NORTH CANTON – Construction crews will begin erecting fences and moving mounds of dirt this week at two school sites as the North Canton City School District prepares for a multimillion-dollar building project.
School, community and government leaders gathered with students Thursday for separate groundbreaking ceremonies to kick off the site preparation phase of the roughly 18-month construction projects. 
“This is the culmination of a lot of work and a lot of preparation and a lot of support by a lot of people,” Superintendent Jeff Wendorf said. “… We finally get to see some things happening.” 
The $58 million project consolidates five buildings into two schools.
The Mary L. Evans Early Childhood Center, Clearmount Elementary and Northwood Elementary will be consolidated into a primary school for students in preschool through second grade. Greentown Intermediate and Orchard Hill Intermediate will be merged into an intermediate building for students in third, fourth and fifth grades. 
 

With the new academic year already hindered by COVID infections and closures, a new hurdle has emerged. A month of extreme weather has disrupted back-to-school across the country, with closures affecting more than 1.1 million students.
More than 45,000 students in Louisiana alone are expected to be out of school until October because of lingering problems caused by Hurricane Ida, which made landfall Aug. 29.
Remnants of the storm also battered districts in Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey with flooding and tornadoes. Additionally, rising temperatures coupled with inadequate air conditioning have closed hundreds of districts around the country.
Meanwhile, wildfires have scorched school grounds in California.
“Unfortunately, these horrific wildfires and other natural disasters have become our new normal as a result of the effects of climate change,” California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said in a news release Sept. 3.
The frequency and intensity of the natural disasters shuttering schools are in part due to climate change.
“Ida is an unnatural disaster, at least in part,” Jason West, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health tweeted on Aug. 29. “Climate change makes it stronger, sea level rise makes it more damaging.”
Here’s how America’s schools and students are faring as climate change fans the flames of extreme weather.
 

Baltimore County school board doubled down Tuesday night on a plan to replace Towson and Dulaney high schools following a heated debate among the elected leaders, school system staff and community members.
School board members voted 6-5 in favor of amending a capital improvements budget request to the state in order to include the total replacement of the aging schools. Rod McMillion, Moalie Jose, Cheryl Pasteur, Erin Hager and Makeda Scott voted against the amendment. The student member of the 12-person board is not permitted to vote on budgetary matters.
Board members later voted unanimously to approve the amended budget request that is due annually to the state of Maryland in October.
Capital improvements to public school buildings are typically funded through a combination of state and county money. The board’s proposal will next head to the Maryland Interagency Commission on School Construction for consideration. Separately, county officials will consider funding for the projects based in part on how much the state decides to award.
 

When third-grade teacher Sarah Adkins returned to her classroom at Pennoyer Elementary School in Norridge, Illinois, in August, she knew that she would be facing a slew of challenges — none of them related to curriculum or student achievement. First, it would be hot in the building. Secondly, the water fountains would be inoperable because they’d been turned off to protect against possible lead poisoning, and many of the toilets and sinks in the bathrooms of the 70-year-old building would be broken.
Windows would pose an additional obstacle. “We’re located near O’Hare Airport, so there is a lot of noise,” Adkins told Truthout. “Our windows are double-paned to help reduce the sound, but we can’t open them.”
This, despite raging COVID-19 infections — made worse by the Delta variant — and late August recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to utilize “layered mitigation strategies” to combat the virus. These strategies include universal masking and the vaccination of teachers, staff and kids older than 12; adequate ventilation, including working heating and cooling systems or in-room air purifiers; social distancing in classrooms and lunch rooms; frequent hand washing and sanitizing of high-touch surfaces including door knobs, desktops, writing implements and computers; and testing, contact tracing and quarantining when positive COVID cases are detected.
Turns out, this is easier said than done.
Indeed, U.S. public schools have been in sorry shape since long before COVID — and it’s gotten worse. A report published by the federal government’s Government Accountability Office (GAO) in June 2020 documented the burgeoning crisis, reporting that the structural integrity of 100,000 public schools was putting nearly 50 million kids and the more than 6 million adults who instruct, feed and clean up after them at risk.
“Fifty-four percent of public-school districts need to update or replace multiple building systems,” the report concluded. “Forty-one percent need to upgrade or replace HVAC systems.”
 

DUBLIN, CA — Families pushing for improvements at Dublin Elementary School plan to rally Tuesday evening ahead of the school board meeting.
The rally will begin at 5 p.m. at 7471 Larkdale Ave.
Dublin Elementary parents argue that the Dublin Unified School District should scale back its future plans for the new Emerald High School in order to make much-needed improvements at the elementary school, which opened in 1961.
The school board is slated to vote that night on a plan to implement the district's facilities master plan, which seeks to accommodate a growing student body amid soaring enrollment numbers in aging facilities.
"The [Dublin Elementary] facility does not match the level of education our children and staff deserve," said Kristin Speck, who co-chairs Dublin Elementary's site council, in the caption of a YouTube video that outlines some of the school community's concerns.
 

A brand new public school opened in Long Island City Monday — one of 11 new school facilities to open in New York City on the first day of classes.

School administrators opened the doors of P.S. 384 Hunters Point School, located at 1-35 57th Ave., to students this morning. The opening adds 612 seats to the district.

The city’s School Construction Authority said the 11 new buildings bring more than 3,700 much-needed school seats citywide. Two of the buildings are in Queens — one being P.S 384, the other being an addition at P.S. 2 in East Elmhurst.

The Hunters Point School cost $67.5 million and took more than three years to complete. Its opening was briefly in danger of being postponed due to the pandemic and city budget constraints, but it still opened on the first day of the 2021-2022 school year as scheduled.

The city prioritized its completion, given the shortage of school seats in Long Island City. Meanwhile, the opening dates of several other schools being built in western Queens were pushed back due to pandemic-related delays.

Tens of thousands of public school students in Washington state returned to classes this month in school buildings judged to be at risk of collapse in a strong earthquake. A new report to the state Legislature prepared by state geologists and a structural engineering firm gave the lowest possible seismic safety rating to more than 90 percent of the school buildings assessed in a selective statewide survey.
Structural engineers hired by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources visually inspected 561 school buildings over the past four years, assessed the underlying geology and reviewed architectural drawings where available. The report they prepared assigned a star rating to each school ranging from one star on the low end up to five stars for the safest schools.
Ninety-three percent of the school buildings assessed got a one-star structural safety rating. Four percent had two-star ratings and only three percent were rated three-star or better.
"The one-star buildings do mean there is a risk of collapse in multiple or widespread locations in that school building," said Corina Allen, chief hazards geologist at the state Department of Natural Resources and leader of the School Seismic Safety Project.
Allen said the high percentage of deficient, old buildings was "not too surprising" given how the schools in the study were selected.
"We were purposefully looking at higher risk school buildings and schools that were located in high seismic hazard areas and tsunami inundation zones," Allen said in an interview. "The newer schools are expected to perform much, much better in a large earthquake."
Out of the more than 4,000 total K-12 school buildings in use in Washington, the project prioritized for scrutiny those constructed before 1975 when the building code was toughened. Schools in the state's largest district, Seattle, and in nearby Bellevue were not examined because they have already seismically upgraded many of their schools, according to the report's authors.
 

CHEYENNE – Although Cheyenne has some of the oldest schools in the state, the chances of improvements being made anytime soon are rapidly drying up.
Nearly 30% of Laramie County School District 1’s facilities rank in the top 20 on Wyoming’s current list of schools in the worst condition. There is a need for building renovations, or even replacement, due to factors such as age, deteriorating quality, inability to keep up with classroom capacity needs and a lack of technological updates.
Assistant Superintendent of Support Operations Dave Bartlett said this isn’t likely to be remedied for many of the schools in the near future. Since 2012, there have only been 16 schools in the district high on the needs list that were addressed.
“It’s just because the funding isn’t available that I can spend,” he said.
Hundreds of schools throughout the state require maintenance, though, which makes it less surprising that LCSD1 hasn’t renovated or rebuilt a large portion of its schools. But what’s more concerning to Bartlett is the clear decrease in the ability of state government to administer substantial and steady funding to schools.
Whether that funding be for educational programs or building facilities, the state budget is shrinking across all sectors.
A decade ago, the state’s biennium budget for school facilities would fund upward of 25 major renovation and construction projects across the state. In the upcoming 2023-24 biennium budget, according to Bartlett, it will most likely fund two.
 

A recent survey of state educators shows that 97% of teachers say improved ventilation is a top concern while only 27% say it’s being implemented in their schools, according to data released Friday by the Connecticut Education Association.
Representatives from the CEA met outside Manchester High School on Friday to highlight some of the findings of the organization’s Back-to-School Survey. The survey was taken by 955 educators between Aug. 20-25.
“What resulted is a very solid and reliable cross-section of information about teachers in the state of Connecticut,” CEA President Kate Dias said.
Dias, a former Manchester teacher, said the top concern among educators surveyed is improved ventilation in school buildings. About 47% of educators said their schools’ ventilation system was not providing enough protection from COVID-19 for them to feel safe working in-person, while 27% said they did feel safe, and 25% said they were unsure.
“We see a disconnect between a priority — a real considerable working condition — and whether or not people feel it’s being responded to,” Dias said.
Dias highlighted Manchester a one municipality that has made a commitment to improving school facilities through bond referendums, but said more needs to be done statewide in general.
 

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — The digging has begun on Knox County Schools‘ newest elementary school. School and county officials broke ground Friday at 10515 Coward Mill Road. The place was chosen to help relieve pressure on schools in booming Northwest Knox County.

“Hardin Valley and Karns are growing rapidly, and a new elementary school is an important investment for the families who live in these communities,” Superintendent Bob Thomas said. “This state-of-the-art school building will help students in Northwest Knox County achieve academic success and support the work of our outstanding educators.”

The 124,000-square-foot building will have capacity for approximately 1,200 students and is expected to be completed prior to the 2023-24 school year. The school will have 56 classrooms, two music rooms, two art rooms, a library, a 6,700-square-foot gym with a stage and a storm shelter that will be able to hold 1,320 occupants.

U.S. schools face an annual $85 billion shortfall in facilities funding, and schools that serve lower-income students face the biggest gaps, a new report finds.
Districts spend about $110 billion on maintenance, operations and capital construction each year. But they need $195 billion to meet health and safety standards, says the “2021 State of Our Schools Report” by the 21st Century School Fund, the International WELL Building Institute and the National Council on School Facilities.
Increased construction costs, building inventory increases and a sharp decline in facility spending since the Great Recession are driving this widening gap despite the efforts of communities and districts to upgrade their schools, the report says.
Back in 2016, the same report pegged the funding shortfall at $46 billion.
“Unfortunately, while local districts are struggling with making facilities safe in a pandemic, they are faced with longstanding deficiencies in their aging infrastructure, which makes this very difficult,” said Mary Filardo, executive director, 21st Century School Fund and lead author of the 2021 report.
Nationally, local districts cover 77% of school facility costs, with only 22% coming from states. High poverty districts spent an average $3.8 million per school on construction from 2009-18 while low-poverty districts spent more than $5 million.
 

House Democrats announced a proposal this week for $82 billion in federal grant funding and a requirement for states to provide 10 percent in matching funds to improve the nation’s school buildings.
But schools nationwide will need far more than that to address worsening facilities conditions, two new reports emphasize.
The latest plan in Congress to fund school facilities comes as federal Democratic lawmakers are moving forward with a broad package of nationwide infrastructure investments. The dollar figure and shape of the school facilities component are likely to change before the bill passes, if it does at all.
Advocates hoped a bipartisan group of lawmakers would include funding for schools in their narrow infrastructure investment package that’s currently working its way through Congress. Instead, they’re hoping to see funding included as part of a funding package that will move through lawmakers’ reconciliation process for budget-related items.
In the meantime, the needs are ever-growing, according to the new “State of Our Schools” report from a coalition of organizations including the National Council on School Facilities, the 21st Century School Fund, and the International Well Building Institute.
U.S. schools currently spend roughly $110 billion per year on facilities. The report, following up on a similar 2016 study, asserts that schools are collectively investing $85 billion less per year in building construction and improvements than would be needed to achieve full modernization. That number reflects a $25 million increase, adjusted for inflation, over the dollar gap identified in the 2016 report.
 

After 18 months where virtual learning was the norm for most students in the city, the School District of Philadelphia welcomed children back to in-person school last week, in some cases, to heaps of overflowing schoolyard garbage.

A week later, some of those trash piles only grew larger.

On Thursday morning, parents at Laura H. Carnell Elementary School in Northeast Philadelphia were shocked, disgusted, and confused.

Garbage bags, broken pieces of wood, wet cardboard boxes, broken furniture, and other debris piled up in chaotic disarray next to the school’s entrance and alongside the building.

Parent Jessica McCullough said the schoolyard had been reeking in recent days. Thursday morning’s cooler temperature and rain made it more bearable.

“You don’t smell it right now,” said McCullough, “Yesterday while it was really hot you could smell all the garbage. There’s garbage at the entrance and kids are stepping on trash in the entrance over there … broken headphones on the floor, and boxes and everything on the floor.”

Many parents have seen the trash at Carnell since the first day of school, on Aug. 31. To Mccullough and other parents, it’s a hazard.

“It shouldn’t be there,” said McCullough. “They should clean it. If they weren’t ready to open the school for the students they shouldn’t have opened the school.”

McCullough’s 8-year-old son Sebastian stood next to her, mask on, peering at the trash in front of his school.

More than 7,000 gardens were sprouting in schoolyards across the US as of 2015. For decades, these leafy spaces have been earning praise for their multifaceted benefits: offering kids hands-on experience growing fruits and vegetables, helping them develop a taste for healthy food, and providing teachers with a platform to explore STEM concepts. Representative Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) wants to move some school gardens up in the world—to rooftops—and plant them alongside meadows that also provide havens for wildlife, reduce stormwater runoff, and mitigate urban heat islands.

HR 1863, a.k.a. the Public School Green Rooftop Program Act, which Velázquez introduced in March, would authorize the Department of Energy to provide $500 million in grants to public schools to build and maintain green roof systems. That’s enough for about 14 million square feet of greenery—which, by some estimates, would retain some 154 million gallons of stormwater and 537 tons of carbon—with priority given to schools serving low-income students. Velázquez, backed by 20 (Democratic) co-signers and the support of the National Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups, says such roofs will help forge a path to “cleaner, healthier communit[ies],” according to a press release.

The science is on her side—although Pete Ellis, senior project manager for Recover Green Roofs, a Massachusetts-based company that’s installed green roofs on about 20 school and university buildings and is an industry sponsor of the bill, says that more work needs to be done to quantify things like carbon sequestration potential, biodiversity improvement, and just how much green roofs can reduce heating and cooling costs for any given building. Nevertheless, he says, “A lot of things have been rigorously substantiated: improved air quality, reduced ambient temperature to alleviate urban heat island effects, and the ability to capture and retain stormwater runoff.” 

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued a statement Wednesday in response to the House Education and Labor Committee’s release of its portion of the Build Back Better reconciliation bill, which includes $82 billion for K-12 construction.

This announcement comes directly on the heels of the release of the “2021 State of Our Schools” report — a joint publication of the 21st Century School Fund, the National Council on School Facilities and the International WELL Building Institute — which finds that the nation has been underinvesting in school infrastructure by $85 billion annually. For more, go to: https://resources.wellcertified.com/resources/press-releases/state-of-our-schools-2021.

Weingarten said:

“It shouldn’t have taken a respiratory virus to want to fix outdated school buildings falling apart due to decades of neglect. Whether it’s failing heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems, leaky facilities that breed mold or windows that won’t open or close, this type of disrepair undermines student learning and overall safety, disproportionately harming students of color, students with disabilities and students in rural counties. That is why we applaud House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott for including $82 billion for school construction grants in the House version of the reconciliation bill.

“If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that schools are the centers of our communities — places where everyone should feel safe and welcome, and where students can experience the hope of learning, the joy of connections and the resilience they need to succeed. This requires safe and healthy buildings.

New report from the 21st Century School Fund, the International WELL Building Institute and the National Council on School Facilities shows massive underinvestment in education facilities, identifies solutions to achieve healthier, more sustainable elementary and secondary schools.

NEW YORK, Sept. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The 2021 State of Our Schools Report: America's PK-12 Public School Facilities, released today by the 21st Century School Fund, the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) and the National Council on School Facilities, projects that the United States faces a shortfall of a staggering $85 billion in school facility funding every year. Districts are spending about $110 billion every year on maintenance, operations, and capital construction – but the educational facilities standards for good stewardship necessitates nearly $195 billion. The rise in the nation's PK-12 gap has been brought on by increased school construction costs, building inventory increases, and a sharp decline in facility expenditures after the great recession.

All this exists despite extraordinary efforts on the part of local communities and states to deliver public school buildings that help protect the health and safety of the students, teachers and staff who walk through their doors every day.

Thirty-three school buildings sustained water damage as remnants of hurricane Ida slammed Paterson with heavy rain last week prompting the Board of Education to convene an emergency meeting on Friday to start the academic year remotely.
“We had severe damage to some of our buildings, more so than others,” said superintendent Eileen Shafer on Friday.
Facilities director Neil Mapp said most buildings sustained flooded basements and roof leaks. He said in some cases water came in through drains and bathrooms as the antiquated combined sewer system filled up with stormwater.
Mapp showed images of the damage, including a badly flooded basement.
School officials spent millions of dollars in preparation for in-person school opening in September. Schools in Paterson have been closed since March 2020. It’s not clear how long the district will remain remote.
“We need to leave that date open because we have some severe damage,” said Shafer.
Shafer said the district will remain remote until repairs are made and the schools are ready for students.
“We want the entire district to go remote until we can get some of this damage remediated,” said school board president Kenneth Simmons.
Simmons said more water came into the buildings as the Passaic River crested following the downpour.
 

The bond would pay for upgrades to HVAC units, roofing, lighting, parking lots and sidewalks. It would also provide students with what the district calls "devices at the ready."

"Devices at the ready is an interesting term. It is to make sure that students have the devices they need when they need them," Spickard said. "If students need them at home, we have devices for them at home. If they need them here for certain projects, whether they're publication projects or collaboration projects, that we have the types of devices when students need them and how they need them."

One Saturday afternoon in late May, a few days before the end of his junior year, Harvey Ellington plopped onto his queen-size bed, held up his phone and searched for a signal. The 17-year-old lived in a three-bedroom trailer on an acre lot surrounded by oak trees, too far into the country for broadband, but eventually his cell found the hot spot his high school had lent him for the year. He opened his email and began to type.

“Good evening! Hope all is well! Congratulations on being the new superintendent for the Holmes County Consolidated School District.”

A week and a half earlier, the school board chose Debra Powell, a former high school principal and mayor of East St. Louis, Ill., to lead the rural school district that Ellington attended in the Mississippi Delta. Powell worked as an administrator at Ellington’s school before the pandemic, and she ran track with Jackie Joyner-Kersee when she was a teenager. Maybe, Ellington thought, Powell had what it took to turn the district around.

Ellington’s fingers hovered over his cellphone screen. Soon he would be a high-school senior, and he wanted to sound perfect. He looked around his bedroom, first at the sign that said, “You are worth more than gold,” then at his dresser, where he’d propped a copy of Carter Woodson’s “The Mis-Education of the Negro” underneath a picture of the superintendent’s round-table meeting. Ellington served on the student advisory group his freshman year, and he was president his sophomore year, but the round table no longer existed.

North Carolina has a nearly $13 billion backlog in new school construction and renovations, according to the 2020-21 Facility Needs Survey. 

The backlog represents an increase of more than $4 billion over the $8 billion reported in the Facility Needs Survey five years ago. 

Construction costs for new schools, as well as and additions and renovations to existing ones account for more than half — approximately $6.54 billion — of the costs identified in the 2020-21 survey. 

Critics of state tax cuts have long blamed the state’s growing backlog on North Carolina lawmakers’ decision to redirect the 7.25% of income tax revenues from the Public School Building Capital Fund to fill budget holes during the 2008 Great Recession. In 2013, lawmakers eliminated the corporate tax transfer to the Building Capital Fund to pay for some of the cuts they made to the corporate and personal income tax rates.     

It’s worth noting that North Carolina hasn’t held a state bond referendum for public schools since 1996. The $1.8 billion from that referendum was spent before 2005. 

In small part, enrollment growth has spurred the need for more funding to build schools. State education officials project a modest 2% enrollment increase in public schools over the next 10 years. Growth is projected to be greatest in grades K-8, while enrollment in grade 9-12 is projected to decrease.