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.
 

The school building that houses Adelaide Elementary School in Federal Way, Washington, is more than 65 years old. With no heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system, and classrooms and offices all having single-pane windows, the school is not equipped to insulate students and staff from extreme heat. In the northwestern United States, where temperatures in May don't often exceed 70 degrees, that usually has not been much of a concern.  
In May 2023, however, the region was gripped by a stifling heat wave that brought record-shattering temperatures.  
Federal Way Public Schools was largely unprepared to deal with a situation that what soon became a crisis for many students and educators. Because of the magnitude of the heatwave, even those schools with some sort of working HVAC system couldn't keep their learning and working spaces at a comfortable temperature.
“Our buildings didn't get a chance to cool down,” says Shannon McCann, a special education teacher and president of the Federal Way Education Association (FWEA). “Everyone—students and staff—were suffering.” 
Educators were tasked with finding ways to alleviate the heat, but there is only so much they could do. The impact on students was immediate and alarming. 
 

Education officials are asking for an extension on the deadline for schools to comply with sanitation regulations after Typhoon Mawar caused damage to facilities across the island and set back preparations for the upcoming school year.

But even if an extension is granted, Simon Sanchez High School may be unable to reopen by the start of the next school year due to major typhoon damage.

Guam Department of Education leadership sat down with lawmakers at the Guam Congress Building Wednesday to discuss what’s needed to get students back in the classroom by Aug. 9. About 99% of schools still lack power, according to acting GDOE Superintendent Judi Won Pat, and none have had power and water restored as of Wednesday.

Since 2017, 57 schools have been built by the Turkish Ministry of National Education to be safer and more resilient to disaster, with support from the World Bank, GFDRR and the EU.
24 of these schools are located in areas affected by the February 2023 earthquakes and aftershocks and all withstood the disaster.
Over 40,000 people now have access to safer and resilient schools as a result of the Turkish Ministry of National Education’s partnership on safer schools with the World Bank, GFDRR and the EU.

An open records request is showing the Green Bay Area Public School District invested $26.9 million over the past 10 years in buildings that a community task force recommended to close.

The recommendation to close 12 district buildings is still in play as the district faces a $20 million budget deficit for the 2024-25 school year and a projected enrollment decline of about 12% over the next decade.

As the community task force spent the first few months of this year exploring possible options for right-sizing Green Bay's school district, Lisa Kardish was surprised to hear Leonardo da Vinci School for Gifted Learners was on the chopping block.

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - More than $2 billion in school construction is going unspent, Hawaii News Now has learned, and nearly half of that money is set to lapse next year.

“That to me is something that to me is totally unacceptable. We know we can do better and accepting mediocrity is to me something like accepting an F,” said Republican state Rep. Gene Ward.

The money is for hundreds of DOE projects that the state Legislature appropriated for school construction.

“This is crazy when we have a massive repair and maintenance backlog ... I mean, there’s there’s just no imaginable excuse for this,” said Colin Moore, a University of Hawaii political science professor.

“I’m sure that many other departments across the state would be very happy to take some of this money off the DOE’s hands.”

A few years ago, voters in Little Rock came to the agreement that renovations were needed in schools across the district, particularly at Little Rock Central High School, a national historic landmark in the capital city. The measure passed at the polls with over 75 percent of voters in support of the measure. 

The $300 million allocated in construction funds would be used to update school buildings and build new ones.

Little Rock School Board member Jeff Wood said at the time that part of those renovations would impact Little Rock Central High School, with the removal of portable buildings and the revitalization of athletic facilities at Little Rock’s flagship school. And if you’ve driven past Little Rock Central High School lately, you know that these improvements are already coming to life. 

“A decent chunk of that $300 million — $80 million — has been allocated for Central High School. The baseball field has been removed and allocated for student parking, and the biggest renovation will be to buildings allocated for the STEM program,” said Muskie Harris, a member of the Little Rock Central High School’s Tiger Foundation. The Tiger Foundation is a team of volunteers with close ties with the school who help navigate financial assistance to support the school’s extracurricular activities.

Classes were canceled Friday for the 422 students at Somerville’s Winter Hill Community Innovation School after concrete fell onto an inside stairwell, leaving families protesting that they had long warned of such dangers.
The school for prekindergartners to eighth-graders was unoccupied at the time the concrete fell, interim superintendent Jeff Curley said in an email sent to families Thursday evening.
This is the second day of classes students have missed due to Winter Hill facilities issues this school year. In November, the building was closed after a water main broke; students were sent home at noon, parents said.
After staff found the concrete from Thursday’s incident, the stairwell was closed and a structural engineer conducted an immediate review for minor repairs. “Out of an abundance of caution at this time, we have made the decision to close … while structural engineers conduct a more thorough review of the building,” Curley said.
 

ELIZABETHTOWN | After some 18 months of waiting, Boquet Valley Central School District heard back from New York State Education Department officials about how much aid they would provide for a new school building.

Their figure did not come in at 91 percent as planning and review with State Ed had suggested.

School Superintendent Joshua R. Meyer met with officials numerous times over the past six months, challenging their early aid calculations. The last meeting with State Education Commissioner Dr. Betty A. Rosa put the final offer at 55.6 percent.

"We filed a submission to State Ed in early March 2021," Meyer said. "It took about 18 months before the district heard back."

Pauses in project review, he said, were due to the COVID-19 pandemic, because people were not meeting together, working remotely instead.

The final amount of aid available from the state sits at $34,387,656, which would have been a larger percentage of initial building cost estimates around $50 million.

But delay and supply/demand struggles, plus rising costs for materials and labor have pushed the price for a new school building in Lewis to $61,859,000.

The local share would be $27,471,344 to build on a 75-acre parcel of county property at Thrall Dam in Lewis.

GILLETTE, Wyo. — Wyoming’s School Facilities Commission will vote at its June 7 and 8 meeting in Buffalo on emergency rules to adopt changes to the state’s School Facility Condition Assessment process.
The meeting will take place at Johnson County School District #1, located at 601 W. Lott in Buffalo.
Legislators established the commission in 2002 to ensure adequate, equitable primary and secondary school facilities in Wyoming. The governor appoints commissioners, while legislators approve them.
In the 2022 Budget Session, Wyoming legislators decided to appropriate $4 million for the new School Facility Condition Assessment, according to the meeting packet. During this year’s legislative session, lawmakers eliminated the consolidated remediation schedule, which goes into effect in July. They changed state laws around charter schools that require the department to determine whether school districts have sufficient space for such a school. These changes require rules updates.
The School Facilities Division of the State Construction Department recommends the state’s School
Facilities Commission complete the following, the meeting packet said:
Adopt the Emergency Rules draft the Department has presented to the School Facilities
Commission and request the Governor not sign them into effect until on or after July 1,
2023, when the statutory changes take effect with regards to the consolidated remediation
schedule;
 

As schools reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic, indoor air quality arose as a top concern among K-12 education stakeholders. Many school administrators, parents, and others in school communities were wondering: What should we do to address indoor air quality? What will help most when school buildings are old? Do we need HVAC upgrades to comply with the highest recommended standard of air ventilation, and aren’t those expensive? 

The pandemic put a spotlight on the importance of healthy learning environments for all students. But many people within the K-12 education community – including advocates, educators, and students – have been raising their voices to improve the physical state of schools for a long time, highlighting the inequality between schools in low-income neighborhoods and the impacts it has on their education, compared to those in affluent communities. School building needs often go far beyond HVAC upgrades, especially in low-income communities and communities of color. The 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure by the American Society of Civil Engineers rated the Nation’s school buildings as a D-plus. We know that physical improvements to school buildings are important, as there is significant evidence that connects how lighting, temperature, noise pollution, access to green space, and more contribute to student learning and educator morale and attendance. 

SANTA FE, N.M.— New Mexico Public Lands Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard announced an executive order today that bans new oil and gas leasing on state lands within one mile of schools and other educational facilities.

The order is the result of collaboration between the State Land Office and the Center for Biological Diversity, Citizens Caring for the Future and community members in Eastern Navajo Agency. The groups and residents detailed concerns about students’ exposure to oil and gas pollution in letters to the commissioner in March and April.

“It’s outrageous that kids at schools like Lybrook Elementary are exposed to toxic emissions from oil and gas every day,” said Samuel Sage, community services coordinator for the Navajo Nation Chapter of Counselor. “These are vital protections for communities like ours. We hope all state agencies get the message that they need to do more to protect kids and communities.”

The executive order also requires State Land Office staff to review all existing oil and gas mineral leases, business leases and rights-of-way to ensure they comply with state law. That includes requirements to plug inactive wells, remediate spills and adhere to relevant air quality standards.

Just a day after Pittsburgh Public Schools rolled out an extreme heat protocol for schools without air conditioning, the district announced that 40 schools will transition to remote learning as temperatures are expected to spike later this week.

On Tuesday, Superintendent Wayne Walters announced a new Extreme Heat Protocol for schools without sufficient air conditioning systems, which guide heat-related closures and other decisions. By Wednesday, the district said 40 facilities would go to remote learning for the remainder of the week due to hot forecasted temperatures

According to the National Weather Service, temperatures in Pittsburgh may surge up to 90 degrees on Thursday and up to 94 degrees Friday. 

Mr. Walters’ new protocol guides the district to monitor the temperature inside school facilities when outside temperatures are forecasted for one or more days to exceed 85℉ and/or a heat index of 90℉ or higher, per the National Weather Services. With that monitoring, the district will make a decision on whether to temporarily shift to remote learning.

As California grapples with how to deal with heat waves made more intense by climate change, schools in the state may soon have to come up with plans for cooling down outside play areas by planting more trees and replacing surfaces like asphalt that swelter on hot days.

The state Senate passed the legislation that would require public and charter schools and districts to strategize on how to introduce more shade on campus, plant gardens and replace surfaces that hold on to a lot of heat with alternatives such as grass and wood chips. They have a 2027 deadline to start implementing their plans.

"We needed this a long time ago," said state Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat representing the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County. "We are making up for the decades of delay that we're in right now."

Only a handful of state senators voted against the bill. It would still need approval in the state Assembly.

The bill is a starting point that will set schools up for any future, stricter legislation that could mandate how they have to mitigate heat, Menjivar said.

One of the most significant institutions of Black education in the United States was the Rosenwald School, a local school developed in part through the philanthropy of Julius Rosenwald. Although many of the physical schools no longer remain in Arkansas, their legacy survives through the students educated in them.

Julius Rosenwald was born in 1862 in Springfield, Ill., to Jewish immigrant parents. He never finished high school or attended college but went into the clothing business instead in 1878. He invested $35,000 in the stock of Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 1895, and in a little more than 30 years, it grew into $150,000,000. He became president of the company in 1908 and chairman in 1922. Rosenwald became a trustee of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1912 and made gifts to the rural school movement being carried out by the institute, primarily through close contact with his friend Booker T. Washington, whose autobiography, "Up From Slavery," inspired his philanthropic vision. Washington had a goal of providing safe, purpose-built school buildings for Black students, and Rosenwald wholeheartedly supported Washington's dream.

Rosenwald believed that a philanthropist should focus on expendable rather than endowment resources. He felt that donors needed to make sure that their contributions would make the most impact within their lifetimes. The needs and problems of future generations, he believed, should be left to the philanthropists of the future to solve.

This legislative session brings hope for improved education funding in our state. Gov. Joe Lombardo’s proposed budget calls for an increase of $2 billion dollars in state appropriations for K-12 education over the biennium, and legislators are considering this critical proposal now. Nevada’s Economic Forum recently provided increased projection of $250 million in state coffers as well. However, even in this remarkable economic landscape, many school districts will continue to face longstanding and enormous challenges in meeting the needs of their students. 

For the White Pine County School District, the persistent challenge is seen in our ability to construct new facilities. New construction may seem to be a vanity project to some or secondary to providing quality education to others, but neither is the case for our district. Though we have worked for years to address this, many of our facilities lack the essential characteristics necessary to serve our students and their families, retain qualified instructional staff and provide the safety and accommodation that any family would expect to have for their children.

Because we are a rural district, many readers may not know about the conditions our students and staff face throughout the school year, especially for two of our schools: David E. Norman Elementary School and White Pine Middle School. Both of these schools are housed in charming buildings that are full of state and local history. They are also, to put it simply, inadequate and concerning. 

APPOMATTOX COUNTY, Va. (WSET) — The Virginia Board of Education has granted Appomattox County Public Schools (ACPS) a School Construction Assistance Grant worth $4.5 million.

This grant, awarded on May 11, comes as part of the statewide initiative to support school construction projects, with Appomattox being one of the 45 recipients. The Virginia Public School Construction grants are the outcome of the School Construction Assistance Program, established by Governor Glenn Youngkin during the 2022 Special Session I General Assembly, which provides a total of $450 million in state funds for fiscal year 2023. These funds aim to facilitate competitive grants for new school construction, additions, and major building renovations.

Annette Bennett, the Division Superintendent, expressed her enthusiasm regarding ACPS's successful application for the grant, which was submitted in March 2023 to aid the renovation of Appomattox County High School.