The Lakeside Union School District encourages the community to join in on the celebration as it “flips the switch” on its districtwide comprehensive Energy Infrastructure Modernization Program, encompassing energy efficiency improvements and new solar structures.

Marking a major milestone in the program and especially ringing in the new year, the event will take place at the District Office on Jan. 18 at 3 p.m.

“We’re incredibly proud to share this accomplishment with the entire Lakeside community,” said Board President Andrew Hayes. “This program ushers in a new era of energy resilience for our district. It will provide long-lasting benefits for our students and staff in the classroom and save general fund costs significantly, ensuring a secure future for the entire district.”

Launched in 2021, the program is a comprehensive effort to modernize antiquated infrastructure in the areas of HVAC, roofing, lighting, and other efficiency improvements while converting to renewable energy sources. The program allows the district to leverage various grants, incentives, and other one-time funding from state and federal programs to alleviate capital budget pressure and meet state energy mandates. 

The Deputy Mayor of Education (DME) has reached the point in their Boundary and Student Assignment Study where recommendations are being made that impact specific schools. This is part of a reexamination of feeder patterns and school boundaries required by DC law every ten years. The last boundary study took place in 2013.

Changes proposed in November could have impacted most Hill schools, with the biggest changes at Brent, Maury, Miner, Payne as well as the Cluster Schools (Peabody, Watkins and Stuart Hobson).

But on Dec. 20, DME and the Advisory Committee announced that the bulk of those recommendations were off the table, including boundary changes affecting Brent, the Cluster Schools and Payne. However, probably the most contentious idea remains under consideration. That’s a proposal to recommend that Miner and Maury elementaries be paired into a single elementary school located in two different buildings.

After the Maui wildfires displaced over 1,000 students and 100 Department of Education employees, state and school leaders are searching for solutions to help Lahaina schools recover and protect other Hawaii schools from future disasters.

But budget restraints and unfunded legislative priorities may make it more difficult for DOE to complete the repairs and updates needed to keep students safe while on campus.

After DOE faced more than $40 million in a budget shortfall last year, the department requested roughly $198 million in supplemental funds for the upcoming 2025 fiscal year. The governor’s proposed budget, released last month, fell short of the department’s request by over $86 million.

For over 15 years, dogged advocates for improving school infrastructure have been urging the Department of Education (ED), as well as members of Congress, to create a national hub for school facility information that would help school districts, states and other policymakers make better decisions about our K-12 schools. Indeed, when IWBI President and CEO Rachel Hodgdon and I worked together at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in the late 2000s, we proposed legislation that would fund such an idea. In the meantime without such a federal entity in place over the past decade, it’s been groups like IWBI, USGBC, the 21st Century School Fund and others that have stepped in and supported invaluable efforts to better understand the often dismal condition of our nation’s school facilities, evidenced most recently by the 2021 State of Our Schools report, a vital resource that found a staggering $85 billion annual investment gap in K-12 school infrastructure.

NEW HAVEN — With both a projected decrease in enrollment and aging schools, New Haven officials have announced that they are beginning the process of evaluating school closures.
Across the region, municipal leaders are reckoning with how to navigate keeping enough public school classroom space for their needs in well-maintained buildings amid a projected decrease in public school enrollment and ballooning construction costs.

The Conway Board of Education approved the 2024 Facilities Master Plan during its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday.

The facilities division of the Arkansas Department of Education Division of Elementary and Secondary Education requires all school districts across Arkansas to submit a master plan every other year.

The plan includes a list of the district’s buildings, the dates they were built, the square-footage of each and enrollment projections. The plan also includes a maintenance, renovation and repair schedule as well as a list of any possible future project where state funding could be requested.

Over the past year, the Pine City School District has been diligently addressing critical challenges facing facilities and programs. It’s been almost two decades since the school has undertaken any significant building projects including maintenance. Now, after nine months of thorough examination, it’s evident that the school needs your support. 

Areas of decline and need

The 1962 addition to the elementary school is sinking, causing substantial damage to the walls, floors, and plumbing. This affects 10 classrooms, the kitchen, the cafeteria, and restrooms. And there are large areas of roofing, wall panels, and code issues needing to be addressed in all buildings.

 The district has an annual budget of nearly $300,000 for general repairs, but when a roofing project is nearly $1,000,000 there is a considerable funding gap. In fact, the growing number of projects and those anticipated over the next 5 years are estimated to cost over $12.5 million for necessary building repairs. To keep pace with building needs and cover the costs of substantial projects like roofing and wall repairs, the school needs your help.

The state today released tools to help assure the safety of public school buildings throughout Delaware.

Senate Substitute 1 for Senate Bill SB-270 (SS1 for SB270) directed the Delaware Department of Education (DOE) to establish an evaluation and assessment system to determine whether a school facility is in good repair.  The facility assessment tool will help school districts review and assess conditions in a standardized way.  The assessments will help identify areas in need of attention, so school facilities are clean, safe, and functional for staff and students. As required by SS1 for SB270, DOE worked with experts in school facilities maintenance, the Delaware Division of Public Health (DPH), district superintendents, the Delaware State Education Association, and the Delaware Association of School Administrators.  Stakeholder conversations have confirmed that the tool will help schools assess areas of concern and develop the plan to address concerns required by SS1 for SB270.

The facility assessment tool will be provided to districts to begin assessments, which they are required to provide in May each year, along with a board-approved repair and maintenance plan to the state.  The assessment tool allows for basic school information, including address and building size, to be confirmed or updated so DOE information is complete and accurate.  The assessment tool provides a guide of areas and conditions to be assessed to help determine if specific areas of a facility are in good repair.  Additional parts of the assessment help districts evaluate building system age and useful life and provide insight into modernization efforts at each school.

Helena Public Schools will consider an array of options, including the closing of schools, to help cope with the maintenance backlog throughout the district, the schools’ superintendent said. 

The district has about $8.3 million budgeted to spend on its buildings during the current school year, while the maintenance updates are expected to cost close to $90 million, Superintendent Rex Weltz recently told Montana Free Press.

Because the district cannot afford to update every building’s needs at the same time, it hired SMA Architecture and Design to help develop a plan that will frame the options the district can take to approach the budget shortfall, including the possible closure of some buildings.  

Weltz, who took on the position in 2021, explained that the plan will help the district better strategize how it moves forward.  

In a 4-3 board vote that ended a nearly year-long, contentious process, the Salt Lake City School District will permanently close four elementary schools after this academic year.

Two east-side schools, Hawthorne and M. Lynn Bennion, and two west-side schools, Mary W. Jackson and Riley, will be closed. Many parents at the Jan. 9 board meeting were concerned and uncertain about what would happen next.

After the vote, one person booed the board members as people walked out West High School’s auditorium. Other community members looked emotional.

The impacts will be felt district-wide.

Current Hawthorne students will be assigned to Emerson or Whittier elementaries. Mary W. Jackson will be split between Backman, Rose Park and Washington elementaries. Bennion students will go to either Liberty, Emerson, Wasatch or Uintah elementaries. And Riley families will be assigned to Edison, Mountain View, Parkview or Franklin elementaries.

Bancroft Elementary in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Northwest DC is carving a new path to make the street in front of the school safe for students and closed to traffic during arrival and departure times. Here’s how we made this happen and what we learned. Every neighborhood school with dangerous streets out front should consider it.

A popular school both in the neighborhood and among Spanish language-dominant students from outside the neighborhood, enrollment has risen now to 772 from just 473 a decade ago. There’s something about the socioeconomic mix of the dual language school that parents and students love. They want to keep it as it has been – a gem. So when our call to action went out, both young parents and older community residents responded, donating hours of volunteer time to “man the barricades” and make the street safe.

The recovery of Maui schools and students and expansion of fire prevention efforts on campuses statewide will be a top priority for the 2024 legislative session that begins next week.

Lawmakers also will grapple with educational problems carried over from previous years such as improving school transportation, repairing aging school facilities and reversing students’ learning loss from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rep. Amy Perruso said she’s worried about the Legislature’s ability to adequately fund the efforts as the state prepares to spend approximately $500 million on helping Maui rebound from devastating Aug. 8 fires.

“If we were going to have money adequately funding public education, it should have happened last session,” Perruso said, pointing to the state’s $2 billion budget surplus in 2023.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Monday announced a $2 billion investment in public schools over the next 10 years, a large contribution aimed at shoring up dilapidated infrastructure at schools across the state.  Little said the investment, which he announced in his State of the State address, provides property tax relief that would also provide school  districts with the ability to repair and replace their school buildings, citing reporting from the Idaho Statesman and ProPublica.  Local school districts have long struggled to fix their dilapidated, aging school buildings, in part because of the high two-thirds voter approval  threshold that school bonds require.  Schools face leaking roofs, collapsing ceilings from water damage and failing plumbing, the investigation from the Statesman and ProPublica found. “We’ve all seen the pictures and videos of some Idaho schools that are neglected — crumbling, leaking, falling apart,” Little said. “In one school  I visited, raw sewage is seeping into a space under the cafeteria. Folks, we can do better.” “As elected leaders, it is not just our constitutional obligation but our moral obligation as well to prioritize and strengthen public schools,” Little added.

Anne Forrester began feeling ill during her first year of teaching, in 2016. The symptoms steadily worsened as she spent more time in her decades-old school building.

“I was getting sick all the time, including chronic respiratory and asthma symptoms,” says Forrester, who worked in Thomas C. Boushall Middle School, in Richmond, Va., at the time. “But I was new and didn’t think too much about it.”

There were, however, whispers in the building about what was really triggering these symptoms—which were also affecting many of Forrester’s colleagues and students.

It turned out that many buildings across the district were becoming breeding grounds for mold.

By 2022, says Forrester, “you could see it everywhere.” Mold was clearly visible in classrooms, hallways, and offices, covering parts of the ceiling floors, lockers, and chairs.

Mold is just one of the many pollutants that degrade indoor air quality (IAQ) in many school buildings. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly half of the educators and students working and learning in school buildings are breathing air polluted by bacteria, chemicals, viruses, and pesticides.

When hot weather hits, conditions become even more dangerous. Long before the end of the school year, temperatures— fueled by climate change—are reaching 90 degrees, creating stifling, often unbearable learning and working conditions.

“When you have breathing issues or it’s too hot or too cold or too humid, you will not be productive,” says Kristen Record, a high school physics teacher in Stratford, Conn. “It is extremely hard to concentrate for lengthy periods of time.”

The Public School System has secured a $4.99-million grant it will get over five years through the Supporting America’s School Infrastructure program, according to Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (D-MP) over the weekend.

Sablan disclosed in his e-kilili newsletter that this funding, as the U.S. Department of Education announced on Thursday, is rooted in the concept of Minetgot, the Chamorro term for resilience, and focuses on three objectives: the creation of a comprehensive 10-year school facilities master plan, transitioning to a cloud-based maintenance system, and implementing a maintenance training program for district staff.

Sablan said the facilities master plan will address reducing emergency repair costs, ensuring modern safety standards, and increasing sustainability.

Urban heat islands, made worse by climate change, can push up temperatures and bring on more air pollution in larger cities. Now, a Milwaukee project is giving public schools resources to remove a key source of the heat-trapping effect.

Dozens of public schools in Milwaukee are working with the nonprofit Reflo on swapping out playground asphalt for green infrastructure, including more trees and native plants.

Lisa Neeb, manager of the Green and Healthy Schools Program Manager for Reflo, cited environmental benefits such as reduced stormwater runoff, and giving students more refuge on hot days.

“There’s often not very many areas of shade, if any, on these urban schoolyards,” Neeb pointed out. “There’s not a lot of things to naturally do.”

The Arizona Department of Administration (ADOA) is getting nearly $5 million from the U.S. Department of Education.

The funds come from one of eight grants being disbursed under the federal government’s Supporting America’s School Infrastructure (SASI) program.

The goal is to help districts in various states to improve their school facilities.  

ADOA received endorsements from the Legislature, Governor’s Office, school districts and statewide education organizations to get the grant.

A department spokesperson said the money will help modernize Arizona’s Building Inventory Database so the state can more quickly address preventative-maintenance issues and new-school construction.

SACRAMENTO—On Thursday, January 4, the United States Department of Education announced that the California Department of Education (CDE) is among the recipients of the Supporting America’s School Infrastructure (SASI) Grant Program. Through a SASI Grant, CDE will receive $4.99 million toward improving school facilities in small school districts across California.

“I am pleased that we have been able to secure this federal support for our rural districts. We know how important school facilities are in providing a safe and healthy environment for our students. We must make sure that safe, healthy, and up-to-date school facilities are available to children in every community,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. “Every student should be learning in an optimal environment that supports them to be healthy, safe, engaged, and challenged.”

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Virginia is getting $5 million in federal funding to help address infrastructure at schools, U.S. Education Sec. Miguel Cardona announced Thursday during a visit to Victory Elementary.
"All too often schools are the last places that get renovated or air handling systems or air conditioners are the first things to get cut in budgets," Cardona told reporters during his visit. "You know what? That's not acceptable."
Virginia is one of eight states to receive the funding through the Supporting America's School Infrastructure program in the Dept. of Education.
The funding will let schools assess infrastructure, hire staff and develop infrastructure systems, among other things.
While Virginia is receiving the funding, Cardona acknowledged it's just a drop in the bucket.
"It's five million more than it was ever done at the Dept. of Education," he said. "What we're doing is recognizing that infrastructure needs to be part of the conversation when we're talking about student achievement, student equity."
 

The Biden-Harris Administration announced eight new grant awards today totaling more than $37 million over five years under the Supporting America’s School Infrastructure (SASI) program and one new grant for $10 million over five years under the National Center on School Infrastructure (NCSI) program. This $47 million investment, issued by the U.S. Department of Education (Department), bolsters the capacity of states to support school districts in improving school facilities with the goal of more equitable access to healthy, sustainable, and modern learning environments for all students. U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona will highlight this announcement during a visit to Virginia today with Ranking Member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, and U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.