The Richardson Independent School District plans to close four elementary schools and a Pre-K campus as part of its “Project RightSize” plan to respond to declining enrollment and lack of state funding.

The district said four elementary schools – Greenwood Hills, Springridge, Spring Valley, and Thurgood Marshall – will be consolidated into other elementary schools in the district starting in the 2024-2025 school year. The newly proposed attendance zones can be found here.

The Dobie Pre-Kindergarten campus will be closed completely beginning in 2025-2026.

Project RightSize is the result of months of planning, according to Superintendent Dr. Tabitha Branum.

“When I think about the role of a superintendent and the things that weigh on your heart, and on your mind, tonight‘s conversation is probably one of the hardest conversations that I’ve had to lead to this point, and may in a long time, in my career,” Branum said at the outset of the announcement Thursday.

Two main factors brought this major change about – declining enrollment and a lack of funding from Texas legislators.

On any given day, there are more than 9,000 empty seats in Richardson ISD classrooms, according to figures released by the district. The elementary schools in question are each at less than 60% capacity.

A public-interest law firm threatened Wednesday to sue Gov. Gavin Newsom and state officials unless they create a fairer system of subsidizing the costs of school facilities. That system must be as equitable as the Local Control Funding Formula, the decade-old formula for funding schools’ operating budgets, Public Advocates demanded in a lengthy letter.  

At a news conference announcing their demand, Public Advocates and school board members, superintendents and parents with decrepit, inadequate and unhealthy school buildings charged that the state’s school facilities program discriminates against districts with low property values. Districts with high property values gobble up most of the state’s matching subsidies to modernize schools, while property-poor districts serving low-income families can’t afford local school bonds to qualify for state subsidies to build comparable facilities, they said.

State Rep. Landon Brown, R-Cheyenne, likened the approach the Senate took Thursday in cutting $111.8 million in proposed major Wyoming school construction projects to performing surgery with a bludgeon instead of a scalpel.
“They could have gone in with a scalpel instead of a bludgeon, and they went in with a bludgeon hammer,” Brown said.
The Wyoming Senate voted 16-15 twice to cut funding for the design and construction of seven school projects around the state in the next biennium. The cuts were primarily in response to concern about the way two high schools were selected for the state money, one in Jackson and another in Rock Springs.
“The problem I have with that is, go after those two if you don’t like those particular two,” Brown said. “The rest of the process was followed with complete fidelity.”
Sen. Larry Hicks, R-Baggs, proposed both amendments, arguing the Legislature should follow its own rules no matter the circumstance. He said the Legislature was “putting the cart in front of the horse” by approving the construction projects.
“I want to be prospective and say from this point going forward, we in the Legislature, to the maximum extent possible, should follow our own laws,” he said. “Follow the rules of the agency and have a high degree of fidelity to the process.”
 

The Iowa City Community School District is transitioning its junior high model to a middle school model by adding sixth graders to South East, Northwest, and North Central schools for the 2024-25 school year.

The decision to initiate this transition was made in the spring of 2022 after receiving approval from the school board. Since then, a committee of district representatives, administrators, and teachers looked at the best way to transition students from elementary schools to a new building, as well as what would most benefit students in middle school.

Construction has been underway on all three existing buildings to accommodate the new students and staff. Just over $56 million from the facilities master plan budget was allocated for the project of building new classrooms and common spaces for the 300-400 plus new students entering each building in the fall.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Jefferson County Public Schools plans to build 20 new schools in the next decade.
That includes a new $56 million facility for W.E.B. DuBois Academy, which will be home to a middle and high school.
"I can't say enough what a new school means to kids and families," Superintendent Dr. Marty Pollio said during his State of the District Tuesday afternoon. "Especially if they were in their old school and you see them walking into their new school and get to see the looks on their face." 
JCPS originally introduced a four-year plan with the goal of building new schools for Grace James Academy, W.E.B. DuBois, and a new west end middle school, which was later named Hudson Middle.
W.E.B. DuBois' plan calls for a 178,000-square-foot facility with a three-story academic wing and a gymnasium wing off Poplar Level Road.
Grace James and Hudson are currently housed in old school buildings, known as "swing spaces." 
Wednesday, a JCPS spokesperson said locations for the two schools are to be determined, but hopes to finalize in the next few months. 
 

A new state plan to spend $2 billion on school facilities is a step toward alleviating districts’ reliance on local property taxes, but it won’t solve the problem, school leaders told lawmakers Tuesday. 
School trustees and administrators packed the House Revenue and Taxation Committee’s meeting as the panel nearly unanimously endorsed House Bill 521. The bill would direct $200 million annually to public schools and cut income taxes. 
It’s the “first real attempt” the state has made to address the fact that “facilities cost a lot of money,” said Andy Grover, executive director of the Idaho Association of School Administrators and a former Melba School District superintendent.
“While this will help reduce bonds, levies and plant facilities, it doesn’t get rid of them.”
Gov. Brad Little’s office and House Republican leadership crafted the plan, which House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, called a “compromise bill.” House Majority Leader Jason Monks emphasized Tuesday that HB 521 is, “first and foremost,” a tax cut. It will trim income tax rates for individuals and corporations from 5.8% to 5.695%. And the ultimate goal in helping schools fund facilities is to eliminate the need for bonds and levies, said Monks, R-Meridian. 
 

Last week was a nailbiter for the Eastmont School District. For most of the week after last Tuesday’s special election, the $117 million school bond for this district in East Wenatchee hovered around 59% approval – just short of passage, according to state law.
In Washington, school bonds, often used for construction projects, require a 60% supermajority of voters. That is a higher threshold than that of school levies, most often used for programs and people, which require only a simple majority of 50% plus one vote.
For some districts, that supermajority can be a heavy lift. Last week, seven of the 21 school bonds statewide on the Feb. 13 special election ballots – 33% – hit the supermajority and passed. As of Friday, 11 of the 21 bond measures – 52% – got more than 50% support, yet failed.
In contrast, 172 out of 192 local school district levies – or 89% – passed statewide, according to figures supplied by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Looking just at operations levies that pay for instruction, that percentage is higher – with 91% of them passing.
In the Eastmont district, in Douglas County, it was the second time the district put this construction proposal on the ballot, after a November 2022 failure.
“We have really dramatically reduced the ask,” said Eastmont Superintendent Becky Berg. “From $185 million to $117 million, after interacting with about 900 community members.”
 

MARION COUNTY, Fla. – The superintendent of Marion County Public Schools confirmed her district is in a crisis as it deals with aging schools and record growth.
“It’s not to be overly dramatic. When you look at the data, the growth and our facilities. When you have about half our facilities are over 50 years old, the cost of maintenance continues to climb,” said Dr. Diane Gullet, superintendent of Marion County Schools.
News 6 went inside some of the schools in need of repairs and upgrades.
At East Marion Elementary School in Ocala, none of its classrooms have doors. Instead, a large room is broken up into four pods. Each pod contains a different class.
“The students are adaptable. They are resilient, but there are times when you know we’re doing fun and exciting things and maybe the class next door is needing to be testing,” said Sarah Dobbs, principal of East Marion Elementary School.
East Marion Elementary was built in the early 1970s, and not much has changed.
“Thinking safety wise, these doors we walked through are the original doors for this pod, so they’re on a magnet system. When we release the magnet they lock us in. This is between us and 80 students,” Dobbs said. “Student safety is the first thing that goes through my mind when talking about this concept, this layout.”
Fort King Middle School was built in 1963. The school’s gymnasium still has its original bleachers and is now just getting air conditioning.
 

Just as the state has been trumpeting its opening 13 public preschool classrooms well in advance of its Ready Keiki plan to open 50 to 80 by August, a bill is advancing to repeal the relatively new state School Facilities Authority and move all school construction back again to the state Department of Education, and the authority’s founding executive director has abruptly resigned.

Supporters of state Senate Bill 3328, introduced by a dozen senators led by Senate Vice President and Education Chair Michelle Kidani (D, Mililani Town-Waipio Gentry-Royal Kunia), say moving construction back into the DOE’s purview is best for efficiency, and the School Facilities Authority has run out of political will.

But some observers are asking whether the DOE is fit to take back new-facilities construction when it is already struggling with a backlog of more than $2 billion in construction projects. DOE has about $876 million obligated in contracts for ongoing projects, while another $893 million is set to lapse June 30 and another $331 million lapses in June 2026, according to a DOE Even one of the bill’s introducers, state Sen. Donna Mercado Kim (D, Kalihi-Fort Shafter-Red Hill), expressed some skepticism about its proposed changes during a Feb. 7 hearing of the Senate Education Committee, of which Kim is vice chair.

At a meeting with Chicago Public Schools officials last week, local parents said area schools are in need of infrastructural repairs and program improvements, and pushed back on schools being characterized as “underutilized.”

The Feb. 8 meeting was a roundtable discussion to gather input on the state of local school facilities for CPS’ upcoming five-year Educational Facilities Master Plan, which will inform how CPS spends its money on building repairs and improvements over the next five years. Held at Ray Elementary School, 5631 S. Kimbark Ave., the meeting was the latest of 16 planned across the city.

As part of the master plan process, CPS conducts a neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis of the current state of its facilities, as well as enrollment trends, program offerings, demographics, and unique community needs, per the plan’s description.

WASHINGTON (February 15, 2024)—Nearly one-third of public schools (31 percent) have one or more non-permanent (portable) buildings in use on campus, according to data released today by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the statistical center within the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Additionally, major repair, renovation, or modernization work was being performed in 21 percent of all public schools as of December of this academic year, when the survey was administered. The average age of the main instructional building among reporting U.S. public schools is 49 years, with 38 percent constructed before 1970.1

“The condition of our school facilities plays a critical role in the education of more than 49 million U.S public school students,” said NCES Commissioner Peggy G. Carr. “School facilities provide a setting for learning and affect health and comfort of the school’s students and staff. As such, these data provide insight into the current condition of our schools as the nation continues down the road to learning recovery.”

Feb. 15—CHEYENNE — The construction of school facility projects has long been funded at the state level, but lawmakers in the Wyoming Senate now suggest passing that off to the local districts.

A joint resolution introduced in the Senate on Thursday calls for an amendment to the state constitution, which would transfer the responsibility for all school facility construction projects to local school districts. Senate Joint Resolution 5, "School capital construction-constitutional amendment," was sponsored and introduced on the floor by Sen. Charles Scott, R-Casper.

"Our current system really is not going to work any longer," Scott said. "As a practical matter, we've got to do something differently."

The average school building in America is nearly half a century old, and almost a third of the nation’s public schools have at least one portable or non-permanent structure on their campus, new federal data show.

A growing body of research shows students perform better on tests when their school buildings are well-maintained and modern. The health consequences of prolonged exposure to toxins like mold and asbestos in school buildings can last long into adulthood. And the emergence of COVID put renewed pressure on schools to ensure students and staff are breathing clean air.

But a large share of the nation’s 100,000 schools have buildings in major disrepair. Close to half of educators surveyed by the EdWeek Research Center in 2023 gave their buildings a “C” grade or worse. Advocates estimate the nation would need to collectively spend $85 billion a year on top of its current school facilities investments in order to ensure every school building gets adequately renovated.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday announced a “long overdue” plan to build new facilities to better serve deaf, blind and visually-impaired students at historic but dilapidated schools in Little Rock. 

The disrepair of the Arkansas School for the Deaf and the Arkansas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired was highlighted last fall when the governor and a group of bipartisan lawmakers toured the facilities, which are located about a mile west of the state Capitol.

“We will invest significant resources to build a new state-of-the-art facility on the current campus, combine administrative functions and provide additional high-quality instruction on a regional basis,” Sanders said. “And we’re going to prioritize student safety and happiness so that ASD and ASB will thrive as they were intended to right here in the heart of our capital city.” 

Sanders said there will be further discussions about construction and funding, and while there’s not yet a specific timeline for the project, she said the goal is to work as quickly as possible. 

The state has received some estimates on the project, Sanders said, and the Legislature previously set aside roughly $30 million in 2022 for the schools.

PORT ANGELES — The Port Angeles School District’s aging infrastructure has been kept in good working order through regular preventive maintenance and responding promptly to emergency repairs, Superintendent Marty Brewer told the board.
Nonetheless, five schools that are between 45 and 70 years old have deteriorated to the point where they need to be replaced.
“We have a responsibility to address our facilities’ needs before it gets to the point where we don’t have solutions,” Brewer said during a review of the district’s 30-year plan on Thursday.
Brewer’s presentation and that of Nolan Duce, director of maintenance and facilities, were preludes to the district’s intention in November to ask voters to support a bond issue that would fund construction of new Port Angeles High and Franklin Elementary schools.
The board would need to approve such a measure and it has not yet been presented with one.
 

The Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in northern Nevada broke ground Friday on a new school that will replace a 70-year-old building tribal leaders have linked to many cancer deaths in the community.

“It’s quite the accomplishment,” said tribal Chairman Brian Mason. “It was a big effort by just not myself, but everybody involved. And it couldn’t have benefited a better demographic group than the children. And that’s all that really matters.”

The Owyhee Combined School, where generations of tribal members were educated, sits adjacent to hydrocarbon plumes that Mason believes is the cause of more than 100 cancer cases among tribal members over the years.

In the 1950s, a maintenance shop owned by the Bureau of Indian Affairs began disposing of diesel and other oils through a shallow injection well. By the 1980s, the school’s water began tasting and smelling like fuel, according to Mason.

Although the old drinking water wells were capped and replaced by new ones, tribal leaders fear the contaminants could remain in the old school pipes.

The Madison School Board on Monday discussed its plan to transition the school district to 100% renewable energy by 2040 — a goal that will likely require revisions given the scale of the proposed changes.
The necessary updates to district buildings, which would focus on electrifying heating systems, will cost around $1 billion. These upgrades would be made alongside other building renovations.
Most of this money would be generated through regular referendums, which could potentially begin as soon as November 2024 and last through 2044, according to board materials. Other money would come from fundraising or federal grants, according to Bob Soldner, the district’s assistant superintendent for financial services.
“I think it’s fair to say the majority of these funds are going to need to be approved by voters, but there could clearly be other fundraising to supplement what voters would approve,” Soldner told the Wisconsin State Journal Monday.
 

Here in Hawaii, our Department of Education is unique in several respects.  In most states, K-12 education is handled by localities such as towns and counties and is largely funded by property tax.  Our DOE, however, is descended from royalty – it was established by King Kamehameha III in 1840 – and it now runs education statewide.  No property tax is used to fund education; our state constitution now says that the property tax is the exclusive kuleana of the counties.

The DOE also is unique in that it is the only state agency with the power to impose a tax.  (Even the Department of Taxation only administers and enforces taxes imposed by laws enacted by the legislature.)  The tax that DOE imposes is called the school impact fee.  We have written about it before.  Basically, developers of housing projects are required to provide land for school facilities depending on the number of kids that the projects are expected to house and the amount of capacity (or lack thereof) in the schools that now serve those projects.  Builders in the same districts that are too small to be expected to provide land are required to cough up some money instead.  In addition, all home builders or buyers must pay a construction cost fee.

BAY CITY, Mich. (WNEM) - Heading to the polls in just over two weeks, voters will decide if they want to keep paying to help one school district maintain and care for its buildings.
Voters in Bay City approved the millage when it first appeared on the ballot in 2018 with 56 percent saying yes and 44 percent no.
The Bay City Public Schools Superintendent, Stephen Bigelow, said he’s hoping for the same outcome this time around.
“Something that is incredibly important for Bay City Public Schools,” Bigelow said about a 10-year renewal of the sinking fund millage.
He said voters renewing the sinking fund millage through 2034 is vital to the school district.
“What a sinking fund does is, it provides districts with money that they can count on to put specifically towards maintenance and care of facilities,” he explained.
If approved, the sinking fund millage will bring in about $1.4 million annually for the upkeep of 13 buildings in the school district.
“Our newest building is 50-years-old and our oldest building, Bay City Central, is over 100-years-old, so they take a lot of care,” Bigelow said. “We certainly want to make sure that we’re keeping all of our buildings up to spec and making sure that things are looking good and working properly.”
 

Flood control measures installed to protect Valley High School and its campus, including the New Kensington-Arnold School District’s football stadium, are overdue for needed maintenance.

A debris basin at the upper end of the campus is 80% full and “minimally functioning,” said Jim Pillsbury, a hydraulic engineer with the Westmoreland Conservation District.

A dozen V-shaped deflectors in Little Pucketa Creek, made from rocks and intended to help the stream keep itself clean as it flows past the school, also need maintenance, he said.

And while the district is working to replace the twin pedestrian bridges over the creek, it also would be helpful if the district avails itself of the opportunity to remove sediment from the channel, which Pillsbury said there would be less of if the basin had been maintained more regularly.

School board member Bob Pallone and other district officials recently met with Pillsbury about the creek. Pallone, who returned to the board following last year’s election, heads the board’s buildings and grounds committee.