Funding for public schools is a big issue on the November ballot with more than ten billion dollars on the line in the statewide ballot measure Prop 2. 
The proposition would help school districts repair, upgrade, and construct new facilities, though opponents say it would just overburden taxpayers with more debt.
Ongoing construction at West Portal Elementary in San Francisco will replace rows of portable classrooms into a state-of-the art facility.  
"A lot of students were in our temporary classrooms that were decades old," said West Portal Elementary teacher Emily Harris. 
Harris has seen the challenges students and faculty face daily.  
"When students are in those kinds of learning environments, they don't have enough space for their own physical bodies," said Harris. 
SFUSD parent Satindar Dhillon has two children who have attended classes inside what they call "portables." He's voting yes on Prop 2 to upgrade more schools across the state. 
"When you see nice facilities, it does make you feel better and more comfortable about going to the school," said Dhillon. 
But opponents say wealthier districts have an advantage over underserved communities since local districts are required to match funds to secure state school bond money. 
 

Seven school districts will share more than $360 million in new state lottery-funded grant awards for school construction, renovation projects and other capital improvements. Among the projects funded by the grants are plans to consolidate schools into one campus, increasing access to career and technical education and modernizing facilities for students, faculty and the surrounding community.

The grants, awarded under the Needs-Based Public School Capital Fund (NBPSCF), represent the largest annual allocation under the program, created by the General Assembly in 2017 from state lottery revenues. The grants are in addition to the state’s lottery-supported Public School Building Capital Fund and the Public School Building Repair and Renovation Fund, from which all 115 districts receive an allocation each year.

In Fresno Unified, the state’s third-largest school district with 71,000 students, the watchword for repairing schools is “worst, first.”
Two-thirds of the 103 schools are more than 50 years old, and with age comes burst pipes, air conditioning on the fritz and other demands. Add a commitment to property owners in this largely low-income community to stabilize property taxes, and the result is tough decisions and compromises.
Its neighbor Central Unified faces similar challenges to address the needs of aging buildings with limited resources.
A small tax base per student limits the taxing capacity in many Central Valley communities. Modesto City Schools has been patiently addressing cramped quarters in its elementary schools one bond at a time. Eventually, every school will have a multipurpose room serving as a spacious cafeteria and auditorium so that every school can do assemblies. Measure X, if it passes, will mark another milestone toward that goal.
In California, the list of school buildings needing attention is long and growing. This year, a record 252 school districts are seeking $40 billion worth of renovation and new construction projects, including classrooms for the youngest students, transitional kindergartners, and space for “maker labs” and innovative career explorations for high schoolers.
 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded the New York State Department of Health $5 million to address indoor air quality issues and greenhouse gas reduction in schools.
According to a press release from the department, the funds will be used to expand the already existing New York State School Environmental Health Program, which provides information on policies, practices and free resources to schools that want to improve their environments.
Healio spoke with Michele Herdt, MPH, PhD, director of the New York State School Environmental Health Program, about the funding and how it will be used to improve indoor air quality in schools as well as mitigate its harmful effects.
Healio: Where does poor air quality come from in schools?
Herdt: The entire building is considered when discussing air quality. Contaminants (chemicals, dust/particles, odors) contribute to poor air quality. Contaminants come from outdoor sources such as vehicle exhaust, industrial emissions, construction activities, wildfire smoke and pollen. Contaminants could also come from indoor sources such as cleaning supplies, carpets, cooking, pests, renovations and building repairs. Building systems may also affect air quality. Classrooms need to get enough fresh air and exhaust stale air, maintain appropriate classroom temperatures and humidity, and must address water damage and signs of mold if they appear.
 

This week, green schoolyards will be inaugurated at five more Milwaukee Public Schools thanks to Reflo’s Green and Healthy Schools program in partnership with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.
The five schoolyards this year, serving six schools – Milwaukee Sign Language School and Morse Middle School for the Gifted and Talented; Forest Home Avenue School; Greenfield Bilingual School; Lincoln Avenue School and Story Elementary School – were funded with $8.4 million from these partners and others, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
An official unveiling is set for Tuesday morning at Milwaukee Sign Language School and Morse Middle School for the Gifted and Talented, 7900 W. Acacia St., where the largest schoolyard greening project so far includes a densely planted and biodiverse microforest.
Forest Home Avenue School, appropriately, has also gotten a microforest.
Thirty-one schools in MPS have now taken part in the project, not counting schools like Maryland Avenue Montessori, which created its own greening project with some of the same partners before the Reflo program started in 2018.
As part of the greening, large sections of nonporous pavement at the schoolyards is removed and replaced with natural areas that not only serve as play and learning spaces but also help keep hundreds of thousands of gallons of stormwater on site and out of the combined sewer system.
The schools take part in the planning of each schoolyard transformation.
This helps prevent sewage releases into Lake Michigan.
 

PORTLAND (WGME) -- For the first time in more than 25 years, the state will take a hard look at school construction and renovation needs, plus how to pay for it.
Governor Janet Mills says she recognizes all Maine kids should be able to attend a safe, modern, efficient and accessible school regardless of where they live.
Now, leaders will figure out how to get there.
With a quiet bill signing, Mills created a new Commission on School Construction.
“I think we've seen in recent years a great disparity among communities,” Mills said.
"We'll have 120 students here this year. Pre-K to 5," Sebago Elementary School Superintendent Steve Connolly said.
The CBS13 I-Team recently surveyed every school district in Maine.
Out of nearly 550 schools, the average age of a building is 54 years old.
Sebago Elementary School is one of the oldest.
"One side of the hall was constructed in 1954,” Connolly said. “1986 they constructed the other side of hall."
 

In June, Greenbrier County Schools announced a comprehensive energy savings project that will significantly enhance the energy efficiency of school facilities throughout the county. After an extensive three-year analysis of all school lighting, HVAC systems, and utility costs, the CMTA Engineering Firm began the $14 million project. Through the Inflation Reduction Act, the school system was eligible for over $2 million in federal credits, bringing the project cost down to $12 million.

The project’s primary goals are to modernize infrastructure, reduce energy consumption, and generate substantial savings of approximately $500,000 annually to the school system and community. The project included replacing outdated HVAC systems, installing energy efficient LED lighting, and implementing advanced energy management systems across all schools in the county. Other than financial savings, the project also creates a healthier and more comfortable learning environment for students and staff, supporting the districts commitment to provide high-quality education.

With the installation of the solar panels at Rupert Elementary and Western Greenbrier Middle School, they now have the most extensive solar array of any school site in West Virginia, making these two schools net zero energy-cost facilities. Additionally, Rainelle Elementary School will receive solar panels in the summer of 2025, reducing consumption costs.

Maybe your child’s classroom leaked during this year’s winter storms or shut down early — or entirely — during recent heat waves.
This guide is for parents and families that want to better understand the condition of their child’s school — and how to advocate to get it fixed.
My school has a problem right now — how do I get help?
Start local. Your child’s teacher and the principal should be able to explain how to request repairs.
Here’s how it works in Long Beach Unified, where Alan Reising oversees facilities and operations:
Every school has a plant supervisor. This person is in charge of custodial services and investigates maintenance issues — whether they’re identified by a student, teacher, administrator, or parent. 
If the repair requires any of the district’s 85 skilled craftspeople like an electrician or plumber, the plant supervisor submits a work order to the district. These orders are categorized as emergency, urgent, or routine. 
The district prioritizes work orders based on severity. Response times vary from minutes for problems that could lead to serious injuries to “ I don't know when…but we'll get to it” for routine maintenance. 
“We don't have the latitude of having an unlimited resource budget to have individuals waiting for a call,” Reising said.
Reising, who’s also the chair of the Coalition for Adequate School Housing, says smaller and rural districts may have even fewer resources.
 

When the Idaho Statesman and ProPublica teamed up to report on crumbling school buildings last year, we recognized that it would be a challenge to capture the attention of readers and officials.

Idaho residents already knew that their own school buildings were in bad shape and that state law made it hard for districts to raise the money to fix them. We were unsure whether additional reporting would change anything.

To have a chance at impact, we set out to do the most comprehensive possible version of the story to show that the problems were statewide. We needed to take readers into schools so they could see what was broken and the effect on students and staff in a way that wouldn’t be easy to ignore. And because we couldn’t visit every school ourselves, we needed to get people in every part of the state to help us document what was happening locally.

Through ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, we spent about nine months reporting and heard from 106 of the state’s 115 superintendents and 233 students, parents, teachers and others.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A school closure in Alexandria has caused concern among parents after potential lead exposure was detected at Naomi L. Brooks Elementary School. 
The school remains closed while health officials work to address the issue. 
Administrators are meeting with families, faculty, and staff to provide updates and share available resources.
The Virginia Department of Health and the Alexandria Health Department have scheduled a webinar for Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. to answer questions and provide critical health information. The meeting will be held via Zoom, and health leaders are strongly encouraging students, staff, and their families to attend.
According to the Alexandria Health Department, students and staff should get their blood lead levels tested. 
 

MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsinites in November will choose whether to approve nearly $3.5 billion in referendums to build, renovate or maintain schools across the state.

There are at least 140 referendum questions from 121 school districts on the Nov. 5 ballot, asking for around $4.29 million in funding increases for building and maintaining school facilities, covering operational costs or both, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Many of those referendums will ask for increased revenue limits, which result in increased property tax for residents.

As part of the 121 total school districts, around 55 districts are asking for a combined $3.46 billion to cover the cost of new construction, to fund capital projects or to maintain and modernize old structures, DPI data showed.

Hundreds of public schools across Washington are located in areas where they could suffer damage in a major earthquake. But more than a decade after the state set out to evaluate school seismic risks, the information is difficult to access and harder to verify.

In the last school year, more than 378,000 students attended schools with buildings constructed before the adoption of modern seismic codes and that have no risk evaluations or retrofits, according to data from the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction obtained through a public records request. The majority of seismic risk data collected by school districts and the state is not shared with the public.

An additional 167,000 students attended schools already assessed as having “high” or “very high” seismic risks, based on their locations and building conditions.

Compiling the school seismic data is aimed at determining the scope of vulnerabilities across the state to prioritize building improvements and to inform emergency planning. 

The V.I. Board of Education expressed concern during a Saturday meeting that auxiliary agencies are not doing enough to ensure that issues with school systems and infrastructure are appropriately flagged. However, one board member expressed that the issue really lies with the lack of responsiveness by education officials.‌
“Those agencies are supposed to also walk through the schools, etc, and they’re supposed to provide citations,” said board member Winona Hendricks during the meeting. “There’s no way that a school could be without air conditioning for one year in a kitchen…the health department has not provided a citation or explanation, Fire[Service] has not,” she continued. She called for the board to obtain access to “a copy of the opening of school reports for some or all of the auxiliary agencies.”
‌The discussion arose out of recent incidents which highlighted the lack of adequate facilities to ensure smooth operations in the territory’s public schools. Problems with the lack of air conditioning in school kitchens have been reported at the St. Croix Educational Complex and the Lockhart K-8 school. The kitchen at the Eulalie Rivera Elementary School is out of commission due to a delayed rehabilitation process. Ms. Hendricks also indicated unspecified issues at the Joseph A. Gomez Elementary School that the board needed to probe.‌
 

The School Committee looked at the fiscal year 2026 capital plan, approved builder’s risk insurance and talked about goals and improvements during Thursday’s meeting.
Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations Susan Rothermich said the strategy with replacements is to spread them out over several years. In fiscal years with large projects like a roof replacement, those would stand alone to “make them more palatable for the community,” she said.
The district’s requests for FY 26 total $2,595,000 and include replacements for the following: $735,000 for heat, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC); $200,000 for storefront entry doors; $60,000 for campus sewer cover; and $100,000 for system technology upgrades.
Also listed is $1.5 million for an adaptive playground located at Marathon School. Rothermich explained that the schools would be submitting a grant application to the Community Preservation Committee.
Town Meeting in fiscal year 2024 approved use of Community Preservation Funds for an engineering study as well as design and construction bid documents for the project. An Adaptive Playground Committee has been working on these items in conjunction with BETA and expects to have construction bid documents by November.
As for the other requests, Rothermich said the high school has 14 HVAC units and the middle school has eight that need to be replaced. The requests also include funds for a feasibility study for a sustainable replacement plan, she said.
 

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – School building consolidations are being considered across Kansas this year. The Wichita and Garden City school districts are considering merging and closing some school buildings. One much smaller community, Healy, plans to dissolve its district altogether.

The Garden City Public Schools Board of Education met Thursday night to consider whether to approve a plan to close three elementary school buildings. Following our 6 p.m. broadcast, Garden City Public Schools announced that the board rejected the recommendation in a 4-3 vote.

They are not the only ones who have thought of building consolidation this year. Across Kansas, Wichita Public School’s Board of Education voted to move forward with its facilities master plan, which would close four elementary schools.

Millions of dollars will go to improving the special education system in Flint, Mich.'s schools—part of a legal settlement meant to benefit students who were affected by dangerous levels of lead in the city’s water supply discovered nearly a decade ago.

The settlement of the class action lawsuit will dedicate $9.69 million to bolstering Flint schools’ special education system, where many of the affected students remained in the years since the water crisis. Funds and support will expand in coming years to the broader Genesee County to address the needs of families who moved outside the city after the contamination.

“This investment will have both immediate and long-term impacts to structurally improve the quality of special education services that all children in Flint and Genesee County receive,” Bonsitu Kitaba-Gaviglio, the deputy legal director for ACLU Michigan, said during a press conference Thursday on the settlement and plan. ACLU Michigan sued on behalf of families impacted by the lead crisis.

On a grassy hillside nestled into a live oak woodland ecosystem in the San Francisco Bay Area, a group of elementary students armed with clipboards huddle around a cluster of native vegetation, sketching its craggy form and jotting down observations. There’s dirt under their fingernails and, lacking desks, their clipboards wobble precariously on their knees, but not one of them seems to care. They are completely engrossed in the landscape they’re studying.

This is a fairly typical morning at the Nueva School, where the newly built Science and Environmental Center (SEC) houses indoor-outdoor classes for lower and middle school students. Recently awarded the 2024 Green Good Design: Green Architecture award, the bustling new building is the latest net-zero carbon addition to the campus.

It’s also evidence of an increasingly vital part of our built environment: sustainable school architecture. Not just because it is infrastructure that will always be necessary—unlike, say, office buildings, as the post-pandemic years have proven—but as William Leddy, principal architect of Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects (the firm that designed the Nueva School SEC) says, thoughtful school architecture can “actually empower kids to understand that they have agency to make changes in this world.”

The next time it rains hard in Poway, the water could wash away a $70,000 investment at Black Mountain Middle School; its newly refinished gym floor. Above that shiny surface is a roof lacking the ability to keep out the weather. Not only because it’s filled with holes but also because its six rusty air conditioning units are purely decorative.

Along with educating students, Principal Darcel Glover’s mission is to keep the 50-year-old middle school campus operating. 

“You can see the wear and tear,” Glover said as he gave NBC 7 Investigates a tour of safety concerns.

Those include heavy wooden roll-out bleachers that are difficult and dangerous to move.

“There’s thousands of pinch points within here,” Glover told us. “You can get fingers caught between these bleachers. There’s a ton of cases of serious injuries with these types of bleachers.”

We couldn’t help but notice disconnected electrical wires suspended above fire doors. Those are supposed to automatically close and lock during a fire. Needless to say, they don’t.

In July 2023, 18 years after Hurricane Katrina left most of New Orleans underwater, NOLA Public Schools hosted a ribbon-cutting at the last school building reconstructed in the wake of the storm. On hand was a Who’s Who of people involved in the largest school recovery effort in U.S. history. 

The 2005 hurricane and subsequent flood destroyed or severely damaged 110 of the 126 public school buildings operating at the time. Bringing them back was a linchpin of efforts to rebuild the city. Displaced families could not return until there were classrooms to welcome their kids. 

The logistical challenges of the $2 billion effort were unprecedented. No one had ever tried to rebuild an entire school system. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was mostly in the business of repairing or replacing houses and residential buildings, and was notorious for doing so excruciatingly slowly. 

Federal law specifically prohibited taking advantage of a disaster to build something better than what had been destroyed. Decades of official neglect, however, had left most New Orleans schools moldering long before the storm. Students sat in classrooms that didn’t meet fire and electrical codes, lacked window panes and were inaccessible to people with disabilities. 

The Wake County school system needs to reverse its growing backlog of facilities maintenance — including air conditioning replacements and repairs — school board members said Tuesday. But they’re still working on a plan to do that.
Wake County schools are $214.3 million behind on updating heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment, the board learned during its monthly facilities committee meeting Tuesday. That’s only about a quarter of the $752.2 million the district is behind on replacing or updating facility needs across its about 200 schools. Just $114 million is planned to alleviate that backlog over the next four years. Other needs don’t have funding sources for them yet.
And that’s likely an undercount of pastdue maintenance; the numbers provided by Wake on Tuesday were only for equipment that was five years past its expected lifespan.
It means the district has fallen short of maintaining its facilities based on industry standards for various equipment. Now, the cost of getting equipment back to update is $752.2 million — on top of the regular equipment maintenance the district already must do for equipment that is not yet past its life expectancy.