ANN ARBOR, MI – More than half a million in tax credits will help install rooftop solar panels at several buildings in Ann Arbor Public Schools in a move the district claims will save money and free up millions more for new construction.
The district announced receiving its first direct-pay check for $572,000 from an expiring federal program to help install arrays in a news release on Monday, Dec. 29.
The news comes just a couple of weeks after Ann Arbor School Board members got their first briefing on putting over $4.6 million toward solar panels at four schools over the next several months.
According to the district, accessing federal tax credits would help with close to a third of solar installation costs — particularly as Congress rolls back energy-related incentives — and contribute to revolving funds in the $1 billion capital bond approved by voters in 2019.
 

Officials with Covington Independent Schools say that roof damage has impacted Latonia Elementary School.
The call about the collapse came in to officials at approximately 11:10 p.m. on Wednesday.
On Thursday morning, WLWT captured drone footage of the elementary school that showed that the roof had partially caved in and that damage to the building's exterior bricks was present.
Covington Independent Schools says that no one was inside the building at the time of the collapse, with no injuries reported.
“The safety of our students and staff is our No. 1 priority,” said Superintendent Alvin Garrison of the collapse. “We are currently working with structural engineers, restoration and environmental companies, and local fire officials to determine the exact cause of the collapse and to evaluate the integrity of the surrounding structure.”
 

Students at two Arlington middle schools are urging school board members in the Northern Virginia county to fund and expedite renovation plans.
At a school board meeting earlier this month, students at Swanson and Thomas Jefferson middle schools said hallways are overcrowded, sprinkler systems and sinks are broken and major upgrades are needed.
Board members approved the direction for the Capital Improvement Plan covering fiscal years 2027-2036. Part of the plan includes tasking Superintendent Francisco Durán with presenting renovation plans for the two middle schools.
ARL Now first reported details of the vote.
The total budget to upgrade both campuses would be in the range of $150 million, according to school board documents, and school leaders would have to prioritize infrastructure, safety and accessibility needs.
It’s unclear, though, when exactly renovations would occur and how much work would be done at the schools.
 

Built in 1896, Booker T. Washington Middle School is a distinctive redbrick schoolhouse that after mid-century additions consumed most of a city block, growing to educate about 1,000 students a year as the area became a thriving Black middle-class community.

Then families started leaving the city, mostly for the suburbs. In 2002, when the current city school board chair began teaching there, one of the four floors was vacant.

Twenty years later, the West Baltimore building was half-empty. Then another problem arose: Booker T. Washington desperately needed a new roof. The cost: $5 million.

Today, the historic building with a cupola and arches houses just 363 students from two schools, and one of them — Renaissance Academy — may close in June, leaving empty all but a tiny fraction of the massive building.

Across Baltimore, school enrollments have been shrinking, driving a proliferation of small schools that require an outsize investment to stay open. That’s led Baltimore City Public Schools to close or merge 39 schools over the past decade, yet the city still has at least 30 schools, many on the West Side, that are operating far below capacity.

Nearly a quarter of Miami residents, and almost half in District Four, do not live within a 10-minute walk of a public park, a gap the city aims to close by opening school playgrounds, fields and courts to the community.

The Miami City Commission has authorized the city manager to negotiate and execute a long-term joint-use agreement with Miami-Dade County Public Schools to open school recreational facilities to residents during non-school hours. The move advances a citywide strategy to expand access to safe, local spaces for exercise and community gatherings, with a final accord pending the school board’s approval of the agreement.

Welcome to KAWC’s Educating Yuma, a new program that takes a closer look at the schools, people and issues shaping Yuma's future.

This episode explores Arizona’s long-troubled system for funding public school facilities — the buildings, repairs, and infrastructure students rely on every day.

A landmark 1994 lawsuit forced the state to overhaul how it paid for school construction and maintenance. But over time, funding fell behind. In 2017, a new lawsuit argued that Arizona was once again violating its own constitution by failing to adequately support school facilities. In August 2025, a judge agreed.

KAWC Education Solutions Reporter Sisko Stargazer has spent the past several months since following up with Yuma schools to find out how the current system has affected them.

NORWALK — The new West Rocks Middle School will have to wait a little longer to open after city officials decided to pause the project for a year to take advantage of extra savings.
An affordable housing bill signed by Gov. Ned Lamont in November would increase Norwalk's reimbursement rate for new construction from 60% to 65%, but the higher rate doesn't kick in until July 1, 2026. The deadline to submit school construction projects for state reimbursement is June 30 every year, meaning Norwalk officials would have to wait until the summer of 2027 to submit the West Rocks project to get the extra funding.

The state recently awarded the Watertown Schools a grant to run its farm-to-school program, including its Freight Farm. See details in the announcement from the Watertown Public Schools, below.

Watertown Public Schools has received more than $80,000 in state grant funding to continue its farm-to-school efforts, expanding learning opportunities for Watertown’s students while also increasing local food production.

Last week, Governor Maura Healey’s office announced $1.2 million in funding to expand educational food growth and farming efforts across Massachusetts. In total, 34 public school districts and early childhood centers received funding.

Three years ago, a group of educators went before the state charter school commission with a bold proposal. With the commission’s approval and state funds, they would build the first charter school in Hawaiʻi to specialize in artificial intelligence and data science, operating out of a small campus in Kalihi. 
The commission was ready to give the school permission to move forward, but Department of Education leaders were skeptical. Kalihi schools were already struggling with low student enrollment, they said, and nearby DOE campuses offered lessons in technology and engineering similar to the coursework Kūlia planned to offer. 
Kūlia Academy, which opened last fall despite opposition from the DOE, already has a lengthy waitlist. The school draws students from across the island and largely appeals to families because of its central location and unique focus on artificial intelligence, school director Andy Gokce said. 
“We are on a good trajectory,” Gokce said. 
While Hawaiʻi faces shrinking public school enrollment overall, demand for charter schools has continued to grow. Charters have seen nearly a 10% jump in enrollment since 2020 — the only sector of Hawaiʻi education to report continued growth since the pandemic. Even as the state considers closing some small public schools, charter schools are building campuses everywhere from urban Honolulu to the north shore of Kauaʻi.
 

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) - As severe weather becomes more of a threat to Kentucky, public schools are taking the extra step to ensure that students are safe.

In 2019, Senate Bill 1 stated that any new K-12 facility had to incorporate a safe room. A safe room, according to FEMA, is built to withstand winds up to 250 mph and also provide electricity up to two hours after a severe weather event.

Chris McIntyre, the chief financial officer for Warren County Public Schools says these safe spaces bring more piece of mind during severe weather.

“This is another layer that helps protect our most valuable resources, our kids,” McIntyre said. ”The parents feel more secure when their kids are at school.”

The results are in and, by a wide margin, it seems Philadelphia residents want aging school structures throughout the city saved by being renovated or rebuilt, instead of seeing the facilities shuttered.

The School District of Philadelphia recently found this out through the results of a "Facilities Planning Process Emerging Themes Survey" that sought input from those with students in the district, as well as teachers, faculty and others with connections to school facilities, for input on how to manage the district's aging structures.

The survey found 81% of respondents felt it was important or very important that Pre-K through eighth grade programming strengthened through better use of space.

This included responses that called for old facilities to be updated, space used more efficiently, class sizes reduced, and wider access to programs for arts, music, physical education, home economics, foreign language, along with a wider range of extracurricular activities and clubs for all grades.

Following voter rejection of its $63 million, single proposition bond proposal during the November general election, the Boyd ISD board of trustees met last week to discuss alternatives to curb student overcrowding issues at the elementary school.

Superintendent Tom Woody led the discussion which centered around the possibility of moving Kindergarten classes from Boyd Elementary School to Boyd Primary School in an effort to create more space at the elementary campus. However, the potential move will likely come with new issues for the district to face regarding restroom facilities and class sizes. 

“There’s really not enough restrooms in the [primary school] building,” Woody said. “Also, when you really look at it, the classrooms themselves for 22 Kindergarten kids are going to be on the small side… We’re really looking at Kindergarten going from five to six [classes] next year.”

(Washington, DC – Dec. 23, 2025) – The 2025 State of Our Schools report, released today by the 21st Century School Fund, International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), and the National Council on School Facilities (NCSF), shows that the U.S. now faces a $90 billion shortfall in school facility funding every single year, despite significant progress local school districts have made to ramp up their investments.

Since its earlier releases in 2016 and 2021, the report has tracked a steep and alarming rise in the nation’s school facilities funding deficit. What was a $46 billion gap in 2016 grew to $85 billion in 2021 and has continued to widen as school construction costs climb, building inventories expand, and aging facilities require more extensive maintenance, modernization, or replacement.

Eight more Valley schools are set to close in the coming years due to low enrollment and a funding deficit. Now, school districts are figuring out what will happen to the empty buildings.

This month, the Kyrene governing board voted to close down six schools in the district, while Scottsdale Unified voted to close down two schools, including Pima Elementary.

“There’s certain things that we joke about saying, hopefully they won’t put a nuclear waste dump there or something like that. But other than that, it’s kind of whatever the community needs,” Tim Cavanagh said.

Cavanagh has lived across from Pima since the 1990s. Even after a school is closed, the district still owns both the building and land.

When asked if he feels the community should have a say in the building’s future, Cavanagh said, “Well, I mean, I think it’s one of those things, just because I live across the street, I don’t think I should have any more say than any other resident of Scottsdale that paid for it.”

Recorded live at MACo’s 2025 Winter Conference, this episode features an in-depth, candid conversation with Alex Donahue, Executive Director of the Interagency Commission on School Construction (IAC), on one of the most pressing challenges facing Maryland counties: school construction.

Joined by MACo Executive Director Michael Sanderson, Donahue breaks down why school construction costs have risen dramatically, how inflation and funding constraints are straining both state and local budgets, and what the growing backlog of projects means for students, counties, and communities across Maryland.

The discussion explores the realities behind capital funding, the limits of existing state programs, the increasing pressure on counties to forward-fund projects, and why collaboration between counties, school systems, and the state is more critical than ever. Donahue also outlines emerging strategies, from energy efficiency and total cost of ownership to flexible facility planning, that can help counties navigate today’s challenges while planning responsibly for the future.

PITTSFIELD — A long-awaited new West Side elementary school is finally moving forward after state officials approved Pittsfield’s request to begin formal planning.

On Friday, the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s Board of Directors unanimously voted to allow the city to enter a feasibility study, the next major step toward designing and constructing a new school that would replace both Silvio O. Conte Community School and Crosby Elementary School. 

The planned 700-student building would sit on the current Crosby site and would be the first new elementary school constructed in Pittsfield in 50 years. Both Crosby and Conte have been deemed outdated and functionally obsolete by city officials.

“This is an important step toward equity for our district,” said interim Superintendent Latifah Phillips, who wrote a letter of support to the board. “[Crosby is] our most dilapidated and worst conditioned building in a part of our city, which serves our students with the greatest need.”

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WBOY) — The West Virginia School Building Authority (SBA) granted the wishes of 12 county projects during its final meeting of the year Monday morning, several of which are local to north central West Virginia.

Topping the list is the approval of $3.5 million in awarded funds to Barbour County Schools for its recently approved consolidation project, which will close three middle schools and transfer the students to Philip Barbour High School’s campus. That plan also outlines the renovation of the Belington Middle School building in order to house Pre-K through 5th-grade students.

The City of Evanston, Evanston/Skokie School District 65 and District 202 are closing in on establishing a Joint Working Group on Public Facilities and Resource Sharing that would identify collaboration opportunities between the groups and conduct long-term resource planning. 

Two of the three members of the city council who sit on the City-Schools Liaison Committee — Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th Ward) and Juan Geracaris (9th Ward) — support the working group. Krissie Harris (2nd Ward) is the lone holdout, and said she wants to consider the proposal further. Mayor Daniel Biss — who would not sit on the committee — has also expressed support for the initiative.

Members of the District 65 school board who sit on the City-Schools Liaison Committee did not respond to questions asking whether they supported the measure prior to publication.

Down a narrow staircase at Presque Isle High School, a cast iron steam boiler towers over visitors in the same place it has sat for the last six decades.
Eleven presidents and tens of thousands of students ago, the boiler — and the high school — were new. They’re not anymore. But replacing the boiler system would cost millions, MSAD 1 Superintendent Ben Greenlaw said. That’s just part of the $40-$50 million in infrastructure investments he estimates the 200,000 square-foot building will need over the next 20 years.
It might be that long before the funding needed to build a new high school is greenlit through the Maine Department of Education’s Major Capital School Construction Program. Greenlaw, aware of the budget crises that have gripped nearby districts in recent years, doesn’t believe MSAD 1 can wait that long.
So earlier this year, he probed an option that has seemed more and more inevitable to education leaders across the state: consolidation. Now Presque Isle High School — Maine’s largest high school north of Old Town — is exploring combining with nearby Caribou and Fort Fairfield high schools to form a single regional high school and tech center.

Construction began at a Brooklyn elementary school four years ago to make its building more accessible for students with disabilities.

A new entrance ramp was among the projects at Red Hook’s P.S. 15, where more than 62% of the students have disabilities.

But the seemingly straightforward construction project has not yet been completed, said Katina Rogers, a Brooklyn mom and president of the local parent education council advising on District 15’s needs.

Parents were frustrated that the city paid $11 million for the project, which included window replacements and exterior work, despite the work remaining unfinished — and building conditions were worse than when the project started, they said.

“For that to be happening in an underserved community, it’s really a problem,” Rogers said.