Helena Public Schools has increased the amounts of their Building Reserve Levies for the elementary (K-8) and high school districts to keep up with the rising cost of materials and labor for construction, school officials said.
The elementary Building Reserve Levy went from $1.25 million to $3 million. The high school Building Reserve Levy increased from $700,000 to $1.5 million on the ballots that go out Friday. The last Building Reserve Levy passed in 2013, and if these two pass, it would be a renewal of the existing levies.
“How do we buy nuts and bolts, pieces of plywood, doors, windows, boilers — how do we pay for that stuff? It comes out of the (facilities budget),” said Todd Verrill, HPS’ facilities director. “... We have a large footprint. We have a lot of facilities, and they’re getting old.”

Thirty of 37 New Brunswick schools that had peak carbon dioxide readings above the "desirable" level during air quality testing more than a year ago still lack proper ventilation systems, data quietly released by the Department of Education reveals.

Among them is a school that had a peak more than double the targeted maximum of 1,500 parts per million, and another that also had an overall average above that peak limit.

Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is commonly created indoors when people exhale. It's used as a proxy to measure air quality and the rate at which air is being renewed, which can contribute to the transmission of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses, according to experts.

Infection control epidemiologist Colin Furness contends carbon dioxide levels should be kept below 800 to 1,000 ppm and describes the test results as a "public health crisis."

"Let's be clear, the CO2 readings are a measure of how much of other people's exhalations you are breathing in. And I just, you know, I really want the 'ick' factor to sink in," he said.

"This is not what we should have anywhere — particularly schools. … What could be more important than child health?"

Newton school board members already received survey input from teachers and staff about proposed master planning options, but they want even more feedback from the elementary faculty who would be most affected by any building closures, which administrators hinted as a definite possibility in the coming years.
Elected officials also agreed that of the three scenarios presented by the master planning committee, only two seemed to be the most viable.
Here are the scenarios the master planning committee came up with:
• Scenario No. 1: Construct a new grades 1-4 elementary school at Thomas Jefferson or Aurora Heights site and demolish original buildings, selling Woodrow Wilson Elementary site for development and add and remodel Emerson Hough for a pre-K and kindergarten center. This scenario costs more than $40 million.
• Scenario No. 2: Add and remodel Emerson Hough for pre-K-1st grade center, add onto and remodel Thomas Jefferson Elementary into a nine-section grades 2-4 building and then sell the remaining sites for redevelopment. This scenario costs more than $20 million.
 

During the April 11, 2023 school board meeting, South Pasadena Unified School District (SPUSD) unveiled plans to install solar panels at all five district school sites and the District Office before the end of 2024. Each site will add roof, carport or field arrays in single- and double-wide configurations to maximize the amount of power produced while taking the existing landscape into consideration.

According to Generation180, a nonprofit that promotes and tracks clean energy, by early 2022 nearly one in 10 K-12 public schools across the country were using solar energy and the number continues to grow.

The SPUSD solar project was approved by the Board of Education and includes installing panels that will supply more than 1100kW DC of power. The panels will produce an energy (solar) offset ranging from 33-90% depending on the site where they are installed. Solar offset is the amount of electricity the solar project produces in a year divided by the total amount of electricity actually used that year expressed as a percentage. These estimates are impacted by roof size, solar seasonality, and utility regulations.

The Andover High School Building Committee has recommended that the town build a new high school instead of renovating the old building.

“It’s cleaner, it’s quicker, it brings less risk, it’s less impactful for the students,” said committee member Shannon Scully. “It’s also the least expensive of our notable expensive options.”

The campus option with a new theater is estimated to have a total project cost of $480,847,000. The renovation option was estimated to cost $567,864,000 and a similar new building project that would have included a renovation of the Collins Center came in at $503,821,000.

A preliminary tax analysis found the project will result in an estimated increase on the average annual property tax bill of between $1,740 and $2,215, depending on interest rates.

Members of the Building Committee said during a meeting April 6 that the option they are recommending also has the most efficient layout.

The project will replace the current high school which town officials say suffers from overcrowding.

Though the project is progressing, it faces a significant hurdle due to the town’s debt limit. The price tag for the project will likely exceed the town’s available debt limit, meaning the town can’t currently legally pay for the build.

Jackie Uselton rifled through the mock pill bottles and test first aid kits in a mock pharmacy cabinet that doubles as storage in Westlake High School on a recent Monday morning.

“The vision would be to have a mock hospital room, hospital bay, beds,” said Uselton, health science and clinical instructor. “We do have some stuff. We’re just kind of crowded.”

Right now, the health sciences programs are stuffed into three small classrooms, she said. The roughly 200 health science students have to share one mock hospital bed.

That, however, could change if Eanes school district voters approve a proposed $131.4 million bond, which would fund facility upgrades, including some that would allow programs like health sciences to expand.

Aging facilities, safety upgrades and technology needs have driven the Eanes school board to call for a bond election.

HOUSTON — A Houston ISD teacher believes the air quality conditions at her school have gotten her sick.
KHOU 11 has previously reported on claims of mold and high levels of carbon dioxide at Kelso Elementary School. While cleanup is being done at the school, one teacher said she's concerned about her and her student's health on campus.
"I felt like something was off. I couldn't exactly explain it. Lightheadedness, headaches beyond belief," the teacher said, who didn't want to be identified for fear of retaliation.
She said she's gotten sick at school and believes it's because of reported mold and high levels of carbon dioxide in some classrooms.
"I want to hear the truth," she said. "What is there and what have they done about it?"
HISD has said there was an HVAC issue and that as part of standard protocol, crews were sent to evaluate it. The district also confirmed to KHOU 11 that there was "regular mold," which they said was not harmful.
 

New boilers in five elementary schools are some of the major repairs and maintenance needed in the Bozeman School District as part of the district’s $6 million capital improvement plan for calendar year 2023.
Of that amount, $4 million will go toward elementary schools, and $2 million will go toward high schools. BSD also has plans for a combined total of $2.5 million in upgrades in 2024 and 2025.
Mike Waterman, the district’s executive director of business and operations, said that although many projects are slated, some may go uncompleted if the district can’t find companies to do the work. The projects that don’t get finished will roll over to subsequent years.
The capital projects were approved in March, and BSD Director of Facilities Matt Stark said work is already underway to purchase equipment and to line up contractors and consultants. Stark said this year is heavy on mechanical equipment, and long delivery times mean ordering sooner is better.
Each boiler costs about $75,000, and boilers are needed at Irving, Hawthorne, Whittier, Hyalite and Meadowlark Elementary Schools. Hawthorne will need two boilers.
 

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Duval County School Board will hold a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday to mark the beginning of a new place to learn for sixth through eighth graders.
Chaffee Trail Middle School is the first middle school to be built funded by the half-penny sales tax, which was approved by Duval County voters in 2020.
Students will perform and school district leaders will share remarks about the Westside’s new addition to education.
The 6-8 grade school is estimated to cost $38.6 million and is just one of four transformational projects that will be funded by the sales tax.
In September, the design meeting between stakeholders for the new middle school was completed, and the district said it has received conceptual floor plans and proposed building elevations for the new school.
 

For years, Puerto Rico has been hit with natural disaster after disaster, making it hard for every sector to recover fully. Education has especially been hit hard, with interruptions in schooling becoming very prevalent in students’ lives. Just last fall, flooding caused many schools in coastal Puerto Rico to close while cleaning out the water, meaning students were missing out on many classes. These constant interruptions have caused students to fall behind in curriculum, worrying both parents and students who have high aspirations that rely on their education.

Back in 2017, Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, leaving the entire territory in devastation. On average, schools were closed for up to four months or more. This meant students were far behind in their academic progress, “especially in reading and math.” The gap in education especially affected low-income students who were not able to access external educational resources, widening the wealth disparities in education. After recovery efforts, schools started opening up in order to help students catch up on education. However, this relief, if any, was felt briefly. On January 7, 2020, Puerto Rico experienced a magnitude 6.4 earthquake. There were reports of strong shaking from people inside buildings and damage to homes and property. As a result, schools were declared closed again until the completion of a full inspection of each school to assess structural damage and security for future incidents. 

GREENWICH — More than 30 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, Greenwich Public Schools buildings are still not ADA compliant. However, district officials are taking steps to address accessibility concerns, starting with examining how accessible the school buildings are.

Accessibility issues at the schools abound, and have even garnered the attention of federal authorities. Two years ago, the federal Office of Civil Rights filed a complaint against the district because of its failure to comply with ADA standards at Old Greenwich School.

Principal of OGS Jennifer Bencivengo spoke to the Board of Education at an Oct. 20 meeting, sharing that students who are on crutches do not find it fun having “to climb up and down over 100 steps a day to get to their third floor classroom. 

“Nor did their teachers, who have to ensure these children are able to safely traverse multiple flights of stairs on crutches while monitoring 23 other children,” Bencivengo said.

Dexter Community Schools is announcing its first ever community-wide fundraising campaign to construct a Solar Panel Walkway and Solar Field along the bus hub that will provide sustainable energy to the surrounding schools, offer significant energy cost savings for the schools over time, protect and shade students while they wait for the bus, and provide unique and hands-on place-based educational opportunities for students of all ages.

Dexter Community Schools is partnering with a local foundation, businesses, alumni, and the community to raise the funds necessary to build the solar panel walkway and nearby solar field.

GREEN BAY, Wis. (WBAY) - At its seventh meeting on April 5, the Green Bay Area Public Schools Task Force finalized its facilities master plan. It now moves forward to the Board of Education for its review.

Below is a picture of the GBAPS Task Force’s schema that they have voted to send to the Board of Education.

According to a letter sent to families and staff from Interim Superintendent Vicki Bayer, the Board of Education will vote in June on the recommendations. Prior to that vote, the Task Force will finalize its presentation to the Board during its meeting on April 18. The Task Force will then present its recommendation to the Board during its meeting that will take place at 5:30 p.m. on May 8, in the District Office Building’s Board Room.

PHILADELPHIA - Two different school buildings in the School District of Philadelphia are closing, one temporarily and one for the rest of the school year, due to asbestos, according to school officials. The School District of Philadelphia confirmed Friday that during new rounds of testing, plaster previously labeled safe, came back with asbestos at Mitchell Elementary and at Frankford High School.

A letter was sent Friday afternoon alerting families S. Weir Mitchell Elementary, or simply Mitchell School, in Southwest Philadelphia, is closing for the rest of the 2022-2023 school year, due to the presence of asbestos in the plaster on the walls and above ceiling tiles.

At least 38 elementary schools in north-central Pennsylvania have closed over the past decade, forcing students and staff to adapt to more crowded schools, longer commutes and larger class sizes. Some of the districts hardest hit by these closures, many in shrinking rural areas of the state, cited student population decline as a reason for shutting down schools.
Enrollment at the 55 districts Spotlight PA focused on declined by 11% over the past decade — outpacing a statewide decline of 8%.
But district officials and experts said there are also more universal reasons for these rural closures, from the flight of students from traditional public schools to charters to a lack of state funding. All but five of the 55 school districts face per-student funding shortfalls, some of which exceed $2,000, according to an analysis by Matthew Kelly, an education professor at Penn State who studies funding policy. Kelly prepared the analysis as part of a landmark lawsuit that claimed the state is violating its constitution by underfunding poor school districts. Commonwealth Court recently ruled in favor of the challenge, though it did not prescribe a remedy for the issue or direct the governor and legislature to act in a specific way.
 

Architects have always considered the positive influence of natural light on the health and mood of a building's occupants, but measuring its actual benefits was a challenge for a long time. However, the past few decades have seen significant progress in this area, with research such as the comprehensive study conducted by the Heschong Mahone Group, which analyzed more than 21,000 student tests in three school districts in California, Washington, and Colorado. The results showed that students in classrooms with more natural light had a 20% faster learning progress in math tests and 26% on reading tests, compared to students in classrooms with less natural light. Many other studies reinforce that including natural light in spaces has immense long-term benefits for societies, especially during a child's valuable formative years, who spend about 90% of their time indoors and about 200 days a year in classrooms.

The renovation and extension project of the Grøndalsvængets School in the suburbs of Copenhagen, Denmark, by JJW Architects, is an excellent example of how to apply architectural research in a practical way. The school is an almost 100-year-old building that has been expanded with new spaces for sports, music and learning. The success of the project was achieved through two vital design strategies. First, the reuse of 250,000 bricks from a nearby dilapidated hospital, which allowed them to maintain the local aesthetic and reduce the environmental footprint that producing new bricks would have had.

ST. CHARLES COUNTY — State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick opened an audit of the Francis Howell School District one day after three critics of the district’s finances were elected to the school board.

Fitzpatrick, a Republican, announced the audit Wednesday, citing “numerous ... fiscal and operations concerns” with the school district.

The concerns center around construction of the new Francis Howell North High School, which was estimated to cost $86.4 million when voters approved a $244 million bond measure in June 2020. After price increases in labor and materials and an additional 30,000 square feet were added to the project, the school board in December 2021 approved a maximum cost of $164.7 million. The school is scheduled to open in fall of 2024.

Francis Howell Families, a political action committee, previously called for the state audit along with state Rep. Phil Christofanelli, R-St. Peters.

The conservative group, which opposes what it calls pornography and critical race theory in schools, raised more than $25,545 for three candidates who won seats Tuesday on the school board — Ron Harmon, Mark Ponder and Jane Puszkar.

Thousands of North Carolina public schools will be tested in the next three years to try to remove unsafe levels of lead and asbestos that could endanger students. The state is using $150 million in federal COVID aid to expand a program that has allowed all 4,500 licensed childcare facilities to test and remediate unsafe levels of lead in their water. The additional funding will allow K-12 public schools to also test their water taps. The money also will help schools and childcare facilities remove lead paint and asbestos.
“Overall, our objective is to identify and eliminate exposure to lead and asbestos hazards where North Carolina children are learning and playing,” said Jennifer Redmon, RTI International’s director of Environmental Health and Water Quality Program. The state Department of Health and Human Services is coordinating the program in cooperation with the state Department of Public Instruction and RTI International. A presentation on the new “Clean Classrooms for Carolina Kids” program was made at Wednesday’s State Board of Education meeting. In 2019, Environment America gave the state an “F” for failing to get lead out of drinking water at schools.
 

As heavy storms keep pounding California with torrential rains and a record Sierra snowpack is poised to melt and send rivers surging over their banks, more than a fifth of the state’s 10,000 K-12 schools are at a high or moderate risk of flooding, an analysis of federal data by EdSource shows.

Schools in flood-prone areas, in some cases protected by aging, weakened levees with poor safety ratings, face possible floods similar to those that have already swept through schools in Alameda, Merced and Monterey counties this year, causing millions of dollars in damages, Federal Emergency Management Agency data shows.

Flooding in the Tulare and the San Joaquin basins in the Central Valley in the months ahead “is inevitable,” Jeffrey Mount, a geomorphologist and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California who studies flood and water management, told EdSource in an interview.

“We’re looking at a pretty epic spring in those places. We’re really going to see some considerable hardship in these small rural communities once this snow begins to melt,” he said. He urged local communities and public agencies like school districts to start planning now.

WATERBURY, Conn. (WTNH) — Connecticut schools are set to receive millions of dollars in federal grants to improve their indoor air quality.

Educators, who have been fighting for better air quality for decades, said the COVID-19 pandemic created more urgency.  

Joanie Amato, a West Haven High School teacher and a representative for the American Federation of Teachers and School Nurses, said Connecticut leaders must protect kids and educators from airborne illnesses.   

“They want to keep their children safe,” Amato said. “They want to have a clean, healthy school. The reality is it’s been neglected for so long and, financially, districts can’t do it alone.”  

State leaders announced the first round of grant money on Wednesday, with $56 million allocated to better air quality in public schools.  

It’s part of Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed $450 million plan for schools, which includes both state bonding and federal money.