Across the country, school districts are furiously debating whether to keep schools open in the face of the recent omicron surge. Perhaps no place has received more attention than Chicago, where the teachers union has been locked in a stalemate with the Chicago Public Schools over Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s insistence upon in-person learning. Likewise, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has continued insisting schools remain open, recently saying “We know what works, to keep our schools and our staff safe … We should be using those mitigation strategies. That along with vaccination for our students to keep them safe and testing protocols will keep our schools open full time in person.”

These calls for in-person learning during the omicron surge rest upon an assumption that schools can keep students, teachers, and staff safe. But how can we seriously expect effective mitigation of infectious diseases such as COVID in schools — something that requires investment in appropriate ventilation, testing, and infrastructure for distancing — when many of our school buildings are decades behind on repairs and upgrades? In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers finds that “53% of public school districts report the need to update or replace multiple building systems, including HVAC systems”.

The Paducah school board approved an agreement with Ascendant Facility Partners Monday for a guaranteed energy savings contract proposal that was approved by the board at its Dec. 9 special meeting.

The agreement will be signed after the Kentucky Department of Education approves the agreement.

Ascendant Facility Partners is a company that provides full-service energy and infrastructure solutions and is based in Paducah.

The project will involve several city schools and includes renovations and upgrades of water conservation, water heaters, kitchen hood and freezer upgrades, heating, bus clock heater upgrades, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment upgrades, boiler upgrades, lighting upgrades, heat pump upgrades and more.

The total project cost is $10.63 million, but Ascendant has guaranteed $5.6 million in energy savings.

The guaranteed $5.6 million in savings can be used to offset some of the cost of the upgrades. The rest is paid through bonding potential through the state.

“The scope of the project would be upgrades in lighting across the district except for the Innovation Hub,” Superintendent Donald Shively told The Sun on Tuesday. “So, Morgan, McNabb and Clark (elementary schools) and Paducah Middle.

“Then, there are multiple ways to save energy through building envelopes, changes in water, gas and electric in addition to that. A big item in that is replacing the (heating, ventilation and air conditioning or HVAC) system at Paducah Tilghman High School, which was last replaced in 1998.”

PROVIDENCE — Four years ago, Rhode Island voters approved a $250-million school construction bond to address decades of neglect, and what one official called a tidal wave of need.  
Now, state officials are proposing a second, $300-million bond that would go before voters on the 2022 ballot. The bond would also provide incentives for early childhood education facilities, career and technical education facilities, and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) facilities. 
The legislation, sponsored by state Treasurer Seth Magaziner, Senators Hanna Gallo and Sandra Cano, and Rep. Brandon Potter, also includes new incentives for energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements to public school buildings, and new incentives for school districts to hire local contractors and minority business enterprises on construction projects. 
In 2017, the state Department of Education commissioned an engineering study that identified more than 50,000 deficiencies across the state’s 306 public school buildings. Magaziner led the state’s School Building Task Force, which brought together educators, experts, and community stakeholders to develop a plan to rebuild Rhode Island’s schools. 
The bond has allocated more than $1.7 billion to repair or replace 189 school buildings across 28 districts in Rhode Island.   
 

BRISTOL, Va. — The Bristol Virginia School Board unanimously agreed Thursday night to pay for an energy performance agreement but will first ask the city to help fund a costlier one.

The board heard a presentation from Energy Systems Group, an Indiana firm that is proposing to make improvements at Virginia High School, Virginia Middle, Van Pelt Elementary and the central office. The company offered two options. Scenario three would cost $4.09 million and is expected to generate $2.16 million in energy savings over 15 years. Scenario two would cost about $5.67 million, and it is expected to generate $2.16 million over 15 years.

With either plan, the School Board plans to commit $2 million in federal ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund) funding to offset some of the costs, bringing the cost for scenario two down to $4.48 million and scenario three to $2.55 million.

“The board agreed to definitely move through scenario three and gave me the authority to ask City Council about scenario two,” Superintendent Keith Perrigan said after the meeting.

Perrigan plans to ask to be included on the agenda for Tuesday night’s City Council meeting but — because the agenda already includes a presentation about potential school funding from Davenport & Co., he isn’t sure whether there is time.

BETHEL — A Western Alaska school in danger of being lost to erosion because of climate change is at the top of the state’s list for new school construction.

The Department of Education and Early Development put the school in the village of Napakiak at the top of its priority list for replacement for the upcoming fiscal year, KYUK-AM reported.

The school is just 64 feet from the Kuskokwim River and it’s getting closer every year. Just two years ago, the school was almost 200 feet from the river.

Climate change is a contributing factor in the erosion caused by the Kuskokwim.

It has been an ongoing problem in Napakiak, but the pace has accelerated in the past few years. Numerous Alaska communities face the same dilemma because they are affected by the warming climate that is thawing permafrost and compromising river banks.

Napakiak rose to the top of the school replacement list after the Legislature approved more than $3 million in September to demolish the existing K-12 building, said Tim Mearig, facilities manager for the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development.

After several years of ongoing disruption from the Covid pandemic, wildfires and heat waves, California’s 6 million students and their parents know firsthand that far too many school buildings are not equipped to address our present challenges.
This is especially true for Black and brown children who face disproportionate climate change impacts and are more likely to attend school buildings in poor condition. With “hot school days” responsible for an estimated 5% of the racial achievement gap, one wonders how Gov. Gavin Newsom’s program to extend the school year deeper into the summer will cope with inequitable access to air-conditioning.
Leading superintendents across the country are delivering the message that our school infrastructure and our learning agenda must urgently address the climate crisis. For the first time, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona identified climate change as a threat to his department’s mission.
State leadership must respond by articulating a vision for how we ensure every school performs its most critical function — to provide safe and inspirational spaces for children to learn without disruption. A vision for California’s public school infrastructure in the form of a master plan or a road map such as that for early education and child care can align funding streams to address extreme weather impacts and with the state’s goal of carbon neutrality. A master plan, for example, would guide all districts to eliminate fossil fuels as they undertake facilities projects while also installing on-site solar energy and energy storage systems and transitioning to electric school buses. It would also help county offices of education develop curriculums that would incorporate these clean energy investments as hands-on learning opportunities.  
 

If the Democratic leaders of the Legislature give way, the next state budget will allocate $ 10 billion of the estimated $ 30 billion surplus to repair and expand the facilities in the K-12 school district.

This funding will have a major impact on the growing needs of buildings since voters broke $ 15 billion in kindergarten-to-high school and college bonds in March 2020.

However, the issuance of $ 12 billion of school bonds proposed for the 2022 vote could fail due to a parliamentary bill.

Phil Ting of D-San Francisco, chair of the Parliamentary Budget Committee, highlighted $ 10 billion in a parliamentary budget blueprint presented in December. Unspecified additional amounts will be sent to university and community college facilities, along with $ 10 billion for transportation projects.

Within the next few months, the method of distributing funds from transitional kindergartens to grade 12 will be through grants or whether it is tied to match local donations, as in current facility programs. Negotiated with the Senate and Governor Gavin Newsom. His version of this month’s 2022-23 budget. But parliamentary leaders wanted to make their broad priorities known now, Tin said.

It’s also unclear whether surplus funds will supplement or replace the $ 12 billion TK-12 and community college bond issuance proposed by Congress in June with the goal of placing them in front of voters next year. .. Mr Tin said a $ 10 billion surplus budget could replace school-building bonds in 2022. This is partly a timing issue and determines the probability that public debt will pass in a crowded state vote amid economic uncertainty. There is no decision to continue, Tin said.

Forest Edge Elementary School in Fitchburg, Wis., has become the largest net zero verified education project in the United States. The 126,600-sf project features 1,700 solar panels, 90 geothermal wells, and an energy-maximizing design.
The solar panels are on the building’s roof and, after one year in operation, the panels have provided all the power the school needs to operate. The rooftop solar panels produce 646 kW of energy in one year and offset CO2 emissions equivalent to 623,249 pounds of coal burned. In addition to being energy-efficient, the school’s design connects students to the natural environment and leverages its unique features as a teaching tool.
Each section of the school is themed to highlight natural energy sources: Life, Light, Thermal, and Wind. Viewing areas in the building offer views of the solar panels, vegetated roofs, and geothermal pumps. The library is designed as a “nest” that faces toward the forest adjacent to the school, immersing the students in nature while indoors.
 

The Rockland area school district is moving ahead with plans to erect modular buildings at its high school and middle school with money received from the federal government.
Regional School Unit 13 Superintendent John McDonald said Friday, Dec. 31 the district has received approval from the Maine Department of Education for the projects. The district is using WRBC Architects Engineers.
Bids are expected to be solicited in the next couple of weeks, McDonald said. The cost of the project will not be known until bids are received.
RSU 13 is receiving $8.6 million in federal COVID-19 grants which will be used for the modulars, as well as other needs such as staffing.
The money is required to be spent on ways to address problems created by the pandemic and all the money must be spent by September 2024, with some of it needing to be spent prior to that.
The administration proposed three modular buildings be erected. Two would be on the grounds of Oceanside High School in Rockland and one at Oceanside Middle School in Thomaston. The high school modulars would be erected in the area  where the skate park had been located. The middle school modular would be located to the south side of the school (left side if facing the school from the front).
 

More than 40 years ago, Congress banned harmful polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, from schools. And it’s been 37 years since Congress directed schools to address asbestos. But today, millions of schools continue to be plagued by these and other toxic chemicals.

Specific concerns:

Thousands of schools likely contain old lighting fixtures that leak PCBs, a known carcinogen.
Two-thirds of state educational agencies report schools containing asbestos, a known carcinogen, but the full scope of asbestos contamination and cleanup is unclear.
One-third of school districts that tested drinking water in 2017 found elevated levels of lead, a potent neurotoxin, and many schools report still having lead paint.
Nearly one in 10 U.S. children attends a school located less than a mile from a chemical facility.
A total of 54 percent of public school districts surveyed in 2019 have outdated heating and ventilation systems, which can lead to respiratory problems like asthma.
Pesticides linked to serious health harms – including glyphosate, 2,4-D and atrazine – are sprayed near schools and school playgrounds.
Cleaning and disinfecting products used routinely in schools can contain hazardous chemicals.
Children are especially susceptible to harm from chemical exposure. Yet many U.S. schools have not been upgraded to eliminate PCBs, asbestos, lead and other threats. Exposure to toxics has a significant, negative impact on educational outcomes, a Brookings study shows.

The lead lawyer in the lawsuit that forced Washington state to revamp public school funding has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a small district, saying the state is failing students due to the poor condition of school buildings. “Public education is supposed to be the great equalizer in our democracy,” reads the complaint filed Tuesday in Wahkiakum County Superior Court. “Our state government’s failure to amply fund the Wahkiakum School District’s capital needs, however, does the opposite. It makes our public schools a perpetuator of class inequality.” The Seattle Times reports attorney Tom Ahearne is representing the Wahkiakum School District, which lies along the Columbia River and has fewer than 500 students.
The suit said Washington is violating the state constitution by failing to ensure all students learn in safe and modern school buildings. A decade ago, Ahearn was the winning attorney when the Washington Supreme Court ruled in the landmark McCleary case that the state was failing to uphold its state constitutional duty by amply funding basic education for all students. That case upended many school districts’ reliance on property taxes, but stopped short of changing the funding system for building construction and improvements.

Throughout the cities, townships and villages of Wayne, Holmes and Ashland counties there are dozens of schoolhouses that are 100 years old or more.
Each has seen hundreds of children come and go over the decades. And each school has a story to tell.
How are these century buildings being used today? Reporters from The Daily Record and Times-Gazette scoured the tri-county area to find out
Wayne County century schools
All four elementary schools in the Southeast Local School District were built more than a century ago, or very close, said Superintendent Jon Ritchie.  
Ritchie said Mount Eaton and Fredericksburg schools were each built in the 1890s, and Holmesville and Apple Creek schools were each built in the 1920s. All four feed John R. Lea Middle School and eventually Waynedale High.
While there have been some additions and updates over the years, including to the roof and electrical wiring, Ritchie said, most of the schools have not seen any major renovations since their initial construction.
“I wouldn't say they've been renovated,” Ritchie said. “... It's not like you'd walk in and go ‘Wow, that's a new building.’” 
The district will be getting a brand-new school in a few years. With the help of funding from the Rover pipeline, a one-campus building that will house all Southeast students is planned for completion by August 2024, though the location for the new construction has yet to be determined.
 

If the Assembly’s Democratic leaders have their way, next year’s state budget will dedicate $10 billion out of a projected $30 billion surplus to repair and expand K-12 school districts’ facilities. The money would put a big dent in building needs that have grown since voters defeated a $15 billion bond for K-12 schools and colleges in March 2020. These include an  immediate need to modernize school buildings to accommodate transitional kindergarten and community schools.
Yet the proposal could also derail a proposed $12 billion school building bond issue for next year’s ballot.
Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, who chairs the Assembly Budget Committee, highlighted the $10 billion in the Assembly budget blueprint that he presented earlier this month. An unspecified additional amount would go to university and community college facilities, along with $10 billion for transportation projects.
How the money for transitional kindergarten to 12th grade would be distributed — whether through grants or tied to matching local contributions, as under the current facilities program — would be negotiated in coming months with the Senate and Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will propose his version of the 2022-23 budget early next month. But Assembly leaders wanted to make their broad priorities known now, Ting said.
 

DUNCAN — Construction on a new middle school in Spartanburg School District 5 has begun, on schedule to open for the 2024-25 academic year.

The new construction project along Abner Creek Road is part of a plan to build new schools and upgrade existing school buildings to meet anticipated enrollment growth over the next five years. District 5 serves communities in Duncan, Lyman and Wellford in western Spartanburg County. Student enrollment for the current school year is 9,800 students. The enrollment increased by 700 over last year, which was the district’s largest-ever increase in a single year.

On Nov. 2, voters in District 5 approved a bond referendum to allow the district to borrow $295 million to build two new schools and fund expansions at others.  In addition to the middle school in Duncan, a new elementary school will be built behind Wellford Academy of Science and Technology at 684 Syphrit Road in Wellford. The academy students will continue to attend the school, then move into the new elementary school when it is completed. 

The Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District on Jan. 5 is opening its fourth new school and second elementary in 3½ years.
The new Jacksonville Elementary at 2400 Linda Lane will be home to almost 700 kindergarten-through-fifth-graders and 50 staff members who are coming together from the soon-to-be-closed Pinewood and Warren Dupree elementary campuses.
The new brown-brick elementary with red metal trim is next door to Jacksonville Middle School, which opened for the first time in August. If the Linda Lane address sounds familiar, the adjoining elementary and middle schools are on the site of what was once Jacksonville High.
With the new Jacksonville Elementary, the school system has four new schools up and running, with two more yet to build, to achieve its goal -- and the directive of a federal judge presiding in a long-running school desegregation lawsuit -- of replacing all of its eight original campuses with six new buildings.
All of the construction comes in a district that is in just its fifth year of existence. The 3,800-student district detached from the neighboring Pulaski County Special School District and began operating independently in 2016.
The new district inherited the desegregation obligations of the Pulaski County Special district in what is now a 39-year-old federal lawsuit. Those obligations in the two districts include equalizing the condition of aged school buildings, which are often in communities with high populations of Black students, with the newer buildings in the Pulaski County Special district that are in predominantly white neighborhoods.
 

Ask someone at Cardinal Newman High School today to chronicle the past few years on campus and their answers often involve a lot of gesturing to areas of the school once destroyed, now remade.
On a recent rainy afternoon, Linda Norman, president of the college prep Catholic school, pointed toward the foothill of the Mayacamas Mountains just east of the Ursuline Road campus, tracing the path of the Tubbs fire from memory.
“The fire came down through there,” Norman said, sweeping her hand down in the direction of Cardinal Newman’s campus, about half of which was burned in 2017 during the deadly North Bay firestorm. It caused roughly $15 million in damages, including the utter destruction of several school buildings.
Today, the campus skyline includes the roof of the North classroom complex, rebuilt in 2019.
And about 50 feet north of that building, a new structure, the two-story classroom building, rises even higher. The campus’s 512 students have been able to attend classes in that building only since October. Its completion allowed them to move out of 24 portable classrooms that were their temporary home since 2018.
“My portable was right there, and I was looking as the buildings were being built,” said Elsa Binder, a social studies teacher who now occupies a second-story classroom in the new complex. She gestured toward her new window. “And now I get to look out onto beautiful Sonoma County.”
 

Thousands of Missouri school buildings are likely not testing their water for lead. A Missouri House bill would require them to start filtering.

Lead is a dangerous neurotoxin. Medical professionals say there is no safe amount of lead for children to inhale or consume. But Missouri residents drink water supplied by lead pipes at rates exceeding almost the entire country.

Children in Missouri suffer from elevated levels of lead in their blood in numbers exceeding all but a few states.

“Since no level of exposure is safe, just addressing one part of this very large problem is helpful,” said Madeline Middlebrooks, an Equal Justice Works fellow for the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center.

A Missouri House bill would require that schools install high-quality filters to ensure children aren’t drinking water contaminated by lead, which can leach into the water from lead pipes. The legislation would require schools to test after the installation and ensure the water has less than one part per billion of lead. Water fountains that exceed that level must be shut off, and the school must develop a plan to remediate the lead.

As more schools close again due to the spread of the coronavirus, the surge is raising new worries about an old problem: the condition of local school buildings.
A review of internal reports from leaders in D.C., Maryland and Virginia shows maintenance backlogs were a problem long before the pandemic began and remain a big concern as this semester ends.
Even before the omicron variant, Becky Reina says she felt more comfortable keeping her kids home than sending them back to the classroom this fall. The D.C. mom had too many concerns with air filtration in her kids’ school, among other issues.
“They don't have enough maintenance staff, they don't have enough cleaning supplies, they don't have enough people to maintain all of the infrastructure in these buildings,” she said. “And that's been a historic problem before the pandemic.”
A review of state and D.C. school building records found maintenance backlogs indeed predated the pandemic but have been especially difficult to tackle during it.
Keith Anderson, the head of D.C.’s Department of General Services, which oversees the District’s 117 school buildings, says the problem isn’t lack of funding or staff.
“Construction and facilities maintenance comes down to two things: labor and parts,” he said. “Now what we are having issues with is getting the parts to complete the jobs.”
In Prince George’s County, a parent-teacher organization president said she regularly hears from maintenance staff asking for help getting the supplies they need.
“If the work order is put in and the workers can't get the supplies, then the building can start decaying,” Phyllis Wright said.
 

STAMFORD — Two major school construction projects in Stamford recently received partial funding from the state, but officials are hoping to receive even more money.
Of the two projects, the biggest is reconstruction of Westhill High School, a project estimated to cost $258 million, according to the state’s Department of Administrative Services. The current 50-year-old structure has had a variety of problems, including “major water intrusion items related to leaky roofs, windows, doorways and exterior facade,” according to schools Superintendent Tamu Lucero.
Plans are to build a brand new school on the same site, and then demolishing the existing building once the new one is complete. Lucero said the new school would be designed to be more student oriented, “promoting student autonomy and independence.”
The state has agreed to finance 20 percent of the work, or $52 million, according to a letter released late last week by the department.
 

The facilities for the Mason City School District are in "very good condition," according to facility supervisor Todd Huff.
"Over the years, historically, Mason City has taken very good care of their school buildings," said Huff. "We have some buildings that have been in renovation longer than others; Hoover Elementary is a good example."
Repair and maintenance projects that have taken place in the past few years include new roofs for Hoover and Pinecrest Center, boiler work at Hoover, and some gymnasium work at John Adams Middle School.
"We sanded and redid the gym floor at John Adams. That's a big project — looks brand new," said Huff. "We added some skylight windows at John Adams during the renovation out there so that gym area has really changed a lot in the last few years."
Huff said updates have also been made to buildings, such as replacing windows, brick work, and sidewalk repair. 
Every year, Huff walks and inspects every inch of a facility to help guide him on what maintenance needs to be done. From the inspections, Huff designs a five-year maintenance-projection plan to determine when certain items will need a repair.