a school nestled among the streets of Lawrenceville and Bloomfield.
“I think he will feel really sad. He likes Woolslair,” said Farnan.
She says Woolslair is known as a magnet school: “Why would they close a magnet school?”
Pittsburgh Public Schools announced Monday that Superintendent Anthony Hamlet and his leadership team have shared a plan to close Fulton PreK-5 in Highland Park, Miller PreK-5 in the Hill District and Woolslair PreK-5 in Lawrenceville, as well as Manchester PreK-8, Allegheny 6-8, Arsenal 6-8 and Sterrett 6-8.
 

Educators and students should be working and learning in school buildings because we know it’s where the true magic of education happens. And the health and safety of educators and students are every bit as important as the classes that take place. As things stand, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers cannot definitely say that buildings are safe to reopen.
In addition to evaluating ongoing critical issues like infection rates, and availability of ventilation and PPE, we must also contend with new obstacles such as the emergence of new, more virulent strains of the virus. Since late October, Philadelphia has been far beyond “substantial,” and the risk of community transmission remains high. Before we can reopen our school buildings, we need to take every precaution to ensure that all safeguards are in place.
Students in Philadelphia have historically navigated education cuts and conditions that would never be tolerated in a wealthier, whiter school district. In a school system that educates primarily children of color experiencing poverty, it should be lost on no one that once again, too-often marginalized students are facing a return to potentially hazardous schools. School buildings in Philadelphia average more than 70 years old, eclipsing the national average by decades. Our union’s work to ensure the safety of students and staff is rooted in our commitment to changing these deeply inequitable systems.
 

RICHMOND, Va. (WDBJ) - The Virginia Senate has passed a bill to help school districts repair outdated buildings, but finding enough money for a statewide solution remains a major challenge.

The measure from Sen. Bill Stanley (R-Franklin Co.) creates a Public School Assistance Fund that would receive money from state, local and private sources.

Lawmakers warn the price tag for school repair and replacement could exceed $15 billion.

“And it’s about time that this General Assembly understand that we have a huge multi-billion dollar problem in front of us, that has to be solved now,” Stanley told members of the Senate.

The federal government would commit $130 billion to help public schools make capital improvements under new legislation described this week by U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

The funding would address a concern that school officials have raised repeatedly since the start of the pandemic: adapting ventilation systems and other physical building improvements can be expensive, and schools cannot bear the cost themselves.

The money would not be restricted to projects related to COVID-19, though, but could pay for an array of facility upgrades. 

"COVID has highlighted the inequities that have been part of our school system for too long," Gillibrand said Tuesday.

The bill has 25 Democratic co-sponsors in the Senate. Gillibrand said they hope to see it folded into an omnibus stimulus spending plan.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, joined Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, and 24 of their colleagues in introducing the Reopen and Rebuild America’s Schools Act last week.  
With school districts facing increased costs, aging school infrastructure and an urgent need to alleviate crowded classrooms and ensure adequate fresh air ventilation to help reduce COVID-19 transmission, the bill would invest $130 billion in modernizing classrooms across the country and would help schools upgrade their physical and digital infrastructure. 
“As we continue to grapple with the COVID-19 crisis, it is critical that we invest in the safe and sustainable reopening of our schools,” said Coons. “This bill prioritizes the needs of our students and educators, the safety of our school buildings, and jobs in communities throughout Delaware and the country — creating opportunity while helping our schools overcome the challenges of the pandemic.” 
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 schools become stronger and more sustainable than before the COVID-19 crisis. 
The Reopen and Rebuild America’s Schools Act will provide $100 billion in formula funds to states for local competitive grants for school repair, renovation and construction. States will focus assistance on communities with the greatest financial need, encourage green construction practices and expand access to high-speed broadband to ensure that all students have access to digital learning. 
 

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.