GILLETTE — State legislators expect that in upcoming years they’ll need to fork out about $500 million for multiple high schools they say need replacement throughout the state. That number doesn’t take into account any other money needed for school facilities across Wyoming.

“We’ve got a looming issue with schools in our state,” said Rep. Landon Brown, R-Cheyenne, chair of the Select Committee on School Facilities, which met Thursday in Casper. “We’ve got at least three high schools that are sitting out there as it stands right now that need to be replaced. Each high school’s probably going to be $130 (million) to $150 million. Cumulatively, we’re talking about half a billion dollars just for three schools.”

Brown said it’s not realistic to “eat an elephant all in one bite,” but he wanted committee members to think about a few ideas before their next meeting.

Nearly every state’s constitution includes a right to a free, basic education for all children. But what exactly do states owe every student?
That question is far from settled. Case in point: A school district in rural Washington state recently argued before the state’s highest court that a constitutional commitment to education includes adequate funding from the state for school building improvements. The court didn’t quite agree.
This case might seem like a one-off local example of confusing technicalities in school finance. But it’s part of a longstanding and ongoing tradition of using the byzantine American judicial system to shape school funding. And the verdict has implications that could reverberate well beyond Washington state.
The 400-student Wahkiakum school district on the state’s southwestern tip sued the state in 2021, arguing that it owes local school districts in low-wealth areas more financial support to keep their buildings safe and modern. But on Sept. 7, the Washington Supreme Court issued a unanimous verdict that sidestepped the district’s question. The court simply rejected the notion that the state bears sole responsibility for school facilities improvements.
The verdict was disappointing for Tom Ahearne, the lead lawyer representing the school district. He believes judges ignored the plaintiff’s argument that the state bears some responsibility for school facilities funding, not necessarily all of it.
“What all nine of them agreed to do is not answer the question that was asked, answer a different question, and then let the legislature do something,” Ahearne told Education Week.
 

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, Md. (7News) — Leaders in Prince George's County, Maryland commemorated the opening of five new state-of-the-art middle schools built as part of a unique partnership program.

On Monday, county officials, along with state, city, and community leaders celebrated a first-of-its-kind program, allowing Prince George's County Public Schools (PGCPS) to build multiple schools at the same time through a public-private partnership.

These schools, Hyattsville Middle School, Drew-Freeman Middle School, Sonia Sotomayor Middle School at Adelphi, Kenmoor Middle School, Walker Mill Middle School, and the soon-to-be-completed Colin Powell K-8 Academy, were built in less than 3 years and cost roughly $486 million according to officials.

SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio ISD is considering closing 19 schools – the majority of them next year – as part of a "rightsizing" plan put into motion amid declining enrollment for one of the city's biggest districts. 

Fourteen of the schools are elementary facilities, four others are early childhood education centers and the 19th is Lowell Middle School, located on the near west side. The move would represent a massive operational downsizing and consolidation for SAISD, which currently operates 42 elementary schools. 

Park City School District did not comply with environmental laws and local ordinances when it came to contaminated soil discovered behind one of its junior high schools last month, according to findings released by state auditors Monday.
The district also lacked compliance with school construction regulations, auditors found — such as not having the proper local permits.
The findings come as the district looks at an estimated $3 million soil cleanup behind Treasure Mountain Junior High School, which serves eighth and ninth graders. The audit itself began in December 2022 after the district was selected by the state’s Office of the Legislative Auditor General to partake.
Auditors found five areas where it recommended the district make improvements: compliance with environmental regulations; compliance with school construction regulations; helping “bolster” its underperforming student groups; its strategic plans to help it make “informed decisions and set meaningful goals”; and better utilizing its student analytics tool.
The district, along with the Park City Board of Education, “appreciates the opportunity to further study the report and to implement actions that increase compliance, efficiency and accountability,” district spokesperson Heidi Matthews wrote in a statement Monday.
 

During its meeting on Thursday, the Sonoma Valley Unified School District board reviewed three options to address seismic deficiencies in nine buildings at Altimira Middle School, including a full retrofit that would cost an estimated $9.3 million.
“The issue is not an emergency,” said Josh Jackson said, a senior associate who presented the options for the consulting firm Perkins Eastman. “The buildings are not at risk of imminent collapse, but there is some urgency to this.”
While preparing the school district’s Facilities Master Plan, Perkins Eastman stated in January 2023 that several of Altimira’s buildings do not meet earthquake safety standards. The district is advised to either retrofit or demolish the buildings.
“It could be a high priority for the district to address in the coming years. I don’t think actions need to be taken this week, but this is the next thing the district should spend capital investments on,” Jackson said.
Trustee Celeste Winders said that it was a relief to hear that the buildings are safe right now, but that the situation is serious.
 

WOODSTOCK — Fundraising efforts for a new Woodstock Union Middle and High School building have crested the $3 million mark, according to Mountain Views Supervisory Union officials.
Voters in the supervisory union — which includes the towns of Woodstock, Barnard, Bridgewater, Pomfret, Reading, Killington and Plymouth — will be asked in March 2024 to approve an $85 million bond to fund construction of the new building, said Ben Ford, the School Board’s vice chairman.
Meanwhile, the supervisory union’s buildings and grounds crew is working overtime to brace the school’s existing 60-year-old structure for the upcoming heating season.
Last March, the supervisory union’s voters gave approval to replace the aging steam system with a $1.3 million hot water heating alternative. The high school portion of the building weathered “multiple failures” last winter in its steam heating system, said Joe Rigoli, buildings and grounds director.
The 2021-2022 school year saw upwards of $150,000 in heating and cooling repairs, Rigoli said.
 

The first weeks of the new school year in D.C. have brought reunions, excitement — and complaints of leaks, rodents, and broken elevators and air conditioners.
As temperatures soared during a stretch of sweltering heat last week, parents at Whittier Elementary School in Northwest Washington complained of a lack of air conditioning and wrote on social media: “We can’t breathe!”
Temperatures that pushed HVAC systems across the city past their limits have since cooled, but other issues — including out-of-service elevators and faulty public address systems — continue to vex teachers, students and their families.
The problems span the city. Among the more than 80 outstanding work orders are requests for pest control at Deal Middle School in Northwest and to repair leaks on the Langdon Education Campus in Northeast, according to a city-run database of repair needs. The ongoing problems continue to frustrate families and city leaders, who had hoped these issues would have been resolved by the first day of school.
 

YORKVILLE – Yorkville School District Y115 will replace the chillers at two school buildings next spring at a total cost of slightly more than $1 million.
Director of Facility Operations Heather DiVerde said the 300-ton air-conditioning unit at Yorkville Middle School is failing and needs to be replaced. The new chiller will cost $589,763, DiVerde said.
The Yorkville School Board reviewed plans for purchasing the new unit at a committee-level meeting on Sept. 11 and is expected to give final approval for the purchase at its Sept. 25 meeting.
Meanwhile, plans already have been approved for a new 215-ton chiller to replace the aging unit at Grande Reserve Elementary School, at a cost of $473,600.
The money for the YMS and Grande Reserve chillers will come from different sources.
 

CHEYENNE — An inability to clearly defend which schools should be prioritized for state funding has Wyoming lawmakers hesitant to forward the School Facilities Commission’s budget to the chamber floor.

The SFC has two remediation schedules. One is the condition schedule, which lists the physical quality scores of the buildings, and the other is the capacity schedule, which is related to the maximum number of students in a classroom.The condition schedule is reflected by both the facility condition score, which covers the individual components of the facility, and the facility index score, which scores the building as a whole.

Members of the Legislature’s Select Committee on School Facilities, during their meeting Thursday in Casper, expressed concern over not having a consistently prioritized list of school construction needs so that they could explain the budgeting process on the chamber floor. Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, explained that the FCI score failed to address the urgency levels of any specific issue within a school.

On hot days, fourth-grader Adriana Salas has observed that when the sun beats down on the pavement in her schoolyard it “turns foggy.” There are also days where the slide burns the back of her legs if she is wearing shorts or the monkey bars are too hot to touch. Salas, who attends Roosevelt Elementary School in San Leandro, California, is not alone in feeling the effects of heat on her schoolyard. Across the country, climbing temperatures have led schools to cancel classes and outdoor activities to protect students from the harmful effects of the heat.

This story also appeared in Mind/Shift
Jenny Seydel, an environmental educator and founder of Green Schools National Network, encourages teachers to leverage students’ observations about their schools to make learning come alive. According to Seydel, when teachers use the school grounds as a way to learn about social issues, they’re using their school as a three-dimensional textbook. For example, schools’ energy and water conservation, architecture and lunches are rich with potential for project-based learning. “We can learn from a textbook. We can memorize concepts. We can use formulas, but we don’t incorporate that learning until it is real,” said Seydel.
Against the backdrop of climate change, Roosevelt Elementary School teachers turned to their schoolyards as a way to apply lessons about rising temperatures to the real world. While these issues can seem overwhelming to young students, exploring them within the context of their school can not only make lessons stick, but also encourage students’ sense of civic agency. 
 

LAHAINA, Hawaii – On a hot morning in Lahaina a few weeks after the wildfires, some 500 parents, teachers and students gathered under an outdoor tent, spilling onto the lawn.
Keith Hayashi — superintendent for Hawaii public schools — faced a tough crowd as he tried to reassure parents that the Department of Education (DOE) will make the right calls when it comes to reopening schools.
"I can't imagine what it's like to be in your shoes," he responded to a mother who was pleading to re-open schools in Lahaina. "But know that we will do our best in moving forward to make those decisions to support your students, to support you, and this Lahaina community."
Many kids on Maui missed out on an important ritual this year – going back to school. It's another consequence of the wildfire that destroyed or damaged many homes and buildings, including Lahaina's public schools.
Hayashi hears a lot of concern and anger from parents. "My senior athlete got robbed his freshman year, because of COVID. He got robbed half his sophomore year, because of COVID protocols," says Anela Gordon, whose son is a senior and a football player at Lahainaluna High School. "Now getting robbed his senior year? How fair is that?"
 

HAMILTON COUNTY, Tenn. — Last month, a task force revealed its specific recommendations designed to improve Hamilton County Schools.
But some school board members raised concerns at a meeting on Thursday and said that these recommendations are just the beginning of a larger conversation.
It can be a big pill to swallow when talking about closing the schools some of your children attend.
"They might not get to do fun stuff because there's too many kids," says Finn, an Alpine Crest student.
What will the Hamilton County Schools district look like in the year 2030?
That's a question Hamilton County leaders want to answer with new recommendations aimed at saving taxpayer dollars and improving the educational experience for students.
"I'm the president of the PTA at Alpine Crest. What I do, we couldn't do at a school that large," says Laura Ellinor.
Alpine Crest Elementary is one of 3 Hamilton County elementary schools that the task force recommended be consolidated into one big school at Dupont Elementary.
"It's not good for the teachers. It's not good for the students. It's not good for the parents sitting in a car line with 1,000 other families," says Ellinor.
Some parents calling the new proposal a ‘mega school.’
 

Cracked walls, mold, sewage backups, even the risk of electric shock. That's what students at Druid Hills High School outside Atlanta faced for years — and they wanted the world to see.  
Chronic under-investment left school buildings and facilities there in disrepair. The problem got national attention after a video the students posted to social media went viral.  
In the video, one student shows walls peeling from water damage. Another points to holes in the ceiling. One shows a sign warning students not to touch a metal pole in a classroom because of the risk of electrocution.  
"This isn't really normal," said Harley Martz, a senior at Druid Hills who helped produce the video as a sophomore in 2022. "The bottom floor of our main building flooded … [students] had to relocate … and it was just very claustrophobic. I mean, those kids, I don't think they had class that week. I mean, it threw off just everyone's schedule."  
As a new academic year begins, many students, like Martz, face barriers from the very walls of their school buildings, rather than their teachers or textbooks. A CBS News analysis of federal data found school districts with more Black students were able to invest far less money in buildings than majority-White districts — and often-unequal funding practices by state governments can make the problem worse.  
7 miles apart, a world of difference   
Druid Hills High is part of DeKalb County Public Schools, a district where CBS News found one of the starkest examples of unequal school building investment. Between 2015 and 2020, the DeKalb County School District invested about $961 in its buildings for each student enrolled.
Jack Cole, now a senior at Druid Hills, said the impact of under-investment was clear to the students. 
"It's like there's no drive to want to be there and learn if I don't want to be in school in the first place," said Cole. 
But while their school building is crumbling, others nearby are new, modern and innovative.
 

Fulton County Schools will use sales tax funding for a $9.3 million renovation project at Dunwoody Springs Elementary School.
A total contract of $9.765 million, which includes $465,000 in a project contingency fund held by the school district, is on the Fulton County Board of Education’s consent agenda for its Sept. 21 meeting.
F. .H. Paschen, S.N. Nielsen & Associates LLC of Chicago, with regional offices in Atlanta and Savannah, will be awarded the contract when it is formally approved, according to the district’s Chief Operations Officer Noel Maloof.
The renovation will include new luxury vinyl tile flooring in the corridors and common areas, ceiling replacements, new fire sprinklers, lighting in the corridors and common areas. replacement of the emergency generator, HVAC modifications, and upgrades to portions of the existing building.
 

JERSEY SHORE — Over $6 million — possibly up to $9 million — was the estimated cost for needed repairs and maintenance on some district buildings, the Jersey Shore Area School board heard last month. This month, they want that amount scaled back considerably to fit into available capital projects funds, which are about $1 million.
Board member Wayne Kinley asked Superintendent Dr. Brian Ulmer to meet with Mark Wall, director of maintenance, buildings and grounds, to decide the most critical needs.
“We will take the list we have prioritized and whittle it down to that $1 million amount and come back with our recommendation for the whole board to look at and make decisions of where we go from there,” said Ulmer.
The pushback at last month’s meeting on the possibility of the board floating a bond to finance the estimated cost of all the maintenance and repairs came from board members and the public.
A few members of the public referred to the cost of keeping the buildings open in addressing the board.
 

HAMLET — The Richmond County Schools Board of Education approved a new use agreement for organizations seeking to use school facilities and fields.

Use of the high school gym or athletic fields will be a flat fee of $200, different from a previously posed fee of a $100 hourly rate at the August Board meeting. There is also a $100 maintenance fee for all outdoor facilities.

There is a $100 flat rate for middle school facilities, down from a previously proposed $75 hourly rate.

Superintendent Dr. Joe Ferrell outlined why they decided to revisit and change the existing policy after consulting with their finance department.

“What we realized was that $60 was not covering what we actually had to pay to these custodians and SROS and others,” Ferrell said. “We were having to cover a lot of the costs.”

At their August meeting, overwhelming feedback from the board members regarding the initial policy indicated that a flat fee was more appropriate than an hourly fee. Ferrell said their initial policy may have priced out some organizations and “none of the board members” wanted to do that.

Plymouth Community Schools is using the sun to power some of its school buildings.
It’s not the first district to use solar panels but district leaders in Plymouth are showing WSBT22 how they are using the sun to save money.
Solar Powered Schools
At Riverside Intermediate in Plymouth, teachers in every classroom are using the sun to light their classrooms.
Not because the sun is shining through the window, but because the sun is helping power the school building and turn the lightbulbs on.
Plymouth Community Schools is powering some of its classrooms, in part, from solar panels.
On sunny days, solar arrays outside Riverside Intermediate and Washington Discovery Academy are soaking up the sun and converting it into energy.
 

As hundreds of adults and children toured the airy new Union Middle School in Sandy last week, a young student’s voice rose above the chatter.
“This school is too big,” she said. “I miss the old one.”
The original Union Middle School was 55 years old and deteriorating, one of many aging buildings located in the Canyons School District when it was created in 2009. Split off from the Jordan District, Canyons estimated that it had inherited $650 million in deferred maintenance on its buildings.
In Midvale, then-Mayor JoAnn Seghini had initially been reluctant, but she became a convert to the idea of Canyons, the state’s first new school district in nearly a century. And since 2010, Midvale Elementary and Midvale Middle have been rebuilt, along with other schools, including Midvalley Elementary, Peruvian Park and Hillcrest High.
A facilities assessment had shown the district’s maintenance needs were so great it was cheaper to rebuild many schools than to make repairs.
As the latest rebuild, the new Union Middle boasts 230,000 square feet, making it 35,000 square feet — just shy of an acre — larger than its predecessor. The adjacent former school was demolished this summer.
 

Kansas school districts are warning Evergy’s plan to raise electric rates will saddle them with painful higher costs that harm their ability to recruit and retain teachers. Wichita Public Schools USD 259, the state’s largest district, filed documents with the Kansas Corporation Commission decrying the proposed increases and alleging they could lead to larger class sizes. De Soto USD 232 told The Star that its projected additional electric costs could pay for three or four teachers.
Wichita and De Soto – along with the Shawnee Mission, Olathe and Blue Valley districts – have intervened in the rate case before the KCC, the regulatory agency that will decide whether to allow Evergy to raise electric rates. The company has requested a 25% increase in the revenue it collects from educational customers in its Kansas central region and a roughly 2% net increase among all customers in its Kansas metro region. “The largest area of operating expenditures is personnel, so a likely consequence would be the inability to add and retain teachers and other school staff,” Wichita Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Susan Willis said in written testimony last month. “This would lead to increasingly larger class sizes and continued reduction of student services.”