STAMFORD — Two major school construction projects in Stamford recently received partial funding from the state, but officials are hoping to receive even more money.
Of the two projects, the biggest is reconstruction of Westhill High School, a project estimated to cost $258 million, according to the state’s Department of Administrative Services. The current 50-year-old structure has had a variety of problems, including “major water intrusion items related to leaky roofs, windows, doorways and exterior facade,” according to schools Superintendent Tamu Lucero.
Plans are to build a brand new school on the same site, and then demolishing the existing building once the new one is complete. Lucero said the new school would be designed to be more student oriented, “promoting student autonomy and independence.”
The state has agreed to finance 20 percent of the work, or $52 million, according to a letter released late last week by the department.
 

The facilities for the Mason City School District are in "very good condition," according to facility supervisor Todd Huff.
"Over the years, historically, Mason City has taken very good care of their school buildings," said Huff. "We have some buildings that have been in renovation longer than others; Hoover Elementary is a good example."
Repair and maintenance projects that have taken place in the past few years include new roofs for Hoover and Pinecrest Center, boiler work at Hoover, and some gymnasium work at John Adams Middle School.
"We sanded and redid the gym floor at John Adams. That's a big project — looks brand new," said Huff. "We added some skylight windows at John Adams during the renovation out there so that gym area has really changed a lot in the last few years."
Huff said updates have also been made to buildings, such as replacing windows, brick work, and sidewalk repair. 
Every year, Huff walks and inspects every inch of a facility to help guide him on what maintenance needs to be done. From the inspections, Huff designs a five-year maintenance-projection plan to determine when certain items will need a repair.
 

RANDOLPH – A small group of parents and students rallied in front of Randolph High School on Tuesday to support more than 100 students who walked out last week to call for improvements at the school.
Randolph High School's walkout was the latest of a spate on the South Shore as students call for changes in their districts.
In Randolph, students and parents want renovations to the high school building,  more teachers and less strict discipline against students for things like being late to class. 
"They aren't encouraging students, there's not enough support. ... The tardy policy is too punitive," said Tyisha Curenton, a mother of both a freshman and a senior at the high school. "There's a shortage of teachers."
Curenton said the district needs to improve communication and that students aren't getting enough education with the number of teachers currently employed.
 

SHERMAN — Residents have made their voice clear — they’d like to see a permanent, one-time repair of The Sherman School roof.
At a town meeting Saturday in Charter Hall, in a vote of 49 to 1, residents voted against a temporary repair to the roof, which has been a hot issue in town over the past few months.
Portions of the roof are considered to be in very poor shape, according to town and school officials. Sections vary in age from 1991 to 2014. Approximately 50 percent of the overall roof area is out of warranty and beyond industry standards for a useful life of about 20 years, according to Brian Berlandi, Board of Education chairman. The school has about 270 students in grades K-8.
Buckets had been set out on many occasions to catch water from leaks. The school board initially recommended permanently replacing portions of the roof, and in a town meeting Sept. 14, voters unanimously approved funds not to exceed $575,000 for this work.
 

D.C. education officials announced Sunday that three public schools will transition to virtual learning through the start of winter break due to surging COVID-19 cases.

Students at McKinley Tech High School, Turner Elementary School and Bard High School Early College DC will learn virtually this week, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee said, due to an increased number of cases impacting operations.

“Multiple positive cases of COVID-19 at school were reported in recent days that impacted school operations,” Ferebee said, “resulting in the temporary shift to virtual instruction through December 22.”

The school system also said that it plans to continue prioritizing the health and well-being of its community members, and made the decision to go virtual after consultation with District health officials.

As an education writer, I rarely have dealt with desegregation. The effort to create a better mix of rich and poor, White and non-White students in our schools was crumbling because of unfavorable court decisions when I started on this beat in the 1980s.
Educators and community leaders who wanted to help low-income students no longer tried to move them into better schools. Instead, they focused on improving schools in impoverished neighborhoods. Their work has been at the center of my reporting. They have had successes, but news of their progress has spread slowly.
Ignoring the segregated state of our education system has led some people to assume it is a natural situation — that perhaps there’s nothing wrong with students attending schools full of other students who look like themselves.
Nothing challenges such thinking more effectively than a new study by Tomás Monarrez and Carina Chien of the Urban Institute, titled “Dividing Lines: Racially Unequal School Boundaries in US Public School Systems.”
Most of us probably don’t know — like I didn’t, before reading the think tank’s report — that if you study the history of school boundaries that divide neighborhoods by income and ethnicity, many reflect the redlining maps issued by a federal agency, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), in the 1930s and 1940s. Scholars disagree over whether President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who founded the agency as a New Deal initiative, can be blamed for making neighborhoods look bad on those maps, but there is little doubt that labeling some areas as “hazardous” for mortgage loans hurt the local schools.
Monarrez and Chien say they found more than 2,000 pairs of neighboring public schools that “are vastly different in terms of the racial and ethnic composition of the population living on either side of the boundary.”
 

An overall price tag for proposed new St. Landry Parish elementary school construction is rising as the number of projected new facilities continues to increase.
Those are the pair of inflationary issues school board members face as the deadline approaches for approving a final budget for as many as four new kindergarten through fourth grade campuses.
The construction package still under consideration is tied to an ambitious parish wide property tax referendum scheduled March 26. 
Not only are voters being asked to approve at least $150 million for new schools in Opelousas, Eunice and areas in the southern part of the parish, but also included are proposed raises for school employees and athletic facilities.
Each of the three proposals are separate ballot items, but if each is passed, taxes now paid by property owners will double to about 44 mills annually over a 10-year period.
 

NEW YORK — Amid a surge in COVID-19 cases across New York City, four public schools have shuttered and another 25 are under investigation for possible closure, according to city data on Sunday.

Eagle Academy for Young Men II in Brooklyn, PS 18 in the Bronx, and Robert E. Peary School in Queens were closed on Friday and will remain closed through Dec. 26, according to the DOE.

The fourth school, City Knoll Middle School in Manhattan, was closed on Saturday and will remain closed through Dec. 26, according to the DOE.

Students at all four schools will return to classrooms after winter break on Jan. 3. All affected students will utilize remote learning on days when school is in session.

DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer told PIX11 News on Sunday that the safety of students and staff is a top priority.

“We do not hesitate to take action to keep school communities safe and our multi-layered approach to safety allows us to respond quickly and stop the spread. All staff at DOE are vaccinated and all students at these schools will have a device to ensure live, continuous learning,” Styer added.

Information made available by the Department of Education also shows there were at least 799 active classroom closures and 2,881 partial classroom closures citywide, as of Friday.

Pawtucket is moving closer to building a new high school where McCoy Stadium now stands.
A city panel studying the idea endorsed tearing down the now-vacant ballpark and building a $300-million school complex that would replace Pawtucket's two existing public high schools.
The 482,500-square-foot building recommended by the high school building panel could fit 2,500 students and include technical education facilities.
Mayor Donald Grebien called it an "inspiring opportunity" and now a top priority of his administration in a news release.
"This project would take advantage of a city owned asset, turning the now sadly vacant McCoy Stadium site into a vibrant campus for learning, career exploration, athletics, and community activities," Grebien said in the release.
Pawtucket mayor:$17.7 million deal for Apex site an 'important step' in redevelopment
Renderings of the plan show a main entrance to the school and bus drop-off on Division  Street. The opposite side of the building would have a grassy quad leading to an artificial turf athletic field.
The whole complex would be ringed with surface parking lots containing more than 650 spaces.   
Renderings show a four-story main academic building with gymnasium, auditorium and pool.
A presentation from consultants studying the project estimate $265,857,500 in construction costs, "including soft costs, contingencies and standard escalation" eligible for state school building aid.
They project another $31.5 million in furniture, equipment, technology, demolition and site remediation, for a total of $302,507,000.
The new East Providence High School that opened this year cost $190 million.
 

FALL RIVER — Diman Regional Vocational Tech High School crossed an important threshold in its effort to replace its current school building, with an announcement that it had secured more than $145 million in state funding for the project.
The Massachusetts School Building Authority announced last week that it had awarded Diman a grant of up to $145,772,694 for a new school.
“Greater Fall River Vocational students will soon have a beautiful new space which will undoubtedly enhance and improve their ability to excel in the classroom,” MSBA Executive Director and Deputy CEO John McCarthy said in a press release.
Diman and the MSBA will next have to work out a Project Funding Agreement. This will determine the project’s exact budget and the conditions under which the district will receive its grant.
A school for the future:Diman's plans for a new building
School officials have placed the project’s total cost at about $293 million.
 

PERRY TWP. – Perry Local officials have tough decisions to make as they move forward with plans to construct four new elementary buildings, a new middle school and renovate the high school.

Since the district began planning for the $163.5 million project, the pandemic has caused construction costs to skyrocket.

District leaders are left wondering how they are going to fully fund it with an insufficient budget, Superintendent Scott Beatty told the Board of Education and members of the district Building Advisory Committee. 

The cost of steel has jumped 111% and material costs have gone up more than 27% between August 2020 and August 2021, according to the Associated General Contractors of America. It also can take 18 months to get new school furniture, Beatty added.

"It's nobody's fault," Beatty said. "But it's important for you and the community to see what we are up against."

CHARLESTON – A representative with the School Building Authority of West Virginia on Friday expressed support for Upshur County Schools’ plan to build a new comprehensive career-and-technical high school and renovate the current Buckhannon-Upshur High School into a reimagined middle school.

Ben Ashley, director of architectural services for the statewide funding agency, said School Building Authority staff considers Upshur County Schools’ ‘Vision of the Future’ an “excellent project” and “fully supports [Upshur] county’s desire to pass a bond to address these facility issues.”

My Buckhannon contacted the SBA for clarification regarding the process for disbursing funding to applicants after the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported Monday that the county had not been awarded $21 million in funding they had applied for this cycle during an announcement of awards Dec. 13.

Ashley explained the decision was entirely a procedural one related to timing.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Changes included in the state budget mean public schools will soon be getting more money from the North Carolina Education Lottery.

Lottery proceeds, which totaled more than $700 million in the last fiscal year, are distributed to all 100 counties on a per-student basis. Although the lottery money is a tiny fraction of the state's education spending, the formula leaves small counties, which often have numerous repair needs, at a disadvantage.

Schools in Warren County, for example, need a lot more work than the district can afford. A school had to close three years ago when the heating and cooling system stopped working, and Superintendent Keith Sutton said the district can't pay to get it fixed.

"We've got about seven schools here. Four or five of those structures are in desperate need of repair [or] renovation and, in some cases, new construction," said Sutton, a former Wake County Board of Education member who recently took charge of Warren County Schools.

"In terms of improving teaching and learning, we want our students [and] our faculty to be in an environment that is conducive to learning," he said.

In past years, the state lottery paid out just $100 million statewide for school buildings. Again, the money was distributed based on the number of students, so Warren County got just $138,000 last year.

Wed, December 15, 2021, 7:00 AM·4 min read
Key Podcast Takeaway: NEPC Talks Education offers insightful programming on a variety of significant education policy and practice topics for educators, community members, policymakers, and anyone interested in education.

BOULDER, Colo., Dec. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- In this month's episode of the NEPC Talks Education, NEPC Researcher Christopher Saldaña interviews Jeff Vincent, Julien Lafortune, and Kathleen Gebhardt about K-12 public school facilities and infrastructure. Vincent is cofounder and director of the Center for Cities and Schools at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studies how school facilities serve as both educational and neighborhood assets. Lafortune is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, where he researches education finance, school capital funding policy, and educational tracking and stratification. Gebhardt is a school board member in the Boulder Valley School District, as well as a director for the Colorado and National School Board Associations. She is also an attorney and adjunct professor teaching education law at University of Colorado Boulder and University of Denver. Saldaña, Lafortune, Vincent, and Gebhardt discuss K-12 school infrastructure spending and its impact on student outcomes. They also explore a model state K-12 school capital funding program designed and implemented in Colorado.

Vincent explains that unlike school operating expenditures, funds for facilities such as a new school or building upgrades come largely from local revenues. In their recent article, How Much Does Public School Facility Funding Depend on Property Wealth?, Vincent and his co-authors examine how wide variations in local property values can result in students living in low-income communities having less adequate school facilities than students living in more affluent communities.

Following devastating tornadoes that ripped through Western Kentucky on Dec. 10-11, superintendents from the impacted districts provided updates from their local communities during the Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE) Dec. 14 Superintendents Webcast.

Mayfield Independent
Mayfield Independent Superintendent Joe Henderson described the days following the storms as the hardest thing he has ever had to deal with in his life, but said he has been overwhelmed with the outpouring of support the district has received not only from Kentucky, but throughout the country.

“We truly appreciate the support and ask that you continue to pray for our community,” he said.

On the night of the storm, Henderson said up to 200 community members sought refuge in Mayfield High School’s gymnasium.

“They were walking the streets with nowhere to go,” he said.

Now, the gymnasium that housed its community is packed with donated supplies.

The Mayfield Independent District has three schools, and the middle school was the only school that received damage during the storm, and it was minor, Henderson said. However, the district’s transportation and maintenance department was completely destroyed. None of Mayfield’s school buses are usable at this time, and Henderson doesn’t believe any of them are salvageable.

“I want to thank all the districts that have reached out and offered buses to help,” Henderson said. “… I’ll just be honest with you right now, and it’s strange for me to say this, but school is the furthest thing from my mind right now.

“We have people that are trying to survive.”

There are community members with no heat, no food and no water, Henderson said.

“That’s our main concern right now,” he said.

The highest expense for schools behind faculty salaries is energy, prompting some districts in Michigan to eye solar savings.

“For a long time, schools have been looking at how to become more energy efficient,” said Scott Little, the associate executive director of the Michigan School Business Officials.

Schools replace broken industrial equipment with more efficient alternatives and have phased out fluorescent lighting, Little said.

A few Michigan schools already take advantage of solar energy, but most rely on energy from fossil fuels, said Ray Telman, the secretary and treasurer of the Michigan Schools Energy Cooperative, the organization spearheading a K-12 solar operation.

The goal is to provide solar opportunities to about 4,000 K-12 buildings around the state starting in spring 2022 with a program called Bringing Renewable Innovation to Education, or BRITE for short, Telman said. In August the cooperative, which will cover startup costs, began pitching BRITE to schools.

This program would reduce the cost of installation by about 25%, the amount available to for-profit businesses for such a project. Through BRITE, the cooperative would connect schools to for-profit installers to reap these benefits, Telman said.

MANISTEE — Lighting and HVAC may not immediately spring to mind when one considers what is critical to student success within a school district.
"You feel that it's kind of removed from the students — the boilers and stuff like that — but it's extremely important to the students' success," said Ron Stoneman, Manistee Area Schools superintendent. "It's their learning environment."
The Manistee Area Public Schools Board of Education took action during its meeting on Dec. 7 to ensure the district can provide an energy-efficient and comfortable educational setting by voting 5-0 in favor of entering into a $2.5 million contract with Honeywell for a project primarily focused on Madison Elementary, Manistee Middle/High School and the transportation building. Board members Theresa Anderson and Ashley Sensabaugh were not present during the meeting.
"It really focuses on the lighting and the heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems over at Madison, and a little bit at the middle school/high school," said Greg Mackey, education group account executive for Honeywell. "The work that we put into this proposal is really to try to complement the bond initiative that you guys currently have going on here, as well."
 

Voters in northeastern Nevada shot down a ballot question proposing the Elko County School District take out $150 million in general obligation bonds for capital funding projects after an extension of the existing “Pay-As-You-Go” funding stream was voted down last year. 

Nearly 60 percent of nearly 5,000 votes tabulated in the special election voted against the measure while 40 percent voted in favor of it, according to preliminary results released by the county clerk’s office. In the county of more than 52,000 people where more than 26,000 are registered to vote, 3,812 votes were cast by mail, with another 658 cast during early voting and 529 cast on Election Day. Other mail ballots postmarked by Tuesday but received later may be added to the total count next week. 

The results dashed hopes for school district leaders, who had presented projects on a wish list during a previous school board meeting including updates to many K-12 schools and gymnasiums, a new elementary school in Elko, a remodel of a building from 1917 on the Elko High School campus and a career technical education facility for Spring Creek High School, among others. 

“Preliminary results indicate voter disapproval of the bond issue needed to provide funding for acquisition, construction, renovation, and equipping school facilities as provided by the Elko County School District’s Capital Improvement Plan,” the school district said in a Tuesday night statement. “The county will not certify results until a later date, but votes tallied so far point to a loss for Elko County students and the communities we serve.” 

AIKEN, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - Aiken County school officials provided construction updates on a number of big school projects at Tuesday night’s school board meeting.
Growth in the school district reflects the growth we’ve been seeing the county as a whole.
Aiken County is involved in five different school construction projects right now that are all on time and within budget. Officials are also looking ahead as they plan for the future.
The county is seeing more and more people moving there each year. And the school board knows the first thing someone looks at is how the school system works.
“Well we are anticipating growth,” said John Bradley, chairman of the Aiken County Board of Education.
The school board’s plan is to build or reconstruct schools larger than they need. They’re using tax money and COVID assistance funds, too.
“Bottom line this is your taxes dollars at work,” said Corey Murphy, chief officer for operations of student services.
Wagener-Salley High School is one of the older schools in Aiken County. It’s getting a makeover costing about $45 million.
 

SOUTH HADLEY — The cost of remediating a massive mold infestation at South Hadley High School earlier this year has ballooned to $1.4 million, according to figures provided in Select Board documents for its meeting Tuesday. 

The costs include $784,574 for mold mitigation work done by the firm ServiceMaster Recovery Management, $44,500 for mold testing done by two other firms, $12,000 estimated to deal with the high school’s weight room, and $500,000 estimated for air conditioner splits and dehumidifiers.

In addition to those costs, the district is looking to spend $67,865 to replace some of the thousands of items thrown away during the cleanup.

Among the thousands of discarded items were textbooks and educational materials, science lab equipment, teachers’ personal items, technology and hundreds of other class materials, according to a district spreadsheet that the Gazette obtained earlier this year through a public records request.

The school’s mold problems began just days before an expected Sept. 1 start date for classes. The state, which has refused to allow remote learning amid the continued pandemic, permitted South Hadley to use seven days of remote learning, but the district will have to make up 11 total days missed amid an extensive cleanup.