ROCHESTER, Minn.-The Rochester Public School Board approved the district's 10 year long term facilities maintenance plan at its meeting on Tuesday. 
RPS' Director of Finance and Technology John Carlson said there is an estimated $295 million dollars worth of projects for the next 10 years at 36 district buildings, which have an average age of 41 years old. 
However, Carlson said record high inflation and supply chain issues have increased the estimated cost of future projects and that the district may have to cut back its funding amount on some projects in the future. 
RPS is required to submit a 10 year plan to the Minnesota Department of Education but Carlson said the district only needed to approve its plan to spend around $5 million dollars for the 2024 fiscal year. 
"What you are really being asked to approve is the FY 24 pay as you go amount because that is the amount we need to turn in on these sheets and it will be on the pay '23 levy that you are going to have access to in Sep. and even at that time you have further chance to say, no we do not want to levy that amount but we can not get a number on the levy sheet until we approve the long term maintenance plan by July 31," Carlson said. 
 

DENVER — School board members with Jefferson County Public Schools will study a plan to close more school buildings Tuesday night, as the district continues to downsize because of a lack of enrollment.
It seems like a jarring proposal for a metro area that in all accounts seems to be growing, but Colorado’s population growth is decreasing and has been since 2015. Colorado's state demographer, Elizabeth Garner, said it is due in large part to a lack of births in the state.
“For Colorado as a whole, we reached our peak school age population in 2018 and we’ve been declining ever since,” Garner said.
In the 2020 census, Colorado added 38,529 school-aged people, under the age of 18. But 43 of Colorado’s 64 counties saw their 18-and-under population decrease since 2010. One of the largest decreases in that population was in Jefferson County, a fact that Garner attributes to more people in that county aging in place and their school-aged kids eventually aging out of public schools.
 

Joseph Rodman West Elementary, near Washington, D.C.’s Petworth neighborhood, appears not only modernized but resurrected. And the firm behind the new and improved structure is behind several other public buildings in the District of Columbia.

Perkins Eastman has renovated at least 14 D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) buildings since the district dedicated $4 billion in 2007 to making its facilities healthier, more energy efficient, and sound. This one, which the firm completed before the school year in August 2021, aspires to be the world’s first net-zero-energy, LEED Platinum, and WELL-certified public school. But before its doors opened, it needed a new moniker.

In July 2021, Mayor Muriel Bowser approved legislation to rename the building John Lewis Elementary School. Joseph Rodman West was a U.S. senator, a Union general, and a chief executive of the District of Columbia. But in a statement, Bowser said he was much more than that. 

With the start of the new school year just weeks away, families are preparing to send their kids back to school, stocking up on school supplies and new clothes. As families get ready, so do school district maintenance teams across North Texas.
Teams have spent all summer updating air conditioning units, making needed repairs and doing preventive maintenance — changing filters, cleaning coils, replacing belts and motors — to make sure air conditioning systems are running properly so classrooms are cool on the first day of school.
“We work around the clock making sure that everything is ready to go,” said William Kelly Horn, assistant superintendent of facility services with Arlington ISD.
Even with extreme temperatures this summer, many North Texas districts have stuck with normal protocols to prepare air conditioning units for the approaching school year. The bigger concern has been making sure crews working in the heat are safe.
Triple-digit highs are expected to continue in the area for much of this week. Last month, the high reached at least 100 degrees on nine days, compared to the typical June total of two. A heat advisory is in effect for portions of North Texas until Wednesday at 9 p.m. Hot temperatures and high humidity will increase the risk for heat-related illnesses to occur, especially for those working outside.
 

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho — For decades, steadily growing student populations have driven an ongoing need for Kootenai County school districts to acquire land, build schools and hire more teachers for new classrooms.
However, a drastically changing economy is exacerbating those challenges for local school districts.
Kootenai County has seen some of the highest population growth of any county in the U.S. over the past decade. This population growth coupled with a low supply of affordable housing has led area realty prices to soar, reports our partners from the Coeur d'Alene Press.
For home sellers and investors, rising real estate prices are cause for celebration, but for renters, businesses and school districts needing space to build new facilities, high realty prices pose a real problem.
“No one‘s just giving away land,” said Scott Maben, director of communications for the Coeur d’Alene school district.
Acquiring land has become far more cost-intensive for the school district, but building new schools isn’t optional.
“This year we've seen more growth in the secondary schools,” said Jeff Voeller, the Coeur d’Alene district’s director of operations. "That's why a new middle school is so critical for us because we will continue to see them busting at the seams."
According to Voeller, it would cost millions of dollars to buy enough land for a single school in the current market.
 

SUGAR LAND, Texas — Fort Bend ISD board members are considering approving more than $7 million for the remediation and renovation of an elementary school where inspectors first found mold in May.
The hundreds of kids zoned to Barrington Place Elementary School will have to go to other campuses this upcoming school year while the mold is removed.
The school district said the mold is not airborne and was found in the insulation above the ceiling.
Although the school district said it doesn't pose an immediate health hazard, it will cost millions of dollars to remediate the school.
In late May, the school district said mild mold growth was found on some of the school's walls. A disinfectant was used to clean the areas. But then in June, the school district said more mold was found above the ceiling during a routine inspection. Insulation surrounding the chilled water piping deteriorated with age and allowed moisture to get into the material, the district said.
 

After Texas’ deadliest school shooting happened in his district’s own backyard, Southwest Independent School District Superintendent Lloyd Verstuyft knows it is incumbent upon him and his staff to ensure every facility in the district on the outskirts of San Antonio is as secure as possible.
That involves upgrading security technology, assessing each of Southwest ISD’s 18 campuses, fixing any physical safety defects and providing emergency operations training to all staff members.
But all of that comes at a cost.
While the Uvalde school shooting hasn’t necessarily taught San Antonio school districts anything new about school safety, district officials say it has heightened their sense of urgency to solidify their security plans and highlighted the need for far more funding to secure campuses.
Since the May 24 shooting, which killed 19 children and two teachers, Gov. Greg Abbott has directed state agencies to ensure schools are more secure and charged state Education Commissioner Mike Morath with outlining several actions school districts must complete before the start of the 2022-23 school year. Those actions include conducting safety audits of all school facilities, inspecting every exterior door, convening each district’s safety and security committee to review plans for emergencies like school shootings and training all staff, including substitutes, on safety procedures for their campus and district.
 

(The Center Square) – The current period of inflation, with rates that have not been seen for more than 40 years, is not just impacting the price of gas, food or other staples.
According to a Kentucky Department of Education official, a dozen or perhaps more public school district construction projects statewide are also bearing the brunt of the sudden rise in costs.
Chay Ritter, the director of the KDE’s Division of District Support, told the Capital Planning Advisory Board on Wednesday in Frankfort that construction costs for new school projects have almost doubled from their initial estimates. In some cases, that’s happened in less than a year.
For example, he said Christian County Schools estimated the cost to consolidate its two high schools would be $107 million last November. It rose by $10 million in February and $30 million in May.
Last week, the Kentucky New Era reported two bids for the new school to replace both Christian County and Hopkinsville high schools were $203.4 million and $198.9 million.
 

Greenskies Clean Focus and its partner Eznergy Solar Energy Solutions, a New Jersey-based solar developer and EPC, have completed a 490-kW solar portfolio for the Rumson Board of Education. Annually, the 1,225 solar panels at the schools are projected to generate more than 550,000-kWh of clean energy, offsetting approximately 87-90% of the electricity needs of the individual schools.

The rooftop solar installations located at Deane-Porter Elementary School (204 kW) and Forrestdale Middle School (286 kW) will help the school district save on energy bills over the long term and increase its sustainability profile.

“Greenskies is excited to support the Rumson School District in its adoption of renewable energy,” said Stanley Chin, President and CEO of Greenskies. “Solar provides stable energy costs and a highly-visible demonstration of the environmental benefits for years to come. Schools are an important component in the transition to clean energy in New Jersey and across the US.”

Urban communities are “disproportionately” receiving K-12 Common School Trust Dollars, despite the trust’s revenue coming from timber harvesting in rural areas, and State Superintendent Chris Reykdal said his office wants to change that. The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and Reykdal held a press conference Tuesday — the first of nine OSPI has planned leading up to the legislative session in January — to outline their priorities for “transforming” public K-12 schools in the state. “We are a state that has to share in our interests,” Reykdal said. “Our kids deserve equitable opportunities to learn no matter where they are.”
The major challenge raised by OSPI is that the revenue being generated in rural Washington is “almost exclusively” ending up in counties such as King, Pierce, Spokane and even Yakima. Reykdal said that the Department of Natural Resources is responsible for managing a trust for public schools, which is primarily funded through timber harvesting. Agricultural lands and leases also fund that trust, but 50-60% of the money is generated from trees. Reykdal said that money, in turn, goes to the legislature, which decides how to appropriately fund the school system.
The Washington legislature puts that money towards the School Construction Assistance Program, OSPI’s largest capital budget program, which the state uses to match funding when voters pass local school district bonds. But to pass a local bond for school funding, 60% of voters in school districts must approve the bond issue and the accompanying taxes to support it. Even if smaller, less affluent communities can pass a bond, they might be “property poor” so the amount they are matched by the legislature isn’t always significant enough to transform schools, he said. Due to the declining revenue from the harvesting of timber, Reykdal said OSPI wants to “stop depending” on those funds for the School Construction Assistance Program.
 

Food deserts. Poor housing conditions. Lack of community investment.

These challenges may not always come to mind when people think about how to improve America’s public schools.

But when my colleagues and I studied the 21st Century School Buildings Program, a US$1.1 billion school building and renovation initiative in Baltimore, these were the kinds of issues that staff from community-based organizations, schools, philanthropic organizations and city agencies hoped to address through improved school facilities.

Schools are the “hubs and hearts” of neighborhoods, as one community member told us during our research in the Southeast, Southwest and Cherry Hill sections of Baltimore. If, as one community school coordinator shared, schools want to achieve their goals to educate students, they should strengthen the communities that surround them.

All Denver school buildings will get air quality sensors this summer as part of a broader pandemic-fueled effort to improve the air students breathe. 

Denver Public Schools is spending $1.5 million on about 800 sensors, which will be placed in 10% of the district’s classrooms, a spokesperson said. The $1.5 million is a small fraction of the $205 million in federal COVID stimulus money, known as ESSER funds, that the 90,000-student district received. The district must spend the money by 2024. 

“We know now, more than ever, that good indoor air quality contributes to a favorable environment for students and staff, and is part of assisting a school with its core mission of educating children,” district spokesperson Scott Pribble said in a statement.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused educators and families to question the air quality inside schools, an aspect of public education some researchers said got too little attention for too long as students suffered with allergies, asthma, and airborne viruses that can disrupt learning. 

(The Center Square) — Georgia authorities are using a federal grant to fund a new website to disseminate school safety resources and updated training to Georgia schools.

The Georgia Department of Education and the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency are using a Bureau of Justice Assistance STOP School Violence Grant to fund the new Georgia Center for School Safety website.

State officials described the website as a clearinghouse to distribute school safety resources and updated training to school and district staff, community partners and the public. They say the information will help them recognize, prevent and respond to violent acts.

In St. Louis and across the country, school buildings are in bad need of updates. The American Society of Civil Engineers does a regular report card of the country’s infrastructure, and in the most recent one, schools got a D+.

“A large portion of the system exhibits some pretty significant deterioration,” said Marsia Geldert-Murphey, president-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Funding for school infrastructure has been a national problem for decades, she said.

“In the 1950s and ’60s, people were very willing to participate in building this amazing infrastructure that we have,” Geldert-Murphey said. “But it is now aged out, and we haven't been keeping up with the maintenance and the operations, and so we’re suffering for it.”

Those types of maintenance issues are especially prevalent in St. Louis Public Schools, where the district estimates the average age of buildings is 87 and many were built at the turn of the 20th century. As federal funding for school infrastructure has stalled, districts like SLPS are asking voters to pass local bond measures to address decades of wear and tear.

San Francisco Bay Area high school teacher Lisa Raskin moved out of a cramped apartment and into her own place this month, paying a deeply discounted $1,500 for a one-bedroom with expansive views that is within walking distance to work.
It was once an impossible dream in an exorbitantly priced region hostile to new housing. But her employer, a small school district just south of San Francisco, was the rare success story in the ongoing struggle to provide affordable housing and in May, it opened 122 apartments ranging from one to three bedrooms for teachers and staff.
“I have a sense of community, which I think is more valuable than anything else,” said Raskin, 41, a San Francisco native for whom teaching is a second career. “More districts really need to consider this model. I think it shows educators that they value them as educators.”
The Jefferson Union High School District in San Mateo County on the north end of Silicon Valley is among just a handful of places in the country that has educator housing. But with a national teacher shortage and rapidly rising rents, the working class district with excess land could serve as a harbinger as schools across the U.S. seek to attract and retain educators.
“We’ve had significant turnover of staff over the years. 25% on an annual basis. And this is a way for us to be able to retain and recruit both teachers and staff,” said Andrew Lie, a school board trustee.
 

In March, Julie Kalakau determined which children would fill the seats of Sunshine School for the 2022-23 school year. When she was done, she realized that there were still enough applicants to fill two more classroom spaces, but her preschool was at capacity.
Hawaii faces a critical shortage of early learning centers. The problem was made only worse by the coronavirus pandemic, which forced some owners to permanently close their doors. A new law seeks to change this.
In a historic investment for early childhood education in Hawaii, Act 257 allocates $200 million for the construction, expansion or renovation of prekindergarten facilities across the state. The School Facilities Authority must spend the money by the end of June 2024.
The act advances the state’s ambitious goal of providing all 3- and 4-year-old students with access to preschool education by 2032, as laid out in Act 46. Currently, Hawaii only has the capacity to serve 50% of its students in that age group, and the burden of finding affordable, accessible child care primarily falls on middle and low-income families.
However, the details of construction have yet to be determined as the new law has ambiguous language that leaves open the question about what facilities are eligible for the funding.
Sylvia Luke, the chair of the House Finance Committee who introduced the bill, promised the $200 million will fund the creation of 2,000 to 4,000 prekindergarten seats over the next two years.
“This is the starting point of aggressive preschool expansion,” said Luke, who is running for lieutenant governor.
 

Flint Community Schools’ Aug. 25, 2021, board of education meeting heard parents’ push back against a weeklong closure of the schools for “heat days.” This was the third time the district had closed classrooms in the three weeks since summer vacation, effectively exceeding the district’s allotted snow days for the year by Aug. 23.

While the Flint district may have been the first to close for excessive heat this year, it has not been the only one in the state. Detroit announced a half-day closure in anticipation of near-record high temperatures in May, and Dearborn Public Schools joined in the following month.

“On high temperature days such as today, without AC, hot classrooms and schools can lead to students overheating, sweating, and generally being irritated,” Superintendent Nikolai Vitti of the Detroit Public Schools Community District said in a statement released to Chalkbeat Detroit. “This leads to students not being able to focus on learning, which can lead to behavior issues.”

A 2018 Harvard study suggested American students score lower on standardized tests when they are subjected to high temperatures in the classroom. The study concluded that air conditioning enhances students’ learning potential significantly.

DANVILLE, Va. (WSET) — The numbers are in for a huge renovation project at Danville Public Schools.

It's going to cost $141.5 million to improve and renovate school buildings over the next four years.

Superintendent Dr. Angela Hairston gave this update to school board members at Thursday's meeting.

The majority of the money to fund the project is coming from the 1% percent sales tax referendum Danville voters approved last fall.

The D.C. public school system would have to report to lawmakers the percentage of doors in each school building that properly lock and the working status of every air conditioning and heating system ahead of the upcoming academic year, under a bill approved unanimously this week by the 13-member D.C. Council.

Council members said they wanted to avoid a repeat of last August, when teachers and parents returned to classrooms and reportedly complained to their representatives of broken HVAC systems and other faulty equipment. After the school shooting in Uvalde, Tex., this spring renewed discussions about school safety, some teachers and parents in the District reported that locks on building and classroom doors were broken.

The legislation would also require traditional public and charter schools to report the percentage of students who have not received the routine immunizations required to attend schools. Many families missed doctor appointments during the pandemic and about a quarter of students are not up to date on their non-coronavirus vaccines, according to city officials.

Idaho likely has a record budget surplus, and some education leaders say it’s time for a big change.

They’d like to see legislators use some of the money to repair or replace aging and overcrowded schools.

The history isn’t encouraging. Legislators have long resisted the idea of using state dollars for buildings — putting the responsibility, and the out-of-pocket cost, on the shoulders of local property taxpayers.

But education lobbyists hope two factors will change the conversation this time around.

The first factor is the surplus itself. Based on projections, Idaho ended the 2021-22 budget year on June 30 with a $1.3 billion surplus. The final numbers are expected next week.

The second factor is a scathing January report from the Legislature’s research arm, the Office of Performance Evaluations. The report said it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to bring Idaho’s schools to “good” condition. But researchers were hesitant to put a price tag to the maintenance backlog, because the Legislature hasn’t bothered to ask for a statewide school buildings assessment since 1993.

Big surplus, meet big problem. Big problem, meet big surplus.

But only if lawmakers are willing to make a historic shift in how they view the state’s obligation to education.

“This is a golden opportunity,” said Rod Gramer, CEO of Idaho Business for Education. “I know it’s controversial, but what better time to start tackling that problem?”