During a School Safety Advisory Commission meeting on Tuesday, Alabama's State Fire Marshal, Scott Pilgreen, drew attention to a lack of basic safety system maintenance in schools. The advisory commission provides recommendations to the Alabama legislature regarding school security.
Maintainance of safety measures such as door locks and fire systems were issues discussed among the group.
"I'm not trying to indict anybody in these schools, but you talk to the leadership of the school you get a mixed bag. Some of them are extremely apologetic and want to get on it quickly to get it fixed. A lot, 'we don't have the money,' and they want to point to the superintendent's office. When that happens, my people call me," said Pilgreen.
 

LORAIN — As Lorain Schools’ “new” buildings start to age, the district is looking at a $35 million price tag over the next five years to keep the facilities in shape. 

During a brief presentation at Monday’s Board of Education meeting, Director of Communications and Marketing Tony Dimacchia gave an overview of the costs and projects Lorain Schools will need to complete to maintain its buildings. Those projects range from resurfacing parking lots to replacing ceiling tiles and gym floors. It also includes security upgrades like kick-plate lockdown devices for classrooms and a mass emergency notification system. 

Lorain Schools is also looking at purchasing the former health department building at 1144 W. Erie Ave. for about $200,000. The building would need about $909,000 in renovations and a 2,000-square-foot addition costing about $629,000 to meet the district’s needs. If the purchase moves forward, Lorain Schools would look to relocate its administrative offices to the former health building, while using the office space at the high school to expand career tech programming. 

To build a new building to meet the district's needs would cost an estimated $2.5 million, Dimacchia said. 

“We certainly don’t want to increase the costs of the district, but it is critical for us to maintain safe and healthy facilities,” Dimacchia said.

PEMBERVILLE – Eastwood Local Schools has started to address the future of its middle school and high school.

At its Nov. 20 meeting, the board of education approved a resolution of intent to participate in the Expedited Local Partnership Program with the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission.

Superintendent Brent Welker said the district was starting a fact-finding process to fully understand the scope and costs associated with new construction or renovation of the two schools.

“So we will be ready if our number is called,” he said Monday.

He said the district sent a letter of interest to OFCC in 2021, but at that time was far down the list for funding. The district was bumped up in the last couple months due to completion of the elementary school portion of its master facilities plan.

Functionality and maintenance have become issues at both the middle and high schools, Welker said.

The high school was built in 1960 and added onto in 2000.

“We’ve kept it in pretty good shape,” he said. But finding replacement parts for the mechanical systems “is a big deal.”

The middle school was built in 1970.

There has been some interest in getting the middle school and high school under one roof but providing a 21st-century learning environment is a priority, Welker said.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — An entire county school system in coal-producing West Virginia is going solar, representing what a developer and U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin’s office touted on Wednesday as the biggest-ever single demonstration of sun-powered renewable electricity in Appalachian public schools.

The agreement between Wayne County Schools and West Virginian solar installer and developer Solar Holler builds on historic investments in coal communities made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act, which Democratic Sen. Manchin had a major role in shaping as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Manchin, who announced this month that he wouldn’t run for reelection in the deep-red state, citing an increasingly polarized political system, was quick Wednesday to tout U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2022 landmark climate, health and tax law, which placed special emphasis on creating new clean energy jobs.

“Let’s be clear — this investment in Wayne County is a direct result of the Inflation Reduction Act,” he said in a written statement. “This type of investment in rural America to create jobs, make our country more energy secure and lower electric costs is exactly what the IRA was designed to do.”

As California’s fund to fix crumbling schools dwindles to nothing, lawmakers are negotiating behind the scenes to craft a ballot measure that would be the state’s largest school construction bond in decades.

But some beleaguered school superintendents say the money will not be nearly enough to fix all the dry rot, leaky roofs and broken air conditioners in the state’s thousands of school buildings. And it won’t change a system that they say favors wealthy, urban, left-leaning areas that can easily pass local bond measures to make needed repairs.

“The big question is, why can’t our kids have school buildings that are safe and as nice as other kids’ schools, just a few miles away?” said Helio Brasil, superintendent of Keyes Union School District, a rural TK-8 district in a low-income area south of Modesto. “This school is in such bad shape it can feel like a jail. … I’m speaking up about this because I feel the system needs to be fixed. I don’t want the next generation of students to have to experience this.”

Boston school officials are on the “final mile” of plotting out how to address decades of neglect and disinvestment in school facilities, district officials announced.

“After many decades of the firm decision making, shifting our physical footprint will be disruptive,” said Superintendent Mary Skipper ahead of a presentation on the facilities plan at the Nov. 15 School Committee meeting. “In some cases difficult. Tools we’ve developed over the last 18 months will enable greater transparency, collaboration with our communities to understand how and why certain decisions are made.”

With about half of facilities built before WWII and some around 100 years old, Skipper said, the project is an “ambitious” and unprecedented undertaking for the district but necessary to provide students “fully inclusive, high quality education.”

COLUMBIA — Many thousands of students who studied in the now-demolished Wando High School buildings in Mount Pleasant spent part of their days walking from class to class, past banks of lockers in their school’s hallways.

But the image of lockers in American school life — of teenagers letting gym clothes rot in them, gossiping and perhaps getting shoved into them — is slowly disappearing. The students who now attend Lucy Beckham High, opened on the old Wando’s grounds in 2020, don’t have that space to store their books or meet up with friends between periods.

That design choice is part of what school architects say is a trend: district officials prefer to leave banks of hallway lockers out of newly built campuses. 

“Maybe 20 years ago, the expectation was that you would put lockers in every single school that you designed,” said Ben Thompson, K-12 studio director at McMillan Pazdan Smith, the South Carolina architecture firm that designed Lucy Beckham and other schools. “Now, it’s rare that you include them in buildings.” 

All 4,000 schools across the country are to have solar panels installed to reduce energy costs and their carbon footprint, Education Minister Norma Foley has announced.

Schools in some counties have been invited to participate in the first phase of the Solar for Schools Scheme, to be funded by the Government’s Climate Action Fund.

The first phase will open for applications on November 30 while it is intended that all eligible schools across the country will have the opportunity to apply to the scheme by the end of 2024.

The scheme aims to assist schools in reducing their energy costs and their carbon footprint as part of the response to meeting the 2030 and 2050 Climate Action Plan targets for the school sector.

The Huntingdon Area School District is launching a multi-million-dollar energy efficiency and cost reduction project.
School board members took several major steps to put the work into motion at their monthly meeting Monday, including approving an almost $10 million bond issue to pay for the energy service company (ESCO) contract.
Representatives of the school district’s bond counsel and financial advisers and consultants spoke to school directors before they voted to take on the huge debt.
Melissa Hughes of PFM Financial Advisors reviewed the school district’s existing debt portfolio and reports showing how much impact debt services have on the HASD budget.
She said her firm’s projections showed a relatively level debt service when the amount needed to finance the ESCO project is included.
Chris Hoffert of Stifel, a brokerage and investment banking firm, also provided a market update before directors made their final decision.
“Long-term interest rates are favorable right now with recent steady improvement,” Hoffert reported.
He noted over the past three weeks rates have come down slightly, and that’s great news for the school district to lock in interest rates on the bonds in early December.
“There’s a lot less volatility than even a month ago. Things are looking good and we’re optimistic we can get the best rates for you that we possibly can,” Hoffert said.
 

A U.S. jury has ordered Bayer's Monsanto to pay $165 million to employees of a school northeast of Seattle who claimed chemicals made by the company called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, leaked from light fixtures and got them sick.
The Washington state court jury found the company liable for selling products containing PCBs used in the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington, that were not safe, and did not include adequate warnings. The award included nearly $50 million in compensatory damages, and $115 million in punitive damages.
The verdict in favor of six teachers and a custodian who said exposure to the PCBs gave them cancer, brain injuries and other issues marks the latest trial loss for the company, which is now facing nearly $870 million in verdicts from alleged PCBs exposure at the Sky Valley center, said an attorney for the plaintiffs.
The company is appealing those verdicts.
Monsanto said in a statement that it will contest Monday's verdict, and that blood, air and other tests show the school employees were not exposed to unsafe levels of PCBs.
 

AIRWAY HEIGHTS, Wash. — The Cheney School District (CSD) serves more than 5,000 students in Airway Heights, Cheney and the West Plains. 

“Those three distinct communities are experiencing a lot of growth, and have been pretty steadily for quite a while,” CSD parent Sonny Weathers said.

Weathers serves as co-chair on CSD's Long Range Facilities Planning Committee. The committee formed in December 2022 to bring solutions to the local school board on how to accommodate future growth in the area.

Beginning around January or February 2024, the Guam Department of Education will be taking a look at restructuring the number of public schools on the island, as the current capacity far exceeds the student enrollment that needs to be serviced, according to GDOE Superintendent Kenneth Erik Swanson.

"It'll be a very public process, and that's going to mean a couple (of) schools or buildings will close," Swanson said, acknowledging that closures are usually an emotional issue for some people, but GDOE is trying to ensure that it can adequately maintain facilities. 

"Our objective is to reduce the load in terms of financial load of what needs to be maintained, so we can do a better job, at the same time, provide adequate service to our whole community," the superintendent said. 

BRIDGEPORT — Bridgeport Public Schools plans to tap nearly $2 million in federal COVID-related aid to replace the aging air conditioning and heating system at James J. Curiale School. 
The new HVAC system will be installed over the summer and is expected to serve the K-8 school in the city’s West End for at least for the next two decades, according to Jorge Garcia, a district official who oversees school facilities. 
In a recent school board meeting, Garcia said the existing air conditioning system at Curiale has become so outdated that maintenance officials have struggled to locate and purchase new parts to replace damaged ones.  
 

A vacant field right next to the current Deer Park Elementary School in Baltimore County will transform into Maryland’s first net-zero elementary school by 2025.

County and state leaders joined Deer Park students and staff to break ground on the $70.6-million-dollar project on Monday morning, wearing white and yellow construction hats to mark the occasion.

Superintendent Myriam Rogers said the new school will serve as a leading example for state environmental efforts, by producing and saving as much – or more – energy than it uses each year.

“You will see solar paneling on the roof, geothermal heating in the boiler room, smart technology that monitors when lights are on and off and when electric plugs can be used,” Rogers said. “I’m especially interested in seeing the school's light tubes, which will be used to import natural sunlight to use in classrooms instead of artificial lighting.”

Three other net-zero schools exist in Maryland. Two serve kindergarten through eighth grade students in Baltimore City. Wilde Lake Middle School in Howard County became the first net-zero school constructed in the state in 2017.

The new Deer Park school will also alleviate enrollment pressures in a rapidly-growing community, Rogers said.

GREENWICH — Hamilton Avenue School is heated and cooled with a geothermal system — at least, it should be.
“The system that's there failed across the board,” Greenwich Public Schools facilities director Dan Watson told the Board of Estimate and Taxation budget committee on Nov. 8. “We have experts telling us that it wasn't installed right, it wasn't operated right, it wasn't probably designed right.”
The Board of Education needs to replace the bad geothermal system and it is seeking $3.2 million to do so. Watson and other schools officials are also asking that the town not use geothermal at Hamilton Avenue or at other schools in the future, primarily because current staff are not well versed in these systems.
 

When Francis Galicia, a student in Rockland County, N.Y., arrives at their high school for class each morning, they cannot help but notice that something vital is missing.
“We don’t have access to running water,” Francis said, referring to the lack of drinkable water from fountains.
Francis' high school is part of the East Ramapo Central School District, which shut off many drinking water fountains in 2016 after lead was detected. The problem was traced to the school's water fixtures. Francis was in fourth grade at the time, but seven years later the water fountains in question remain inoperable.
The district says the issue is being addressed and that they are working to replace water fountains. In the interim, the students are being provided with bottled water on a daily basis.
But Francis says the water coolers sometimes run out as the temperature rises.
“They don't acknowledge the fact that we're struggling,” Francis told ABC News. “But now I'm here telling you that we are struggling.”
East Ramapo is not the only school system that has experienced issues with lead in its water. For years, concerns have surfaced over lead in water pipes and fixtures in public schools across the country.
 

IDAHO FALLS — An Ada County District Judge issued an order on Wednesday voiding the latest Idaho Falls School District 91 plant facilities levy.
Voters overwhelmingly passed the 10-year $33 million levy in May to build a new elementary school on the south side of Idaho Falls.
According to Bonneville County Prosecuting Attorney Randy Neal, the court “adopted the determination by the Idaho State Tax Commission that Idaho Falls School District 91 could not have a second plant facilities levy until a similar levy passed in 2022 expires.”
Idaho law says districts can have one levy fund. At that time, the district and its legal counsel interpreted that to mean the district could have two plant levies – one for the new school and one that has been used for the maintenance of schools – if the levies both go into one fund.
However, in August, the Tax Commission challenged that interpretation.
District 91’s Board of Trustees filed a complaint with the courts “seeking a declaration of the interpretation of the statutes in question,” the board said in a news release at the time.
 

PUYALLUP, Wash. — The Puyallup School District is one of many school districts across the state preparing to meet the requirements of the Washington state's Clean Buildings Act. 
The district said the requirements accelerate the need for work already being pursued, but there are some challenges in regards to funding. The district is hopeful voters will support its efforts. 
Meanwhile, the Washington State Department of Commerce is offering one-on-one assistance and other resources to try to help building operators meet the requirements passed by legislators.
The Clean Buildings Act passed in 2019 and expanded in 2022. It is meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the state's largest buildings. The original legislation applies to buildings over 50,000 square feet, and requires them to evaluate energy use in the building, keep maintenance and operations plans, and make adjustments to buildings to reduce energy use if they are over target amounts. The expanded legislation applies to buildings between 20,000 and 50,000 square feet, and for now only requires benchmarking and maintenance and operations planning. There are some exemptions, including for manufacturing, agriculture and industrial buildings. In many cases, incentives, and financing help are available. 
 

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOV) - The Edwardsville school board voted this week to approved the issuance of $13 million dollars in bonds to pay for the installation of solar panels on school buildings. The district plans to install collections of solar panels in 10 places on 7 buildings.
Some taxpayers in the district were uncomfortable with the initial cost but others saw the long range benefits.
“I think long term as an investment it sounds like a good idea,” said Jackie Toigo.
Stephanie Crouch told First Alert Four, ‘I think anything we can do to harness the power of the sun and nature is fantastic.”
The district estimates the use of solar energy will lead to 40-60% savings on electric bills over the 30 life of the panels.
According to Generation 180′s 2022 Solar Schools Report, the number of schools powered by solar energy has tripled since 2015. And an estimated 6-million students attend solar powered schools.
The school district’s decision is part of a proliferation of solar panels in the region.
Debbie Evans installed solar panels on her Edwardsville house in March. She said she has no regrets.
 

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Jack Reed today announced a new $876,792 federal grant for the Rhode Island Department of Education – RIDE school modernization , preventing environmental health risks, improving maintenance, and planning long-term, under the Supporting America’s School Infrastructure Grant Program.

With this funding, RIDE’s School Building Authority would increase necessary supports to assist local education agencies (LEAs) with improving building conditions and educational environments for students and teachers. Additional staff would coordinate energy efficiency and air quality audits, while aiding districts with procurement, technical assistance, and professional development.

Senator Reed helped the U.S. Department of Education recently launch the Supporting America’s School Infrastructure Grant Program to enhance the ability of state departments of education to address school facilities matters.