PESHTIGO — Silver shovels turned the dirt as Peshtigo celebrated its groundbreaking on a $40.7 million addition to its middle and high school on Wednesday.
Among those wearing hard hats were two students, Taylor Wortner, a sophomore, and Christina Powers, a senior.
Wortner, wearing her Peshtigo blues, said she’ll be the first group to graduate with the renovations.
As a three-sport athlete, she said the new athletic accommodations “will not only be great for the students but great for the community.”
The renovations will boast a two-station gym for sports and performances and a fitness center, which are breaking ground this year in the approximately six-phase plan that will stretch until August 2026. The school will also keep the old gym.
“I’m really excited for the gym,” Wortner said. “Oh, and air conditioning.”
Powers said that although she’ll be graduating by the time the renovations are done, she has a younger sister in school who will benefit — along with the town.
“All our community uses the school, not just the students,” Powers said, mentioning that people can use the gym at certain times when the school isn’t using it.
Gary Larsen, school board president, said that in his 19 years of service, this project is 10 times the cost of anything he’s seen go through in his tenure.
“Our students will soon see the state-of-the-art school they deserve,” Larsen said.
Chad Sodini, high school principal, summed up the feelings of the day.
“I know our students and staff are excited,” Sodini said.
 

Across the country, schools generally pay for major building upgrades by taking on debt through bonds that they pay back over a number of years. And in most of the United States, school districts need support merely from a simple majority of voters to pass those bonds.

But 10 states buck that trend, requiring more than a simple majority. School districts in those states have a steeper path to funding large projects, whether the construction of new buildings or the replacement of an outdated HVAC system.

California requires 55 percent in favor; Missouri requires 57 percent; seven states require 60 percent; and one state—Idaho—requires support from a whopping two-thirds of voters. So even if a majority of voters in those states back school facilities bonds, it might not be enough.

Those 10 states collectively are home to 4,000 of the nation’s roughly 13,000 public school districts. They enroll 5 million students—roughly 10 percent of the nation’s total public K-12 enrollment.

DEEP RIVER — Shoreline middle schoolers will remain at  Valley Regional High School for classes for the foreseeable future after being moved there in early September due to extensive mold discovered before the start of the academic year, an official said.
Regional School District 4 Superintendent Brian J. White said Thursday that mold was discovered in late August when teachers returned to John Winthrop Middle School in Deep River after summer break. 
The district serves students living in Chester, Deep River and Essex.
“There was very high humidity in parts of the building,” White said. That triggered an investigation to determine exactly what was occurring. A consultant report, based on lab results, confirmed the situation.
The superintendent has been communicating with the school community every week since then.
Based on the findings of a Sept. 7 preliminary report, school was immediately dismissed and everyone was told to leave the building, he added. The middle school remained closed the next day.
“We knew at that time what we were going to have to do a much deeper dive,” White explained.
 

An abundance of natural light flows through the art classrooms at Lawrence Central High School. Three floors above, students complete independent work in an open-space lounge. 

And on another end of the building, crews work on the latest addition to the Lawrence Township high school: an indoor pool. 

The renovations here are among the largest of the district’s massive facilities upgrade plan that has touched each of the district’s 17 school buildings. So far, it has pumped more than $500 million into new classrooms, new stadiums, bigger playgrounds, safety renovations, and more.  

The district’s Blue Ribbon Facilities plan, which began in 2014, sought to upgrade buildings that are up to 55 years old by creating more classroom space to accommodate the district’s growing student population. The district has so far spent over $200 million on these upgrades. But in 2019, voters approved a $220 million ballot measure that turbocharged the district’s facility plans by funding improvements at Lawrence Central, five other schools, and four early learning centers. The changes could be vital to ensuring students are engaged in school, a challenge in the post-pandemic era.

The working group on class sizes for the New York City Department of Education unveiled its preliminary proposals for smaller class sizes at the Martin Luther King Jr. Educational Campus auditorium on Monday.

During the event, working group members—comprised of parents, teachers, and school principals—and other stakeholders presented their proposals under six subcommittees: enrollment planning, capital planning, staffing and hiring, instructional implications and programming options, special education and integrated co-teaching, and budgeting and financing. Each subcommittee was dedicated to addressing different challenges with reducing class sizes.

The working group’s co-chairs, Johanna Garcia, chief of staff for State Sen. Robert Jackson, and David Marmor, a Queens high school principal, moderated the event to hear feedback from parents and other stakeholders.

The working group laid out five recommendations with regard to enrollment planning, including supporting schools that are already in compliance with the law, surveying key stakeholders such as principals, teachers, and support staff, limiting enrollment at overcrowded schools that do not have the space to comply with the new class size caps, and relocating 3-K and pre-K programs from district schools.

Members of the working group said one of the biggest issues for small class sizes is finding adequate space for classrooms. The capital planning committee, whose duties include addressing challenges related to the construction of new schools, planning existing spaces, and consolidating schools, proposed 25 preliminary recommendations. Some suggested measures included repurposing existing “unutilized or underutilized” facilities, merging co-located schools, and building new school buildings.

As soon as funding becomes available, Wyoming County schools officials are ready to begin construction on several major projects – including a new school in Mullens, a multi-purpose facility for the Career and Technical Center, in addition to safety enhancements and other improvements at schools across the county.

All the projects are shovel-ready, with the exception of the new artificial turf football fields at both Westside and Wyoming County East high schools which have already been completed and are being used by students.

Total cost for all the proposed projects is nearly $34 million.

Funding sources will include a $20.1 million facilities bond sale approved by county voters in November, the West Virginia School Building Authority, local monies, among others.

Last year, the West Virginia School Building Authority halted Needs Grant awards as a result of soaring construction material costs and inflation.

School districts, particularly those serving many students in poverty and students of color, can expect student test scores to rise significantly after they invest local dollars to fix leaky HVAC systems or patch failing roofs.
When school districts invest local dollars in new athletic facilities or expanded classroom space, however, student test scores don’t necessarily change. But local property values typically rise.
These are two takeaways from a recently published study of the far-reaching effects of school district investments in facilities. The sweeping report, published in working-paper form this summer, analyzes data from more than 15,000 school bond ballot referenda in 28 states between 1990 and 2017. The report was written by Barbara Biasi, an assistant professor of economics at the Yale School of Management; Julien Lafortune, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California; and David Schönholzer, assistant professor of economics at Stockholm University’s Institute for International Economic Studies.
The conclusions build on a growing body of evidence asserting that higher-quality school buildings translate to better academic outcomes for vulnerable children—and higher property values for the communities that surround the improved facilities.
The paper’s findings suggest that students benefit most when extremely low-quality facilities get better, rather than when districts improve buildings that were already in good shape, said Mary Filardo, executive director of the nonprofit 21st Century School Fund and a leading national advocate for school infrastructure improvements.
“All the more argument for intervention by states and the feds for schools in poor condition in low-wealth communities—a targeted program, from poor to good,” Filardo said.

Guam Department of Education officials met with officials from the Safe Drinking Water Program at the Guam Environmental Protection Agency this week regarding the recent analysis that showed two water samples, one from Juan M. Guerrero Elementary School and one from Machananao Elementary School, exceeding U.S. EPA's safety threshold for lead in the water supply. 

According to a report from the Water Environmental Research Institute of the Western Pacific, water from a cafeteria sink at Juan M. Guerrero Elementary returned a positive lead result of 22.7 parts per billion, while the Machananao Elementary cafeteria sink tested 20.6 ppb. The U.S. EPA action level for lead contamination in water in a public water system is 15 ppb. 

Guam EPA provided GDOE with a guidance manual containing recommendations on how to address lead found in drinking water in schools and childcare facilities, according to a release from GEPA. The local regulatory agency "directed GDOE's attention to recommend" immediate, short-term and permanent response actions, the release added.

With little fanfare, First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice added an agenda item to the Oct. 2 Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting about the status of an ongoing needs assessment being conducted for Wilton’s school buildings.
She then delivered some truly stunning news, from the draft report which outlined the repairs, improvements and upgrades needed in Wilton schools over the next 10 years.
“The cost is in excess of $100,000,000,” she said. 
“It’s still a draft and I wouldn’t normally speak about a draft, [but] with the upcoming election and my term ending shortly, I think it’s important, now that I have seen the 10-year projected costs, that I share it in advance of the report,” Vanderslice said. 
“It’s a lot of money,” she added, especially considering that cost escalation factors were only included through 2026, making the actual cost of the 10-year plan even higher.
Vanderslice discussed the school buildings assessment in the context of other infrastructure investment and as part of a longterm financial planning process.
“Over the last eight years, we have focused on investment in infrastructure with almost $42 million in the renovation and reconfiguration of Miller-Driscoll [School], assisted by $6 million in state grants; the restoration of roads…; the study by the state of all our bridges, and we have a plan to get that work done; we have done trail building; and of course the construction of the police headquarters. The last three were all assisted with about $30 million in grants.”
 

BALTIMORE — Ten years ago, the Montebello Elementary/Middle School in Northeast Baltimore was a drab, dingy, and virtually windowless campus, typical of the aging school buildings across the city.
But in January, after a two-year renovation, the school reopened with bright, wide hallways. A modern cafeteria building replaced the dim basement where students used to eat. In the spring, pre-K children learning in a new outdoor amphitheater marveled as butterflies fluttered in their tiny hands. The once bricked-over windows of the school now offer panoramic views of Lake Montebello, a reservoir where families picnic, walk, and bike.
Montebello’s transformation demonstrates what can be done when state lawmakers are goaded into action. Appalled by the decrepit conditions of the city’s school buildings, the ACLU, other community activists, and Baltimore officials successfully lobbied the Legislature in 2013 to create a school construction program specifically for Baltimore, so that the city would no longer have to compete with better-funded districts for sought-after funds. The program has allowed one of the nation’s poorest cities to extensively renovate or replace 29 school buildings — a fifth of its inventory — in less than a decade.
But it also involved a tough tradeoff — a commitment to close 26 schools with declining enrollment or particularly poor conditions, a painful process that led to regret and broken relationships between the district and some of its families and teachers.
 

CORDOVA, Ala. (WBMA) — Parents have expressed frustrations regarding plans from Walker County Board of Education to consolidate Cordova Elementary School with Bankhead Middle School.
We reached out for more information about the proposed plan. Superintendent Dr. Dennis Willingham said this is still in the preliminary planning phases so there is nothing to publicly comment about at this time.
Cordova Mayor Jeremy Pate provided ABC 33/40 with a copy of the plan from the Board of Education.
The plans show that there would be new classrooms built on to Bankhead Middle. There would also be a two story classroom building, additional parking and a new gymnasium. It appears the lunch room would be shared.
"You’re talking about a school of 350-400 now with a lunch room and you’re going to import another 400 students, so before they even open the doors, you have 800 kids there," said Pate. "If we grow any in the next two to three years, before they even get the school open, they are going to be overcrowded. Of course the lunch room is going to be overcrowded before they even open the doors and then the classroom sizes are a question for some people and the sheer ability to be on the same campus and share that many kids in the same area."
 

The Amidon-Bowen Elementary School community is reeling, frustrated after DC Public Schools (DCPS) suggested a swing space for the 2027 fiscal year that is 3.5 miles away from their home campus at 401 I St. SW.

Amidon-Bowen is slated to be modernized in 2027 and reopened in 2029. The Amidon-Bowen population is set to move into a temporary space from 2027 to 2029 during the planning, design and construction phases. The fully modernized school is scheduled to reopen for the 2029-2030 school year. The project will cost an estmiated $84.2 million and the new building will be able to serve 373 students.

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
Through the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) Planning Actively for Comprehensive Education Facilities (PACE) Annual Supplement for Fiscal Year 2024-2029, Amidon-Bowen community members learned the former Meyer Elementary School (2501 11th St. NW) would be the temporary campus for their PreK to Fifth grade students.

“It was frustrating to hear about the swing space plan for the first time because a parent happened to see the reference to Meyer in the Mayor’s CIP plan,” said Sarah Buckley,a member of the Amidon-Bowen PTA Advocacy Group (ABPTAAG).  “We feel like we can’t count on DCPS to keep us informed, let alone take the community’s views into account.”

D.C. is again planning to redraw school boundaries. And as in adjustments past, the process that overhauls attendance zones has also drawn ire from families in the city’s most in-demand feeder system: the Jackson-Reed High School cluster.
The process is still in its early stages — the advisory committee running it will deliver a report to D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) sometime this winter, and its suggested changes will not take effect until the 2025-2026 school year at the earliest. But families who settled near, or lotteried into, popular schools worry their children will be redistricted.
The city, meanwhile, has its own priorities: to foster diversity, reduce overcrowding in some schools, fill seats at others and provide equitable access to high-quality public schools.
Several attendees at a virtual town hall about the redistricting process Wednesday shared concerns about the Jackson-Reed cluster. One of the middle schools that feeds it, Alice Deal, was at least 95 percent full during the 2021-2022 school year, according to the city’s most recent master facilities plan. While officials have yet to offer up any plans, families fret that an elementary school may be removed from the boundary to free up space at Deal — a suggestion that came up after the last boundary study in 2014 — which some say already feels too crowded.
 

The Prince George’s County Board of Education has approved the second phase of a school construction project funded through a mix of public-private funds.
The vote Thursday night to move ahead comes a week after a similar vote failed. School board members conveyed a sense of urgency Thursday to approve the work.
“We need to stop wasting time,” Madeline LaSalle Frazier (appointed, District 8) said during the meeting. “Let’s get these buildings done.”
The second phase of the project includes eight new buildings: Fairwood Area Elementary School in Bowie, Margaret Brent Elementary School in New Carrollton, Springhill Lake Elementary School in Greenbelt, Templeton Elementary School in Riverdale Park, James Duckworth Elementary School in Beltsville, Hyattsville Elementary School, Robert Frost Area PK-8 Academy in New Carrollton, and Brandywine Area PK-8 Academy.
 

The former Franklin Primary Center in Munhall stood quiet this week, an almost empty shell of what was once a bustling Steel Valley elementary school. 

Hallways that formerly swarmed with excited students were still, the classrooms blank of posters and lessons. Sparse conference rooms gave few signs they were still in use, the only sounds echoing from the front of the building where a handful of administrators are still housed.  

While plans are delayed, Franklin Primary Center will soon be demolished to make way for a new elementary school that will combine students in kindergarten through fourth grade who are currently split between Barrett Elementary in Homestead, built in 1934, and Park Elementary in Munhall, constructed in the early 1900s. The project, which is expected to be completed by 2027, could cost around $56 million. 

“We have gotten to the point where the buildings we currently have are no longer adequate to our needs,” Michael Sullivan, Steel Valley’s director of facilities, said Monday. “At some point we had to make a move. The longer we wait the more we risk having something happen at the schools where we have a failure in a major system or something and then we’re out of school and we’re scrambling to get kids in place. It’s long overdue.”

MIDDLETOWN — The Board of Education hopes to receive funding as part of their five-year capital improvement plan to start installing air conditioning systems in the older public schools.
Middletown was among districts statewide that dismissed students early during the heat wave earlier this month, when temperatures across the state swelled into the 90s.
Ninety percent of four of the city's 10 schools are air-conditioned, Director of Facilities Kevin Dion said, according to the Sept. 12 Board of Education meeting video. Older buildings, however, lack the duct work and capability necessary to install units quickly — or support a cooling system.
 

Chicago Public Schools facilities need $3.1 billion in “critical” repairs that must be addressed in the next five years, according to a district plan released Thursday.

The cost is part of a total of $14.4 billion in updates that the district identified in its Facilities Master Plan, which CPS is required by state law to produce every five years. 

“In a district as large as ours, and with a building portfolio as old as ours, this is the investment it would take to repair and modernize each and every one of our current facilities and give our students the learning environment we know they deserve,” CEO Pedro Martinez wrote in the plan’s introduction. 

The $3.1 billion in costs identified as the most urgent work includes repairs to windows, roofs, masonry, and heating and cooling systems. Another $5.5 billion would go toward repairs in the next six to 10 years, according to the facilities plan. Beyond that, the district wants money to build labs “to support STEM education,” accommodations for students with disabilities, new auditoriums, new fields for sports, and classrooms “outfitted” for career and technical education — programming that Martinez wants to expand, according to the plan. 

ROCKFORD, MI – Construction is well underway on a new Rockford elementary school building that was intentionally designed to strengthen student identity and belonging.
The new, $28 million Edgerton Trails Elementary School is expected to be completed by summer 2024 after over two years of construction. The building, located at 9605 Edgerton Ave. NE, is the ninth elementary school being added to the Rockford Public School District that serves around 7,700 students.
The 85,000-square-foot building will be able to house up to 750 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. It features two main academic wings, collaborative learning areas, a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) room, an outdoor learning patio, and more.
Rockford school administrators visited schools across the state, including some schools in Washington D.C., to come up with the designs for Edgerton Trails.
 

Kansas City Public School’s Board of Directors voted unanimously Wednesday night to maintain the district’s current tax levy.

That’s despite skyrocketing property assessments across Jackson County, and a Missouri law that requires other districts to lower their levies if property values rise faster than inflation.

Since 2021, assessed property values rose by an average of 40% in Jackson County. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index increased about 13% over the last two years.

Kansas City Public Schools expects to see a $32.9 million increase in revenue because of the bump in property values. And the district is exempt from what’s known as the Hancock Amendment because its levy was set by a federal judge in 1995, as part of desegregation litigation.

“We're recommending the maximum amount, because we haven't changed this tax rate for 25 years,” said KCPS Chief Financial Officer Erin Thompson.

Part of the reason for making that ask, she said, is because the district’s buildings have more than $400 million in deferred maintenance.

“Of course we're going to ask for all we could get for our children in the classroom to have safe schools,” she said.

In the first week of school this year, indoor classroom temperatures reached nearly 100 degrees in parts of New York.

Kids were sluggish, irritated and dripping in sweat. They reported headaches, nausea and some students required trips to nurses’ offices. Teachers and school staff desperately tried fans, opening windows and closing curtains all while battling their own heat exhaustion after spending hours in the same sauna-like conditions.

Since the beginning of September, more than 600 educators have shared stories of extreme heat, describing classrooms that lacked effective climate control systems as “heartbreaking,” “inhumane,” and “a living hell” during what should have been the energizing start to a new school year.

As parents, teachers and elected representatives in our communities, we have seen how budget battles have forced difficult choices when it comes to facility upgrades. For years, many of our schools have not had the resources to create the learning environments that all of our children deserve.