MEDINA, N.D. — Work will begin on the first new construction at the Medina Public School in the next weeks after a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday, July 3.

Damon Bosche, superintendent of Medina school, said the project will add four classrooms and four breakout rooms at the southwest corner of the existing building. Planned construction costs are $3 million.

Bosche said the addition is in response to an increasing enrollment at the district. The school currently has about 200 students in prekindergarten through the 12th grade. This compares to about 150 students in the same grades five years ago.

Some of the increased enrollment comes from open enrollment students from outside the Medina Public School District. About 40% of the students are from outside the district.

“It is a good thing,” said Rory Hoffmann, president of the Medina School Board, of the project. “We needed it, we are busting at the seams. I wish we could have done more.”

DENISON, Texas (KTEN) — At Denison's Frontier Village and Museum, the restoration of what is believed to be Texas' oldest standing schoolhouse is nearing its final stages.

The Holder family, among the earliest settlers in Grayson County, is believed to have constructed the historic building back in 1855. But Its true origin as a one-room schoolhouse dating back to 1830 have come to light in a recent study, further solidifying its status as the oldest surviving educational structure in the Lone Star State.

"Due to research that we've done, we found that it's more possible that it was purchased in 1855, but built in 1830 as a one-room schoolhouse," said Frontier Village executive director Aaron Thornhill. "That would make this the oldest standing schoolhouse in the State of Texas."

Protecting school children from climate change was the main focus of a two day a consultation in Fiji this week.
Facilitated by Save the Children and UNESCO, stakeholders from around the region came together to discuss the way forward for addressing climate resilience in education systems.
Regional 'Safe Schools' lead John Lilo said Pacific school children are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of natural disasters.
Over the past decade, he has noticed an increased number of these disruptions to the education sector and says it has emphasized the crucial need for climate adaptation in schools.
"The Pacific is one of the vulnerable regions in the in the world, tropical cyclones [are] one of the most common hazards"
"In 2020, tropical cyclone Harold wreaked havoc across the Pacific, causing significant damages to schools, affecting 1000s of students, disrupting their learning."
 

An estimated 35 Scottish schools - either recently completed or under construction - are aiming to meet the international Passivhaus standard for energy efficiency, which can cut a building’s heating energy use by up to 80 percent. Designing this way also delivers exceptional levels of interior comfort, wellbeing and durability.

As the country aims for net zero, a proposed ‘Scottish Passivhaus equivalent’ policy for new build housing will be consulted on this summer – and there’s a lot to be learned from the education sector.

This quiet revolution in the way schools are built largely came about when The Scottish Futures Trust set clear funding criteria to ensure new schools are energy efficient, not just on completion but throughout their lifespan.

Almost overnight, designing to Passivhaus standards became the go-to way for councils to secure funding, because it delivers what it says on the tin – it ensures a school’s actual energy use is extremely close to the amount predicted by models. As architects of four Scottish Passivhaus schools – one complete, the other three in progress - we are certainly witnessing a rapid transformation of the Scottish school building sector.

Proposition 2 is a bond measure that would allow the state to borrow $10 billion to help fund repairs and upgrades at thousands of public elementary, middle and high schools and community colleges across California.

The money from the last successful school bond, which passed in 2016, has long since been spent, and the state’s school repair fund is expected to be depleted by January. There is a wait list of districts hoping the new bond will pass so that $3.4 billion can be given for already approved projects to repair hazardous mold, leaky roofs, and septic systems, as well as to build classrooms, modernize science labs and replace aging buildings.

Voters rejected the last school bond in March 2020, a $15-billion proposal that got only 47% of the vote. This time around, after months of closed-door debates, the governor and legislators have lowered the price tag; they hope voters will be in more of a spending mood come November. A simple majority is needed to approve the bond.

The Trinidad School District #1 has a problem: Fisher’s Peak Elementary needs heavy-duty renovations, including costly roof repairs and upgrades to its HVAC system, but a proposal for a project to complete these fixes was passed over by the state in the latest round of BEST grant applications. 

At the June 27 meeting of the TSD1 school board, Willdan’s Mike Enzler presented the board with a possible solution: energy savings financing of the project.

Enzler began his presentation outlining the school district’s other options. It could wait until next year to reapply for a BEST grant to renovate the elementary school, but again, there would be no guarantee the district would be selected. The district could also attempt to pass a bond or secure other lending, but both of these approaches would take time–and given that the school’s HVAC issues could impact air quality for students, time is of the essence. 

AMHERST — A municipal advertisement is seeking bids from general contractors interested in constructing the planned $97.5 million, net-zero energy elementary school building next to the existing Fort River Elementary School at 70 South East St.

On Wednesday, the advertisement for bids was published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and bid forms and contract documents were posted online for the 105,750-square-foot building where 575 students in kindergarten through grade 5 will be taught beginning in the fall of 2026. Electronic bids are due by Aug. 14 at 2 p.m., with an optional prebid conference and site visit set for July 17 at 9 a.m. 

The advertisement states that $78 million is the estimated cost of construction for the building designs, completed by DiNisco Design of Boston. The total cost for the project includes so-called soft costs, such as equipment and furnishings.

This spring, as a heat wave hovered over the region, Pittsburgh Public students were forced out of the classroom. Temperatures in the unairconditioned buildings were expected to reach unsafe levels, causing administrators to enact the district’s extreme heat policy.

That policy has been used several times in recent years as temperatures reach near record highs and sweltering heat waves last for days, caused in part by increased greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere that effectively trap heat, leading to rising temperatures across the globe.

The toll of climate change continues to grow through increased natural disasters such as fires, hurricanes and floods, not only impacting communities but also school children.

Districts across the country are now working to change that.

Extreme temperatures affect every member of the school community, from food service workers preparing lunch in poorly ventilated kitchens, bus drivers driving students home without air conditioning, school groundskeepers doing campus maintenance, and students testing on hot days. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration published a proposed rule that aims to protect workers from excessive heat in the workplace, including public schools in in states with OSHA-approved State plans. 

Currently, there is no federal OSHA heat standard. The proposal has the potential to create significant change, especially for educators working in buildings without proper ventilation and air conditioning.  

Few school districts have mandated temperature maximums. “The absence of standards …means we are allowing kids to sit in 95-degree classrooms leaving students unable to concentrate on learning due to high heat and humidity levels,” Connecticut Education Association President Kate Dias told NEA. 

Under the rule, OSHA would require covered employers to create a plan to evaluate and control heat hazards in the workplace with the goal of reducing the number of occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. This regulation applies to workplaces which fall under OSHA’s jurisdiction, including public schools in OSHA-approved State Plans, general industry, construction, maritime, and agriculture sectors.   

A $100 million bond approved on April 4, 2023, gave District 7 officials a chance to facilitate some much-needed upgrades around the school district.
At the District 7 Board of Education retreat on June 13, board members and superintendent Dr. Patrick Shelton discussed the new estimates on projects and how much is estimated to be spent on the renovation at Lincoln Middle School and other Phase 1 projects.
According to estimates made public at the meeting on June 13, District 7 is slated to spend $108 million on the complete Lincoln renovation and other projects during the first of two phases of updates around the school district.
 

MONTGOMERY, Texas -- Entry-resistant safety glass will be installed at Montgomery ISD buildings after the district's board of trustees unanimously approved the $533,598 purchase on June 25.
The specifics
About 21,000 square feet of safety glass for exterior windows will be purchased, Brad Mansfield, MISD's chief facilities & operations officer, said on June 25. The glass is not bulletproof or bullet-resistant, but it is designed to slow the entry of someone trying to break into the building, he said.
"You can't put enough rounds through (the safety glass) to where you can just shoot the glass out. ... It's still going to be three (to) six minutes of hacking away at one window to get in," Superintendent Mark Ruffin said.

Efforts to rightsize the Guam Department of Education in light of a decreased student population and to maximize resources continue, with the superintendent eyeing the upcoming school year to begin implementation.

GDOE Superintendent Kenneth Erik Swanson reported to the Guam Education Board last week that the department continues to evaluate the island’s 41 public school facilities to make recommendations on the path forward.

“An internal (kindergarten through 12th grade) team followed the plan to determine recommendations to the superintendent that would possibly combine campuses to utilize school facilities more fully. Stakeholder input continues to be gathered while the team analyzes data gathered to date. Online survey data are just now available to me for assessment,” Swanson said.

When the air conditioning broke in a Terrebonne Parish school, it sometimes got so hot that kids fainted or had asthma attacks, and the school had to call an ambulance.

More often, the school sent kids home early. In the best-case scenario, students packed into classrooms with working AC or relocated to the gym or cafeteria to escape the southeast Louisiana heat.

So when the school district got its final federal COVID relief package in 2021, school officials made fixing the AC a top priority. Nearly $23 million — more than 40% of the district’s aid allotment — went to replace the most dire HVAC systems in seven schools.

“It gives us the confidence that we’re not going to have to cancel school, the kids are not going to get sick,” Superintendent Bubba Orgeron said. “When it’s either too hot or too cold … kids are focused on that instead of learning.”

The Legislature announced today a $10 billion bond to pay for repairs and upgrades at thousands of K-12 school and community college buildings across California, some of which have languished for years with dry rot, mold, leaks and other hazards due to lack of funds. K-12 schools would get $8.5 billion and $1.5 billion would go to community colleges.

“This money is badly needed,” said Rebeca Andrade, superintendent of Salinas City Elementary District in Monterey County. “We don’t have the money to make the basic, structural repairs that are needed at every one of our schools. Students need safe spaces to learn if they’re going to reach their full potential.”

The agreement comes after months of wrangling by lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had to choose between two competing school facilities bills – one that included public universities and one that didn’t. Assembly Bill 247, sponsored by Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat from Torrance, had the edge because it asked for less money and because public universities have their own means of raising funds. The bond needs a ⅔ approval majority in both houses and Newsom’s signature.

As California looks to improve its ability to capture and store stormwater throughout the state, there is at least one sizable public landowner that is exempt from such efforts: The Los Angeles Unified School District.

One of the largest real estate holders in the Greater L.A. area, the school district owns more than 3,200 parcels of land that occupy more than 10 square miles combined — an area almost twice the size of Beverly Hills.

Now, environmental groups are urging state water regulators to include the district’s K-12 campuses in updated stormwater regulations, saying that LAUSD could make a considerable contribution to reducing pollution and enhancing water supplies in the region.

“Schools have been unregulated for runoff pollution for far too long,” a coalition of local groups wrote in a recent letter to the State Water Resources Control Board. The groups include the Los Angeles Waterkeeper, Heal the Bay, the Nature Conservancy, the Natural Resources Defense Council and others.

When 14-year-old Catherine Paton arrived at Thursday Island from Canberra, she knew starting school afresh would be an adjustment. New peers, new teachers, new surroundings.

What she didn’t expect was classrooms with sagging roofs and holes in the walls, bathrooms filled with black mould, broken air conditioners and rusty desks.

“Most students at Tagai state college have only ever gone to schools in the Torres Strait, and have nothing to compare school facility standards to,” the year 8 student representative says. “But I do, and I know these facilities are disgraceful.”

New research from the Australian Education Union, provided exclusively to Guardian Australia, shows there has been a significant decline in the adequacy of public school facilities in the four years to 2024, with principals citing degrading bathrooms, school halls and science spaces as their biggest concerns.

Portland Public Schools has a $2.9 billion wish list for a proposed construction and maintenance bond it plans to put before voters in May.

That massive tranche of money would pay for new high schools in three quadrants of the city, plus deferred maintenance, new athletics facilities, updated curriculum materials and more.

Were the district to settle on that figure, it would be far and away the largest bond ask in Oregon history, nearly 2 ½ times the $1.2 billion that the district sought and won approval for in 2020.

By comparison, the San Francisco United School District, which enrolls about 6,000 more students than Portland, is seeking approval for a $790 million bond this November, while voters in Austin, Texas — a district nearly twice the size of Portland — passed a $2.4 billion bond in 2022.

The World Bank's Board of Executive Directors today approved funding support for two government projects designed to help ensure safe and resilient schools as well strengthen economic recovery in the Philippines.

The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors has approved EUR 466.07 million (US$500 million) in funding for the Infrastructure for Safer and Resilient Schools Project, designed to support the resilient recovery of disaster-affected schools in selected regions of the country. Resilient recovery means improving schools’ abilities to continue its functions after being hit by natural disasters.

HARTFORD, CT – While the House added language banning school construction managers from bidding on subcontracts back into statute Thursday, leadership in the chamber thinks a solution to funding those projects still needs to be found.

Senate Bill 501 is full of different provisions, one of which revisited the decision by the General Assembly to remove language from the current statute preventing school construction project managers from bidding on subcontracts within the same project. That language had been removed as part of an omnibus bonding bill that was passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Ned Lamont.

That change would have gone into effect in October, but the two chambers decided to re-address the issue and add the language back during their special session this week.

House Majority Leader Jason Rojas said Thursday that there are two competing issues within the provision: policy and timing.

“Part of it is a timing issue,” Rojas said during a news conference before Thursday’s House session. “I think the policy issue can be revisited – probably will be in the next legislative session – to try to figure out, is there a way to save money here on a really significant cost to the state?”

More than 27,000 students are on their way to Southwest Florida’s largest school district.
District leaders came to that number in their ten-year student growth forecast, which has helped them decide how they will use your money for improvements and building new schools.
The east zone, Lehigh Acres, is seeing the most growth in the area, according to the school district, which is why they are looking to build 10 new schools, across all school levels, in this area under the proposal.
While kids are enjoying their summer break, the Lee County School District is hard at work. A new presentation, new numbers, and a new plan is being proposed.
Dr. Adam Molloy, the Director of Planning, Growth, and Capacity at the school district gave the presentation on Wednesday.
“The school district of Lee County is projected to have now 115,619 traditional K-12 students,” Molloy said.
“The accompanying graph shows student totals at 10-year intervals starting in 2003. Highlighting the significant population increase over the past decade, the school district of Lee County has experienced a compound annual growth rate of 1.61%. That translates to an average annual increase of 1328 students. If enrollment reaches 115,619 students as it’s projected by Davis Demographics, it will exceed our current students station capacity by 22,082 seats,” Molloy said.
The school district knows they have to do something soon. They said they are already at 94.3% of occupied seats and will not be able to keep up with the need.