PHOENIX (AP) — A lawsuit over how much money Arizona's lawmakers allocate for school maintenance, buses, textbooks and technology won't go to trial next week, after a judge granted a request for a delay by the state’s incoming attorney general.
Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes said her office needs time to determine whether some or all of the claims can be resolved without a trial.
The trial was set to begin Monday. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Dewain Fox approved Mayes’ request Friday and scheduled a status hearing for March 17, the Arizona Republic reported.
A group of school districts and associations representing school officials and teachers sued the state in 2017. They argued that the Legislature had shorted them billions of dollars in capital funding for more than a decade.
The lawsuit sought a declaration that Arizona’s school funding scheme was unconstitutional because it violated the “uniform and general” clause of the state Constitution. The state Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that it is the state’s responsibility to provide cash for new schools, major maintenance and things like textbooks. The Legislature began cutting that spending during the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
 

CORAL SPRINGS, FL – In 2014, voters approved $800 million in a bond referendum for Broward County Public Schools to renovate buildings, purchase equipment, and make other long-needed improvements at campuses.
In Coral Springs, 19 high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools are benefiting from the funds that focus on safety, music and art, athletics, renovation, and technology (SMART), according to school officials.
All school construction in Coral Springs and across the school district is expected to be completed in 2025, if not sooner.
Here’s what Coral Springs High School did or plans to do with $15.9 million from the program.
As one of Coral Springs High School’s most popular educational tracks, the culinary program is known for bringing “real-life experiences” to students interested in going into the food industry, Principal Vivian Suarez said.
And so, the school is reconstructing its culinary “lab” through the Smart program.
“It’ll be a state-of-the-art lab that I can’t wait to see,” said Chef Aruna Lein, who heads up the culinary program which has won many state and regional competitions over the years. “We’re going to be a force to reckon with.”
Expected to be completed as early as next month, the area will have new equipment as well as be set up to look like “the back of the house” in most restaurants and catering halls to “mirror what our students will face when they go out to get jobs,” Lein said.
Added Suarez: “We will continue to raise the bar on this program. I don’t know how much higher we can raise it.”
 

Nearly four years after its inception, Bard High School Early College DC has found a new, permanent home in Congress Heights.

Upon their return from winter break earlier this week, nearly 400 students gingerly entered their newly renovated school building. Days later, on Thursday, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) and several other District officials commemorated this milestone with a ribbon-cutting. 

Once construction of the building, formerly known as the Malcolm X Opportunity Center on Alabama Avenue in Southeast, reaches full completion later this year, it will have nearly three dozen classrooms, rooftop solar panels, a theater and gymnasium, a soccer field, track field and basketball court along with several energy-saving amenities. 

For many students, including Josiah Best, the new building not only represents the fulfillment of a vision, but the end of a tumultuous journey. 

Carly Flandro 01/05/2023
SALMON – A cracked foundation. Collapsing sewer lines. Outdoor food storage. 

These are just a few of the problems at Salmon’s Pioneer Elementary School, which was built about 70 years ago. 

“It is quite atrocious,” said Troy Easterday, the superintendent of Salmon School District. 

Renovating the school could cost as much as $2 million, Easterday estimated. But in a community that has an extraordinary 0-12 record of bond failures since 2006, ballot measures cannot be counted on for major upgrades or a new elementary. 

Salmon is one of many Idaho school districts that has struggled to pass bonds. Nearly half of all bond proposals have failed in the past 23 years. As the Legislature gears up and education committees plan to address school facilities needs, school districts are hoping politicians will come to their aid with a new infrastructure bill and surplus funds earmarked for public school buildings.

From the outside looking in, Eagleville Elementary Charter School might look like any other elementary school. But as an environmental charter school, it has a unique focus.

The school, which was founded in 1849, used to be a traditional elementary school, serving students in first through fifth grades. The current building housing the school was built in 1931.

But since the 2004-05 school year, the school is a tuition-free, public 5K through sixth-grade independent charter school that also includes a foreign language, Spanish, in its curriculum, according to the Mukwonago Area School District.

The school primarily focuses on environmental education and using the outdoors, said principal Colleen Hoyne.

For example, to bring environmental components into a math class one day, Eagleviille’s older students calculated how many plants would be needed for the school's butterfly garden.

As the Prince George's County school system prepares to build six new schools in three years under a public-private partnership, questions surround who's building the schools and how workers are being compensated.

Lanham-based DC Plumbers Local 5 is one of many trades asking the Prince George’s County Council to hire union on construction projects.

“We’re not advocating so much for the union workers; we’re advocating for workers, period,” said T Smalls, who represents the union.

New majority on the Council is requesting a labor project agreement ensuring a percentage of county workers are hired and that the construction jobs are union.

“Our residents have health care benefits, retirement and things that most people take for granted,” Council member Ed Burroughs said.

The move caused backlash. Almost 50 Black businesses signed a petition saying they're concerned their construction companies tend to be smaller and some don't have union affiliations.

“There's just institutional barriers and challenges of things that have been in place for years and years that minority small businesses, new businesses, have to overcome, and that's what this creates – more of those barriers,” Warren Builds President and CEO Shane Warren said.

Lead exposure can have serious health consequences for children, but only a fraction of Georgia schools have signed up for a free testing program. Advocates worry school leaders are worried about the cost and consequences of discovering lead in their water systems, which the state has not provided funding to address. In July 2021, the Georgia Department of Education announced a new initiative to provide free funding and resources for schools across the state to test their drinking water for lead. At its launch, the “Clean Water for Georgia Kids” program, administered by RTI International, a North Carolina nonprofit, aimed to test “up to 800” schools during its first year.
More than a year later, just 96 schools and day cares have enrolled in the program, and 82 have completed testing — a small fraction of Georgia’s more than 2,300 schools and 3,100 day cares. In a meeting on Dec. 8, Georgia’s state Board of Education voted to renew RTI’s contract for the testing program. The Georgia program’s underenrollment stands in stark contrast to the successes of the pilot program on which it was modeled. In North Carolina, from June 2020 to September 2021, RTI International succeeded in testing lead levels at every operating day care in the state. Schools were not included.