More than 49 million students were enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools as of fall 2021, according to the Digest of Education Statistics. Coincidentally, that number (the “49” in 49 million) matches the average age of a main instructional school building in the U.S., according to the National Center for Education Statistics. More alarming, nearly four in 10 schools (38%) were built before 1970—and half of those have never had a major building renovation or addition.
Clearly, too many of the nation’s school districts are having to make it work with less-than-ideal educational facilities. But at what cost to student performance and staff satisfaction?
Newly released findings from a 28-school research study by Drexel University and Perkins Eastman reveal a strong correlation between the quality of school building environments and key educational indicators like test scores, graduation rates, enrollment, teacher retention—even community health and wellness.
The study, “Addressing a Multi-Billion Dollar Challenge” (140-page PDF download at BDCnetwork.com/2024-school-study), investigated the differences between modernized and non-modernized elementary, middle, and high schools—17 modernized, 11 non-modernized—throughout Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. 
 

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, minutes ahead of his 11:59 p.m. deadline on April 8 to act on this year’s General Assembly bills, vetoed legislation that would have authorized any Virginia city or county to raise its sales tax 1% by voter referendum to fund school construction.  Only nine Virginia localities – Charlotte, Gloucester, Halifax, Henry, Mecklenburg, Northampton, Patrick and Pittsylvania counties and the city of Danville – are afforded the option under current state law. Isle of Wight County has been lobbying for the referendum option for the past three years as a possible means of paying back more than $30 million it borrowed in 2020 and 2021 to replace the circa-1961 Hardy Elementary with a new, larger Hardy that opened in 2023, and to fund the estimated $71 million cost of replacing another 1960s-era school, Westside Elementary.  House of Delegates Bill 805, sponsored by Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, and Senate Bill 14, a nearly identical bill by Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William, would each have abolished the list of authorized localities and expanded the option to all cities and counties.

When the class of 2021 at Putnam City High School was asked where they wanted to hold their prom, district administrators were anticipating suggestions for a variety of picturesque venues around Oklahoma City.

But their request was a pleasant surprise to staff — the students chose to hold prom at nearby James L. Capps Middle School, a then-new building in Putnam City Schools.

The school, which opened in 2020, sits on 38 acres and features a spring-fed creek that runs under a glass skybridge connecting different wings of the building. With its tall glass windows and large indoor gathering areas, Capps is a source of pride for the community.

“It has become a destination for all of our schools,” said Putnam Superintendent Fred Rhodes. “It’s just off-the-charts cool.”

The enthusiasm for the building can be traced to the district’s efforts to include student and staff voice in the school design process, Rhodes said.

The Guam Department of Education is in contact with the Federal Emergency Management Agency regarding funding for a temporary facility for Simon Sanchez High School students, which would be 90% funded by FEMA and 10% by GDOE, according to Superintendent Kenneth Erik Swanson, who appeared before lawmakers on Tuesday for an oversight hearing covering the SSHS situation, GDOE's rightsizing initiative and other matters involving the education department.

Due to the condition of their campus, SSHS students are having to use the John F. Kennedy High School campus under a double-session schedule with JFK students. 

"We understand, and we agree, that the dual schedule piggyback environment that our Simon Sanchez kids are in at JFK is not good for the JFK student body or the Simon Sanchez student body in the long term," Swanson said Tuesday. 

GREEN BAY (WLUK) -- Another version of plans to consolidate, close and build Green Bay public schools, particularly at the elementary level, could be ordered by the school board on Monday.

In the wake of declining enrollments and tightening budgets, the district has been reviewing plans which could result in about a dozen schools being closed, others being expanded, and new schools built.

After reviewing results of a conceptual boundary survey and other feedback, which showed little support for Scenario A and Scenario B, interim superintendent Vicki Bayer is asking the school board to create a Scenario C.

Among the findings:

66.1% supported making boundary changes to address declining enrollment

Adding K-8s wherever possible on the east side had 57.4% support

Scenario A had 28.2% support (supportive or very supportive)

Scenario B had 24.4% support (supportive or very supportive)
This new scenario would be created based on the following criteria:

Hunt Valley, Md. (WBFF) — A potential battle is brewing in Baltimore County over how to make schools less crowded. Baltimore County has the highest number of overcrowded schools in the region, and there are disagreements over how to free up seats.

“It is absurd to develop in areas that are significantly over capacity,” said Yara Cheikh, a Baltimore County parent and member of the Dulaney High School Parent Teacher Student Association. “We need to fix it.”

A few years ago, Cheikh was part of a task force created by Baltimore County Council to study overcrowding in schools and come up with solutions.

“I have seen the ramifications of overcapacity at the elementary school, high school and middle school levels,” Cheikh told Project Baltimore. “We've seen the damage that it does to our schools and to our communities.”

Nine new schools will open this fall in New York City, aiming to provide families with more choices on where they enroll their children, schools Chancellor David Banks said Thursday.

The new schools will offer a mix of elementary, middle, and high school programs across three of the city’s boroughs. They include a Brooklyn outpost of the successful Bard Early College High School, a Queens high school for careers in film and television, a project-based elementary school modeled on the progressive Brooklyn New School, and the city’s first Montessori-inspired public school.

Banks said the new schools are a way to address the “serious hemorrhaging” of students in recent years, with enrollment falling by more than 100,000 students, despite ticking back up slightly last year.

“Parents and families are looking for a wide range of special schools that are appealing to them, and that’s what we’re delivering,” he said. “My goal here … is to provide school experiences that will draw more families to our schools.”

Pittsburgh Public School officials on Wednesday presented a proposed framework for a facilities utilization plan, an idea that has already faced community pushback because it could lead to the closure and consolidation of some school buildings.

The plan — which was presented by several district administrators during an education committee meeting and did not include a list of schools that could be closed or consolidated — laid out 12 possible recommendations that are meant to act as guideposts as the district moves forward with creating the plan with the help of an outside consultant.

A finalized version could be presented to the board as early as August, with a possible vote on changes to the district’s footprint, which currently has 54 buildings, taking place in December.

The presentation came after school directors in January directed district administration to develop and present recommendations on a facilities utilization plan. That decision came months after Pittsburgh Public officials first announced they were considering closing some schools as the district faces a growing budget deficit and declining enrollment.

ROCKFORD, Ill. — In front of a curious crowd, public input concluded for Rockford Public Schools' nearly quarter billion dollar project on Wednesday night.
The final community feedback session steers RPS 205 in its $180 million Facilities Master Plan. With 45 buildings in the district, RPS officials outlined what they hope to achieve between 2025-2030.
A room of parents, teachers and community members provided questions and comments as well. Concerns included elementary school expansion "overpowering" classroom camaraderie, school safety and construction during the school year.
One Lincoln Middle School teacher also shared their hope the nearly 100-year-old building will continue be focused on despite recent improvements. 
 

MILWAUKEE — Wisconsin voters decided on dozens of school district referendums on Tuesday, including approval for the $252 million Milwaukee Public Schools referendum. More than 90 school district referendums asked for $1.3 billion in repairs and renovation projects.

In Milwaukee, the MPS referendum was more than 51% of the vote and passed Tuesday night. The referendum aims to stop budget cuts to schools but is estimated to raise property taxes. The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and Greater Milwaukee Foundation were both openly against the proposal.

The referendum would allow MPS to raise its revenue limit by $252 million phased in over four years, MPS officials said. The district will exceed the revenue limit by $140 million for the 2024-25 school year. The estimated increase in property taxes would be $216 per $100,000 of assessed property value in the first year, but taxes for the school district would remain flat after.

As the deadline nears for allocating the third and final round of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, concerns are mounting about what the financial future holds for school districts nationwide. Amidst this uncertainty, some districts have focused their efforts over the past three years on investing in an area important to student success, but one that won’t require major budget cuts when pandemic recovery funding ends: school facilities. In Mississippi, school districts are using the largest share of their $1.5 billion ESSER III allotment to improve the long-neglected spaces where students learn.

While some may associate spending on school facilities with flashy sports complexes and state-of-the-art buildings, the reality is that schools nationwide have long grappled with aging infrastructure and outdated facilities in need of comprehensive renovations. For states like Mississippi with historically low educational spending, the one-time infusion of federal funds presented a unique opportunity for districts to not only address immediate Covid-19 concerns but also tackle long-standing renovation needs that predated the pandemic. This analysis, the latest in a series of FutureEd reports on state and local pandemic-response spending, draws on Mississippi Department of Education data to explore how school districts in one of the nation’s poorest states have used federal ESSER III funds to address long-standing inequities in school facilities, a significant barrier to student success.

Requiring children to attend school when classroom temperatures are high is unsafe and reduces learning; yet closing schools for extreme heat has wide-ranging consequences for learning, safety, food access, and social determinants of health. Children are vulnerable to heat, and schooling is compulsory in the U.S. Families rely on schools for food, childcare, and safety. In order to protect the health and well-being of the nation’s children, the federal government must facilitate efforts to collect the data required to drive extreme heat mitigation and adaptive capacity, invest in more resilient infrastructure, provide guidance on preparedness and response, and establish enforceable temperature thresholds. To do this, federal agencies can take action through three paths of mitigation: data collection and collaboration, set policy, and investments. 

Nearly two decades after the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature was shirking its constitutional duty to fully fund public school facilities, lawmakers recently took a major step to address the problem. 

On Friday, Gov. Brad Little signed House Bill 521, which the Republican governor co-authored with a handful of powerful GOP legislators, including House Speaker Mike Moyle. Under the sweeping legislation, the state will spend an additional $1.5 billion over the next decade to help fund building construction and maintenance. 

While tidying up one constitutional conundrum, however, the bill sponsors may have created another: HB 521 itself could be unconstitutional. That’s because it doesn’t only address school facilities; it also cuts income taxes, eliminates a school election date and even gives the state’s public defender’s office a funding boost, among other things. 

Why does the bill’s broad scope matter? The Idaho Constitution explicitly prohibits legislation that embraces more than one subject. 

Declining retail marijuana sales in Colorado could pause millions of dollars in school construction grants, according to lawmakers and the state Department of Education.

Colorado dispensary sales increased for seven straight years after recreational sales began in 2014, topping out at nearly $2.23 billion in 2021, according to the state Department of Revenue. Marijuana sales began dropping after the pandemic ended, however, decreasing about 20 percent from 2021 to 2022, and then another 14.5 percent from 2022 to 2023.

Annual tax revenue from marijuana sales and business licensing fees has experienced a similar decline, falling almost 46 percent from 2021 to 2023. But lawmakers continued going to the well of marijuana revenue for bill funding, according to State Representative Rick Taggert, and now a crunch has hit.

Taggert, a college professor who represents Mesa County, is sponsoring a bill that would pause an annual $20 million transfer from the state's Marijuana Tax Cash Fund to the Building Excellent Schools Today (BEST) fund, a matching grant program intended to help spur new construction at Colorado schools.

The build-up to Town Meeting Day and the record failure of 30 school budgets have overshadowed an earlier, stunning report that has received only modest coverage: Vermont faces at least $6.3 billion in school construction costs over the next two decades — even more, if we don’t start putting $300 million per year into this right away.

An immediate question is: If taxpayers don’t support their local school budget, how likely are they to vote to spend even more on aging school buildings — even if the Legislature establishes a new school construction aid program that would cover part of the cost?

The comprehensive, 42-page, School Construction Aid Task Force Report presented to the House and Senate Committees on Education last month, provides a sobering picture of the condition of Vermont’s 384 school buildings and recommendations of ways to move forward, with the conclusion that “a paradigm shift is necessary.”

Along I-90 between Bozeman and Billings, a field of solar panels borders the interstate under the backdrop of the Crazy Mountains. Those panels help power Sweet Grass County High School for its 160 students.

“Here's our solar panels. They’re next to the interstate. It's a 50 kilowatt ground-mount system,” says Sam Spector.

Spector is the school facilities manager. He started doing energy upgrades almost a decade ago like retrofitting lights in the gym, optimizing heating and ventilation systems and he oversaw the solar panel installation in 2020.

“That solar array right now is producing 25% of our consumption needs.”

Spector says the school consumes the same amount of energy as around 45 houses, so it’s a big utility bill.

Inside the school, he walked through the hallways, pointing out LED bulbs that reduce lighting energy use by 90%, and a timer knob that automatically turns off the exhaust hood in a cooking class.

VICTORIA – The Government of British Columbia is putting $291.9 million towards school maintenance projects as part of its 2024 budget.
To reduce emissions and improve energy efficiency, the provincial Ministry of Education and Childcare is providing up to $26.8 million in energy and electrical upgrades across 51 school districts through the Carbon Neutral Capital Program including upgrades of heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.
The province is increasing the Annual Facility Grant by an additional $3.1 million for routine repairs throughout the year and $150.2 million is also available to districts to address maintenance needs, as well as other improvements, such as replacing playground equipment or enhancing traffic safety, a release said.
Other school spending in the budget includes $5 million annually through the Feeding Futures program to “create, improve or expand infrastructure through projects, such as food-delivery vans and kitchen upgrades, including electrical upgrades and the purchase of commercial-kitchen equipment,” the release said, as well as $23.8 million to purchase school buses, of which $9 million has been allocated for the purchase of electric school buses.
 

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indianapolis Public Schools is getting some national recognition.

IPS announced Thursday that 17 of their school buildings have earned the Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR Certification. That’s up from their 10 energy-efficient school buildings in 2023.

To earn the ENERGY STAR Certification, buildings must rank in the top 25% nationwide for energy efficiency and meet ventilation standards.

According to a news release, the school says “the cost of utilities is the second largest budget line-item for the district, and the prices for electricity, natural gas, heating oil, and water have been steadily increasing.”

To combat the rising prices, IPS partnered with energy consultant Cenergistic to implement conservation programs in the district’s buildings.

Energy specialists have also been tracking IPS energy consumption at all campuses through state-of-the-art technology to identify and correct areas where energy may be overused.

During a presentation to the IPS Board of School Commissioners, William Murphy, the district’s chief operations officer, said that since partnering with Cenergistic on a comprehensive energy conservation program in 2018, IPS has saved $22,860,552.

GREENWICH — From main entryways to sinks, a new report says it will cost more than $34 million to make a majority of district buildings compliant with federal Americans with Disabilities Act mandates.
"This is incredibly common," said Michelle Miller, architect and project manager from Silver Petrucelli and Associates, the firm that conducted the ADA study, at the Thursday night presentation for the Board of Education. "All districts are dealing with this. Schools were built mainly from the '50s to the '70s, so they all have these common issues." 
Silver Petrucelli's study excludes Old Greenwich School and Central Middle School because both schools will become ADA compliant after their building projects are completed. The study also excludes New Lebanon School, built in 2019, and Riverside School. 
 

The Ozark school district recently completed the first of three new storm shelters.

A ribbon-cutting for the new structure at Ozark Middle School was recently held. Students from the middle school choir were part of the celebration.

The space includes classrooms, offices, a new entrance and a storm shelter.

"We are so proud of this wonderful building," Superintendent Lori Wilson said in a news release. "We want to thank the community for supporting our schools and understanding that we needed this structure to not only keep our students and staff safe, but also enhance their learning environment."