As their schools struggle with water leaks, crumbling sidewalks and sinking floors, members of the Hamilton County Board of Education have deep apprehensions about ceding control of $6 million that was reserved in their proposed budget for needed building repairs.
"This is not a compromise," school board member Ben Connor, D-Chattanooga, said during a meeting Thursday evening. "Compromises are when equal parties come together and they make a plan based on a discussion, and after that discussion, they come to an agreement. Compromises don't have ultimatums. They don't have threats. This is a political stickup. It's a political heist, and it was done on purpose."
Amid a windfall in new revenue under the state's new school funding formula, the Hamilton County Board of Education intended to increase its spending on deferred maintenance from $2 million to $8 million in the proposed budget for the fiscal year that will start July 1.
However, the board voted 8-2 on a last-minute resolution Thursday to reduce the amount back to $2 million in favor of the county using that $6 million for a more substantial bond issuance — something county leaders say could actually allow them to complete building repairs at a quicker clip. Members Karitsa Jones, D-Chattanooga, and Larry Grohn, R-East Ridge, voted against the measure.
 

Campbell County school board members made it clear this week that the condition of the Campbell County High School building itself is “unacceptable” and needs to become a higher priority for the state.
Campbell County school board chairwoman Anne Ochs said the onus is on the state legislators to “advocate for our students and county.”
“Our high-mindedness by not pushing our legislators to get involved in this process has been huge because that has not always been the case around the state,” Ochs said. “If you have a powerful legislator who is in charge of certain committees, their facilities seem to get built and get built very well.
“I am asking our legislators in Campbell County to support our schools. We have to do something about Campbell County High School.”
The high school faces several expensive issues that remain in need of funds. The sewage and plumbing at the school at times closes bathrooms due to back ups in the pipelines. Part of the school doesn’t have any fire sprinklers in the hallways.
Campbell County has sent more than $1 billion to the state for what is used for maintenance of school buildings statewide since 1984 and around $120 million this year. Ochs said those dollars would go a long way toward fixing or replacing the issues at CCHS and that she wants to see more equity in the allocation of those funds.
 

Oceanview Middle School students will soon move to Southern High School as Guam Department of Education acting Superintendent Judi Won Pat has advised the schools’ principals to get together to discuss the summer move.
On Wednesday, Won Pat reported to Guam Education Board members that she had toured Oceanview, which won't be opening next school year as a result of the state of the facility. But after touring the Hågat middle school, Won Pat alluded to a concern Oceanview parents had foreseen months ago — the possibility of no return or a delayed return to the middle school campus.
“When I looked at the buildings and asked (GDOE) Facilities and Maintenance to get a quotation to be able to build a full wing, (it) would actually cost us about $7 million to $9 million,” Won Pat said.
The plan in place since November 2022 has been to move Oceanview students, faculty and staff to Southern High, to allow the issues at the middle school to be addressed during the upcoming school year.
 

The systems cooling and cleaning air inside Cesar Batalla School in Bridgeport are on the verge of complete failure, with temperatures sometimes getting so hot they’re considered unsafe and students must be sent home.
At Bethel High School, classrooms have no air ventilation system at all. Teachers rely on open windows and fans.
And in Brownwin Lakowski’s third grade classroom at Newfield Elementary School in Stamford, the HVAC system regularly breaks, leaving students and staff, particularly those with asthma, to suffer.
Just this past month, temperatures in Lakowski’s classroom reached 85 degrees one day. At other times, she said the school's air ventilation system was unable to filter smoke from wildfires in Canada that made its way into the building, causing some schoolchildren to cough.
“Part of having good air quality is having the windows open, but if the windows are open, the rooms get hotter – so it becomes a vicious cycle,” said Lakowski.
 

Ten years ago, the Chicago Board of Education and former Mayor Rahm Emanuel decided to close nearly 50 public schools, mainly on the South and West sides of the city.
One of those schools was Delano Elementary in Garfield Park. Issues arose when those students had to then attend school with students at Melody Elementary.
“I thought it was erroneous for them to take these two schools that have been adversaries for almost 40 to 50 years and put them in the same school,” said Reginald Akkeem Berry Sr., founder of Saving Our Sons Ministries. “That was just, again, set up for failure.”
Berry said his organization had to step in to help mediate when the school closed.
Andrew Carr was a guidance counselor at Delano Elementary. He also had a grandchild who was a student there when the mass school closures happened.
“The lasting impact is that children, they don’t trust the school system,” Carr said. “Then them, as parents, they reject the things that’s happening in the school and they feel like they don’t have a say-so in it, they don’t have a voice in what’s going on and they kind of give up.”
Dwayne Truss was an organizer on the West Side at the time and later served as a CPS board member from 2019 to 2022. He said the school closings failed to consider the connections that families had to their neighborhood schools.
In Austin, four elementary schools closed: Armstrong, Emmet, Key and May. 
Ten years later, Armstrong remains vacant. May’s building was taken over by its receiving school, Leland Elementary. In the last year, Key reopened as the Field School, a private Christian elementary school, while the site of Emmet will house a new workforce development hub called the Aspire Center.
 

Big changes are coming to energy consumption at Jersey City schools. Last night, the Board of Education approved an Energy Savings Improvement Plan, or “ESIP,” that is expected to be the largest such project in New Jersey history.

The ESIP, as presented to the Board at Monday’s caucus, is widespread and designed to increase student productivity in the classroom and save money in the budget for re-allocation. Priorities in the ESIP include new HVAC equipment for eight schools, boiler replacements, roof restorations for 21 schools, and district-wide interior and exterior LED lighting. There will also be a new unified energy management system across the district and increased use of renewable solar energy.

In addition to energy conservation measures, there are also educational programs provided, such as working with the district to incorporate lessons about energy conservation across grade levels. There will also be a program specifically tailored to increasing the number of women in STEM/STEAM, engineering, and construction industries.

Dare County Schools is pleased to announce that three schools in the district will receive NC GreenPower’s grant award for the Solar+ Schools program.

Cape Hatteras Secondary School, First Flight Elementary, and Manteo Middle School will receive a solar educational package that includes a 20-kilowatt (kW) solar array, STEM curricula, teacher training and more.

New for 2023, the program awardees will receive a grant to pay for all of the project’s construction costs, expected to be approximately $55,000-$75,000.

The included weather station and data monitoring will incorporate live information from the array into classrooms. Teachers will be able to compare different weather scenarios and involve students in reading and interpreting the energy data.

We are very excited to be able to install larger systems for the first time and save schools even more on their energy bills. Removing the fundraising burden and simplifying the application process has been well received by our applicants and enabled additional schools to consider installing solar,” said Vicky McCann, vice president of NC GreenPower. “We are proud to continue educating younger generations about solar energy. By the end of next year, we will have reached more than 62,000 students across North Carolina.”

HARRISBURG, Pa. (ErieNewsNow) - Many schools in Pennsylvania are decades, if not over a century, old. Hazardous school conditions are a growing concern among district officials, families and state lawmakers.
This week, Democrats and advocates pushed for more funding to address Pennsylvania's aging education infrastructure in the state’s budget. 
“We want a world class education system and in order to do that, the first thing you need to do is make sure that you have world class facilities for our students,” said Rep. Bob Merski (D-Erie). 
How to keep Pennsylvania's youngest residents safe and healthy in aging schools – that's what Democratic lawmakers like Merski are emphasizing. 
“Schools that have asbestos, schools that have leaky roofs, mold,” said Merski. 
Merski, a former educator, knows firsthand the hazards and challenges for thousands of students and teachers. 
“In my own experience in the Erie School District, I've taught in buildings that are over 100 years old. I've taught in buildings with leaky roofs. There were buckets on the floor at times until they could get up there and patch it,” said Merski. 
New technology and innovative learning tools are placing additional strain on aging infrastructure. 
“The educational technology has changed. So things that you don't see in the building, the wiring, the electricity, those things need to be upgraded to handle all of the new computers and all of the new wireless technology,” said Merski. 
With a few weeks until the budget deadline, House Democrats and advocates are calling for a boost to make classrooms safer. 
 

Key pieces of the Hawaii Department of Education’s newly approved six-year strategic plan will be delayed or deferred due to a $43 million budget shortfall.

The cuts will be felt despite a potential last minute injection of $55 million in discretionary funds for the department from Gov. Josh Green. That measure is still awaiting his signature.

The full extent of the budget gap dominated the state Board of Education meeting Thursday.

The department is still assessing where to make the cuts, but did not make a representative available for comment.

The strategic plan, only approved in February, was designed to revamp the public school system’s curriculum, teacher recruitment strategies and to update facilities.

A variety of line items did not make the cut in the Legislature’s approved budget, including funding for parts of the weighted student formula — the department’s mechanism for funding schools — secondary mathematics initiatives and English learner programs.

STOCKTON - A report released this week by a civil grand jury in San Joaquin County said more could be done to keep schools in the county safe after examining 14 public schools and the county's Office of Education.

A civil grand jury is a panel convened in each county around the state annually to investigate and report on local government operations.

According to the San Joaquin County jury's report, a more unified approach to safety should be undertaken in local schools.
"Safety planning often consists of a patchwork of policies and procedures and many of the Comprehensive School Safety Plans (CSSPs) required by law are boilerplate documents that are rarely specific to school sites," stated the report.

A CSSP is a safety plan required by state law for each school-site operating K-12 grades.

The jury found that although the San Joaquin County Office of Education (SJCOE) and all of the districts had their safety plans approved, only a few appeared to have been drafted to address issues that were unique to a specific school site.

Questions are mounting after the price tag to fix Newark public schools more than doubled in the past five months from $1 billion to $2.5 billion, a mushrooming bill that the city’s Superintendent says city residents will have to pay.
 
But elected officials and experts say the Superintendent shouldn’t be looking to city residents at all. 

The Newark public schools should “go after” the New Jersey Department of Education and the School Development Authority “instead of shifting the burden to local taxpayers and we will support them if they do so,” said Education Law Center senior attorney Theresa Luhm. “This situation speaks to the urgent need for the legislature to put additional money into the school construction program in this year’s budget.

The School Development Authority “fell woefully short on what was anticipated and no real explanation was given to voters across the state,” said Mayor Ras Baraka when asked about the superintendent’s plans. “The SDA owes us more schools.” 

HARRISBURG, Pa. - When school started at Francis Raub Middle School last August, Peggy Repasch complained the lack of air conditioning in the building put her daughter Zoey’s health at risk.

Raub was built in 1923 and doesn’t have central air or heat.

Zoey has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that can cause thick, sticky mucus in the airways and also cause those afflicted to sweat high amounts of salt out of their bodies, prompting dehydration.

House Democrats and education advocates call for more school construction funding from the state
They are proposing $350 million dollars for facilities
Some Allentown School District buildings date back about 100 years
“The heat takes a lot out of you,” Repasch said. “How are these children learning in this heat?”

House Democrats and education advocates say those kinds of conditions need to be addressed across the state immediately.

TOWSON, Md. —
Additional state grants will provide $80 million in support for major ongoing school construction projects, Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski announced on Tuesday.
Baltimore County was awarded $80 million in one-time grant funds for school construction projects selected by the county.
Olszewski's office identified how the money will be divvied up as follows:
$26 million toward a new Lansdowne High School
$20 million toward a like-new Towson High School
$15 million toward a new Deer Park Elementary School
$10 million toward a new Scott's Branch Elementary School
$8 million toward a new addition at Dundalk High School
$1 million toward a new addition at new Pine Grove Middle School
 

Bedford Town officials are projecting expenses that could total more than $30 million, spread over several years, to pursue the goal of converting the four schoolhouses to energy net zero.

The most recent six-year capital plan targets the first step for fiscal year 2025: an allocation of $320,000 to replace the hot-water heaters at Bedford High School. Replacement of the Davis School roof, with a current estimated cost of $1,648,000, is inserted into Fiscal Year 2026.

One year later, the total exceeds $4 million, then surpasses $6.5 million in Fiscal Year 2028.

Taissir Alani, Director of Facilities for the schools and town, recently summarized the projects as part of a short- and long-range capital spending presentation to the School Committee.

“The cost really is a placeholder because as we get closer to the project, we reassess the cost and equipment,” Alani said in a recent interview.

And Amy Fidalgo, Assistant Town Manager for Operations, stressed that heating, ventilation, and roof replacements are likely to be “moved out to further years in the next iteration of the capital plan, which will be vetted by the Capital Expenditure Committee in the fall.

“Our ability to move these projects out a few funding cycles is due to excellent preventative maintenance our facilities department is able to perform in order to extend the lifespan of many of these items,” she explained.

CITY OF TONAWANDA, N.Y. (WKBW) — There's a new school in town for the City of Tonawanda.
In August 2020, crews broke ground at the old Fletcher Elementary School after demolishing it to create a new state-of-the-art elementary school.
Three schools will be combined after school officials realized it would be counter-productive to continue investing in its aging elementary school buildings.
Now, the new Tonawanda Elementary School will be a point of pride for the City of Tonawanda and a place where students will have an "inviting learning experience".
7 News' Pheben Kassahun takes inside of the new school as the finishing touches are put onto it.
Many can remember the pure joy of attending their elementary school.
From the animated teachers to looking forward to recess and guessing what the school cafeteria is serving for the day to class parties.
Mullen Elementary School 4th grader, Aiden Crump said, "It's been very good. I've met many friends along the way. Many teachers are nice. Every teacher I've been with has been nice."
 

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state School Building Authority handed out two rounds of funding totaling close to $16 million during a Monday meeting in Charleston.
The SBA annually selects projects for funding submitted by multi-county technical education centers and projects under the agency’s Major Improvement Project (MIP) category.
“We awarded seven different counties with the projects they had (MIP) and we awarded six of the multi-county statewide grants,” SBA Executive Director Andy Neptune told MetroNews following Monday’s meeting.
MIP funding is going to projects in Wayne, Barbour, Monroe, Hardy, Calhoun, Tucker and Mason counties for approximately $5.8 million.
“These involve things like classroom additions, roof replacements, safety upgrades, exterior doors, safe school entries, things like that,” Neptune said.
There were requests from 15 counties for MIP funding. Projects in Cabell, Webster, Monongalia, Pocahontas, Mingo, Randolph, Summers and Lewis counties will have to look elsewhere for funding.
 

Since February, the U.S. Department of Education has invited national, regional, and local non-profits, foundations, businesses, and community-based organizations to share their bold commitment(s) to advance school sustainability, encompassing infrastructure, health, environmental sustainability education, climate, and environmental justice in America. Over 30 organizations made commitments, ranging from local efforts to national campaigns. These commitments demonstrate the wide range and scope of actions needed to ensure sustainable schools for all students.  

After a multi-year lead up, Lynchburg City Schools is gearing up for the release of several draft scenarios of the facilities master plan, a project that will determine the future of school buildings and programming for the division.

LCS’ Deputy Superintendent for Strategic Planning and Operations Reid Wodicka told the school board this week that he was hoping to provide five or six draft scenarios to the board for its consideration during the week of June 12, which will be followed by another community engagement period where LCS families and school stakeholders will have the chance to weigh in on the decision.

“Again, a very, very deliberate and intentional process that has taken some time,” Wodicka told the school board last week. “But we’re now to the point where we’re having some very concrete scenarios that you will have the opportunity to react to and give some feedback on as we move forward.”

MADISON, CT – Town of Madison is to receive increased state reimbursement for the new school construction, saving taxpayers about $6 million.

Madison Public Schools and the Town of Madison released a joint statement saying the state reimbursement rate for construction costs related to the new elementary school building project has increased substantially.

“Madison Public Schools is incredibly grateful for the support of John-Michael Parker and Christine Cohen on our efforts to achieve a higher reimbursement rate,” Dr. Craig Cooke said, superintendent of schools. “Our staff worked hard in partnership with Colliers International on this proposal to save taxpayers of Madison significant money.”

Cheers of “Dig! Dig!” rang out at the Jennie Reed Elementary schoolyard Thursday afternoon as students watched a handful of their classmates ceremoniously dig their shovels into a mound of dirt. After years of promised improvements to the playground, the elementary school will be one of five others in Tacoma that will get an upgrade. Hopefully by next fall, the grass field at Jennie Reed Elementary will be ringed with an asphalt track. More trees will line the barrier overlooking Interstate 5, and new playground equipment will be installed for students and families to enjoy. The effort is part of a pilot program to increase the percentage of Tacoma residents living within a 10-minute walk of a public park.
More than 65,000 people in Tacoma don’t, and the gaps are particularly evident in the east and southern sides of the city, as well as the Hilltop neighborhood, which aligns with Tacoma’s documented history of redlining, said Andrew McConnico, a project manager for Trust for Public Land. With the price of land increasing, transforming existing schoolyards into community parks has proved to be a cost-effective and innovative solution, McConnico said. There are ongoing efforts to revamp the playgrounds at Helen B. Stafford Elementary School, Whitman Elementary School, Mann Elementary School and Larchmont Elementary School as well.