WESTBURY, NY, US, March 31, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Westbury Union Free School District, with project partner Energia, announces the start of construction for their district-wide Energy Performance Contract. The district will generate guaranteed energy savings of at least $395,000 annually, which in conjunction with State Building Aid, and ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funds, will be used to fund over $12 million in capital improvements to district facilities at no out-of-pocket cost to taxpayers.

"I believe every child deserves a World-class education experience while enrolled at Westbury Union Free School District, and we know classroom environment can have a big impact on student learning,” said Dr. Tahira A. DuPree Chase, Superintendent of Schools. “By engaging in an Energy Performance Contact, with our partners Energia, we will be able to upgrade our facilities, resulting in more comfortable classrooms - all at no additional cost to taxpayers. Additionally, we are adding solar sustainable energy, reducing our carbon footprint, and furthering our positive impact in the world."

A tornado injured at least seven people and destroyed an elementary school building when it touched down in an Arkansas town Wednesday morning, as a strong spring storm makes its way over the region. Widespread damaging wind gusts, several intense tornadoes and severe thunderstorms are forecast for parts of the Mid-South into the central Gulf Coast through the evening, according to the National Weather Service. 
Springdale Mayor Doug Sprouse said a tornado touched down in the town around 4 a.m. local time Wednesday. Seven people were hospitalized with injuries. As of Wednesday afternoon, one person remains in critical condition, one is in stable condition and five others were treated for their injuries and released, the Springdale Police Department said. All other residents are accounted for, and no deaths have been reported at this time.
Later Wednesday afternoon, the National Weather Service confirmed the tornado in Springdale and rated it at least an EF-2, which is considered strong with estimated winds of up to 157 miles per hour. 
 

Charles County public school system is in line to see an increase in the state share in costs for future school construction.
During Monday’s board of education work session, Michael Heim, assistant superintendent of supporting services, and Steve Andritz, director of planning and construction, briefed board members on funding for school construction.
The county is projected to see $22.89 million in funding from the state’s Capital Improvement Program for fiscal 2023.
A grant will provides funding for new school construction and renovation as well as major maintenance programs for existing facilities.
Costs of new school construction and certain renovation or addition projects are split between the state and local governments based on county wealth, but as Heim explained, those funds only cover actual building and improvements
“That [state funding] does not include buying land, design cost or any of the technology, fixtures, etc.,” he said.
Charles County also saw a rise in its state share, which is based on county wealth, from 61% to 65%.
A new grant allowing the Maryland Stadium Authority to issue bonds for school construction projects is also set to provide more money for constructing educational facilities in the state.
The Built to Learn Act, which passed the Maryland General Assembly in 2020, came online with the passage of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future last year.
The law allows the stadium authority to issue revenue bonds to fund new construction projects which would be managed by the authority.
Charles County is expected to receive about $25.35 million in assisting three school addition/renovation projects.
 

St. Johns County recently announced its plans to build 19 new elementary, middle, and high schools and expand two other schools over the next two decades. In just the next five years, the county will build at least four new schools.
This was approved by a unanimous vote of the St. Johns County School Board.
This announcement is a positive move for both the school district and Beacon Lake families. Many families choose the single-family homes and townhomes at Beacon Lake because of the amenities and convenient location, which includes access to St. Johns County’s top-rated public schools.
Beacon Lake residents can look forward to a new high school opening right across the street– Beachside High School. The high school is set to open for the 2022-2023 school year. It has five buildings: Administration/Media Center, Auditorium, Gymnasium, Cafeteria, and a Classroom building. Classrooms will exist in all buildings except the Cafeteria. For a virtual tour, please visit https://www.stjohns.k12.fl.us/newschools/.
A couple of the district’s current schools will be expanded to increase student capacity, and new schools will help to accommodate new families moving to the area.
 

Castellanos Elementary sits just two blocks from the vehicle-clogged 10 Freeway in a part of the Pico-Union neighborhood with few parks and a lot of auto repair shops.

It’s one of L.A. Unified School District’s newer campuses, built 12 years ago. But the dual-language charter school’s more than 450 students, almost all Latino, have hardly any green space — just a 100-foot-wide play area of scraggly grass and dirt without a working sprinkler system. The gated, fenced and walled-off campus is mostly paved over with asphalt that absorbs the sun’s rays and radiates heat throughout the day.

There are few trees to shade the blacktop, so students often gather in the shadows of the school’s two-story buildings to stay cool. Children are constantly getting scrapes from the asphalt, said school operations manager Carla Rivera, and on hotter days they sometimes have to be kept inside.

The experience is sadly typical of schools across Los Angeles, where too many children are forced to learn and play in paved-over, fenced-in and often treeless campuses that draw apt comparisons to prison yards or parking lots. These conditions are detrimental to learning, health and well-being, and especially harmful because they are so common in the same low-income communities of color that already suffer from a lack of tree canopy, park space and higher exposure to heat and pollution.

About half of Montana schools that had tested their water by mid-February under a new state rule had high levels of lead, according to state data. But the full picture isn’t clear because fewer than half of the state’s school buildings had provided water samples six weeks after the deadline.
For many schools with high lead levels, finding the money to fix the problem will be a challenge. The options aren’t great. They can compete for a dwindling pool of state money, seek federal aid passed last year, or add the repairs to their long lists of capital improvement projects and pay for the work themselves.
“We prioritized emergency needs and then will follow up with the next-most-serious thing,” said Brian Patrick, Great Falls Public Schools’ director of business services and operations. “Obviously, this is something we want to get addressed right away. We want safe water for our kids.”
Lead, a toxic metal long known to cause lasting organ and nervous system damage, can make its way into drinking water through pipes and fixtures. Children are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, which can slow development and cause learning, speech, and behavioral problems. Although federal rules require that community water sources be tested for lead, schools have largely been free from that oversight and can decline to be tested.
 

A recently completed solar project in Livermore Falls is the first in Maine to provide most (96%) of its solar energy to public schools in the state.

The 14,040-panel array is expected to produce roughly 6,478,200 kilowatt hours of clean energy annually, offsetting more than 6,348,000 pounds of carbon pollution from regional fossil fuel power plants each year, according to a March 22 news release from ReVision Energy.

ReVision partnered with Aligned Climate Capital, an investment firm focused exclusively on clean solar energy and other sustainable assets, to bring the project to Western Maine.

Mt. Blue Regional School District (RSU 9), Spruce Mountain School District (RSU 73), Camden Rockport School District (SAD 28), Camden Hills Regional High School (Five Town CSD), and Hope Elementary School (Union 69) have all taken steps to reduce their carbon footprint by participating as ‘off-takers’ from the array under what is called a power purchase agreement, the release said.

Ninety-six percent of the clean energy produced by the array will go to toward offsetting the schools’ energy needs, with the remaining four percent going to Farmington Water District. Solar power generated by the array will offset the electric bills of the off-takers through Maine’s Net Energy Billing program.

Living in harmony with the land and sea has been a pillar of Hawaiian culture for centuries. But you wouldn’t think it if you’d visited one of Hawaii’s 270 public schools. Stark lighting, stiflingly hot classrooms, and loud air conditioners are the norm, much like in the rest of the country.

Many of Hawaii’s public schools were built decades ago with insufficient funds and a lack of good natural ventilation for the tropical climate. As a result, the Hawaii Department of Education is the third largest electricity consumer in the state.

But in other areas, Hawaii has been a leader when it comes to going green. In 2015, it was the first state to set a deadline to run completely off renewable energy by 2040, and it’s still on track to achieve that goal. Now, Hawaii’s public schools are starting to be redesigned so that they align with the surrounding climate.

Future-proofing, or passive design, is an ancient technique that leverages natural elements to build comfortable structures. Today, passive design focuses on creating tight, energy-efficient building “envelopes” that work with the local climate and rely less on air conditioning or electric heating. This doesn’t just reduce energy usage, but it also lowers utility costs. Hawaii has a fairly stable climate—Honolulu rarely drops below 65 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes it an ideal place to implement climate-responsive designs that other schools across the country can learn from.

Key Takeaways
California’s K–12 school facilities require significant new and ongoing investments. Funding for facilities comes mostly from local sources, and depends crucially on local property wealth. The state provides some funding for facilities through the School Facility Program (SFP), which usually requires local matching contributions. Does the SFP promote a more equitable distribution of school capital funding? This report finds:

SFP funding has disproportionately benefitted more affluent students and districts. Low-income, English Learner (EL), and Latino students have received less funding than higher-income, non-EL, and white students since 1998. Per student state funding has been highest in the districts with the fewest high-need students. →
Disparities are driven largely by modernization funding—and partially addressed by hardship funding. Higher-wealth and lower-need districts have received more funding for modernization, one of three major SFP programs. Funding for new construction, a second major program, goes mainly to growing districts; it has been higher in lower-wealth districts, but also in districts with fewer high-need students. Funding for both financial and facility-based hardship—the third major program—has been significant enough for higher-need and lower-wealth students and districts to partially address disparities. →
Suburban districts have received the most SFP funding, while funding for rural districts has been “boom or bust.” Suburban districts received the most funding per pupil and are the least likely to have received no funding at all. Most districts that have received no SFP funding are rural. However, higher levels of hardship funding have kept average per student state funding in rural districts comparable to funding per student in cities and towns. →
Districts allocate funding across schools in ways that reduce inequities across districts. Districts target more funding to schools with higher shares of low-income and Latino students. However, within-district allocations generally have a small impact on across-district disparities. This suggests that focusing on which districts receive funding may be more impactful than efforts to influence which schools within districts are targeted for facility improvements. →
State policies could improve the equity and efficiency of facilities funding. Recently proposed changes—including a sliding scale for district contributions keyed to local wealth and/or need, prioritization of facility needs, and greater funding for hardship cases—could help narrow funding inequities. To make it easier for small districts with lower organizational and fiscal capacity to qualify for and receive funding, county offices of education and/or the California Department of Education could provide greater technical assistance. Finally, improving current data on facility conditions would go a long way toward accurately assessing needs and targeting the schools and districts with the greatest need.

Leadership from the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) met virtually on March 24 with superintendents of districts impacted by the Dec. 10 and 11 tornados to encourage the districts to continue to request aid from the West Kentucky State Aid Funding for Emergencies (SAFE) fund.

Through House Bill 5, the state legislature provided $200 million to support districts, local governments and other agencies affected by the December 2021 storms and tornadoes. The bill appropriated $30 million to local school districts. The money may provide wraparound services, such as tutoring and mental health supports for students and families, and assistance with additional transportation costs. In addition, KDE can transfer a portion of the $30 million to the state School Facilities Construction Commission to help repair damaged school buildings.

KDE created a simple application for districts to submit their needs under the permissible uses of the funds. Districts can access the application on the KDE’s State Grants webpage. Requests for funding should cover anticipated expenses through June 30, the end of the fiscal year.

So far, the department has received seven applications with nearly $7 million in requested funds.

KDE Associate Commissioner Robin Kinney reminded superintendents that there are two steps to request funds – the application process and a request for cash reimbursement after the application is approved.

“If you are a district having difficulty with cash flow … we have put a section on the application where you can share that with us so we can advance funds,” she said.

Elected officials, environmentalists, union leaders and other advocates gathered on the steps of City Hall Thursday to demand Mayor Eric Adams and the NYC city council retrofit public schools with climate friendly infrastructure.
The March 24 rally saw the coalition of advocates call on the mayor to plan to support carbon-free, healthy schools especially in lower income neighborhoods by funding the Carbon Free and Healthy Schools (CFHS) initiative in this fiscal year’s budget plan.
The speakers highlighted how the initiative could simultaneously combat multiple priorities of city leaders, while also addressing the long term concerns of student health and wellbeing in public school buildings.
“The majority of the emissions from our city come from large buildings,” said Maritza Silva-Farrell, executive director of ALIGN, a leader of the Climate Works for All coalition to amNew York. “Public schools are some of the biggest polluters in the city. So we are talking about reducing emissions and ensuring that we actually meet our climate goals, and it is critical that these buildings have the funding necessary to be upgraded and have the retrofits needed.”
NYC public schools are an average of 70 years old, and with aging infrastructure and a pandemic, students are being put in unnecessary risk of illness or injury. Many of these schools lack adequate heating, cooling and ventilation systems (HVAC), and also may still contain hazardous building materials like lead and asbestos. 
 

QUINCY – The city will apply for money from the state School Building Authority's accelerated repair program to fix windows, roofs and boilers at five Quincy schools in the coming year. 
Councilors this week approved submitting applications for repairs at Broad Meadows and Point Webster middle schools, as well as Wollaston, Montclair and Parker elementary schools. 
Quincy Public Buildings Commissioner Paul Hines called the projects "relatively simple" and said they  are needed mainly for energy conservation. If the state approves any of the projects, Hines will go  back to the city council and ask for money for the city's share of the costs. 
Roof repairs are needed at Broad Meadows Middle School, as well as the 110-year-old Wollaston and Montclair elementary schools.
Point Webster's windows need an upgrade. The middle school was built in 1917 and, though renovated and refurbished in 1998, the windows have never been replaced.
 

The Philadelphia school district is restarting a Facilities Planning Process that will determine its future building needs — including if schools should close or new ones will be built — and funnel repair and modernization funds to where they are needed most. This new initiative replaces the Comprehensive School Planning Review that began in 2019 but was halted in March 2020 because of the pandemic.

Philadelphia’s school buildings have an average age of 70 years and a few date back to the 19th century. For the past several years, the district’s buildings have been plagued with health hazards including loose asbestos and lead in the drinking water. Since 2019, several schools have closed temporarily and students have been relocated due to emergency repair work. Also in 2019, a veteran teacher was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an asbestos-related disease. At the beginning of this school year, teachers protested and refused to enter the Masterman building due to concerns that it wasn’t safe.

In a letter sent to parents and posted on the district website, Superintendent William Hite said the district must “thoughtfully and proactively plan not only for new school learning environments but for what must be done with our existing school buildings so students have access to educational spaces that spark creativity, support academic programs, and meet their 21st-century learning needs.”

The district will look at its building inventory, projected population patterns, and grade-by-grade enrollment estimates so it can “prioritize investments,” Hite’s letter said.

The Flagler County Commission is considering ending a long-standing smart-growth rule: There would no longer have to be sufficient school capacity for new development to go forward.
Under a proposed revision of the county’s Comprehensive Plan, the blueprint that frames the county’s long-range development policies, the “school concurrency” requirement would be eliminated. The state no longer requires it, making it optional for counties to keep or discard. The plan unveiled only hours before a commission workshop today would discard it.
The proposal is still just that. Today’s workshop was designed to brief the County Commission on the work of the Northeast Florida Regional Council, which drafted the plan. The council is one of 10 such regional councils around the state, created by the Legislature to promote regional cooperation and problem solving. It gathers 26 municipalities and seven counties, including Flagler, and operates under the aegis of a 35-member board, including, from Flagler, county commissioners Dave Sullivan and Joe Mullins, and Bunnell Mayor Catherine Robinson.
 

RICHMOND, Va. -- Some Richmond school leaders maintain they want control over the construction of a new George Wythe High School citing an audit that showed the city overspent taxpayer dollars building the last round of new schools.
If there is one thing members of the Richmond School Board and Richmond City Council can agree on, it's that students and staff in Richmond deserve an upgraded and modernized educational experience.
“We have thousands of kids in our school buildings across the city that need new infrastructure," Richmond School Board Member Jonathan Young said.
It's a sentiment echoed by Richmond City Councilwoman Stephanie Lynch.
“I bet you 95% of the residents in Richmond agree that our school buildings are not in good shape," she said.
However, they disagree on how to build new schools as the ongoing debate over the stalled construction of George Wythe High took center stage again this week.
A majority of the Richmond School Board wanted complete control of the construction process without involvement from the city.
It's part of a "Schools Build Schools" policy the board adopted in 2021 after Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney announced plans for a new Wythe in October 2020.
Young, who represents the city's 4th school district, is one of five members who supported the policy.
He points to a 2020 report from the city's auditor which showed the city overspent taxpayer dollars building the last round of new schools including Henry Marsh Elementary, Cardinal Elementary, and River City Middle.
“Money was wasted. It was not spent in a prudent way on the last round," Young said. "It's unacceptable."
When evaluating citywide capital improvements projects, the auditor listed middle and elementary school construction costs under "needs improvement."
 

No one was expecting more than a few flooded cars in the parking lot.
It was Sept. 1, 2021, the second-to-last day of summer band camp at Cresskill Middle/High School in Bergen County, N.J.
After a year and a half of remote and hybrid learning, the school's 1,000-odd students were about to head triumphantly back to school in person.
To celebrate, band director Joe Verderese created a set list for the fall marching band with the theme of "overcoming," with songs like "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)," "Lean On Me" and "I'm Still Standing."
As practice was ending, Verderese heard a huge crack of thunder. "The custodian yelled to me down the hall, 'Joe, did you hear that?' And I was like, 'We gotta get out of here.' "
Seven inches of rain from the remains of Hurricane Ida hammered down in just a couple of hours. The water poured through the school's vents – vents set just a few inches above the ground. It turned the auditorium into "an aquarium," says math teacher Michael Mirkovic. It flooded classrooms, the office, the boiler room.
Giuseppe Martino, the custodian who had called out to Verderese, ended up trapped in the gym overnight by rising water.
Now, about seven months later, this school – a modest one-story rectangle built in 1962 – is still sitting unusable by students. Repairs have barely begun.
"What the inspectors have told me is, 'Mike, you don't have a school. This is now a building,' " says Superintendent Michael Burke.
Many schools weren't built for our new climate reality
Almost 1 in 5 U.S. students attended schools in districts that were affected by federally-declared natural disasters from 2017 through 2019. That's according to the latest available analysis from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Hurricanes in Florida and Texas, wildfires in California and Colorado, floods in North Carolina and Arizona. Across the country, climate change has been driving more severe weather.
 

SOUTH BEND — In a Saturday meeting centered on the South Bend school district's master facilities plan, school officials and consultants addressed community feedback on a wide range of topics about the “right-sizing” process, including concerns about school closures. 

The meeting, held at Brown Community Learning Center, marks the first of two scheduled sessions where school leaders will gather input from the community on what residents want to see done with the district’s facilities following a 2020 referendum that allocated $54 million to pay for capital projects. 

Discussions surrounding facilities come after the district closed two elementary schools last year and raised the possibility of closing a high school. The school district also recently sold its downtown headquarters to the city of South Bend.

A presentation by the assistant superintendent of business and finance, Kareemah Fowler, to open the meeting quickly turned toward the topic of school closures after a question from the audience.  

“This is part of ongoing efforts for rightsizing,” Fowler told the crowd of around 40 people. “So if something comes out of this where there needs to be some adjustments or something needs to be closed or combined, this is where that discussion is going to take place. But today is not specific to any high school closing.” 

A measure which seeks to establish the Bureau of School Construction and Maintenance within the Department of Education with the responsibility to construct and maintain public schools and other educational facilities, failed to win approval from members of the Senate Committee on Education and Workforce Development on Thursday.
An amendment to the bill narrowly received approval but when it came to actual voting on the measure, sponsored by Senate President Donna Frett-Gregory, the result was three yes votes from Ms.Frett-Gregory and Sens. Genevieve Whitaker Kenneth Gittens. However, it received three no votes from Sens. Milton Potter, Kurt Vialet and Janelle Sarauw. Senator Carla Joseph did not vote.
“The bill has failed,” said Ms. Whitaker, who chairs the committee.
Bill No. 34-0079 is an Act amending Virgin Islands Code to establish the Bureau of School Construction and Maintenance within the V.I. Department of Education. It also seeks to change the Education Maintenance Fund to the School Construction and Maintenance Fund while making an appropriation of $2.5 million from the V.I. Education Initiative Fund to the School Construction and Maintenance Fund.
Presenting the bill to the committee, Ms. Frett-Gregory said the physical state of public schools in the territory has been deteriorating for more than two decades due to inconsistent maintenance and limited resources, while some schools have experienced preventable structural failures resulting in injuries and the closure of entire school buildings. 
 

GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) — Guilford County Commissioners walked through yet another school in Guilford County, one they said is in the worst conditions for students and teachers.
On Wednesday, county commissioners continued their school tour through Grimsley High in Greensboro. The visit lasted nearly an hour and left commissioners heartbroken at the sight of the conditions the classrooms and bathrooms are.
“When you pass by this road, and you see this magnificent campus, you think everything is great, but until you go inside, then you will be amazingly disappointed,” said County Chairman Skip Alston.
The tour of Grimsley High showed holes in the walls in classrooms, plaster falling from the ceilings and walls, outdated bathrooms, and repairs that need fixing.
“Even when I tried to touch it, they said don’t touch it because you don’t know what it is, it could be asbestos, but you have children sitting in these classrooms,” said Commissioner Carlvena Foster.
 

HOPE, Ark. – The Hope Public Schools Board of Education, Entegrity Partners and community members recently gathered for a Flip the Switch ceremony to celebrate a first for Southwest Arkansas public schools: an on-site solar array.

Located across from Clinton Primary School, the 1.13 MW-DC array will offset approximately 80% of the District's annual electrical energy consumption.

"The Board and Administration saw an opportunity to reduce utility costs and use that savings to invest in their facilities; ultimately leading to a greater learning environment for students," said John Coleman, Regional Director of Entegrity, in a news release.

Solar production is part of the comprehensive energy savings project with Entegrity. The full scope of work, including LED lighting, water conservation, HVAC system upgrades and the array is expected to save HPS over $200k annually.

Entegrity's sustainability experts are incorporating education components at HPS to give students exposure to solar at the fifth and sixth grade levels.