Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools is getting high marks for low energy consumption throughout the district.

At a February 28 study session, members of the district’s school board heard from mechanical engineer Margaret Bishop, who presented an analysis of the district’s energy use.

According to Bishop, the district’s energy consumption has been on a downward trend, dropping by nearly 19% since the 2012-13 school year.

“Clearly there is a significant reduction in energy consumption, which means you are saving energy and, in turn, dollars,” said Bishop. “I work with a lot of school districts and these are truly amazing numbers. Staff have done a wonderful job.”

In addition, all of the district’s schools have earned an Energy Star score of 75 or higher on the Environmental Protection Agency’s 1-100 scale, which indicates that they perform better than at least 75% of similar buildings nationwide.

A publicly governed, managed and funded system for public education is a critical part of our democratic system of government. Here in Washington, DC, this is the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). This citywide system must guarantee education rights for every school-age child — in every corner of the city. The DCPS citywide system of neighborhood schools is a powerful tool for advancing access to high-quality educational opportunities without the bias and stress of a lottery. 

With explicit policies and practices for equity in our DCPS neighborhood schools, DCPS is the system that can most effectively and efficiently deliver on shared priorities for families and communities. These include:

High-quality academic programs, after-school and co-curricular opportunities.
A safe and nurturing environment in modern, well-maintained school buildings and grounds. 
Community and parent engagement that builds social capital, and political empowerment that strengthens our democratic institutions.
Public space and community use that you can count on, for all residents in a neighborhood.
Walkable schools, resulting in fewer cars on neighborhood streets — and more time for families to participate in school-related activities or supporting their families at home, at work or with other community organizations.
Economies of scale that provide better value to the District at lower cost to taxpayers. 
The District of Columbia should prioritize its publicly governed and managed system of DCPS neighborhood, by-right public schools because of the benefits they provide families, communities and our democracy. 

A New York Times Magazine article, “The Tragedy of America’s Rural Schools,” tells a story about the educational system in Holmes County, Mississippi, suggesting that the community has failed to provide adequate school facilities, that administrators and teachers have failed to provide sound educational programs, and that the schools have failed to serve their students. The article shines a spotlight on a single student in a single rural school district. There is benefit in turning on a spotlight. It’s important to use the national media to tell stories about Mississippi and the rural schools that serve one-fifth of students across the United States. However, a spotlight illuminates only part of the whole scene. Overhead lighting can reveal a bigger picture–in this case, revealing the impact of state and federal policies that fail to meet the needs of rural schools and the students they serve–including Holmes County, Mississippi.

School funding policies are one of the biggest barriers to rural school success. The bulk of funding for public schools comes from local property taxes. Rural populations, economies, and the presence of public lands (such as national forests) often yield lower property values, which in turn leads to funding inequities for rural schools. In Mississippi, as in most states, millage rates are capped. Even if the local community wanted to, districts cannot raise the property tax rate beyond a certain level to increase school funding, placing rural districts at an even greater disadvantage.  Inequitable funding can lead to lower teacher salaries and teacher shortages, limited school offerings, and under-resourced classrooms.

In Holmes County, the limited tax base means that school buildings are out of date and in need of repair. In 2019, the district sought voter approval for a bond issue that would have funded a new high school and freed up money currently going to facility maintenance to allow for a raise in teacher salaries.  Nearly half the county turned out to vote, and the majority, 58%, voted to approve the bond issue–but a state law in Mississippi requires at least 60% approval of a bond issue. Other states, including Washington and Oklahoma, have similar requirements. Rules like these make it difficult for a local community to raise funds to provide adequate school facilities for their children–even when the majority of voters approve.

HONOLULU (KITV4) -- Should the state build preschools? Some Hawaii legislators think the state should.

On Monday, the Hawaii Senate Committee on Education heard House Bill 2000, HD1.

The bill proposes to allocate an unspecified amount of money from the state's general fund to the school facilities authority for the construction of preschool facilities.

The bill does not have a lot of specifics yet including how many preschools the state would build, or where they would be built, or how much the project would cost.

State Representative Sylvia Luke and members of the House Majority leadership introduced the bill.

During Monday's hearing, there was only testimony in support of it.

"Culturally our Asian and Pacific Islander children are taught very young to be seen and not heard. This is a time when their brains are being developed, their speech patterns are being developed, and their motor coordination, so allowing us to have preschool for them develops a critical skill needed to be successful in school," Laverne Moore testified on behalf of the Hawaii State Teachers Association.

An effort to jump-start the pace of earthquake retrofits to vulnerable, older school buildings in Washington has passed the Legislature unanimously. The Evergreen State has lagged behind other West Coast states and provinces in reinforcing schools to withstand strong shaking.

A report from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources last year said tens of thousands of Washington students attend class in buildings at high risk of collapse in an earthquake. Thousands more youngsters go to low-lying schools in the coastal tsunami zone.

Stanwood, Washington parent and PTA volunteer DaleAnn Baker was among a corps of citizen activists who successfully lobbied the Legislature to more than double state spending for earthquake retrofits, or in some cases, to pay most of the cost to relocate a public school out of the tsunami zone.

"The amount of funding is significant and this is great,” Baker said in an interview Wednesday. “It is really showing that the Legislature wants to make a commitment to this effort."

Baker said her journey into activism began a few years ago when she realized the elementary school where she sends her two children was built in 1956, long before modern seismic safety codes. “How is it acceptable to require kids to attend school in a building that may collapse during an earthquake?” the aerospace engineer asked herself and others.

On Wednesday, the Washington Senate voted 49-0 to pass a supplemental state construction budget that includes $100 million for earthquake and tsunami safety upgrades to the most vulnerable schools statewide. The action to send the budget bill to the governor's desk followed a similarly lopsided 98-0 state House vote on Tuesday. The new funding for school seismic safety retrofits represents a 150% increase over last year's level and a nearly eight-fold increase from just three years ago.

Not many people can say the pandemic has made their jobs easier. But in some ways, Tracy Enger can.

"You know, it is such a hallelujah moment, absolutely," says Enger, who works at the Environmental Protection Agency's Indoor Environments Division. For more than 25 years, she's been fighting to improve the air quality inside of America's schools.

But there are lots of competing demands for limited school budgets. And in the past, getting school districts to prioritize indoor air quality hasn't been easy. Often, she says, it took some kind of crisis to get schools to focus on the issue – "when they found the mold problem, when their asthma rates were kind of going through the roof."

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic — spread by virus particles that can build up in indoor air and linger, sometimes for hours. Key to clearing out those infectious particles: good ventilation and filtration. For example, one study of Georgia schools linked improved ventilation strategies, combined with HEPA filtration, to a 48% lower rate of COVID.

Suddenly — finally — lots of people have started to pay attention to indoor air quality in schools, says Anisa Heming, director of the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council.

Aging K-12 schools in Colorado, including many in Pueblo, are in need of billions of dollars in funding for construction and repairs. 

The Colorado Department of Education estimates that over $18 billion is needed for school construction statewide. Included in that total is $84.8 million for construction in Pueblo School District 60 and $22.4 million in Pueblo School District 70, according to the CDE.

The average estimate of funding required to meet Colorado school districts' construction needs is about $39.5 million. 

“Generally, we know that there is not enough money going into school facilities to keep up with what’s being deferred,” said Dustin Guerin, CDE Statewide Facility Assessment Supervisor. “Without a big influx, the expectation is that the systems continue to age.”

“Buildings don’t get any younger,” he said. “They just keep aging and things keep breaking and needing to be replaced.”

Parents and education advocates renewed yearslong calls for a new middle school to serve students in Shaw and surrounding neighborhoods during a D.C. Council public roundtable yesterday.
They said families were pulling their kids out of D.C. Public Schools and enrolling them in charter or private schools because of the perceived lack of quality middle school options in their neighborhood. Their hope is for the city to build the school at the historic Banneker Junior High School site on Euclid Street NW.
It’s been a few years since the D.C. Council held a hearing on the issue, and Council Chairman Phil Mendelson hoped the “long overdue” dialogue would help inform upcoming budget discussions.
In 2019, the Council narrowly approved legislation to move the top-performing, majority Black and Latinx-serving Banneker High School to the site of the former Shaw Middle School. Mayor Muriel Bowser and others framed the debate in terms of gentrification. Banneker High School families had been promised a renovated building for years, and critics condemned prioritizing a new Shaw middle school as valuing the needs of recently arrived, mostly White residents in the gentrified neighborhood over those of people of color.
Still, others question why the nearby Cardozo Education Campus, whose student body is more than 49 percent Black and more than 47 percent Latinx, doesn’t meet the needs of families clamoring for a stand-alone middle school.
[The skepticism] is really centered around this, ‘Okay, well, y’all say you want the school. Are you really going to put your kids in it?’” Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau explained, echoing conversations she has had with parents. She also pointed out that the vast majority of witnesses who testified at yesterday’s roundtable are White, wondering what people of color think about the issue. 
 

Atlanta Public Schools will host community meetings this month on proposals to change school attendance zones and open a Midtown elementary school.
The district in 2019 began work on a 10-year facilities master plan that will guide decisions about use of school buildings based on enrollment trends. As part of that work, officials presented several suggestions earlier this month about how to ease overcrowding concerns and address other issues.
Now, APS is hosting several meetings to talk to parents and community members about about how those proposals would impact specific schools.
A 6 p.m. Tuesday meeting at Centennial Academy will provide details of a proposal to redistrict the kindergarten through eighth grade school, among other potential changes. The school currently feeds into Midtown High School, but that could change to Booker T. Washington High School.
 

Gov. David Ige has appointed Chad Keone Farias to serve as executive director of the School Facilities Authority, which is charged with the development, planning and construction of public school capital improvement projects.

Farias, currently the Ka‘u-Keaau-Pahoa complex area superintendent, joined the Authority last year. He has worked for the state Department of Education since 1993 as a teacher, counselor, vice principal, principal, and superintendent.

The Hawaii Island-born Farias earned his bachelor’s degree in history and education from Loyola Marymount University, and a master’s degree in education administration from the University of Hawaii.

“As a proud Hawaii public school graduate, I’m excited to guide the School Facilities Authority in creating the facilities our students deserve,” Farias said. “This kuleana is great and I look forward to the opportunity to improve education access for all of Hawaii.”

Farias’ appointment is subject to Senate confirmation. If confirmed, he would serve a six-year term.

(Bloomberg) -- Voters in Idaho are poised to reject most school bond proposals that were up for election Tuesday, sending officials back to the drawing board on how to handle overcrowding amid surging population growth.

Three of the four general-obligation school bond measures on ballots Tuesday were failing, according to unofficial results as of Wednesday morning. Together with supplemental levies, which often help cover school operating costs, more than $280 million was up for a vote. Many of the levies are on track to pass, though they only require a simple majority, unlike bonds which need super-majorities to pass in Idaho.
The state, as well as its neighbor Utah, is in the midst of a population boom driven by West Coast transplants. That trend accelerated when the pandemic untethered workers from their offices, and the influx of residents has some school districts bursting at the seams.
 

DETROIT – The Detroit Public Schools Community District intends to spend $700 million to rebuild and repair schools throughout the district. Also in the district’s 20-year master plan is a proposed list of school closures.
The proposed closures are being met with resistance from the community. Concerned parents came out to a school board meeting on Monday (March 7) night and spoke out about the closures despite being told the topic wasn’t up for discussion at that meeting.
Residents and teachers want answers from the district. They want to know how students from the schools up for closure fit into the district’s master plan. The people Local 4 spoke with said they feel there’s been a lot of secrecy and not enough clarity.
“It hasn’t been very positive, it’s been kinda bleak. You know, they’re talking about phasing it out,” Sheila Allen-Frazier said. “It’s heartbreaking to see a school close because when a school closes the community dies.”
Allen-Frazier works at Sampson Webber school, one of the schools on the list for closure.
Velma and Tony Rucker sent their kids and grandkids to the schools across the street. They’ve been looking at the old shuttered Biddle school building for years.
“And even if they tear it down, it’s still like a big gaping hole that doesn’t add anything to the community,” Velma Rucker said.
Nicole Conaway is a teacher at Communication and Media Arts High School.
“A lot of this is about the property and land grabs and we’re not taking it,” Conaway said.
Conaway has organized against closures in the district before and she said she is prepared to do it again.
A spokesperson for the district said the plan is not final and that they are conducting community engagement sessions to get feedback. The next community session is set for March 14.
 

If the public school system were to now fix all the maintenance problems that had been delayed over years because the government didn’t have enough money to fix them before, it would cost about $107.2 million, according to reports presented to Guam Education Board members on Tuesday.

And, if the government were to go one step further and improve and modernize all schools, updating them to 21st century learning environments, it would cost $142.5 million.

That's nearly $250 million, which is roughly one year's budget for the Guam Department of Education. 

The massive cost figures were disclosed during a sneak peak of the Master Facilities Plan provided to education officials during the GEB’s Safe and Healthy Schools Committee work session on Tuesday. The presentation was provided by contractor HHF Planners, a Honolulu-based planning firm that operates throughout the Pacific Rim.

DUBUQUE, Iowa (KCRG) - The Dubuque Community School District will be installing more than 200 solar panels on the roof of a local elementary school in an attempt to reduce energy costs. District leaders say the project will eventually pay for itself, and then save money overall with reduced energy costs.

The district has been looking into the idea of saving energy costs through solar panels for years. In fact, district leaders started a pilot program back in the 2019-2020 school year in one of the district’s buildings.

Kevin Kelleher, the district’s chief financial officer, said, through installing solar panels and LED lights on a district building, the district were able to save around $900 a month on energy. He said, for that reason, they decided to expand the project to school buildings.

They will start with elementary schools, specifically Sageville Elementary, because they are smaller buildings.

The Maryland Energy Administration (MEA) announced the launch of the Decarbonizing Public Schools Pilot Program to expand the capacity of local education agencies (LEA) for managing energy data, reducing operating costs, and for inserting energy performance criteria into capital improvement planning.
The Decarbonizing Public Schools Pilot Program was developed by MEA and the Interagency Commission on School Construction (IAC) to “foster LEAs’ long-term capacities for energy management and net zero energy (NZE) school design and construction, where the total amount of energy used is equal to or less than the amount of renewable energy created.”
Notably, the program provides $2 million in state funding from the Strategic Energy Investment Fund to help local school systems develop and expand their capacity to address ongoing energy challenges and opportunities for controlling costs through data management, as well as adopting cost-effective net zero energy design considerations for public school portfolio planning.
“MEA has been helping make Net Zero Energy schools a reality, having recently supported three projects, including the Holabird and Graceland Park/O’Donnell Heights schools in Baltimore City and Wilde Lake Middle School in Howard County,” said Dr. Mary Beth Tung, Director of MEA. “Early lessons from these projects indicate lifecycle operating costs can be greatly reduced when sound energy management and design principles are incorporated early in project identification and design.”
A total of $2,000,000 is anticipated to be available for distribution to grant participants between AOI.1 and AOI.2. The amount awarded may vary depending on the quantity and quality of applications received.
 

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Irving Middle School and Belmont Elementary may be the two Lincoln Public School buildings with an Energy Star certification sticker on the front door, but they couldn’t have done that without a district-wide effort.

“We are a large organization in the Lincoln community. We have a lot of facilities, we consume a lot of resources”, says Sustainability Coordinator Brittney Albin. “We want to operate efficiently and sustainably, just like any other organization.”

LPS was able to boost its efficiency quite a bit, partially due to upgrades brought about by the 2014 bond issue. A key component of that expenditure was a pivot to geothermal energy being used in the HVAC systems at Irving and Belmont.

“The initial investment is usually the higher one, but the paybacks are very quick”, says LPS Director of Operations Scott Wieskamp. “We spent a lot of time studying that system 25 years ago, and we’ve really implemented it across the district. We only have two buildings that are not geothermal at this point in time.”

Five local schools will receive grant money after Governor Mike DeWine announced over $25 million dollars toward School-Based Health Centers around Ohio.

Liberty, Salem, Sebring, East Palestine, and Warren City School Districts have partnered with local clinics to bring healthcare clinics inside schools.

Liberty and Salem Schools have partnered with QUICKmed Urgent Care. Sebring, East Palestine, and Warren City Schools collaborate with Akron Children's Hospital.

The grant will create 29 new School-Based Health Centers, and expand services in 107 existing clinics to help provide primary care services and preventative care for students. Expanded clinics will also offer vision, dental, and behavior health care.

Having the clinics inside schools aims to eliminate barriers that students and parents might face when it comes to obtaining care, such as transportation, parents missing time at work, and lack of access to medical providers.

“Studies have shown that health and wellness are interconnected,” said Governor DeWine. “A student who is not healthy or who is chronically absent is not able to achieve their full potential. These partnerships between healthcare providers and schools supports the whole child and ensures that every child may realize their full potential.”

Atlanta Public Schools’ consultants offered two ideas Wednesday to address overcrowding concerns at east-side campuses.

The suggestions are part of the development of a facilities master plan that will guide decisions about how best to use school buildings over the next decade. Although APS enrollment is predicted to increase by only a few hundred students over the next 10 years, several schools in and around Midtown face capacity issues.

To ease that problem, consultants from the Sizemore Group offered two scenarios to repurpose the former Inman Middle School in the Virginia-Highland neighborhood.

They advised opening a new kindergarten through fifth grade elementary school at the site or moving third, fourth and fifth graders from the nearby Springdale Park Elementary School into the building.

Both proposals would require attendance zone lines to be redrawn in the Midtown cluster of schools, shifting some students from one elementary school to another.

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 less 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.
 

COVINGTON COUNTY, Miss. (WHLT) – The Covington County School District (CCSD) approved the use of the Energy Savings Performance Contracting (ESPC) program to create efficiency upgrades.
The school district will also use allocations from the Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund to create improvements to schools.
CCSD is partnering with Entegrity to complete the upgrades. In December 2021, the School Board approved the decision to replace 95% of the district’s HVAC systems, to install LED lighting and to implement 439 ionization units to reduce the spread of COVID. CCSD leaders said the upgrades will create a guaranteed $135,000 in savings each year.
Additionally, five of the district’s unconditioned gyms will receive new HVAC systems, window upgrades and ionization units.