PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Rhode Island leaders held a news conference Wednesday to highlight school construction projects that have been completed with a taxpayer-approved bond as they ask voters to approve another one this fall.
The Statewide School Construction Bond approved by voters in 2018 provided $250 million in upfront “pay-as-you-go” funding to repair and replace crumbling school buildings across the state.
“The fact that we’ve allowed buildings to crumble is such a shame, but we’re not doing that any longer,” R.I. Department of Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green said.
Infante-Green and Gov. Dan McKee on Wednesday released the 2022 School Building Authority (SBA) Report, Renewing the Dream, which they said describes the work being done to build high-quality facilities statewide.
Renewing the Dream is the SBA’s first report since 2017. Officials said it showcases 11 case studies on major renovations or full building replacements that have been completed, along with another six ongoing projects.
“We are continuing to make progress in providing every child in Rhode Island with modern school facilities where they can get an excellent education,” McKee said. “For too long, our funding structures have left our most at-need cities and towns behind, but our entire state team is working tirelessly to change that. Together, we can give every student in Rhode Island the world-class schools they deserve.”
 

School districts across the U.S. are renovating their buildings and upgrading dilapidated ventilation systems with the help of $190 billion of federal COVID relief.

But these improvements will take time, and some won’t be completed for years after the pandemic first disrupted schooling.

The improvements have gotten the blessing of the U.S. Department of Education, which has encouraged ventilation upgrades. And there’s good evidence that such projects will benefit students: Research has found a direct link between air quality and student success, and students in classrooms that aren’t air conditioned tend to learn less on hot days.

Still, the plans reveal an awkward reality: With limited options for spending a big, one-time chunk of money, school districts are using part of it for expensive facilities projects, which may have only a tenuous connection to the pandemic and will take years to complete.

Now, some school leaders want more time. The national school superintendents’ association and other groups recently asked the U.S. Department of Education for an extra two years to spend the money so construction projects can be planned and completed.

“I don’t necessarily think that facilities spending seems to be a bad way to spend it,” said American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Nat Malkus, who recently analyzed COVID relief dollars for schools. But, he added, “It’s certainly not under the original intent of the bill.”

PATERSON — The city’s John F. Kennedy high school complex will be getting $1.65 million in improvements, including renovations of the building’s façade, a repaired gym floor, new fire safety doors and a repaved parking area.

Kennedy will be getting the largest allocation from $4.5 million that the New Jersey Schools Development Authority has awarded to the Paterson district for emergent repairs and capital maintenance work. The Paterson school board last week voted on a plan that splits the state money among 12 city schools. 

But in a district with at least 17 schools that are more than a century old, officials acknowledged that the $4.5 million doesn’t come close to covering all of the repair needs.

ATLANTA - Atlanta Public Schools is in the process of finalizing a facilities master plan that would determine— in part— where students learn.
The Kirkwood Neighbors Organization, KNO, has some ideas that board members said won't solve everything, but could make a difference if overcrowding becomes more prevalent.
Taylor Cross is an APS parent who has lived in Kirkwood for years. He's on the KNO Education Committee Chair. The organization just wrote a letter to Atlanta Public Schools offering up a suggestion.
They said closed Coan Middle and Crim High schools could help with anticipated overflow.
APS educates about 52,000 students at 91 learning sites.
"The Jackson cluster is at capacity now," he explained. "Our organization started talking about what do folks in our neighborhood want to see if they are going to have to make some changes."
A firm hired to help reorganize the school system estimates within five years, six schools will be at or over capacity.
 

On Sunday afternoon, more than a hundred Lower East Side and East Village residents gathered amidst the snow, to once again demand that the long-abandoned former P.S. 64 building be turned back into a community center.

After the school closed in 1977, the building — located at 605 E 9th Street near Tompkins Square Park — was used as the CHARAS/El Bohio Community Center for over twenty years, until the property was bought by a real estate developer Gregg Singer at a public auction during the Giuliani administration. Since then the building has been the subject of lawsuits, allegations of dark money fueling opposition, and a failed plan to turn the school into dormitory housing for local university students.

Last month, a state judge ruled that the developer’s investors can move forward with a foreclosure after the developer failed to pay the balance of a $44 million loan. A foreclosure would open up the possibility of new ownership.

At the rally on Sunday, locals called on Mayor Eric Adams to buy back the property.

Leaders of the Virginia Coalition of Small and Rural Schools continued to advocate for more funding to repair and replace dilapidated schools statewide Monday.
Speaking during an education funding press conference in Richmond, speakers from different state advocacy organizations urged the General Assembly to expand funding for school buildings, behavioral health for students, greater teacher pay, revised Standards of Quality and literacy intervention.
For the coalition, which includes all of the public school divisions in Southwest Virginia among its 80 members, the theme of buildings is a familiar topic. 
“Among the key issues and challenges our work seeks to influence is the urgency of finally addressing the ever-increasing number of crumbling and dilapidated school facilities,” Peter Gretz, superintendent of Fluvanna County Public Schools and vice president of the coalition, said. “We believe the ZIP code in which Virginia’s children are born should not be the deciding factor in whether or not they get to learn in high-quality, modern facilities designed to meet the instructional needs of the 21st century — a century we are almost a quarter of the way through.”
 

The Evanston/Skokie District 65 School Board will get a report Monday that claims all of its elementary and middle school buildings are in poor condition and need nearly $189 million in capital improvements.
The Facility Condition Assessment, from the Cordogan Clark consulting firm, says the only building that isn’t in bad shape is the Hill administration building, where the school board meets.
The report estimates the current replacement value of the 17 district buildings at $461 million and says they need spending totaling just under $189 million in today’s dollars to eliminate building deficiencies.
The consultants say that adds up to a Facilities Cost Index, also referred to as a Facility Condition Index, of just under 41% district-wide.
The consultants say an index of less than 15% is “good,” between 15% and 30% is “fair” and anything over 30% is “poor.”
The International Facility Management Association says a Facility Condition Index of 0% to 5% is “good,” 5% to 10% is “fair,” 10% to 30% is “poor” and anything greater than 30% is “critical.”
The report comes as the school board is considering closing some schools amid forecasts of declining enrollment and excess building capacity.
At the same time, the board is hoping to build a new school in Evanston’s 5th Ward, a project the consultants estimate would cost $40 million, despite forecasts that it would decrease racial diversity.
 

ROCKLAND, Maine — Several area schools could pay for physical upgrades to improve  accessibility, air quality and other health and safety measures with a $5 million state loan to the school district.

Regional School Unit 13 was notified earlier this month that the 13 project proposals the district submitted to the Maine Department of Education were approved for a loan through its School Revolving Renovation Fund. With about 30 percent of the loan being forgiven upfront and the rest of the amount carrying no interest, district officials said it would enable them to improve safety for students and staff.

“It’s a remarkable opportunity because we have to do these projects at some point. They’ve got to get done and to do it with a loan opportunity that is interest free, and a big chunk of it is paid off at the beginning, is great for the taxpayers,” RSU 13 School Board Chair Loren Andrews said.

BIG SKY – Ennis School District voters this week turned down a $59 million bond proposed by the district. The third largest bond ever proposed in the state of Montana, the measure would have supported an ambitious expansion of the Ennis school facilities including a new building, new gym and improvements to the existing junior high school wing.

The issue was voted down by nearly 60 percent of the Ennis School District electorate which includes Madison County residents in Ennis, Virginia City and Big Sky. The Madison County Election Office reported an approximately 53 percent return rate on the 3,571 ballots issued in the Feb. 8 mail-in election.

RICHMOND — The Virginia Senate today passed three bills to provide long-overdue funding for school construction and modernization.

The three bills – SB 471, SB 473, and SB 481 – are part of a bipartisan package of legislation recommended by the Commission on School Construction and Modernization. Two other commission-recommended bills - SB 238 and SB 472 – already passed the Senate earlier this session.

More than 1,000 schools — more than half of K-12 school buildings in Virginia — are more than 50 years old, according to the Commission on School Construction and Modernization. The Commission estimates that the amount of funding needed to replace these buildings is $24.8 billion. Many localities face significant challenges in raising sufficient funds to undertake these projects.

“These bills help ensure that schools across the commonwealth receive the funding to make capital improvements they so desperately need,” said Sen. Jennifer McClellan (D-Richmond), the chair of the commission. “Students need a safe place to learn, and they cannot learn if the school around them is crumbling. It’s time for Virginia to invest in addressing our crisis of school infrastructure. I’m honored to work with Sen. Stanley as we make bipartisan investments in our children’s future.”

EPA and indoor air quality experts are pushing ventilation and filtration as a key means to keep kids healthy during the pandemic as other measures to stop the spread of Covid-19 have become increasingly polarized.

“The pandemic has provided us with a defining moment on indoor air quality for schools,” said EPA’s Tracy Washington Enger, who works in the agency’s Indoor Environments Division.

Enger was speaking during an EPA-hosted webinar that aimed to help school officials at the local level “make the case” to school districts that they should invest in air quality improvements and ventilation, through upgrades to heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems and replacing filters, among other strategies.

The training comes as a string of states, including New York, New Jersey and Delaware, have announced they will soon lift mask mandates in schools, putting pressure on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Though CDC Director Rochelle Walensky as recently as this week stressed the importance of “masking in areas of high and substantial transmission,” the agency is reportedly considering updating its guidelines for which metrics states should use when considering lifting mask mandates, and whether such guidelines should still rely as much on case and transmission rates or incorporate more information on hospital capacity data.

The changing landscape on masking makes other Covid-19 mitigation measures like improved ventilation and filtration in schools all the more important, according to indoor air experts.

“Here we are two years into the pandemic, and what we are starting to hear is a shift in how we are thinking about coronavirus in this nation,” Enger told the webinar.

Though she did not directly address mask requirements, Enger said the nation is facing a question of “how we as individuals and institutions will make the shift from a crisis response to a pandemic to living with an endemic disease.”

The Detroit school district unveiled Thursday night an ambitious $700 million proposal to rebuild schools, renovate buildings, reopen previously closed schools, expand pre-kindergarten programs, and address other long-delayed building needs.

Under the plan presented during a school board study session, the district could spend $281 million to rebuild five schools, another $296 million to renovate buildings, and $128 million to reopen previously closed schools, expand pre-K, build additions onto existing schools, and demolish or sell some vacant buildings.

Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, shared the first details of the district’s facilities master plan with the school board, offering board members the chance to review the proposals.

“It’s a collection of almost four to five years of thought, analysis … about how to place all of our students in a better facility,” Vitti told the board and audience during the meeting.

“We have never over the last two decades had a facility plan for the district. We have been using a bandage approach to our facilities district wide.”

As part of the $700 million plan, district officials are calling for rebuilding the following schools: Cody High School, Paul Robeson/Malcolm X Academy, Pershing High School, Carstens @Golightly, and Phoenix, a building that closed in 2016.

With the help of a new rooftop solar panel installation at Thomas A. Edison Career and Technical Education High School in Jamaica Hills, Queens, New York City’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) and Department of Education (DOE) announced that the city has achieved a key milestone in generating solar powered clean energy.
The rooftop installation at the school and other city properties will generate 16 megawatts (MW) of solar power annually – enough electricity to power 2,600 homes each year. The installation at Thomas A. Edison high school alone will generate 579 kilowatts (kW) of electricity, enough to offset 65% of the school’s electrical use. The installation will also serve as an educational tool for students to learn about green energy alternatives, climate change and careers in the solar industry.
“Solar installations on our public schools help the City reduce emissions while providing valuable learning opportunities for students,” said NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services Commissioner Dawn M. Pinnock. “New York City is leading the way by generating clean energy on City properties and is on target to reduce emissions from government operations 50% by 2030.”
The solar panels at Thomas A. Edison high school are now one of 60 such installations located at NYC public schools. With this addition, NYC now receives a collective 75% of its solar energy from installations on public school facilities. 
 

A new report by state and federal officials released Thursday identified 119 Utah public school campuses with structures constructed of unreinforced masonry, which means they are susceptible to significant earthquake damage during moderate and even low earthquake shaking.

Such construction poses a threat to people in these schools and those in close proximity to the structures, the report states.

The inventory, released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Utah Department of Public Safety’s Division of Emergency Management, notes that children spend the majority of their weekday waking hours at school.

“While schools provide an environment for learning, socialization and personal growth, we generally assume the buildings themselves are sturdy. Unfortunately, some schools by virtue of their age or construction materials can pose a potential safety risk to those very same children. Most noteworthy in Utah, with its high earthquake hazard, are schools constructed of bricks with little or no steel reinforcement,” the report states.

However, a joint state and federal press release notes, “Just because a school is on the list, does not mean it is at an imminent risk of collapse.”

The report, titled “Utah K-12 Public Schools Unreinforced Masonry Inventory,” found 20 of Utah’s 29 counties have at least one school campus with a URM building or addition. Those facilities serve a combined 72,126 children, about 12% of the state’s total public school population.

BROOKYN, Ohio -- The results of a recently completed facility study conducted by GPD Group to assess district facility conditions and needs have been presented to the Brooklyn City Schools Board of Education.

“Back in 2015, the district built a brand-new PreK-7 complex, creating a one-campus district,” Superintendent/CEO Theodore Caleris said.

“The facility study is just the first step for us in terms of getting a handle on what type of renovations particularly are needed at our high school, which was built around 1960 and hasn’t been renovated.

“That building in the near future is going to need some capital improvement work. We’re just looking at gathering information as we begin to consider what that renovation and/or new building would look like.”

BRISTOL, Va. (WCYB) — Leaky roofs, black mold, and crumbling buildings are just some of the issues facing many schools in Southwest Virginia.

The problem isn't new, and local lawmakers are pushing for change.

According to a recent survey by the Virginia Department of Education more than half of the state's public schools are at least 50 years old.

"It's widely known there is a $25 billion school facility crisis in the Commonwealth of Virginia," said Superintendent of Bristol, Virginia Schools Keith Perrigan.

It's a problem school officials in Bristol, Virginia know all too well. Some of their schools are more than 70 years old. Perrigan recently was in Richmond to help testify on behalf of rural schools.

"Southwest Virginia certainly needs to have a voice in Southwest Virginia and in Richmond in regards to school funding and other issues," said Perrigan.

Del. Israel O'Quinn (R-Washington County), is sponsoring bills to help the school systems. One would take money from the state's literary fund and repurpose it for school construction.

BYRON — Byron Public Schools is looking into the possibility of increasing its dependence on renewable energy with the help of some new state funding.
On Tuesday, the school board held a study session and met with Rich Ragatz, the vice president of business development for the company Ideal Energies. Although the board didn't make any decisions at the meeting, they discussed adding solar panels to the district's high school.
If the district does move forward with the project, they could do so in a couple different ways. Both options fall under the recently developed Solar For Schools Grant Program.
"Established by the state Legislature in 2021, the Solar for Schools Grant Program is designed to stimulate the installation of solar energy systems on Minnesota public schools," the Department of Commerce's website reads.
Byron became eligible for the funding through an equation that took into account the school district's adjusted net tax capacity and its number of students.
One of the two programs would award the district up to $102,000. The district wouldn't have to pay for the installation or the materials and it would get a 40% discount on the energy produced by the panels for 20 years. After that, it would have full access to the energy they produce.
It would require approximately 5,000 square feet of space.
"You'll end up with about a $350,000 net savings over the life of the system," Ragatz said.
Another option, which is still be developed, would earn the district a given amount for each kilowat hour of power created through the panels.
 

Phenomena such as digitization or energy efficiency have completely changed the way in which a large number of public spaces are designed or built in our country in recent years or decades. Buildings such as hospitals, sports facilities or educational centers welcome a large number of advances in their construction and maintenance that, a priori, make them more sustainable and efficient.

In the case of schools, the implementation of this digitization and new construction techniques has not reached all communities equallyand there are still too many of them with outdated infrastructures and, what is worse, highly harmful to the health of the little ones.

In recent years, various specialists in environmental health have focused on the presence of asbestos in schools and institutes, especially those built in the 70s and 80s. And this substance, banned since 2002 and whose useful life It is between 30 and 35 years old, it becomes highly carcinogenic and not only if it is handled, but by the mere fact of being exposed to it continuously. For this reason, David Abolafio, manager of Amisur, a company specializing in the detection and removal of asbestos, gives us some simple keys to find out which are the areas or infrastructures where there is a greater probability of finding asbestos and, even more importantly, what steps we must take to remove it as soon as possible and safely.

STAMFORD, CT — Infrastructure improvements in Stamford Public Schools have been an important topic of discussion for quite some time. Last week, new details were released as part of a 10-year master facilities plan for the school district that would rebuild, renovate and close school buildings.

The plan was presented last Thursday to the Board of Education and Long Term Facilities Committee by SLAM, a fully-integrated architecture firm.

A major component of the plan would close four public schools — Dolan and Cloonan Middle Schools, Toquam Magnet Elementary and KT Murphy Elementary. A new K-8 school would be built in South Stamford, and a new pre-K learning center would be built at 83 Lockwood Ave.

According to the plan, the four schools would close after the 2026/2027 school year. The new South Stamford building, which would cost about $112 million, could be operational for the 2027/2028 school year.

Kemp Morhardt from SLAM said closing the schools provides a cost avoidance of $128.6 million for deferred maintenance.

HARRISBURG − February 7, 2022 – Senator Tim Kearney (D – Delaware/Chester), a member of the Senate Education Committee and newly-appointed Vice Chair of Appropriations, recently announced plans to restart the Planning and Construction Workbook Program, —A.K.A. PlanCon— the state’s program for funding public school building construction and renovation, by finally appropriating funding to allow the Department of Education to accept new applications from school districts.

“After nearly 10 years without any state funding for our public school buildings, it is time for the legislature to do its job and address the Commonwealth’s school facilities crisis,” said Kearney. “Suburban, rural, and urban districts are all suffering from different challenges of aging infrastructure, from overcrowded classrooms to holes in the roofs, from broken heated systems to exposed and crumbling asbestos, every school district has unattended facilities issues while they work to address the other crises imposed on our education system.”

PlanCon allows school districts to apply for partial reimbursement for planning and construction costs approved by the PA Department of Education. Recently, the General Assembly passed Act 70 of 2019 to greatly simplify the application process and to create the Maintenance Program to cover critical system repairs and maintenance to existing school facilities, formerly ineligible costs. However, the legislature has not funded PlanCon since 2016 and placed a moratorium on new applications.