CARY, N.C. — Proposed redistricting of student assignment zones would move dozens of students across 46 Wake County Public School System schools next year.
But current students would not have to move schools if they don’t want to, so long as they can arrange their own transportation to school under the draft student assignment plan unveiled Tuesday.
The draft plan is intended to provide relief for overflowing schools and help fill schools that are under-enrolled. It considers, among other things, students' proximity to their schools and allowing for more efficient transportation. Family surveys have shown many parents want their children's schools to be close to home. At the same time, the district is experiencing a continued decline in bus driver employment.

We're out to answer a basic question about Hamilton County Schools: Which schools in the county have the most maintenance requests that haven't been addressed?
School officials, including former Hamilton County School Board Chair Tucker McClendon, have long pointed out there are many repairs needed across the district.
McClendon, who is now deputy county mayor for education and workforce development, is a member of a newly-created County School Facilities Working Group that Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp announced on Tuesday.
McClendon said the working group will use the 2018 MGT study commissioned by the school board as its baseline for the work.
That consulting group recommended closing 9 schools, constructing new buildings for 11 schools, renovating 27 schools, increasing the capacity of 6 schools, and having new locations or sites for 4 schools.
But where do things stand today? That's what we aim to find out. We have reached out to Hamilton County officials to get a current list of the schools most in need of repairs. We'll update this story when we learn more details.
 

BURLINGTON — State officials are calling a program to reduce lead in school and child care drinking water a success, following a new report that found 98 percent of Vermont schools and child cares have completed testing for lead in their drinking water and taken any needed steps to keep water safe. A law passed in 2019 requires all Vermont schools and child care facilities to test their drinking and cooking water for lead.

“Each year hundreds of Vermont kids are poisoned by lead. This program shows how we can work together as a state to reduce lead exposure and keep our children healthier,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine in a statement. “Parents and caregivers can take comfort in knowing that the water their kids are consuming at their school and child care is now safer.”

Lead is a highly toxic metal. There is no safe level of lead in the body, the department said, and exposure to it can slow children’s growth, impair their development and learning, and cause behavior problems.

BROOKSVILLE – The days of kicking the can down the road are over, county commissioners said on Sept. 13 as they voted 5-0 to approve a five-year capital improvement plan that will bring some major changes to Hernando County.

Budget Director Toni Brady showed a plan that has almost $174.8 million in projects for fiscal year 2023 and looks ahead to spending $306 million through fiscal 2027.

Of that amount, $39 million is unfunded, though.

While the list of projects went on for pages and pages, Brady hit the high points for the commissioners, pointing out projects such as the Dennis Wilfong Center for Success, for which the county got a $6.1 million grant for its part of the infrastructure, and including the tax collector annex, Eastside Roadway improvements, replacing the Jenkins Creek Fishing Pier, the Anderson Snow Splash Park and new lights for the Delta Woods Park tennis courts.

More than 20 Massachusetts public school districts that are home to communities who bore a disproportionate brunt of the coronavirus pandemic could share in $100 million in federal COVID-19 relief money to upgrade ventilation and air quality in classrooms.

Worcester Public Schools is eligible to receive up to $7 million from the American Rescue Plan Act — and Boston Public Schools could see up to $15 million, the Baker administration announced Monday.

Springfield Public Schools, meanwhile, may get up to almost $6.3 million, a spokeswoman from the Executive Office of Education told MassLive.

The Davenport Community School District is working on a long-range facilities master plan to right-size the district, and it may involve closing schools.
The district still has a ways to go in the process, as its Board of Directors will vote to approve a master plan proposal in December. The plan sets the vision and priorities for the district over the next 10 to 20 years, though nothing in the plan is certain. 
The district says it must balance its budget with its needs and capacity. District leader say they've been thorough and intentional with the planning.  But months away from the board’s vote, parents and staff alike have raised several concerns about potential closures.
Dr. Austin Burt, a Walcott business owner, said he’d like the district to address its excess capacity internally before making any decisions on a proposal. 
“Because all they're doing now is closing buildings and cutting costs,” he said. “We want to be part of the solution, not part of a continued loss for the district.”
Proposed plans include tentatively closing/idling Buchanan, Washington, Jackson, Jefferson and Hayes or Monroe elementary schools and would convert Walcott K-8 into a junior high school. In one option, Williams and Smart junior highs are idled, but would relocate into the repurposed Jackson and Jefferson sites. 
 

When it gets too hot in Denver and Baltimore classrooms, students are sent home because their schools don't have air conditioning.
In Massachusetts, checking for rusty water leaking from a ceiling has become a "morning ritual."
In California, a school's cockroach infestation has gotten so bad that some students fear eating lunch.
While school infrastructure problems are a perennial challenge, national data and dismal stories from teachers suggest the crises are reaching an apex. Atrocious school conditions have even prompted some teachers this school year to go on strike.
"We're getting to a critical stage now," said Mike Pickens, executive director of the National Council on School Facilities. "The average age of a school building now is from 49 to 50 years" -- the highest in memory. Some schools date back to World War II.
But as schools get older and more desperate for repairs, the funding gap for public schools keeps getting worse.
 

HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — The Guam Department of Education may be looking at shutting down certain schools due to safety issues.

Acting GDOE Superintendent Francis Santos made mention of the possibility during a presentation before the Rotary Club of Guam during its meeting Thursday at the Hyatt Regency Guam in Tumon. He was discussing capital improvement needs and initiatives.

"There's roofing issues in every single school in our system. As I speak, we have a structural issue at the (George Washington High School) gym. We had to shut that down. And we're now looking at two additional schools that we're having some serious structural issues. And we are more than likely going to shut them down and have to move these kids around," Santos said.

Stafford County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Thomas Taylor proposed a 10-year, $1.6 billion Capital Improvement Plan during the September 13 Stafford County School Board meeting.
Of this, 75 percent is dedicated to new school construction or the reconstruction of existing aging school buildings over the next 10 years.
“Per capita, Stafford is the second fastest growing community in Virginia. This year alone, we gained more than 600 new students – the equivalent of an entire elementary school – but we have not built a new school since 2008,” said Dr. Taylor. “We are not keeping up, and we are not providing our students and staff with the learning and working environments they deserve.”
The school system projects an increase of 6,000 students in the next 10 years, calling for a minimum of six new buildings to simply meet the projected capacity requirements.
The plan recommends building three new elementary schools, one new middle school, two new high schools, and one public day school. The program specifies the rebuilding of 4 elementary schools – Falmouth, Grafton Village, Ferry Farm, and Stafford Elementary Schools, as well as the Rising Star Early Childhood Education Center and Edward E. Drew Middle School. Each of these buildings will have exceeded their 60-year life expectancy by the time any approved rebuild begins.
 

Some of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools' facilities are in need of repair or replacement, as the CHCCS Finance and Facilities Committee discussed at its Sept. 13 meeting.

Rani Dasi, the CHCCS Board of Education vice chair, presented the findings of the Capital Needs Work Group, which was founded in 2021 and is composed of representatives from Orange County, Orange County Schools and CHCCS.

The work group’s goal is to develop a plan for dedicating funds and addressing the needs of school facilities, especially older ones.

The work group found that more than half of the schools in the county are over 50 years old, and many are in need of major repairs or total reconstruction.

The aging school buildings are expensive to maintain and can provide poor learning environments for children, the work group's presentation said. 

“The latest thinking is that there's somewhere upwards of half a billion dollars that will be necessary to invest between the school districts in bringing those school buildings up to current standards,” Dasi said.

The work group also found that there are currently no standards or funding for ongoing school maintenance, and that policies have not been developed for allocating money for these needs.

One school district was able to give pay raises to its teachers as big as 30 percent. Another bought new heating and ventilation systems, all the better to help students and educators breathe easier in these times. The improvements didn’t cost taxpayers a cent, and were paid for by an endlessly renewable source — the sun.
As solar energy gains traction across the country, one beneficiary have been schools, particularly those in cash-strapped districts contending with dwindling tax bases.
From New Jersey to California, nearly one in 10 K-12 public and private schools across the country were using solar energy by early 2022, according to data released Thursday by Generation180, a nonprofit that promotes and tracks clean energy. That’s twice as many as existed in 2015.
The savings in electric bills from schools with solar panels often topped millions in each district, and many have been able to adopt the technology without shouldering any costs up front.
“If you’re conservative, we didn’t ask you for more taxes, if you’re liberal, you love the green concept,” said Michael Hester, the school superintendent in Batesville, Ark., where solar arrays paid for teacher raises. “It’s a win-win.”
In Heart-Butte, Mont., the school superintendent, Mike Tatsey, arranged for three-quarters of the energy credits generated by the district’s new solar panels to help lower the electric bills of households in the community, located on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. He believed that freeing up extra spending money for staples like groceries and shoes could have a ripple effect in classrooms.
“That little bit, in my mind, might help a family feel better about themselves, and kids feel better themselves,” Mr. Tatsey said. “In a roundabout way, when they come to school, because of that little bit of extra hope we’re able to give, they’ll be ready to learn.”
 

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAFF) - The Madison County Board of Education met Tuesday to discuss the possibility of adding two new schools to the district.

During the meeting, the Madison County Board of Education approved a $196 million capital budget plan and a $250 million budget for the 2022-2023 school year.

Two future schools are listed on the capital budget plan. The schools could be built as soon as 2024 or 2025, but a school spokesperson said Wednesday that even if construction was starting right away, it would be late 2026 or even 2027 by the time the schools are ready to house students.

One of the future schools will be built on McKee Rd. in Toney, and the other will be built somewhere in Hazel Green. District leaders don’t have a specific spot picked out for the Hazel Green school. A district spokesman said it’s too early to know what grades the schools will house. District leaders said the growth in the area warrants the new buildings.

Connecticut public schools will receive $150 million in state funding to repair and upgrade aging heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, Gov. Ned Lamont announced Wednesday.
The newly formed Connecticut Public Schools HVAC/Indoor Air Quality Grant Program will supplement $165 million in federal COVID relief funds that school districts have set aside to improve air quality.
“COVID woke me up,” Lamont said at a press conference at Phillip R. Smith Elementary School in South Windsor. “Every teacher, every parent was saying, ‘Tell me about the ventilation of my schools. Can I get back to my school safely?’ And it just reinforced in my mind how important it is to make sure you have schools that are safe across the board from a public health point of view.”
State Sen. Saud Anwar, a pulmonary doctor, said that 10% of Connecticut’s teacher and student population has asthma and those respiratory problems are made worse by allergens, inadequate airflow and extreme temperatures.
 

“It’s bad.”
With those words, St. Mary’s public schools’ Director of Maintenance Steve Whidden told the school board about the lack of parts for various school maintenance projects.
The delays in completing such projects have gone from an average of 66 days to 98 days since 2020, he said. Ten years ago, it was 29 days.
In addition, a lack in finding available contractors has also impacted the school system.
“We’re having a hard time getting contractors to respond except for a couple local ones,” he said.
Whidden added that he’s had to pull staff from other assignments to “babysit” projects, such as heating and air conditioning repairs, until all of the necessary parts come in.
“I’ve never had this much problem finding someone who was qualified and would accept what we were offering,” he said.
Board member Jim Davis asked Whidden if he had thought about using students from the school system’s Dr. James A. Forrest Career and Technology Center.
“We’ve been talking about that,” Whidden said, noting students could possibly be used as part-time hourly employees in an internship.
The board voted 5-0 to approve Whidden’s proposed 2022 comprehensive maintenance plan.
Kim Howe, director of capital planning, presented the five-year capital improvement plan, which the board approved 4-0 after Vice Chair Cathy Allen had to leave.
Howe noted that the school system has a 51.25% Facility Condition Index compared to the state average of 47%. This means St. Mary’s public schools have more need in regard to facilities than the statewide average, she said.
“It’s a very heavy lift locally to get these jobs done,” Superintendent Scott Smith said.
 

NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio -- City Council recently approved a partnership with Leopardo Energy that will result in an energy efficiency upgrade for aging infrastructure.
“When it was brought to our attention that we could utilize a program like this, I thought it was an opportunity to make improvements to our city buildings and infrastructure that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to,” North Olmsted Mayor Nicole Dailey Jones said.
“I like the fact that it would increase our energy efficiency in the city and bring some jobs here to get the work done. Those are all good things.”
North Olmsted Director of Economic and Community Development Max Upton said Leopardo Energy, a recognized leader in sustainable building practices and early champion of the green construction movement in the Midwest, is currently conducting an energy audit, which evaluates ways the city can save money by reducing energy consumption.
 

CENTRAL FALLS – With unanimous approval from both the School District and City Council, Central Falls will move forward to present a 10-year plan to construct two new schools and renovate multiple existing buildings, to the state.

The School District and City Council approved a proposal for the Rhode Island Department of Education on Sept. 7 and 12, respectively. The proposal includes plans for construction of a new high school, a new dual language pre-k to eighth grade school, and renovation of three existing elementary schools – Dr. Earl F. Calcutt Middle School, Veterans Memorial elementary School and Ella Risk Elementary School – over the next decade.

Sam Bradner and Erica Schechter with the Peregrine Group, and Jim Jordan from Ai3 architects, led the presentation to the City Council Monday evening. The proposal highlights the construction of a $110 million high school at the site of the city-owned Higginson Avenue/Francis Corrigan Sports Complex, located at the corner of Lonsdale and Higginson Avenue.

The vision for the leading high school design is to create “a focal point, home, and identity for the Central Falls School District.” One half of the new high school will include all of the academic wing. The other half of the building would incorporate the existing athletic facilities, and new arts facilities.

The first five years will prioritize construction of the new high school serving approximately 750 students, followed by conversion of the existing high school facility. After students and teachers move out of the current high school on Summer Street, the building will be turned into a dual language school for an additional $60 million – totaling approximately $170 million for the two schools.

“What we’re trying to do is get students out of the existing high school as quickly as possible so that building can come down, and that construction can start,” Bradner told the City Council Monday night.

NEW ZION, S.C. (WIS) - On Wednesday the South Carolina Department of Education announced more than $80 million in state funds will be going toward two rural counties to help upgrade aging infrastructure.
Clarendon County School District and Lee County School District will each receive $42 million.
The funds are part of $140 million set aside in this year’s budget to renovate what the State Department of Education deems “disadvantaged schools.” Some federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds are also included in this allocation.
Spearman said this is a historic day for South Carolina, and particularly for Clarendon County schools.
Clarendon County previously had three school districts, which have been consolidated into one district for the 2022-2023 school year.
More than $3 million in state funds went to the county to complete the consolidation.
According to Spearman, they were often competing for resources and personnel.
 

Following the disclosure of a federal investigation into Connecticut’s school construction program this spring, state officials vowed to restore trust in the system by reviewing four years’ worth of state-funded building projects.
Yet despite repeated promises from members of Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration to promptly deliver those audit results, nothing has been shared with state lawmakers or the public.
And state officials now say the team of independent auditors that was hired in March won’t be finished with its work until June 2023 — delaying any insight into the multibillion-dollar program that local districts rely on to finance school construction and renovation.
Kevin Kelly, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, said he was deeply frustrated at the lack of communication from state officials, after they committed to transparency.
“We don’t even get a status report,” he said. “They just clam up on us.”
Federal investigators first subpoenaed the state for records related to the school construction program in October 2021, and they focused their requests on several contractors and Konstantinos Diamantis, who led the school building program for more than six years prior to his exit from state government last fall.
The investigators followed up that initial request this spring by demanding records from at least four municipalities that undertook school construction projects in recent years.
Nobody has been charged to this point as part of the federal investigation. But when news of the criminal probe broke in February, several school superintendents and local elected officials came forward to announce that they felt pressured to choose specific construction contractors for their school building projects.
 

Following the disclosure of a federal investigation into Connecticut’s school construction program this spring, state officials vowed to restore trust in the system by reviewing four years’ worth of state-funded building projects.
Yet despite repeated promises from members of Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration to promptly deliver those audit results, nothing has been shared with state lawmakers or the public.
And state officials now say the team of independent auditors that was hired in March won’t be finished with its work until June 2023 — delaying any insight into the multibillion-dollar program that local districts rely on to finance school construction and renovation.
Kevin Kelly, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, said he was deeply frustrated at the lack of communication from state officials, after they committed to transparency.

Lending an ear, being patient with kids’ emotions, and ensuring kids don’t feel they’re at fault: Offering support like that will help children cope with school closures, according to Jeffco parents who have already been through them. 
“I was trying to let him know, ‘we know you don’t like change but this new school is going to become home,’” Jamie Camp said she told her third grader as his school, Fitzmorris Elementary, faced closure in spring 2021 and he would have to move to a new school. “Be patient. They’re going to lash out. Our son did. That’s just them trying to process.”
The Jeffco school district is preparing to help thousands of students say goodbye to their elementary schools at the end of this school year. The board in November is expected to approve a recommendation to close 16 schools, nearly one in five of its elementaries.
In the past two years, the district suddenly closed two small elementary schools that leaders said were no longer sustainable. Now, in a more comprehensive plan, district leaders want to provide more advance notice as they reduce the number of small schools. 
Chalkbeat talked to parents of children who attended the two previously closed schools about what worked, what didn’t work, and what advice they had for families facing closures now. Below read their thoughts, and answers to questions on parents’ minds. 
Why does the district close schools?
Jeffco, like many other districts, has had fewer and fewer students for many years. That has left many schools with very few students. School districts, and in turn schools, get state funding based on enrollment. Most of the schools recommended for closure have either fewer than 220 students or use less than 45% of their building’s space. The district says it provides these schools more money than their per-student allocation, but they still can’t offer the same programs that bigger schools with more students can afford.