For the Philadelphia teacher Freda Anderson, setting up her classroom involves clearing plaster, dust and paint chips from tables, chairs and desks. Somewhere, a leak has allowed water to seep through the walls. Years of deferred maintenance have caused dust and paint chips to scatter across the room. This debris is not just a brazen reminder of state abandonment of public education — it is an active vector of harm. A report released this spring revealed an asbestos epidemic creeping through Philadelphia schools.

During the 2019 school year, 11 schools closed because of toxic physical conditions; a veteran teacher is suffering from mesothelioma, a lethal disease caused by asbestos. Ms. Anderson used to believe the best way to fix schools would be to hire more teachers, counselors and mental health providers, “but, honestly, now the first thing I would do is start reallocating money to fix the buildings,” she told me. “They’re just really dangerous.”

The question of how to finance Philadelphia schools’ $4.5 billion of unmet infrastructure needs — as well as hiring more teachers, counselors and nurses — has been a vexing issue for the community. Despite high levels of affluence in the city, inequitable distribution of state aid and regressive taxation, including hundreds of millions of dollars in local corporate tax breaks, have exacerbated budget shortfalls.

To keep the lights on, the School District of Philadelphia — like thousands of districts across the country — has increasingly turned to debt financing: They issue bonds to borrow money from financial markets, either with their own bonding authority or through municipal governments. Investment funds purchase these bonds, thus lending the funds to local governments or school districts, who promise to repay the loans, plus interest and issuance fees.

(Washington, DC) – Today, Mayor Muriel Bowser, DC Public Schools Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee, and Interim Principal Jacqueline Anderson cut the ribbon on the newly modernized Eaton Elementary School. Mayor Bowser was joined by Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, Director of the Department of General Services, Keith A. Anderson, and community members.

“We cannot wait to bring our students back to fantastic facilities like this one – spaces specifically designed to support the needs of young learners,” said Mayor Muriel Bowser. “We thank all of our educators and staff members who are working hard to get ready for this school year. We thank our families for working with us to get everyone back. And we thank everyone in the community, whether they have children in school or not, who’s supporting our students by getting vaccinated.”

The modernization of Eaton Elementary School, a $57.7 million project, initially began in 2018 with the renovation of two existing buildings totaling 40,000 square feet and the demolition of interconnecting 1930s- and 1980s-era buildings that allowed for the construction of a new 45,000 square feet three-level building. The new facility features a new gymnasium, library, and cafeteria to serve the student body.

“We are excited to welcome our Eaton community back to their school home,” said Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee. “The new school building celebrates our history and embraces the bright future of our students at the heart of the design. As we prepare to welcome back our students on August 30, we’re excited to see our students joyfully learning in Eaton and all our schools.”

HOLYOKE — The Massachusetts School Building Authority has approved up to $5.5 million in grants for Holyoke Public Schools to repair roofs on three of its elementary schools.

In an announcement Wednesday, the MSBA said that it had approved funding for partial roof repairs at E.N. White Elementary School, Lt. Clayre P. Sullivan School and Maurice A. Donahue School. The “accelerated repair program” grants were part of $25 million in funding the agency approved.

“The Accelerated Repair Program allows us to make critical repairs to more schools in less time,” state Treasurer Deborah Goldberg said in a statement. “By improving the learning environment for our children, the program also makes schools more energy efficient and generates significant cost savings.”

(WXYZ) — A local contractor is blowing the whistle on what he says are some dangerous exposures to the cancer-causing material at some Ann Arbor elementary schools that have been under construction.
Ann Arbor Public Schools spent more than $3 million on renovations at the two schools over the summer.
We’re not using the contractor’s name or showing you his face in order to protect his job, but he wants to expose what happened during that construction.
“Do you feel like the students are safe,” 7 Investigator Heather Catallo asked the contractor.
“Not unless something’s done about it,” said the contractor.
schools
A local contractor is blowing the whistle on what he says are some dangerous exposures to the cancer-causing material at some Ann Arbor elementary schools that have been under construction.
By: Heather CatalloPosted at 4:13 PM, Aug 26, 2021 and last updated 6:19 PM, Aug 26, 2021
(WXYZ) — A local contractor is blowing the whistle on what he says are some dangerous exposures to the cancer-causing material at some Ann Arbor elementary schools that have been under construction.
Ann Arbor Public Schools spent more than $3 million on renovations at the two schools over the summer.
We’re not using the contractor’s name or showing you his face in order to protect his job, but he wants to expose what happened during that construction.
“Do you feel like the students are safe,” 7 Investigator Heather Catallo asked the contractor.
“Not unless something’s done about it,” said the contractor.
Recent Stories from wxyz.com
Laboratory reports obtained by the 7 Investigators show asbestos-containing materials were found inside Angell Elementary and Burns Park Elementary.
“It’s on the lunch trays. It’s everywhere. It disperses like flour and it lands on surfaces and it stays there until someone turns on a desk fan, and now it’s in the air again … We worked in every part of that school, from the principal’s office to the cafeteria, to the gymnasium,” said the contractor of Burns Park.
Asbestos is a cancer-causing mineral that was once used in everything from insulation to ceiling tiles.
“You would not want the public breathing it in, definitely not children,” said Dr. Sarah Surber, an assistant professor with Wayne State University’s Department of Public Health. “When it’s disturbed it becomes friable, that just means it turns into a dust or the fibers are released … What happens is, you breathe them in, they go into the lungs and get trapped in the sacs in the lung, and that’s when you have a problem.”
 

In sweltering heat Thursday, educators at Julia R. Masterman school took their laptops and power cords and conducted their professional development day outside.

They stayed outside all day to make a statement, hoping to raise awareness about their concerns around asbestos in the building, which is perilous to health when damaged.

Inside the school, construction is also ongoing. According to teachers, there is a plastic tarp on the gym floor, there is rain coming through the roof, known by students as “roof juice,” and there’s dust from construction. One staffer is said to have been hit by a piece of debris in the school elevator.

“We don’t feel safe going into the school,” said Spanish teacher Elizabeth Diffenderfer, of the Center City campus.

Many teachers feel the same, and, along with Masterman’s Home and School Association, criticized the district for not providing more information and clarity on infrastructure concerns before students return next Tuesday.

The outdoor protest caught the attention of School District of Philadelphia leaders. At a separate event at Citizens Bank Park Thursday, Superintendent William Hite disputed the idea that the school is unsafe.

“I want to be very clear, the district has been in close communication with Masterman HSA reps and the [teachers union],” said Hite, adding, “No known damaged asbestos remains in the school.”

Asbestos—a silent, enduring pandemic—has become a forgotten issue in the U.S. Yet, it continues to endanger the lives of children and school staff every day, bearing particularly on marginalized communities who lack the critical resources to protect themselves.
Consider the example of 11-year-old Deon Clark, who, while playing with his classmates in Philadelphia’s Lewis C. Cassidy Elementary School in 2018, was exposed to alarmingly high levels of asbestos. An investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer found that the surface dust in one area of Clark’s classroom contained 4 million asbestos fibers per square centimeter, “50 times higher than the highest result for settled asbestos dust found indoors in apartments near ground zero after the 9/11 terror attacks.”
The profound health implications that asbestos carries as a lethal mineral bundle cannot be overstated: When inhaled, its invisible fibers lodge in human lungs and can cause cancer and other health complications even years after exposure. This led to its outright ban in over 50 countries. However, the ban has not yet been enacted in the U.S.
Despite growing public awareness of its fatal properties beginning in the 1970s, an attempt by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban asbestos under the Toxic Substance Control Act in 1989 was overturned in 1991 by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Since then, the U.S. approach to dealing with the substance has largely been to oversee its presence in newer products and in buildings across the U.S.
To manage asbestos in schools, Congress passed the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA) in 1986. AHERA requires local educational agencies to “inspect their school buildings for asbestos-containing building material, prepare asbestos management plans and perform asbestos response actions to prevent or reduce asbestos hazards.”
 

The majority of Americans believe that their schools have the resources and capabilities to respond to future disruption, according to a new study from Dude Solutions, the leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider of operations management solutions for education institutions. The company’s recent polling of over 1,000 consumers, titled the American Infrastructure Consumer Study: Education, found 65% of people believe schools have the necessary resources to manage students and 55% believe schools are better equipped to handle another major education disruption in the future.

However, the study also reveals that a majority of Americans aren’t confident in their school’s infrastructure. As communities prepare for in-person learning, most people don’t believe their schools are in a better condition, nor safer, than five years ago. Only 36% of respondents believe that schools have improved in the past five years, with only 37% believing that schools are safer.

Students in Flint Community Schools (FCS) will miss six days of school in the just-started 2021-22 school year due to the heat. FCS ordered schools closed the entire week of Aug .23-26; an instruction day had not been scheduled for Friday, Aug. 27.

FCS Superintendent Anita Steward issued a revised public statement about school closings on Monday,  Aug. 23 on the district’s website that read, in part:

“At Flint Community Schools, the safety and well-being of our staff and scholars is always a primary concern. As we look at this week’s weather forecast, we have made the decision to cancel school districtwide from Tuesday, August 24 through Thursday, August 26 … there is also no instruction on Friday, August 27. The administration building will remain open, and principals are to report to their buildings on Tuesday, August 24. School will resume in-person Monday, August 30, and we look forward to seeing your child. ”  

Outside temperatures were expected to be in the 80s (Fahrenheit) through Wednesday and Thursday, according to The Weather Channel and AccuWeather websites. 

Flint school buildings average 70 years old

The eleven FCS buildings that currently house students in grades K-12 are, collectively an average of 70 years old, according to information provided East Village Magazine by the Flint-based Sloan Museum. 

Inside a century-old red brick building on the edge of Manhattan’s Chinatown, Joanne O’Neill and her custodial staff have been hustling.

In the morning, two hours before students arrived for summer camp, approximately 70 window air conditioning units were flipped on, and all windows – the primary source of ventilation in the building – were opened. Once classrooms were occupied, O’Neill’s team checked carbon dioxide levels, a proxy for a space’s air quality and its concentration of aerosols. Throughout the day, the team would complete other maintenance tasks, such as installing new MERV-13 filters in window units and disinfecting high-touch surfaces like door knobs and light switches. At night, every room had to be properly sanitized. The routine will likely be the same when school opens Sept. 13.

“We strive to get buildings to a point where parents, teachers, and administrators feel comfortable coming in – that’s kind of our mission,” said O’Neill, custodial engineer at P.S. 42, which serves about 500 students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. “We’re doing the best we can.”

After COVID upended lives in March 2020, ventilation — whether through mechanical systems, natural air flow through windows, or a combination of the two — emerged as a critical tool to curb the spread of the virus in indoor spaces. The city launched an intensive effort to inspect every classroom’s ventilation system ahead of last fall’s reopening. The resulting ventilation reports were less detailed than many teachers had hoped and showed that many rooms had documented problems with air supply or exhaust components.

Even if Grand Forks voters approve a do-over request from Grand Forks Public Schools to hike property taxes, the money it would raise would only make a dent in the district’s long – and recently expanded – list of facilities needs.
School district administrators have organized a Sept. 28 vote that will decide if the district can increase residents’ property taxes by 10 mills. If approved, the referendum would mean a $94.64 increase to the property taxes paid each year by the owner of a $210,300 home – the median value in Grand Forks – and a further $2.5 million each year for the district, whose administrators have put together a $260.9 million list of problems at the 17 schools they maintain.
“This two and a half million (dollars) is definitely not a ‘get out of jail free’ card,” Chris Arnold, the district’s director of buildings and grounds, told the Herald. “It’s a start for us to at least start figuring out, ‘OK, how do we dig ourselves out of the massive hole we got into?’”
But prior estimates – at least those given to the Herald – put the district’s total “deferred maintenance” costs at about $77 million as recently as August 2020. How did that figure rise so dramatically? And how did the district’s facilities woes get so bad in the first place?
$77 million to $260 million
The $77 million figure comes from a study by JLG Architects. The report, a “long-range facility assessment and master plan” published in 2017 for a 2018 biennial public forum, says the district’s “potential investments over 15 years exceeds 77 million dollars.” The report’s authors also make clear that it does not encompass every building deficiency in the district and, instead, aims to “provide a framework and starting point for future decisions.”
The $260.9 million figure, which district staff presented at a sobering Grand Forks City Council meeting on Monday, comes from a more complete accounting of the district’s maintenance needs that incorporates the JLG report plus dozens of projects that weren’t covered in it, price estimates for which come from projects the district has previously bid out, estimates put forth by architects and contracts, and internet searches. Arnold said district staff started compiling the list a couple of months ago.
“This is likely the most comprehensive list … that the district has ever had in probably the last 20 years,” Arnold said.
 

ORLANDO, Fla. – Just a few hundred feet from the field goals on their brand new football field, the sounds of construction equipment can be heard outside the new Lake Buena Vista High School in Orange County.
Orange County Public Schools’ newest facility is one of three new schools that opened this year to help relieve overcrowding as the population continues to grow in Central Florida.
“We are here in south Orange County, here at Lake Buena Vista High School,” said school board member Linda Kobert. “If you just look around here on Darryl Carter Parkway, you can almost see a whole city rising up from the ground.”
From the parking lot of the new high school, construction is booming, with the world’s largest White Castle and a new Portillo’s restaurant in sight. Crews are also tagging concrete blocks for a future Taco Bell.
Lake Buena Vista High School was placed there to keep up with the growth of this area off I-4 in between Universal Resort and Walt Disney World.
That’s why Paul Koneski and his family moved to the area in February.
“We are renting this house. Our long term goal is to buy in this area,” Koneski said. “We love the Orlando area.”
His daughter worked at Sea World over the summer while she was home from college, and his son, a junior, is a big theme park fan.
“Everything is, like, 10 to 15 minutes away,” Koneski said. “I mean, you have three major theme parks here. Universal has their new park upcoming up the street here.”
“Having Lake Buena Vista over there helps relieve the pressure in the student numbers that were at Dr. Phillips [High School] and Freedom [High School],” he said.
 

Teachers arrived at Schurr High School in Montebello last week to prepare their classrooms for opening Monday. But instead of arranging books and desks, they found a horrific scene: dead rats on the floor, rat nests in the cabinets, excrement on desks.
“There was feces in several places in my room,” said teacher Al Cuevas. “I could hear rats running around in the walls and ceiling. It’s disgusting. Other rooms right near me were completely taken over by rats.”
After being confronted with the teachers’ frustration and safety concerns, late Friday the school district — which never opened for in-person learning last school year — sent an email to parents of some 2,600 students that the campus would be closed for “the next couple of weeks.” In yet another education setback, students will be put on an independent study program.
About 90% of Schurr’s students are Latino and about 80% are from low-income families.
In addition to the rat infestation, teachers said the air conditioning system was not properly working in a building where many of the classrooms have no windows. This problem is especially acute as state COVID-19 safety measures recommend improved air ventilation systems.
Interim Supt. Mark Skvarna said the district should have done a better job identifying the problem in the run-up to reopening. Skvarna was hired in March, a few months after a fiscal analysis found that the district was at high risk of insolvency.
“I’m not going to make excuses that this stuff was done as well as it could have been done,” Skvarna said. “I don’t believe it was done as well as it could have been done.”
 

Construction will continue on a new school in Fort Washington, Maryland, despite neighbors’ protests over flood concerns.
Protesters lined Swan Creek Road at the beginning of the month, successfully halting tree clearing for the planned school — a 234,000-square-foot kindergarten through eighth grade school on wetland. The residents said they're in favor of the new school but not the location.
In a meeting this week with Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks residents were told construction will continue. 
“We had real high hopes that the meeting would go well but we are very disappointed,” resident Hazel Robinson said.
“[Alsobrooks] said firmly that she does not intend to change the site, although she’ll make every attempt to try to address our concerns,” resident Carter Ferrington said.
Some neighborhoods in the area flood after a hard rain. 
“We've seen at least 2 1/2 feet of water in our street, and it has created an absolute river that runs 180 degrees around our house,” resident Zeneta Walthour said.
Some residents worry their stormwater management will get worse when the forest is gone.
“The truth is we’ve long standing flood issues that have not been addressed in that area, and people want that addressed before any trees are taken down,” Prince George’s County Council member Monique Anderson Walker said.
The current elementary school, Potomac Landing, has 10 acres connected to 14 acres of Maryland Park and Planning land. School officials deemed the site insufficient for the new school and are clearing an adjacent 24 acres of wetland instead. 
“I don't know if there's anything that can be said to really make people happy on this,” resident Abigael Pari Crowe said.
 

South Bend schools explore outsourcing facilities, custodial staff
Carley Lanich
South Bend Tribune

SOUTH BEND — South Bend schools is exploring options to outsource its custodial services and maintenance and grounds staff, drawing concern from those filling the high-demand positions which took on increasing importance during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a school board meeting Monday night, district leaders said their staff is overworked from the top down and a major overhaul is needed to ensure buildings are being cleaned and maintained moving forward.

Years of deferred maintenance and reductions in staffing have led to a point where getting the departments back on track could take anywhere from three to five years, said Kareemah Fowler, South Bend’s assistant superintendent of business and finance. Or, she proposed, the district could outsource its labor.

“We have problems that require expert solutions but we lack the bandwidth and capacity to correct the problems,” Fowler said. “A partnership… will allow for us to maintain and stay on task regarding our current deferred maintenance projects and new referendum and safety projects.”

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC)- The country’s top education official toured a Virginia school to find out how federal coronavirus relief is helping students return to in-person learning and what more can be done moving forward. 
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona was joined by Gov. Ralph Northam and Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger at Glen Allen High School in Henrico on Wednesday.
Schools have benefited from various federal funding streams during the pandemic. Most recently, the General Assembly approved $250 million from the American Rescue Plan Act for qualifying ventilation improvement projects in public schools. Funds will be distributed to schools based on projected enrollment with a minimum allocation of $200,000 per division. Localities will have to match the grant award to get the money. 
While air quality improvements are an important COVID-19 mitigation strategy, some districts were hoping to use ARPA resources for long-overdue school construction projects, which the federal government has discouraged due to its spending deadline.
8News asked Secretary Cardona to respond to frustrations surrounding state and federal funding restrictions, as some fear they will force school districts to pour money into buildings that need to be replaced entirely. 
“I visited a school recently where they used the funds to get a better ventilation system, to get better airflow, to make sure students can enter safely but you’re bringing up an important issue. We shouldn’t stop here,” Cardona said. “Infrastructure is equity and we know that with the Build Back Better agenda, we’re on the path toward that.” 
 

Aging infrastructure has left Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts “uniquely vulnerable” to such environmental health hazards as radon and mold, putting the safety of roughly 1.7 million public school students at risk, a new report concludes.

The report, by the advocacy group Women for a Healthy Environment, calls on state officials to create “an equitable formula,” for school infrastructure investment, and to lift the existing moratorium on a reimbursement program for school construction.

The report found that a majority of public school buildings across the state are within a half-mile of a polluter, and, as a result, that districts that serve more low-income and special education students had a greater prevalence of asthma.

The report also found that those districts were less likely to test for environmental hazards, and less likely to do remediation work when they found such hazards.

“Schools should be a safe place for children to learn, grow and play. The average school building in Pennsylvania was built in 1964 – several years before federal laws that affect healthy indoor environments were enacted,” the group’s executive director, Michelle Naccarati-Chapkis, said in a statement.

“Through science we know that exposure to lead, radon and poor air quality for example, affects the development of our children. Healthy learning environments lead to greater academic achievement,” she continued. “Therefore, it is critical that we invest in our schools to assure children a healthier future. This includes taking advantage of the unique opportunity that the American Rescue Plan Act presents to address these environmental risks now.”

Gov. Tom Wolf, along with his Democratic allies in the General Assembly, have spent the last few years pushing for increased state investment in environmental remediation.

In 2018-19, however, the administration did secure $11.9 million to fund lead paint remediation for the Philadelphia public schools. But in 2020, Wolf unsuccessfully pitched a $1.1 billion effort to fight lead and asbestos contamination in the state’s public schools.

This year, Democrats in the state Senate called for using part of the state’s $7 billion in federal stimulus money to fix “crumbling” schools, WHYY-FM in Philadelphia reported. Democrats said the money was a “once in a lifetime chance,” the Capital-Star previously reported.

“Our physical environment has a huge impact on the way we move, the way we think, and the way we act. In particular, the walls of a school building are there to inspire students to dream beyond their heights,” Sen. Tim Kearney, D-Delaware, said at a June news conference touting the plan, according to WHYY-FM.

Democrats in the state House floated a similar plan to spend the stimulus money across a variety of causes. But to the frustration of Democrats, the Legislature’s majority Republicans ended up banking $5 billion of the stimulus money for future needs. An additional $2.5 billion in state surplus tax revenue was deposited into Pennsylvania’s ‘Rainy Day Fund.’

Individual districts are free, however, to spend the money they receive from the $1.6 billion in federal aid specifically earmarked for schools on lead remediation or other environmental problems that compromise student safety.

CLARK COUNTY, Ind. — Greater Clark County School leaders are ready to present their five-year plan to replace or upgrade a number of schools throughout the district. 
The school board says wasting money is not in this budget, reiterating these are necessary upgrades for a growing district.
What's in the plan?
In the first year, which is the current 2021/22 school year, Greater Clark would take on districtwide HVAC repairs and replacements as well as major paving projects. Students and staff would see technology and security system upgrades.
Schools like River Valley, Charlestown Middle and NorthHaven would see expansions and upgrades to areas like their classrooms, gyms and cafeterias. The district would also look to purchase land for a new school.
"We need to buy some property somewhere out on Stacey Rd, between Jeff and Charlestown, so that 10 to 15 years from now, we'll have the land to build a new elementary or middle school because of the growth in that area," Superintendent Mark Laughner said in an online presentation posted on Aug. 11.
Year 2 is an "ambitious one." It includes building two new elementary schools which Laughner says would be more cost-efficient than renovating the older ones. This means replacing Jonathan Jennings and Wilson Elementary School, while merging students from other schools into the new ones.
 A new building would cost about $25 to $30 million and increase the lifespan of each school by another 60 years or more.
 

ELLWOOD CITY – It would cost the Ellwood City Area School District more than $24 million to make all the structural upgrades proposed by engineers.
A presentation to the school board onpotential renovations for all four district buildings and Helling Stadium was given Thursday by Robert Englebaugh R.A. of HHSDR Architects/Engineers and James Vizzini PE of CJL Engineering.
Englebaugh said the total cost to do all potential renovations would be around $24.39 million.
He and Vizzini then broke the specific projects and costs for each of the buildings and the stadium.
North Side projects
Englebaugh started with North Side Primary, stating the school needs new heat ventilators, a chiller/boiler, a new transformer, additional HVAC work and minor roofing work done.
This represents a total cost of around $1.2 million.
Englebaugh said bids for HVAC and transformer work for North Side will go out this week.
The school was first built in 1992.
 

KILGORE, Texas (KLTV) - Last Friday, the Kilgore ISD school board proposed a $113 million bond to renovate Chandler Elementary as well as replace the current Kilgore High School.
“We’ve got some challenges that have been here for a while, they aren’t new needs, they are recurring needs and our board thought that now was a good time to go ahead and start to address those needs,” said Kilgore ISD superintendent Dr. Andy Baker.
The original Kilgore High School building was created in 1932. At the time, the building was intended to house elementary, junior high, and high school students. Today, it sees about 1,200 high school students walk through it’s halls every school day.
“Its original square footage, its original design was never intended for the design and use we are putting it through today,” Baker said.
And with it’s age comes different issues.
“The moisture issue on the exterior of the walls, those walls are original 1932 walls, the exterior is still the same brick and mortar that was there 89 years ago, the mortar on the inside is now starting to deteriorate given the moisture coming in from outside, so its not coming down from the roofs per say, its coming down from the outside,” Baker said. “So that is a challenge that we have in multiple classrooms, multiple window seals, and multiple exterior walls are just starting to crumble every time a kiddo brushes up next to it, every time a desk hits it, the walls begin to crumble.”
Baker says so far he’s had some feedback from members of the community who hope with a new building, some of the architecture and tradition of the past can be retained.
“There’s a lot of nostalgia incorporated in the tradition of this high school, a lot of the community would like to see even if they believe there might be a need at this point in time they’d still like to see us keep a lot of the tradition, maybe some of the architecture looks,” he said.
 

As students start a new school year, this is a chance to honor the legacy of a group of schools that educated hundreds of thousands of Black children.
From 1913 to 1932, nearly 5,000 “Rosenwald schools” were built in 15 states, mostly in rural Southern communities. These schools were built specifically to educate Black children, and by 1928 one in three rural Black schoolchildren in the South attended a Rosenwald school. Their history, and the remaining school buildings themselves, are now being reclaimed and preserved.
The schools were named for their primary donor, Chicago businessman Julius Rosenwald. The son of German Jewish immigrants, Rosenwald was a clothier who became the president of Sears, Roebuck and Company. As a progressive philanthropist, Rosenwald believed one of the country’s most pressing social problems was the “Negro question,” and he supported the ideas and self-help doctrine of Tuskegee Institute President Booker T. Washington.
In 1912, Rosenwald was a member of Tuskegee’s board of trustees when Washington came to him to suggest donating funds specifically for building Black schools. Most Southern states provided little public funding to adequately educate Black children, and many rural communities had no schools for Black children at all. Washington believed building schools that could provide traditional and vocational education for Black children would be a key method of “race uplift.”
After a successful test group of six Alabama schools, in 1917 Rosenwald established the Julius Rosenwald Foundation, and the School Building Program remained one of the foundation’s primary missions until Rosenwald’s death in 1932.