As California’s fund to fix crumbling schools dwindles to nothing, lawmakers are negotiating behind the scenes to craft a ballot measure that would be the state’s largest school construction bond in decades.

But some beleaguered school superintendents say the money will not be nearly enough to fix all the dry rot, leaky roofs and broken air conditioners in the state’s thousands of school buildings. And it won’t change a system that they say favors wealthy, urban, left-leaning areas that can easily pass local bond measures to make needed repairs.

“The big question is, why can’t our kids have school buildings that are safe and as nice as other kids’ schools, just a few miles away?” said Helio Brasil, superintendent of Keyes Union School District, a rural TK-8 district in a low-income area south of Modesto. “This school is in such bad shape it can feel like a jail. … I’m speaking up about this because I feel the system needs to be fixed. I don’t want the next generation of students to have to experience this.”

Boston school officials are on the “final mile” of plotting out how to address decades of neglect and disinvestment in school facilities, district officials announced.

“After many decades of the firm decision making, shifting our physical footprint will be disruptive,” said Superintendent Mary Skipper ahead of a presentation on the facilities plan at the Nov. 15 School Committee meeting. “In some cases difficult. Tools we’ve developed over the last 18 months will enable greater transparency, collaboration with our communities to understand how and why certain decisions are made.”

With about half of facilities built before WWII and some around 100 years old, Skipper said, the project is an “ambitious” and unprecedented undertaking for the district but necessary to provide students “fully inclusive, high quality education.”

COLUMBIA — Many thousands of students who studied in the now-demolished Wando High School buildings in Mount Pleasant spent part of their days walking from class to class, past banks of lockers in their school’s hallways.

But the image of lockers in American school life — of teenagers letting gym clothes rot in them, gossiping and perhaps getting shoved into them — is slowly disappearing. The students who now attend Lucy Beckham High, opened on the old Wando’s grounds in 2020, don’t have that space to store their books or meet up with friends between periods.

That design choice is part of what school architects say is a trend: district officials prefer to leave banks of hallway lockers out of newly built campuses. 

“Maybe 20 years ago, the expectation was that you would put lockers in every single school that you designed,” said Ben Thompson, K-12 studio director at McMillan Pazdan Smith, the South Carolina architecture firm that designed Lucy Beckham and other schools. “Now, it’s rare that you include them in buildings.” 

All 4,000 schools across the country are to have solar panels installed to reduce energy costs and their carbon footprint, Education Minister Norma Foley has announced.

Schools in some counties have been invited to participate in the first phase of the Solar for Schools Scheme, to be funded by the Government’s Climate Action Fund.

The first phase will open for applications on November 30 while it is intended that all eligible schools across the country will have the opportunity to apply to the scheme by the end of 2024.

The scheme aims to assist schools in reducing their energy costs and their carbon footprint as part of the response to meeting the 2030 and 2050 Climate Action Plan targets for the school sector.

The Huntingdon Area School District is launching a multi-million-dollar energy efficiency and cost reduction project.
School board members took several major steps to put the work into motion at their monthly meeting Monday, including approving an almost $10 million bond issue to pay for the energy service company (ESCO) contract.
Representatives of the school district’s bond counsel and financial advisers and consultants spoke to school directors before they voted to take on the huge debt.
Melissa Hughes of PFM Financial Advisors reviewed the school district’s existing debt portfolio and reports showing how much impact debt services have on the HASD budget.
She said her firm’s projections showed a relatively level debt service when the amount needed to finance the ESCO project is included.
Chris Hoffert of Stifel, a brokerage and investment banking firm, also provided a market update before directors made their final decision.
“Long-term interest rates are favorable right now with recent steady improvement,” Hoffert reported.
He noted over the past three weeks rates have come down slightly, and that’s great news for the school district to lock in interest rates on the bonds in early December.
“There’s a lot less volatility than even a month ago. Things are looking good and we’re optimistic we can get the best rates for you that we possibly can,” Hoffert said.
 

A U.S. jury has ordered Bayer's Monsanto to pay $165 million to employees of a school northeast of Seattle who claimed chemicals made by the company called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, leaked from light fixtures and got them sick.
The Washington state court jury found the company liable for selling products containing PCBs used in the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington, that were not safe, and did not include adequate warnings. The award included nearly $50 million in compensatory damages, and $115 million in punitive damages.
The verdict in favor of six teachers and a custodian who said exposure to the PCBs gave them cancer, brain injuries and other issues marks the latest trial loss for the company, which is now facing nearly $870 million in verdicts from alleged PCBs exposure at the Sky Valley center, said an attorney for the plaintiffs.
The company is appealing those verdicts.
Monsanto said in a statement that it will contest Monday's verdict, and that blood, air and other tests show the school employees were not exposed to unsafe levels of PCBs.
 

AIRWAY HEIGHTS, Wash. — The Cheney School District (CSD) serves more than 5,000 students in Airway Heights, Cheney and the West Plains. 

“Those three distinct communities are experiencing a lot of growth, and have been pretty steadily for quite a while,” CSD parent Sonny Weathers said.

Weathers serves as co-chair on CSD's Long Range Facilities Planning Committee. The committee formed in December 2022 to bring solutions to the local school board on how to accommodate future growth in the area.

Beginning around January or February 2024, the Guam Department of Education will be taking a look at restructuring the number of public schools on the island, as the current capacity far exceeds the student enrollment that needs to be serviced, according to GDOE Superintendent Kenneth Erik Swanson.

"It'll be a very public process, and that's going to mean a couple (of) schools or buildings will close," Swanson said, acknowledging that closures are usually an emotional issue for some people, but GDOE is trying to ensure that it can adequately maintain facilities. 

"Our objective is to reduce the load in terms of financial load of what needs to be maintained, so we can do a better job, at the same time, provide adequate service to our whole community," the superintendent said. 

BRIDGEPORT — Bridgeport Public Schools plans to tap nearly $2 million in federal COVID-related aid to replace the aging air conditioning and heating system at James J. Curiale School. 
The new HVAC system will be installed over the summer and is expected to serve the K-8 school in the city’s West End for at least for the next two decades, according to Jorge Garcia, a district official who oversees school facilities. 
In a recent school board meeting, Garcia said the existing air conditioning system at Curiale has become so outdated that maintenance officials have struggled to locate and purchase new parts to replace damaged ones.  
 

A vacant field right next to the current Deer Park Elementary School in Baltimore County will transform into Maryland’s first net-zero elementary school by 2025.

County and state leaders joined Deer Park students and staff to break ground on the $70.6-million-dollar project on Monday morning, wearing white and yellow construction hats to mark the occasion.

Superintendent Myriam Rogers said the new school will serve as a leading example for state environmental efforts, by producing and saving as much – or more – energy than it uses each year.

“You will see solar paneling on the roof, geothermal heating in the boiler room, smart technology that monitors when lights are on and off and when electric plugs can be used,” Rogers said. “I’m especially interested in seeing the school's light tubes, which will be used to import natural sunlight to use in classrooms instead of artificial lighting.”

Three other net-zero schools exist in Maryland. Two serve kindergarten through eighth grade students in Baltimore City. Wilde Lake Middle School in Howard County became the first net-zero school constructed in the state in 2017.

The new Deer Park school will also alleviate enrollment pressures in a rapidly-growing community, Rogers said.

GREENWICH — Hamilton Avenue School is heated and cooled with a geothermal system — at least, it should be.
“The system that's there failed across the board,” Greenwich Public Schools facilities director Dan Watson told the Board of Estimate and Taxation budget committee on Nov. 8. “We have experts telling us that it wasn't installed right, it wasn't operated right, it wasn't probably designed right.”
The Board of Education needs to replace the bad geothermal system and it is seeking $3.2 million to do so. Watson and other schools officials are also asking that the town not use geothermal at Hamilton Avenue or at other schools in the future, primarily because current staff are not well versed in these systems.
 

When Francis Galicia, a student in Rockland County, N.Y., arrives at their high school for class each morning, they cannot help but notice that something vital is missing.
“We don’t have access to running water,” Francis said, referring to the lack of drinkable water from fountains.
Francis' high school is part of the East Ramapo Central School District, which shut off many drinking water fountains in 2016 after lead was detected. The problem was traced to the school's water fixtures. Francis was in fourth grade at the time, but seven years later the water fountains in question remain inoperable.
The district says the issue is being addressed and that they are working to replace water fountains. In the interim, the students are being provided with bottled water on a daily basis.
But Francis says the water coolers sometimes run out as the temperature rises.
“They don't acknowledge the fact that we're struggling,” Francis told ABC News. “But now I'm here telling you that we are struggling.”
East Ramapo is not the only school system that has experienced issues with lead in its water. For years, concerns have surfaced over lead in water pipes and fixtures in public schools across the country.
 

IDAHO FALLS — An Ada County District Judge issued an order on Wednesday voiding the latest Idaho Falls School District 91 plant facilities levy.
Voters overwhelmingly passed the 10-year $33 million levy in May to build a new elementary school on the south side of Idaho Falls.
According to Bonneville County Prosecuting Attorney Randy Neal, the court “adopted the determination by the Idaho State Tax Commission that Idaho Falls School District 91 could not have a second plant facilities levy until a similar levy passed in 2022 expires.”
Idaho law says districts can have one levy fund. At that time, the district and its legal counsel interpreted that to mean the district could have two plant levies – one for the new school and one that has been used for the maintenance of schools – if the levies both go into one fund.
However, in August, the Tax Commission challenged that interpretation.
District 91’s Board of Trustees filed a complaint with the courts “seeking a declaration of the interpretation of the statutes in question,” the board said in a news release at the time.
 

PUYALLUP, Wash. — The Puyallup School District is one of many school districts across the state preparing to meet the requirements of the Washington state's Clean Buildings Act. 
The district said the requirements accelerate the need for work already being pursued, but there are some challenges in regards to funding. The district is hopeful voters will support its efforts. 
Meanwhile, the Washington State Department of Commerce is offering one-on-one assistance and other resources to try to help building operators meet the requirements passed by legislators.
The Clean Buildings Act passed in 2019 and expanded in 2022. It is meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the state's largest buildings. The original legislation applies to buildings over 50,000 square feet, and requires them to evaluate energy use in the building, keep maintenance and operations plans, and make adjustments to buildings to reduce energy use if they are over target amounts. The expanded legislation applies to buildings between 20,000 and 50,000 square feet, and for now only requires benchmarking and maintenance and operations planning. There are some exemptions, including for manufacturing, agriculture and industrial buildings. In many cases, incentives, and financing help are available. 
 

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOV) - The Edwardsville school board voted this week to approved the issuance of $13 million dollars in bonds to pay for the installation of solar panels on school buildings. The district plans to install collections of solar panels in 10 places on 7 buildings.
Some taxpayers in the district were uncomfortable with the initial cost but others saw the long range benefits.
“I think long term as an investment it sounds like a good idea,” said Jackie Toigo.
Stephanie Crouch told First Alert Four, ‘I think anything we can do to harness the power of the sun and nature is fantastic.”
The district estimates the use of solar energy will lead to 40-60% savings on electric bills over the 30 life of the panels.
According to Generation 180′s 2022 Solar Schools Report, the number of schools powered by solar energy has tripled since 2015. And an estimated 6-million students attend solar powered schools.
The school district’s decision is part of a proliferation of solar panels in the region.
Debbie Evans installed solar panels on her Edwardsville house in March. She said she has no regrets.
 

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Jack Reed today announced a new $876,792 federal grant for the Rhode Island Department of Education – RIDE school modernization , preventing environmental health risks, improving maintenance, and planning long-term, under the Supporting America’s School Infrastructure Grant Program.

With this funding, RIDE’s School Building Authority would increase necessary supports to assist local education agencies (LEAs) with improving building conditions and educational environments for students and teachers. Additional staff would coordinate energy efficiency and air quality audits, while aiding districts with procurement, technical assistance, and professional development.

Senator Reed helped the U.S. Department of Education recently launch the Supporting America’s School Infrastructure Grant Program to enhance the ability of state departments of education to address school facilities matters.

Launched for the upcoming World Toilet Day, the research supported by Unilever, identifies urgent need for school toilet maintenance. The cost of neglecting toilets has now hit $1.9bn in lost infrastructure, with an additional hidden economic cost estimated at over $10bn.
But an extra cent per education dollar would help countries get clean and safe toilets for all school children by 2030.
Nearly 540 million children globally go to a school with no usable toilet, affecting them physically and emotionally during crucial education years. New research from Economist Impact reveals that almost half of these children are affected by ‘toilet loss’ - toilets have been built in their school, but they have been lost and are not usable due to lack of operation and maintenance (O&M). This hidden worldwide problem puts school infrastructure maintenance sharply in focus.
Economist Impact’s year-long study supported by Unilever across Ecuador, India, Nigeria and the Philippines found that poor maintenance led to 1.2 million ‘lost’ school toilets; that’s toilets that have been built but are no longer usable. This equates to a combined infrastructure loss of US$1.9 billion and a societal and economic cost amounting to US$10 billion. The four countries, indicative of others worldwide, could be 10% closer to the goal of providing all children access to usable school toilets if toilet construction had been supported by maintenance.
 

The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education approved more than $195.7 million in bond-funded projects to provide upgraded, state-of-the-art facilities.

The board approved $45 million for the development of wellness centers at Los Angeles High School and Wilmington Middle School STEAM Magnet. Wellness centers are LAUSD-built facilities operated by independent medical providers and partners who focus on prevention, education, early intervention and screening. The wellness centers will offer free and low-cost comprehensive medical, dental and mental health services for students, families and community members.

The 32nd Street USC Magnets School was also approved for a $108 million major modernization project. The multi-phase project will construct 23 new general and specialty classrooms including media, filmmaking, engineering and graphic design spaces, as well as a chemistry lab.

Val Kalahiki isn’t sure her students know what a fire alarm sounds like. In November 2019, Konawaena Elementary’s fire alarm system broke, and it hasn’t been replaced, said Kalahiki, who runs the after-school program at the Hawaii island school. 

In the case of a fire, the main office can use the loudspeaker system to inform students and teachers, Kalahiki said. But after the main office closes at 4:30 p.m., Kalahiki said she has to remain extra vigilant as she oversees 130 students who remain on campus for the after-school program. 

“Where is the state putting all of our money if they can’t even protect our kids?” Kalahiki said.

Her school is one of over two dozen that lacks a working fire alarm, according to Department of Education estimates.

PAXTON, Ill. (WCIA) — Three Ford County superintendents are discussing a one percent sales tax referendum for the March or November ballot in 2024.
The leaders of the Gibson City-Melvin-Sibley, Paxton-Buckley-Loda, and Tri-Point school districts want to put the money toward school resource officers and mental health providers.
PBL Superintendent Travis Duley said most of the money currently comes from property taxes, but if this vote passes, the tax burden would be shared with people visiting or passing through Ford County. He said the tax would not affect vehicles, groceries or farm equipment. He also said a sales tax is an untapped resource of revenue and an opportunity to improve facilities.