WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) - Kansas’ largest school district presented its blueprint for the future of its footprint. The “Facilities Master Plan” Wichita Public Schools presented to the school board Monday night calls for rebuilding, reconfiguring or consolidating about two dozen of the district’s buildings. It could also lead to a $450 million bond question going before voters.

Presented as a draft to Wichita school board members, step one of the Facilities Master Plan involves 25 of the district’s buildings, including school consolidations and rebuilds.

The plan calls for rebuilding eight school facilities, and consolidating four elementary schools, five alternative schools and two administrative centers,” Wichita Public Schools Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld explained.

School rebuilds and renovations will also be part of the plan to accommodate consolidations, the Wichita Public Schools superintendent said.

When Thomas Pace, director of facilities at San Bernardino City Unified, thinks about all the construction that needs to happen at the schools in his district, he struggles to get the math to work.
Many of the existing kindergarten classrooms don’t meet state standards, and now, they’re preparing to layer in another grade for young children: transitional kindergarten.
In 2021, California embarked on a $2.7 billion plan to offer TK to all 4-year-olds by the 2025–26 school year in what’s poised to be the largest free pre-K program in the country.
But school districts across the state, like Pace’s, are struggling to build or modify the facilities most appropriate for these new young learners.
Why the rollout is expensive and hard
San Bernardino City Unified is at the tail end of using $250 million in bond money the city raised over a decade ago for school improvements.
“All of the specialized space is highly expensive, and for those school districts that lack the local resources, we struggle to make those improvements on a grand scale,” Pace said. “So we were already struggling to catch up even in the kinder realm. Now, you add in a greater offering for TK, it just puts a larger burden on local school districts.”
 

There are now 16 community gardens within Federal Way Public Schools, including Twin Lakes Elementary, which held its grand opening on June 1.

There were fun activities and resources as well as food, music and performances, and special guests — including representatives from Swansons plant nursery in Seattle and the Seahawks — to encourage engagement with and around the school garden.

This year, Twin Lakes staff Marina Rojas and Alysia Morales led efforts to organize and build a community garden for the school, securing over $10,000 in donated funds and materials to make it happen, according to the district. They partnered with the Seahawks, working with them in planning and reaching out to additional community partners, including Swansons Nursery in Seattle, which shared resources, funds, and donated labor.

The garden will be a center where Twin Lakes Elementary families and neighbors can have free access to fresh fruits and vegetables and build relationships with each other.

Marine Hills Garden Club also supported this garden.

“We really like the idea of growing gardeners,” Radhika Kumar of the Marine Hills Garden Club said of their work with the gardens at Federal Way Public Schools.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - A skeleton of bare, rusted, steel remnants of an incomplete building stands as a symbol of economic failure in west Louisville.

Abandoned when Passport Health halted construction in 2019, the 20-acre property at the corner of 18th and West Broadway was also where Walmart abandoned plans to build in 2016.

Participant of this development Rubin Pulliam said it has long been a troubling sight and reminds him of lost jobs and opportunities.

“It’s been rough,” Pulliam said. “I hate to come by there now because of what it stood for, what we started out for, and we didn’t know if it was over. But we kept pushing, kept pushing.”

Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) has officially accepted the recommendations in the 2023 Boundary and Student Assignment Study.
Any potential boundary modifications and feeder recommendations would take effect no sooner than the 2025-26 school year, i.e., August of 2025.
The Mayor’s letter was dated June 5.  Next, Deputy Mayor of Education (DME) and DC Public Schools (DCPS) will start formulating the implementation plan, which will be posted to the DME website sometime in August.
Many on the Hill may be wondering how that affects the most contentious issue proposed by the committee, the idea of pairing Miner Elementary (501 15th St. NE) with Maury Elementary (1250 Constitution Ave. NE).
Those recommendations include:
In schools where the percentage of at-risk student enrollment falls below the DCPS average (52 percent) lottery seats be set aside for students meeting at-risk criteria. These seats do not include PK seats except in situations where they are not typically filled by in-bounds students. The percentage is to be determined by the school and LEA.
Implement the at-risk set aside at Maury to help support socioeconomic integration at the school
DCPS explore the feasibility of pairing Maury and Miner Elementaries by launching a Maury-Miner Community Working Group no earlier than School Year 2026-27 to examine the feasibility of a pairing and, if so, determine the logistics of doing so.
 

On his last day of school, Liam McCarthy had to go home because the air conditioning at his Ada Merritt K-8 classroom was not working.

“It produces hotter air,” said Liam, a third grade student. “It feels like exhaust from a truck but then somebody breathing on your neck. And then the sun is on you.”

His mother, Robyn McCarthy, is livid over what she described as an ongoing issue that does not seem to have a resolution.

“I think it’s been an issue at the school for a pretty long time,” said Robyn McCarthy, who added the school’s air conditioning broke a couple times at the end of the school year last year.

As for this school year, Robyn McCarthy said: “I want to say it’s broken nine times in the past six or seven weeks and it broke today on the last day of school.”

Robyn McCarthy and other parents have been told a fix is coming and the budget has been approved for a new air conditioning.

“Mostly I’m worried about the staff, I’m worried about the teachers. I’m worried about the students because they can’t learn when they’re uncomfortable because it’s been brutal,” she said.

At  Baker Heights Elementary, everything seems to be coming apart, and it's Timothy Scott's job to try to patch whatever's broken — whether it be falling ceiling tiles or a water fountain falling off the wall.
"It could be fixed, it could be repaired, but we're pulling funding from the classroom," Scott said.
Baker, Louisiana, just outside Baton Rouge, is home to roughly 12,000 people. Money is tight, and the population and tax base are shrinking. The infrastructure, including five school buildings that were all built in the 1950s, is crumbling.
Across the U.S., the average public school building is now nearly half a century old, and communities like Baker are facing a lot of repairs. Although Congress allocated more than $1 trillion to rebuild America's infrastructure in 2021, many schools across the country are growing desperate to fund the much-needed repairs.
To date, the infrastructure law has funded more than 40,000 projects across the country. But in many cases, the money reaches communities like Baker too slowly.  
Baker Superintendent J.T. Stroder says declining enrollment means "it's tough to do anything." The problems with infrastructure are not limited to the city's schools, he says.
"You can drive around the community and you'll see how those kind of match," Stroder said.
"The way a student feels about their surroundings and their atmosphere affects how they perform academically," he added.
Overall, America's infrastructure — from roads to bridges to drinking water — has a grade of C-minus, according to the last "report card" from the American Society of Civil Engineers. The investment needed just to bring American schools up to par is $870 billion, according to the 21st Century School Fund.
 

The Lake Osewego school district in Oregon is no stranger to climate crises and their impact on students, families, and the broader community.

After years of close encounters with extreme weather and wildfires, as well as the constant threat of earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest, the district south of Portland rebuilt one of its elementary schools in the hopes of never again being caught flat-footed.

The 79,000-square-foot facility can accommodate 600 students. But what sets it apart is that it’s specially designed to withstand the compounding and often difficult-to-predict fallout of climate change, which the community has experienced over and over in recent years.

It is believed to be one of first K-12 schools in America to get its energy from a microgrid—a self-sufficient energy system that can operate independently from the area’s electric grid, supplied in part by an onsite solar panel array. The setup means the school’s power can stay on, even when the rest of surrounding area goes dark. That could translate to fewer emergency school closures as the building is able to maintain power and heating and cooling systems. And it’s part of what makes the school suitable as an emergency shelter for the community during natural catastrophes.

Local school funding disparities are not unique to Arizona, but in recent years, approaching the issue by suing a state is.

Recent research by Bellwether found wealthy districts in 123 large metro areas across 38 states often had much more local funding per student than less-affluent districts as a result of economic segregation. In order to close the state and local funding gap within these metro area districts, $26 billion in additional state funding is needed on an annual basis, the study said.

Bellwether researchers also suggested updating state formulas that include a generous allocation for students in poverty and those needing learning interventions.

Arizona ranked 50th in overall education spending and last in funding education as of September 2023, according to the Education Data Initiative, a team of data researchers who analyze figures on the U.S. education system. During that same period, Arizona’s schools spent $9,070 per pupil for a total of $10.3 billion annually. By comparison, the national average on spending per pupil was $16,080.

Nearly half of St. Louis’ public schools need to be repaired or closed in the next 10 years due to their poor condition, a regional architecture firm has found.

If the district decides to keep the schools open, upkeep will cost an estimated $1.8 billion by 2044, according to the Illinois-based firm Cordogan, Clark and Associates, which presented its findings at last Tuesday's school board meeting.

Steve Raskin, a vice president of the firm, said it’s too early to make a recommendation as to the school district's course of action, whether that’s to close down schools or make major renovations.

“At this point, I think it’s entirely premature to even have that conversation because really, we’re not there yet,” Raskin said.

He said that after presenting the assessments last week, the firm now must work with the school board on next steps, including gathering more data and conducting scenario testing. He said both entities need to ask themselves questions before making big decisions.

Dozens of Pittsburgh public schools without air conditioning will switch to remote learning for students Tuesday as temperatures climb into the high 80s.

This marks the fifth time Pittsburgh Public Schools has closed buildings due to extreme heat during this school year.

According to the district’s Extreme Heat Protocol, administrators are expected to consider moving classes in schools without sufficient air conditioning to remote learning any time the National Weather Service forecasts outside temperatures that “reach or exceed 85°F and/or a heat index of 90°F or higher.”

Exposure to excessive heat can lead to dehydration, sleep disruptions and learning loss, and many PPS schools lack the infrastructure needed to keep students cool.

As a result, 39 of the district’s 54 schools will move to remote live instruction Tuesday. Families affected by the switch can pick up grab-and-go meals at 16 locations across the city from 7 to 9 a.m.

HONOLULU (KHON2) – From an engineering standpoint, emergency officials say most Hawaii buildings do not meet hurricane shelter criteria.
“The state has criteria for shelters depending on construction and design and most of the buildings in our inventory don’t meet that criteria,” explained Honolulu’s Department of Emergency Management Director Hiro Toiya.
Kauai and Honolulu have sought alternatives known as hurricane refuge areas which are mostly in state Department of Education school buildings, like gyms or cafeterias.
“So, while these buildings do not meet the criteria and definition of a hurricane shelter, they do serve as better alternative and they are the best we have in our building inventory to make available to the public,” Toiya explained.
 

WOODSTOCK — On Monday night, the Mountain Views School District Board will consider cost estimates on three options for addressing the maintenance needs of the Woodstock Union Middle and High School buildings. The board hopes to bring another bond measure to voters in September.

The board’s consideration comes following the voters’ defeat on Town Meeting Day in March of a $99 million bond to fund construction of a new middle and high school building. Voters in the Vermont school district’s seven member towns — Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading and Woodstock — rejected the proposal by a margin of 340 votes, 1,910-1,570.

Following the defeat, the board conducted a survey of community members and began to explore other strategies to meet the needs of the aging school building, which serves 440 students and was built in 1956, with the middle school addition completed in 1968.

COLUMBUS, OHIO –– The dire problems facing Columbus City Schools can be illustrated by comparing two buildings: Como Elementary School and Hamilton STEM Academy. Built as identical schools in 1954, they sit less than 2 miles apart, about 4 miles north of downtown.

Como has never undergone a significant renovation. Original floor tiles that an official said contain asbestos still cover a majority of the school, many of its plexiglass windows are no longer translucent and wires snake through the hallways, crudely affixed to the top of cinder-block walls.

While the building has been retrofitted with air conditioning and a new playground, “We can’t do everything,” admits T. Alex Trevino, the district’s director of capital improvements. In addition to its obvious physical shortcomings, the school, with a capacity of 400 students, has only 243.

Children will not necessarily travel farther on average than they do now to get to school if Seattle Public Schools goes through with a plan to close and consolidate about 20 elementary schools. School-level employees — such as, maintenance workers, office staff, principals, and food services workers — will likely be affected by staff reductions.

Those are just some of the details that emerged Thursday night as Seattle school officials answered questions from about 200 parents and community members at Garfield High Schoolduring its second community meeting on its plan to create “a system of well-resourced schools.”

But big questions, such as how much the district will ultimately save through the closures, were harder to answer.

Thursday’s session was an about-face for the district, after the first meeting Tuesday at Roosevelt High School ended with frustrated parents shouting questions at Superintendent Brent Jones and Chief of Staff Beverly Redmond.

Jones said the Garfield meeting was a chance for a do-over, even as many details remained elusive.

Playing at school, it turns out, is not as simple as it sounds.
Many children today are uncertain of what to play or how to initiate and end games. Conflicts arise about rules and who are the winners. The pandemic, educators say, stunted young children’s natural play development.  
As a result, educators, pediatricians and play advocates are encouraging schools to be more mindful and intentional about positive student-led play experiences at schools. They cite academic, physical, social and emotional benefits for kids when there is dedicated time for healthy, inclusive and safe play. 
According to the National Association of State Boards of Education, nine states — Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Missouri, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Virginia and West Virginia — require daily recess for students. Each state has different policies for duration and the grade levels covered. 
Starting next school year, California public schools will be required to provide at least 30 minutes of recess to elementary students, under a law passed in 2023. Recess, the law says, should be held outdoors when weather and air quality permits. 
 

The Wynne High School campus will be open to the community ahead of severe weather on Sunday night.

This was announced by the Wynne Public Schools official Facebook page, in an effort to address the Wynne School District community ahead of inclement weather.

"The safe rooms on the temporary high school campus will be open to the community," the post reads. "Stay safe, and spread the word!"

Back in April, renderings of the future Wynne High School were been posted to social media by Wynne Public Schools.

The school system released a statement reading that they are "thrilled" to finally release these images. 

America’s aging school buildings are on a collision course with a rapidly warming climate.

Last fall, school officials were forced to send students home across the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic — just as many were returning from summer break — because of extreme heat and schools lacking air conditioning. In Baltimore and Detroit, high heat led to early dismissals, the same as it had four months earlier when summer temperatures struck in May.

In Philadelphia last year, administrators moved the first day of school from late August to after Labor Day, in part to avoid a repeat of heat-related school closures in previous years. But the weather didn’t cooperate. They ended up closing more than 70 schools three hours earlier than usual for the entire week.

Hot weather is not a new concern for school districts. But as the burning of fossil fuels heats the planet, it’s delivering longer-lasting, more dangerous heat waves, and higher average temperatures. Across much of the northern United States, where many schools were built without air conditioning, districts are now forced to confront the academic and health risks posed by poorly cooled schools. Fixing the problem often requires residents to pass multimillion dollar school repair bonds, which can be hard to do. Climatic change is arriving faster than most can adapt.

“We have had situations where it’s been 88 degrees outside but the real feel in the classrooms is well over 90 degrees because of the humidity,” said Shari Obrenski, president of the Cleveland Teachers Union. Although most of the district’s schools have air conditioning, 11 switched to virtual instruction during a period of high heat in 2022. “It’s miserable,” she said, “students throwing up, not being able to keep their heads up, just horrible conditions.”

Polk County commissioners approved the release of more than $115 million in educational impact fees on Tuesday for a new Poinciana area high school among other school projects to accommodate the county's growing student population.  

In all, educational impact fees of more than $174.2 million were released for the modernization and construction of additional capacity within the school system. The approval was by a unanimous decision of the County Commission. 

New high school building costs
Among the funds released, Polk County Public Schools received $115.368 million to construct a new 2,500-student high school in Polk County’s Poinciana area, according to a staff analysis by the county’s Office of Planning and Development.  

The Salmon School District in remote Central Idaho will finally get a new school.

After decades in which voters rejected every bond the district asked for, the community on Tuesday approved a $20 million bond to build a new pre-K-through-8 school with a resounding 72% support.

The election comes after the Idaho Statesman and ProPublica reported last year on how children across the state were learning in schools with freezing classrooms, leaking roofs and discolored water. Salmon was one of the most poignant examples — in the last two decades, the district failed to pass around a dozen bonds to replace its dilapidated schools. Idaho is one of just two states that require support from two-thirds of voters to pass a bond.

At Salmon’s Pioneer Elementary, the plumbing is failing, the floors are uneven and pose tripping hazards, and sewage sometimes backs up into a corner of the kitchen. Parts of the building aren’t accessible for students with disabilities. The foundation is crumbling.