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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ushering in a period of massive upheaval at Louisiana's largest public school district, the Jefferson Parish School Board approved a sweeping plan late Wednesday night to shutter six schools, relocate two others, build two new PK-8th grade schools and send thousands of students to different campuses beginning in August.

With only five months to go until the next school year begins, it now falls on Superintendent James Gray and his staff to implement the changes, including the logistically complicated task of reassigning students and staff to new campuses. The plan will impact thousands of students in the district, which has an enrollment of around 47,000. 

Under the plan the board approved at the end of a long meeting in Harvey, six schools would close at the end of the school year: Grace King High School in Metairie; Gretna Middle School in Gretna; Helen Cox High School in Harvey; Butler Elementary in Westwego; Mildred Harris Elementary in Westwego; and Washington Elementary in Kenner.

Two other schools would vacate their current campuses and move elsewhere: Haynes Academy would move to Grace King’s campus; and Thomas Jefferson Academy would move to Gretna Middle’s campus.

There was little her family could salvage. Just a few plastic chairs, some photos, her school uniform.
The flooding last fall that devastated the home of Deishangelxa Nuez Galarza, a fifth-grader in this coastal area of southern Puerto Rico, also closed her elementary school, El Coquí, for three days while staff cleaned out a foot of muddy water from every first-floor room. Deishangelxa missed two weeks of classes, which upset her.
“School is very important to me because I want to keep studying,” she said. “I want to become a nurse.”
It was just the latest interruption in schooling that’s been characterized by near-constant disruption. Deishangelxa started kindergarten at the Ana Hernández Usera elementary school in 2017, the year Hurricane Maria struck the island. Schools across Puerto Rico were closed for an average of four months.
Ana Hernández Usera never reopened. Like more than 260 other schools across Puerto Rico with low enrollment, it was closed permanently as part of wider cost-cutting measures. Deishangelxa transferred to El Coquí, but the island would not get a break from natural disasters. She was eight in January 2020, when earthquakes rocked the island, closing her school for three months.
A few weeks after her school reopened, it closed again because of Covid-19. Deishangelxa struggled with virtual learning and fell far behind. In August 2021, in-person schooling finally resumed for students on the island, but not for long. Just a year later, Hurricane Fiona unleashed a furious attack on the island, causing widespread flooding and infrastructure damage. Deishangelxa was 10 when schools shut again in September 2022 – this time for two weeks.
 

Senators are working on a solution to the chronic lack of maintenance on the territory’s public school buildings and have proposed a bill to create a new Bureau of School Construction and Maintenance.

Bill No. 35-0050 received a unanimous vote of confidence Tuesday from senators in the Committee on Budget, Appropriations, and Finance, and the legislation will be forwarded to the Committee on Rules and Judiciary for further consideration.

“This measure seeks to remove the vexing responsibility of maintenance in particular from our education professionals,” Sen. Donna Frett-Gregory explained. “It’s important that we get to a place where we focus on instruction. Instruction should be the primary focus of our instructional leaders in the territory.”

Five schools will become model green schools thanks to an investment programme focusing on sustainable energy in education, the education ministry announced on Wednesday.

Through a total investment of €2 million, these five schools are expected to become model green schools within eight months.

The five schools are Ayios Dometios gymnasium, Ayias Trimithias primary school, Dali primary school, and nursery schools in Aglandjia and Ayios Antonios.

More schools will gradually be inducted in the Pedia project, with €20 million in funding allocated from the Thalia programme, the budget of which for green school investments amounts to €30 million.

A total of 162 schools from all educational levels applied for energy upgrades, of which 144 were eligible. All schools were evaluated and ranked, and five schools were selected to join the Pedia project.

This is an emblematic project for Cyprus, ministry general director Neophytos Papadopoulos said, adding that it will also be a point of reference for Europe.

Groundbreaking for the a new high school in the Town of Raymond is set to begin this summer.
Alberta’s Minister of Infrastructure, Nathan Neudorf, had more details to share regarding Budget 2023 and the Province’s announcement to fully fund the construction of a new high school in Raymond on Friday.
The Government of Alberta’s Budget 2023 has allocated $2.3 billion in the next three years to 58 school projects
including full construction funding for 13 schools.
The Province’s investment will add nearly 25,000 new and upgraded spaces for students in the coming years.
The new school  in Raymond will be located near Victoria Park, and has been approved for up to $37.6 million for the construction.

Apr. 4, 2023 / PRZen / WASHINGTON -- Marking the 21st Annual National Healthy Schools Day (NHSD), a national coalition of parents, teachers, school professionals, and environment and public health groups have come together to call on President Joe Biden to include $100 million in his Fiscal Year 2024 budget request for the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Air and Radiation/Indoor Environments Division to protect school children and personnel from unhealthy environments in schools and childcare facilities.

The coalition is also requesting inclusion of an additional $10 million for EPA's Office of Children's Health Protection to increase public health research services for children's environmental health.

"School building conditions have been neglected for decades," said national Coalition coordinator Claire L Barnett whose office hosts National Healthy Schools Day annually. "But schools and their communities can help by using US EPA's voluntary guidance on effective interventions. EPA has the authorizations and the proven programs to help schools address complex facility issues. When children have school-induced asthma, headaches, nausea, and bloody noses, attendance and test scores drop, families are extra-stressed, and health care costs rise. With robust funding from congress, EPA can activate Biden's languishing Clean Air in Schools challenge with expanded national outreach and technical assistance to states and schools and communities. Congress could help lift standardized test scores and reduce health care costs if it appropriates $100M to EPA's office of air for school indoor air and $10M to EPA's office of children's health for research and health services."

After weeks of unprecedented storms and rainfall, the need for roof repair and replacement across Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s campuses has become increasingly clear, prompting the district to dedicate nearly $5.2 million for such work.

“Our aging SMMUSD buildings have failed to keep the water out of interior spaces at some of our facilities,” SMMUSD Interim Superintendent Mark Kelly and Chief Operations Officer Carey Upton wrote in an update sent out to community members this week. 

Kelly said that the district’s facility team is currently working to fix over 110 leaks and that 2% of the district’s 576 roofs need to be fully replaced while 7.4% need repair and restoration. 

“We understand the concerns and distractions caused with these issues that we know have led some to worry about classroom air quality, mold, flooding and falling ceiling tiles,” Kelly and Upton wrote. “As soon as issues are reported, our team of maintenance and operations staff, along with some outside contractors, begin to address the issues to determine what is required to fully remedy the problems.”

The U.S. Department of Education granted seven states and the District of Columbia additional time to spend down Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds from the first round of COVID-19 funding. 
The money, which goes directly to school districts, will allow certain districts to spend their ESSER funds through early 2024, or 14 months beyond the original deadline, according to a report on the K-12 Dive website. 
Extensions were granted due to challenges the school districts are facing such as staff shortages, supply chain disruptions and reallocating funds reserved for nonpublic schools. Funding requests for projects have centered around purchases involving cleaning supplies, technology infrastructure and HVAC equipment. 
 

Facing rising costs and new priorities, the Palo Alto Unified School District is planning to indefinitely delay certain planned, bond-funded construction projects in favor of completing items that are deemed more urgent.

Palo Alto Unified is currently in the midst of construction projects on campuses throughout the district, funded by the Measure A and Z bonds, which voters passed in 2008 and 2018, respectively.

There is currently roughly $165 million left available to allocate towards projects, Director of Facilities and Construction Eric Holm told the school board at a Tuesday, March 28, meeting. District officials are planning to indefinitely delay $163.6 million in planned projects, in favor of a collection of projects totalling $141.3 million that the district deems to be higher priorities. That will leave $23.8 million in reserve to cover any further cost overruns or to pay for deferred maintenance projects, Holm said.

Washington , D.C. -
The dire condition of tens of thousands of school buildings across America represents a threat to national security and the well-being of future generations, several of the nation’s top school facilities officials said Tuesday on Capitol Hill.
The only solution, they said, is robust federal investment.
Many districts, particularly in rural and low-income areas, lack the local property tax revenue to fund major school building improvements. Some states contribute virtually nothing to local school districts’ facilities projects. And the last major federal investment in school buildings came during President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration in the 1930s.
But recent developments demand bolder action, school facilities officials from Maryland, Rhode Island, and West Virginia said Tuesday during a briefing at the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill.
Materials and labor costs for construction have risen precipitously. Many decades-old school buildings lack space for the social workers, psychologists, and early childhood education providers increasingly seen as essential for serving students’ complex needs. Vendors, meanwhile, are swarming districts with pitches for expensive solutions to widespread concerns around school security and ventilation, but administrators don’t have the time or resources to vet the offers. And many school buildings in low-wealth and rural areas lack basic infrastructure like drinkable running water and working heat and air-conditioning.
 

As many as 32 students crowd into classrooms originally meant for 22 to 24 students in the Crestwood School District. 

Many of Crestwood’s buildings were built in the 1960s, said Youssef Mosallam, superintendent of the district in Dearborn Heights. But updates have been few and far between for the district’s needs, the superintendent said. 

Then came a small fortune from the federal government: $24 million in COVID relief funds for the district of nearly 3,800 students. At least $8 million of the relief money is going to build 12 new classrooms in the district’s elementary schools, to reduce class sizes and to keep students spaced farther apart, he said. 

Dozens of school districts across Michigan are also directing relief funds to rehab aging school buildings, some of which lack air conditioning or functioning heating systems. In rural Harrison Community Schools north of Mount Pleasant, Superintendent Judy Walton said that means heat may work in one side of a school building in the morning and the other side in the afternoon. The district hasn’t had the funding to make updates for years, she said. 

FEMA Public Assistance has approved two grants of more than $14 million to reimburse the Lee County School District and Lee County Sheriff for emergency costs responding to Hurricane Ian.

The school district was approved for a grant of $10,069,446. After the Sept. 28, 2022, storm, the school district conducted emergency repairs, mold remediation, debris removal, water removal, safety inspections and installation of temporary generators.

Dearborn Public Schools has retained the services of architectural consultants, Fielding International, to conduct a discussion of its work to create a long-range plan for the district’s buildings.
Fielding has been conducting a survey of all of the DPS properties based on a 30-year master plan.
The plan evaluates all buildings for structural integrity, classroom utilization, current building layout, as well as possible improvements and new methods in both design and function for teaching students vital educational needs for the future.
As part of the process, representatives from Fielding International presented the work so far to the Board of Education.
The presentation was given to the board, along with a sparse crowd, on March 21.
Representatives explained their firm used a few factors in evaluating 31 district school buildings including the need for deferred maintenance, adaptability of the structure for projected future learning needs, and building utilization.
 

WEST WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) — Additional funding is on the way for school districts across Rhode Island to help them reduce energy costs.

State leaders announced Friday another $10 million has been secured for the Public School Energy Equity Program, bringing the total budget to $20 million.

Officials said the funding will allow schools to install building automation systems and upgrade their lighting, ventilation, heating and air conditioning systems.

Gov. Dan McKee said the money will help give students and teachers a better learning environment.

“Studies show that more comfortable classrooms lead to higher test scores,” he said.

The Rhode Island Department of Education also found in a 2017 study that by reducing energy consumption in schools, nearly $34 million could be saved statewide each year.

The long-delayed Northeastern High School renovations hit a new snag as district officials noted that a thermal scan of the building showed that insulation was "not staying in place or missing completely."
Board President Mike Redding said the scan was requested following an incident in which a burst pipe flooded the high school's common area this winter. As it turned out, the scan turned up more significant issues.
“These folks need to be held accountable for the less than high-quality work that they were paid to do,” Redding said, at a school board meeting Monday. 
Brian Geller, the district's director of operations, said the project's contractor of the Dillsburg-based Lobar Inc., has not been responsive.
"This is something that needs to be paid for by the contracts, not the district,” Geller said.
Messages left with Lobar from The York Dispatch were not returned Thursday.
 

WHEELING – Energy savings improvements implemented as part of overall upgrades on Ohio County Schools properties have saved the district more than $2.3 million over the last three years – nearly $1 million above what was expected during that time, according to engineers from CMTA Energy Solutions.
Jonathan Gasser and Presley Dean, engineers with CMTA, recently provided an update to Ohio County Board of Education members on the success of energy savings promised by the company as part of its contract with Ohio County Schools.
They provided numbers showing the total amount of energy savings in the school district over the past three years at $2,320,095.
CMTA had guaranteed Ohio County Schools a savings of $1,347,534 over the first three years of the contract, and this sets the savings beyond expectations at $972,561 to date. CMTA had guaranteed Ohio County Schools a savings on its utility costs of $7 million over the next 15 years, or over the term of the 15-year school improvement bond passed by voters in 2018.