As Congress weighs whether to include schools in an infrastructure package, the choice is not whether the federal government should spend money on school construction and renovation. It already does. The choice is whether the federal government should spend less now or more later through a broken, wasteful and disruptive cycle of damage and repair.

School construction is currently funded by local and state governments with one notable exception — rebuilding schools after disasters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has invested billions in fixing schools that have been damaged by extreme weather events such as flooding, wildfires, hurricanes and cold snaps. In 2005, FEMA spent almost $4 billion to help schools recover from Hurricane Katrina. 

Older school facilities present a heightened risk. They do not reflect the latest advancements in building science and disaster preparedness that can minimize damage and keep occupants safe. According to a 2017 report by FEMA, “older school buildings are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters and in most cases, school administrators do not have the financial resources to address these vulnerabilities.” If schools did have resources, investing in resilience would be an excellent use of funds. The National Institute of Building Sciences reports that for every $1 of preventative spending, we save $6 in post-disaster recovery. 

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - Gov. Kay Ivey’s task force assigned to address safety concerns regarding school construction projects under a controversial law that started as House Bill 220 held a public hearing Monday morning.
The bill, passed during the 2020 legislative session, prompted an April letter to the Alabama Senate from the Alabama Association of Fire Chiefs.
“This bill misses the mark on building safety by assigning a monetary figure as a threshold for inspection instead of realizing complexity of the project should be the threshold,” the AAFC said.
Public safety officials have said if not amended, the bill could put first responders and students at risk.
However, after Monday’s public hearing, Chief Tim Love, president of the AAFC, said the group assigned to the bill is making good progress.
“I think today was a good opportunity for us to share. I think everyone involved here is still getting educated on the goods and bads of different portions HB220,” said Love.
Although Love would describe Monday’s work as the right step, he recognized the process isn’t over yet.
“Hopefully next year when the legislative session comes in, we’ll have opportunities to make some amendments to make it better,” Love said.
 

MADISON, Ala.- The Madison City School district is investing millions of dollars for new school buildings and renovations to meet the demand of district growth.
“We would be in serious trouble today enrollment-wise if the board, previous superintendents and the community had not thought of that moving forward,” says Superintendent Ed Nichols.
In 2019, Madison residents passed a 12-mil property tax increase for Madison City Schools aimed primarily at increasing revenue for new school construction.
“We couldn’t do this plan without the financial support of our community and our city,” says Nichols.
The district is opening a new $35 million elementary school and building a $50 million middle school.
Other projects in the district totaling $20 million range from a nearly seven million dollar Special Education wing being added to Bob Jones High School, to a new HVAC system and roof installations, paving projects, pre-k renovations and athletic facility improvements.
“It’s not very glamorous when you put in a new HVAC system, you know there’s not a big plaque on the wall that says ‘hey you’ve got a new HVAC system’ but let one go down…… So we took that money and said ‘hey, let’s use this money for the most good we can get long-range,'” says Nichols.
Superintendent Ed Nichols says it’s all about managing growth.
 

Progress is moving more slowly than expected on the $5.7 million Perry Middle School renovation project due to bottlenecks in the supply chain, Superintendent Clark Wicks told the Perry School Board at Monday’s regular meeting.

“It is progressing. That’s a good thing,” Wicks said of the project. “Probably not as fast as what we want it to. The biggest thing is getting supplies and materials. There’s just so much going on there.”

Wicks used the building’s new fire suppression system as an example.

“Some of the parts aren’t here, and we’re concerned about that,” he said, “but we’ll get a clearer update after July 14. We meet with the fire department on that date as well as the construction people.”

BELEN — With a shrinking student population, Belen Consolidated Schools finds itself in the position of having to consider the closure of an elementary school in the coming years.

At the Tuesday, July 13, meeting of the Belen Board of Education, BCS Superintendent Lawrence Sanchez and consultant Colleen Martinez laid out two plans to redraw attendance boundaries for the district’s elementary schools. Both options would close Jaramillo Elementary School, which serves kindergarten through third grade students.

“This is not something that’s going to happen overnight though,” said Sanchez. “If there are no delays, if everything goes through perfectly — and when does that ever happen — it will be August of 2023 at the very earliest before any of these moves happen.”

The board will hold a workshop to discuss the attendance boundary changes and possible closure of Jaramilllo at 4 p.m., Monday, July 19. The meeting will be on the district’s YouTube channel and members of the public will be able to submit comments and questions during the meeting.

While the school is in line for a complete rebuild since it is ranked in the top 10 projects by the state’s Public Schools Finance Authority, Sanchez said because the district as a whole is overbuilt — having 20 to 40 percent fewer students at each school than possible — the state might turn down the district’s request for money to rebuild the school.

Moore County Schools is starting to make headway on its extensive list of overdue building maintenance projects thanks to COVID-19 relief funding.

Those federal payouts will generally be limited to projects that deal with either improving air quality and sanitation or supporting outdoor activities. But in an indirect way they’ll allow the district to move toward a more ambitious goal: renovating and modernizing six elementary school gymnasiums around the county.

The school board’s spending plan for its Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds designates over $11 million to capital projects, including $5 million worth of a short-term capital priority list the school board approved back in February,

At the time the board planned to pay for those projects with funds coming in over the next year from the district’s normal capital revenue streams — the county commissioners and state lottery — as well as the proceeds from sales of the four old schools in Southern Pines and Aberdeen.

Parts of that plan, like new tracks at Pinecrest and North Moore and a new heating pump and ductwork at Robbins Elementary, will now be paid for with COVID-19 relief funds.

That leaves the district with $5 million to spend on other building projects. On Monday, the Moore County Board of Education roundly endorsed a plan to put that money toward renovating the gyms at Carthage, Cameron, Highfalls, Sandhills Farm Life, Westmoore and Vass-Lakeview at a total cost of $12.7 million.

From the condo building collapse in Surfside, Fla., to the melting streetcar cables in Portland, Ore., to the collapse of the Texas power grid, the catastrophic state of America’s infrastructure has never been more apparent. These tragedies make national headlines, but we don’t need to look that far to find these dangers. Philadelphia is confronting its own catastrophic infrastructure crisis: public school buildings.

This crisis has dire consequences: a maintenance worker’s death from a faulty boiler explosion; a student’s lead poisoning; a career educator’s forced retirement because of her mesothelioma diagnosis after working in schools with exposed asbestos. Philadelphia’s schools are toxic and getting worse without proper maintenance and investment during the pandemic.

The School District of Philadelphia’s (SDP) past approach to infrastructure mismanagement means that its response does not match the severity of its chronic facilities’ issues. State funding cuts eliminated construction reimbursements, and Pennsylvania is one of few states that lacks guidance for educational facilities. District layoffs of maintenance and custodial staff have severed critical connections bridging systemic facilities condition data to the lived experiences of those working and learning in that facility. The district maintains a stubborn resistance to engage the full range of stakeholders into planning and decision-making processes, creating costly outcomes like the Benjamin Franklin/Science Leadership Academy shutdown. These costs are borne by those inside and outside the facility, suggesting that we need a broader coalition of stakeholders involved, with governance, funding, and accountability beyond city and district leadership.

President Biden’s infrastructure proposal is a $100 billion plan to build the next generation of school – which is great for Arizona public schools facing growing enrollment in the next five years. 
New money will provide jobs and assist our tribes on the Navajo Nation, and it is important for Arizona since the state’s school infrastructure program is underfinanced and facing two immediate challenges; increased enrollment and deteriorating schools. 
Here are key facts about Arizona’s public-school facilities. From FY2014 to FY2018, enrollment increased nearly 40,000 students. While there has been a slight decline in enrollment this year due to COVID-19, the National Center for Education Statistics projects that enrollment will continue to rise from 1,168,000 in 2020 to 1,258,000 students in 2026. 
On average school districts in Arizona spent $729 million per year on construction capital outlay for fiscal years 2009 to 2018. To pay for this, local districts took on long term debt, and at the end of fiscal year 2018 had $5.6 billion in long term debt, about $4,900 per student. 
If Arizona school districts and the State were to maintain their public school facilities at the industry-recommended levels, Arizona needs $1.9 billion per year for capital outlay, rather than $729 million. 
One consequence of under investment is that Arizona school districts are spending 12 percent of their total operating funds each year on maintenance and operations of facilities, one of the highest in the nation. 
 

MIAMI – In the wake of the Surfside tragedy, Miami-Dade County school board member Maria Teresa Rojas introduced an agenda item that directs the superintendent to present next month a report detailing the structural integrity of the district’s 400+ facilities.

“I believe 200 are over 40 years [old], and I said we got to do this,” she said Wednesday before the measure ultimately passed.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said he is “absolutely confident that the structural integrity of our buildings is very good.”

The request appears to be about a process already underway.

Just four days after a portion of Champlain Towers South collapsed, Carvalho issued a memo explaining: “the safety of school buildings and all district facilities is of the utmost priority. In light of the recent disastrous collapse of a local residential high-rise building, I requested staff to brief me regarding processes and practices in place to ensure the structural integrity of district facilities.”

TOWSON, MD—Baltimore County Public Schools and Baltimore County Government on Wednesday released updated recommendations for the County’s Multi-Year Improvement Plan for All Schools (MYIPAS), developed by CannonDesign, a nationally recognized architecture and planning company.

Under the recommendations, every school in Baltimore County would receive equitable capital improvements within 15 years and could be completed without any additional revenue increases.

“I am proud of the way that our communities, families, and staff have come together to plan for every school to have a modern and equitable learning environment as called for in The Compass, our strategic plan,” said BCPS Superintendent Dr. Darryl L. Williams. “The thoughtful MYIPAS process has ensured that our way forward is guided by multiple stakeholder perspectives as well as independent, objective advice.”

“Every child and every educator deserves a modern, safe, and supportive learning environment. These recommendations from CannonDesign provide a comprehensive, equitable, and fully funded roadmap to accomplish just that,” said Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski. “These data-driven recommendations will help guide our work with the Board of Education, BCPS, and our communities to ensure high quality schools in every ZIP code and to fulfill our County’s obligations to the Blueprint for Maryland’s future.”

In total, the recommendations call for $2.5 billion in school construction, including all remaining Schools for our Future projects. The CannonDesign proposal also outlines strategies to bring school capacity down to 100 percent through additions and redistricting – eliminating the need for makeshift spaces or trailers.

CAMERON — The flash flooding that unexpectedly swamped much of the county in late June hit Cameron Elementary School particularly hard, and when the waters receded, school personnel had a daunting task ahead of them — but one they were ready to tackle.
Starting as early as the following morning, Marshall County Schools’ custodial staff were on site, piling up what could be salvaged and disinfected and collecting what was a loss.
As of Tuesday, custodians, now assisted by Panhandle Cleaning and Restoration, are still in the process of removing the ruined floor coverings and finding space to store furnishings, but new floor coverings and casework are on order.
“We probably still have another week of getting everything organized and floor coverings ripped up,” said facilities director Mike Price.
“We do have the floor coverings ordered, the new ones we’re going to have to put back; we did get that accomplished. We have our furnishing casework, that’s been finalized, and will be going under production. I feel pretty good about that.”
Price said the ultimate goal remains the same as the day cleanup began –to have the school ready for students to return Aug. 24.
With administration and faculty returning to the school a week ahead of students, Price said the goal is to complete the central office facilities a little ahead of the classrooms.
 

Chicago Public Schools unveiled a $9.3 billion proposed budget for the coming school year Tuesday that taps into federal stimulus funding to power fall’s full reopening and chips in for repairs in the city’s aging school buildings.

The amount represents a 10% increase over last year’s $8.4 billion budget. It draws on $1 billion in federal stimulus dollars for the district’s Moving Forward Together pandemic recovery initiative and increased funding for schools as they prepare to reopen five days a week in August. Spending on facilities is down about 11% compared with last year’s budget, which itself featured more modest capital expenses than in previous years.

Officials said spending across the budget prioritizes schools in high-need communities and those hardest hit by the pandemic. The district is getting about $2.6 billion from the two latest federal stimulus packages for schools, meant to be spread out over three fiscal years — pushing its total over three federal funding infusions up to about $3 billion. Officials said they plan to spend the money over multiple years to keep initiatives such as Moving Forward Together going beyond the 2021-22 school year.

“In keeping with our commitment to equity, schools who need more will get more,” said Jose Torres, district’s interim CEO. He stepped in for former schools chief Janice Jackson eight days ago and did not work on the new budget.

Torres also said that school leaders will be able to direct additional dollars they receive to their campus needs as they prepare for a full reopening.

MILTON — Anticipating town growth, the Milton Town School District board is moving ahead with the creation of a master plan for the district’s three buildings.
At its July 8 meeting, the board unanimously approved a prolonged, three-part assessment by TruexCullins, a firm specializing in educational space planning.
The firm will not only create a facilities master plan that proposes solutions to the elementary, middle and high school’s current functional issues, but anticipates possible increases in enrollment.
Though MTSD has seen a dip in enrollment of about 10% over the last decade, enrollment could rebound post-pandemic, according to TruexCullins.
“I think Milton is going to take off soon,” MTSD Facilities Director Bruce Cheeseman said during a June 24 meeting. “I really do believe it.”
The master plan creation costs $122,000. The funds will come from the district’s capital reserve.
“Although it’s a hefty price tag, I think it’s money well-spent, because it’s going to tell us what we have to do to get us to where we want to go,” Cheeseman said during the same meeting.
The current elementary/middle school building on Herrick Avenue was built in various stages between 1957-79. The building’s most recent renovation was in 1996 when the two-story middle school addition was built.
The complex is approximately 160,000 square feet. 741 students currently attend the elementary school, while 336 attend the middle school.
“The elementary school is pretty full,” Lynne Manley, director of curriculum, instruction and information technology said. “So what is the plan if another say, 400 students come into the district on the younger end, not the high school side?”
The elementary and middle schools share a library, which has been a long-time concern of the administration and the school board. Both see this as a high priority on the list of needed renovations.
Across the street, on Rebecca Lander Drive, Milton High School is 120,000 square feet and enrolls 491 students. It was built in 1969. Its only recent renovation was the addition of a wood-chip heating plant in the 1990s, which is now too expensive to use.
“The cafeteria, too, has looked the same for the last 35 years,” Chair Rick Dooley said. “No one is building a cafeteria that looks like that anymore.”
 

WAYNESBORO, Va. (WHSV) - A statewide initiative intended to bring awareness to school facility needs stopped in Waynesboro on Tuesday, July 13 at 10:30 a.m.
The “Crumbling Schools Tour” will stop at eight schools across the commonwealth. State leaders will join school officials on a tour of facilities to see what resources are needed.
“Often the places you find the biggest facility needs are some of the localities with lower income and higher poverty students,” said Waynesboro City Schools Superintendent Jeffrey Cassell. “We’re spending a lot of our resources educating students, and we need the proper facilities to educate all students.”
Waynesboro High School is looking to make renovations, and Tuesday’s tour was the first step in that process. School officials gave state and local leaders a rundown of the progress they’ve made and what they need to send their plans into action.
“We’ve had the opportunity to renovate two-thirds of our school, at this point,” said Waynesboro High School Principal Bryan Stamm.
The remaining one-third dates back to the 1970s, and that’s where the issues lie. The tour highlighted chipped and scuffed paint, cracks in the walls and deteriorated circulation.
 

As temperatures soar to record highs in many parts of the country, and fears of imminent impacts from climate change continue to mount, close to half of K-12 educators say heating and cooling challenges are urgent concerns in their school buildings, according to a new EdWeek Research Center survey.
Fewer than 20 percent of teachers, principals, and district leaders describe the condition of their district’s school buildings as “excellent.” Thousands of school districts are suffering from a wide range of infrastructure shortcomings—leaky roofs, deteriorating pipes, poor ventilation, overcrowding.
And the majority of educators strongly support federal investment in addressing those concerns.
These finding come from a nationally representative online survey by the EdWeek Research Center conducted between June 30 and July 12, with 760 respondents including district leaders, principals, and teachers.
They offer fresh insight into the layers of challenges school districts have long faced with their buildings due to negligible investment from the federal government, inconsistent state aid, and structural disparities in local wealth.
They also highlight the urgency in the K-12 education world surrounding the ongoing debate in Congress over federal spending on “infrastructure,” broadly defined. Everything from roads and bridges to child care and broadband are on the table for investment, and advocates for school buildings hope they won’t be left behind.
President Joe Biden in March proposed $50 billion in grants and $50 billion in bonds for school districts to repair existing buildings and add new ones. Since then, though, many K-12 observers have been dismayed to see the school building line item absent from various attempts at smaller investment packages that could gain support from both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill.
 

Hillsborough County public school officials are in the early stages of what could be a massive overhaul of school boundaries.

District staff will recommend that the School Board seek the help of a consultant at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The team will look at campuses such as Shields and Coleman middle schools, which are near or above capacity, along with Monroe and Madison middle schools, which have seats to spare.

A board workshop is planned on July 27. On Tuesday, board members will receive the second of two short reports outlining the steps ahead.

“What’s going to be so important is the community outreach piece,” said Amber Dickerson, general manager of the district’s growth management and planning office.

Some in the community reacted harshly when, in February, superintendent Addison Davis discussed the need to close or consolidate some of the dozens of under-enrolled Hillsborough schools to save money. At the time, he said he would have a preliminary plan for the board to review in March or April.

Last August, when Florida’s Hillsborough County Public Schools began upgrading air filters in their K-12 buildings, the event was so significant that news trucks showed up to document one of the first installations, at a Tampa elementary school.
When RAND Corp. researchers last spring presented parents with a list of 13 items that would make them feel safe about in-person schooling this fall, parents’ top priority wasn’t teacher or student vaccines, social distancing or regular COVID testing.
It was ventilation.
Perhaps that’s because COVID-19 has made our most basic act — breathing — newsworthy.
But therein lies the problem: In 2021, with an airborne virus still infecting Americans at a rate of about 15,000 daily, the heating and cooling systems in many U.S. public schools are nothing short of awful. Whether billions in new federal aid will be enough to help school districts upgrade an aging system anytime soon remains an open question.
While data on the scope of the problem are scarce, what little there are suggest that schools are looking at billions of dollars in deferred maintenance. A few examples:
In Worcester, Mass., the district last summer said it would spend $15 million to upgrade heating and cooling systems in its 44 schools, some of which date back to the 1800s. Nearly half of its schools were built before 1940;
In Denver, the school board unanimously approved spending $4.9 million to upgrade school heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems in more than 150 buildings after former Superintendent Susana Cordova said parents had been asking her specifically about HVAC upgrades.
Like many issues, this one hits low-income students hardest.
In a 2014 study of school facilities by the National Center for Education Statistics and Westat, researchers found that schools serving the largest percentage of low-income students also had the largest percentage of air ventilation/filtration systems rated “fair or poor” in permanent buildings.
The study found that in schools with the highest concentration of low-income students, 33 percent had such troubled systems. In schools with the lowest concentration, it was 27 percent.
 

Eugene School District staff have been working since May to repair the failing roof at Kelly Middle School, and while they don't foresee it being fixed in time for fall, the district does expect to be able to use the rest of the building in September.

The building in north Eugene is the temporary location for both the middle school and Yujin Gakuen Japanese Immersion Elementary School, as part of a co-locating plan while construction on a district bond project is underway.

The co-locating plan was already a situation that required renovations to the Kelly building and brought frustrations from families and staff at both schools leading up to the change this school year. 

The district learned mid-May the roof in one of three gymnasiums, the "inner gym," had become unsafe: Two trusses were found to be failing. The area and its roof are structurally connected to the rest of the school building.

The Public School Facilities Authority released the Public School Capital Outlay Council's annual report for 2020, revealing awards and plans for future expansion of southeast New Mexico's public schools. 

The Public School Capital Outlay Council (PSCOC) offers funding to school districts planning construction or renovation of school buildings by matching the estimated cost of a project. Standards-based awards are for larger projects like new school campuses or major renovations, and systems-based awards fun smaller projects like roof and parking lot repairs. 

The organization gave over $113 million in standards-based awards and $12 million in systems-based awards last year. Awards funded a new building for Chaparral Middle School in Alamogordo, which currently sits on unstable land and is prone to sinking. The new school with be capable of accommodating 658 students and is estimated to be completed in 2024.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged schools on Friday to fully reopen in the fall, even if they cannot take all of the steps the agency recommends to curb the spread of the coronavirus — a major turn in a public health crisis in which childhood education has long been a political flash point.

The agency also said school districts should use local health data to guide decisions about when to tighten or relax prevention measures like masking and physical distancing. With the highly contagious Delta variant spreading and children under 12 still ineligible for vaccination, it recommended that unvaccinated students and staff members keep wearing masks.

The guidance is a departure from the C.D.C.’s past recommendations for schools. It is also a blunt acknowledgment that many students have suffered during long months of virtual learning and that a uniform approach is not useful when virus caseloads and vaccination rates vary so greatly from place to place. Some experts criticized the agency’s decision to leave so much up to local officials, however, and said more specific guidelines would have been more helpful.

School closures have been extremely divisive since the outset of the pandemic, and advising districts has been a fraught exercise for the C.D.C. Virtual learning has been burdensome not only for students but also for their parents, many of whom had to stay home to provide child care, and reopening schools is an important step on the economy’s path to recovery.