The Gahanna-Jefferson Public School District's new Lincoln Elementary School, 261 Helmbright Drive, will be dedicated during a ceremony to be held there at 11:30 a.m. June 5.
Steve Barrett, G-J superintendent, said the ribbon-cutting ceremony represents the culmination of Phase 1 of the district’s master facilities plan.
“Lincoln Elementary was the centerpiece of Phase 1, and we are incredibly proud of the learning space that was designed for our community,” Barrett said. “The opening of Lincoln Elementary is an exciting milestone in the history of our district.”
Barrett said the opening will mark the first time the district has opened a new school in 26 years.
Judy Hengstebeck, G-J communications coordinator, said the school is expected to open in August with approximately 700 students.
“We are grateful to our GJPS community for its support,” Barrett said. “We look forward to opening the building for community tours on June 13.”
He said tour sign-up information should be available on the GJPS website and social-media platforms soon.
Special guests are invited to tour the building immediately after the ceremony, with a tour for the community scheduled for 1 to 3 p.m. on June 13, Hengstebeck said.
A rain date for the ribbon-cutting ceremony is June 12.
Hengstebeck said all incoming Lincoln Elementary School families are invited to a pizza party and building tours starting on the playground at 12:15 p.m. June 5.
 

Such a deal.

The Payson school board last week happily accepted a great deal on roof repairs for the leaky Rim Country Middle School gym.

Five Oliver LLC offered to do the work for $111,000 — less than a third of the $329,000 high bid.

The state will pay most of the cost — except for $300. That’s the cost of the roof repair over a storage area, since the state will only foot the bill for the part of the gym actively used by students.

The contract underscores the value of competitive, sealed bids when it comes to getting stuff done. The other bids were $134,000 and $213,000.

Payson’s been cleaning up lately when it comes to sweet talking the state School Facilities Board into paying for long-deferred, increasingly urgent capital projects on the district’s four campuses.

A series of court cases more than a decade ago demonstrated unconstitutional differences between capital spending for rich districts and poor districts. A reluctant Arizona Legislature agreed to take on responsibility for directly funding school construction and major repairs. But when the recession hit in 2008, the Legislature essentially stopped funding district capital needs.

Since then, the state has shorted districts by $2 billion in the formulas for “District Additional Assistance,” which includes textbooks, technology, school buses and building repair and maintenance, according to the formula it agreed to in response to the lawsuits, according to the Arizona School Boards Association. As a result, only critical, health and safety repairs received funding for years.

The state has resumed providing about 20% of the money promised for capital improvements, but hasn’t made much of a dent in the backlog of repairs.

The state plans to sell $1.1 billion in construction bonds in a few weeks — much of it for schools and college buildings — and a key service said Georgia has again retained its AAA bond rating that allows it to save millions of dollars a year in interest payments.

The AAA bond rating is the gold standards for governments looking to borrow to build schools and roads because it allows governments to borrow at relatively low interest rates.

A legislative session doesn’t go by without House and Senate budget chairmen and the governor bragging about the state’s top bond rating.

Fitch Ratings on Monday affirmed the rating for the latest borrowing, saying it “reflects the state’s proven willingness and ability to maintain fiscal balance and a broad-based, growth-oriented economy that supports revenue growth over time.”

Georgia has maintained its AAA rating from the major bond rating services for decades.

Earlier this year, the state auditor said Georgia’s AAA bond rating could be in jeopardy because he hadn’t received complete financial data from the state Department of Labor, which was hit with an avalanche of unemployment claims last year when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

State senators raised the issue in February with state Labor Commissioner Mark Butler, who told them Auditor Greg Griffin’s office made an end-of-the-year request for information on several hundred thousand unemployment cases.

Griffin sent Butler a letter in January saying his office couldn’t complete the state’s annual Comprehensive Annual Financial Report without information it was waiting on from the Department of Labor. The reports are usually completed by Dec. 31.

SPRINGFIELD – After hearing from residents who felt helpless when Rich East High School closed their doors in 2020, State Senator Patrick Joyce (D-Essex) passed legislation through the Senate Tuesday to prevent neighborhood schools from closing without public input.

“Closing a neighborhood school without public input can have serious consequences on the lives of students, families and educators,” Joyce said. “It’s important that residents have the chance to offer feedback on decisions that would impact their kids and the communities they live in.”

In 2019, District 227 was faced with the decision to close one or more of their three schools due to a lack of funding, declining enrollment and aging facilities. The Rich Township High School District in Cook County voted to close Rich East High School, which served Matteson, Park Forest, Olympia Fields, Chicago Heights and Richton Park residents. This decision forced these students to move to either Rich Central or Rich South High Schools.

Joyce understood that many people in the community were upset by the closure and that Rich East families felt left out of the decision-making process, motivating him to introduce legislation to change the way school boards handle such decisions.

The newly renovated South Oak Cliff High School is already in need of repairs.
With heavy rain pummeling D-FW over the last few weeks, weather conditions have caused the high school’s old problems to resurface, with KXAS-TV (NBC5) reporting that water has been seeping through the roof, and staff have had to use trash cans to help contain it.
Declining conditions — including roof issues, water damage, pest control, heating and cooling problems and a gas leak — persisted for years at the school, leading to a student walkout in 2016 and requests from the community for a new high school. Dallas ISD instead agreed to a two-year, $52 million renovation of the over 60-year-old campus, which was completed in January, 2020.
“The old problem is the new problem,” Maxie Johnson, DISD trustee and former South Oak Cliff High PTA president, told the station. “We still have leaks in certain parts of the building.”
 

During its May 17 meeting, the Smithville school board assessed what the possible financial impacts to the district would be from approving or rejecting a Chapter 313 agreement, or tax breaks, for a proposed $190 million solar farm that is planned to be built just south of Rosanky along Jeddo Road.
The 1,700-acre solar project is being led by international renewable energy company RWE Renewables.
The company submitted the Chapter 313 application to the school board last year, seeking tax breaks allowed by the state tax code that would put a limit on the taxable property value for school district maintenance and operation tax purposes.
The meeting included a financial presentation from Kathy Mathias, a consultant with Moak, Casey & Associates — an Austin-based school finance consulting firm that is representing the Smithville school district in negotiations with RWE — that explained the financial impact of the solar project being built with and without the Chapter 313 agreement in place.
RWE is asking the school board to cap the taxable value of the proposed solar facility at $20 million for the first 10 years of the facility’s lifespan, starting in 2022. The $20 million value limitation was determined by the district’s tax base and rural status, and is set by a statute that is updated annually by the state comptroller.
According to Mathias’ presentation, if the project is built, the limitation agreement won’t affect the district’s maintenance and operation tax revenue over the next 10 years, but it will affect where that money comes from.
 

Today, The American Institute of Architects Committee on Architecture for Education revealed the winners of its 2021 Education Facility Design Award, naming 11 exemplary "state-of-the-art designs of schools and learning centers." This year, five projects of "superior quality" received an award of merit, while six projects received an award of excellence, which recognizes designs that meet "a host of criteria, including enhancing learning in classrooms; balancing function with aesthetics; establishing a connection with the environment; being respectful of the surrounding community; demonstrating high-level planning in the design process; and integrating sustainability in a holistic fashion," according to an AIA press release.

Acommunity committee studying Waco Independent School District’s facility needs for a possible November bond election recommended a $375 million package Monday, listing a new Waco High School as the top priority.
The final meeting of the Community Advisory Committee, held remotely via Zoom, found a majority backing the construction of a new Waco High, new Carver and Tennyson Middle Schools, and a new Kendrick Elementary, as well as expansion of South Waco Elementary School, at a total estimated cost of $375 million.
The recommendations would mean closing Indian Spring Middle School and Alta Vista Elementary School.
Funding the bond issue would require an increase of 12.49 cents per $100 valuation in the district’s tax rate.
For the owner of an average Waco ISD home with a $117,499 taxable value, that would translate into an extra $146.76 in school taxes per year.
The committee considered five options for school facilities improvements, including one that would not change the district’s tax rate but rely on retiring old debt. None of the committee voted for that option.
The district’s current tax rate is $1.264 per $100 and supports a $165 million budget.
The committee’s recommendation will be presented to Waco ISD trustees at the board’s June 10 meeting, which starts at 6 p.m.
 

A new bill, that could drastically limit where future schools can be built throughout the state, cleared a major hurdle in the California legislature on Thursday and is now headed for a full vote in the Assembly in the coming weeks.  The legislation would force private and charter schools to comply with tougher environmental standards – the very same regulations that are already in place for public schools – in hopes of preventing classrooms from being constructed near potentially toxic sites.

“Whatever school you send your child to, you should know well that they are not going to be in danger,” said Assemblyman Alex Lee, who authored the legislation, Assembly Bill 762.  “The problem right now is that private and charter schools can be [built] on top of or even really close to toxic and hazardous sites and there's no law preventing that.”

Unlike private or charter schools, the process for constructing public schools is subject to more oversight and regulations.  For example, when new public schools are proposed on land that was previously contaminated, state law outlines specific protocols to safely remediate the area.  Additionally, if a proposed location of a public school is within a quarter mile of a facility known to emit air pollution, schools are required to contact local government air quality regulators to assess the potential health risks.

CHARLESTON — There's an opportunity for the Charleston school district to not have to wait years to fix things like leaky roofs and parking lots that are in bad shape.
That's how district Assistant Superintendent Chad Burgett described the district's plans now that bond revenue is expected to speed up some of the work.
During its meeting Wednesday, the Charleston school board approved issuing about $12.1 million bonds for repair and renovations, with payments coming from the district's school facilities tax revenue.
"Now we can tackle bigger projects," Burgett said.
The board also approved contracts for several building projects scheduled to take place this summer. The bond revenue will pay for those as well as for more in the coming years.
Among the contracts the board approved Wednesday was one for about $1.2 million covering repairs to a large part of the roof of Charleston Middle School.
A review of school building roofs a few years ago showed that the middle school "was in the most need of repair" because of leaking, Burgett said. One part of the roof was repaired last year and the upcoming project will address the rest, he said.
Other work that's more down the road includes extensive repairs to parking lots at the middle school and Charleston High School, which could cost about $2 million, Burgett also said.
The condition of those parking lots represent a "dire need" and saving enough sales tax revenue to pay for their repairs could take two or three years, he explained.
The bond issue represents a change in the approach of how the school will use the sales tax revenue. After Coles County voters approved the tax in 2016, the district waited to accumulate enough money to pay for each project.
Among the sales tax's approved uses are building renovation and repairs and covering bond payments. Burgett said the district will continue to rely on the sales tax so no property tax revenue will be needed.
The three other contracts the board approved Wednesday totaled about $1.1 million. They will address renovating and replacing the ventilation system of the high school band and chorus room, resurfacing other parking lots at the high school and tuck pointing at Jefferson Elementary School.
 

The teachers’ union received a favorable ruling from the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC) against the school district on Wednesday. The decision casts doubt on superintendent Eileen Shafer’s limited in-person school reopening set for June.

Union officials wanted to inspect the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) at school buildings to ensure there was adequate ventilation inside classrooms, but Shafer’s team refused, setting the stage for the unfair labor practice fight with the teachers.

“We are pleased that the Commission upheld our right to have full access to these areas,” said John McEntee, Jr., president of the Paterson Education Association, the teachers’ union, on Thursday. “The health and safety of our students and staff should never boil down to a labor-management issue.”

McEntee said the decision orders the district to conduct walkthroughs, including inspection of ventilation systems, no later than May 28. He said the decision also restrains the district from unliterally requiring school employees – those who have been remote since September — to report to work in the buildings until the new walkthroughs are completed.

As the CDC touts ventilation as a key component to reduce COVID-19 transmission, North Carolina public school districts face millions of dollars in deferred HVAC maintenance.
"I don't believe, as a whole across the state, that we were prepared for those things," said Allison Griffin, a teacher in Franklin County.
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) publishes a facility needs report every five years.
The latest report from 2015 revealed the state's needs exceeded $8 billion. HVAC-related updates accounted for $342 million.
Griffin said before COVID-19, air quality and mold in her school were a concern for her. Over the past year, these fears amplified under the threat of COVID-19.
 

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Should a tornado ever strike Raymore-Peculiar High School, every student, faculty and staff member can all fit inside a shelter strong enough to withstand the most powerful EF-5 tornadoes.
On any given day it can be about 2,300 people.
As part of a larger project totaling $20 million completed in 2017, the school district in Cass County, Missouri, built a concrete dome over an auxiliary gymnasium creating the shelter space.
Joplin tragedy
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Photo by: Charlie Keegan
Should a tornado ever strike Raymore-Peculiar High School, each student, faculty and staff member (about 2,300 people on any given day) can all fit inside a shelter strong enough to withstand the most powerful EF-5 tornadoes.
By: Charlie KeeganPosted at 2:00 PM, May 20, 2021 and last updated 3:42 PM, May 20, 2021
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Should a tornado ever strike Raymore-Peculiar High School, every student, faculty and staff member can all fit inside a shelter strong enough to withstand the most powerful EF-5 tornadoes.
On any given day it can be about 2,300 people.
As part of a larger project totaling $20 million completed in 2017, the school district in Cass County, Missouri, built a concrete dome over an auxiliary gymnasium creating the shelter space.
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“Our board of education, based in part on the Joplin tragedy, felt it was important enough to make this investment. To build a facility like this so if we were ever in a similar situation, we would be safe,” Dr. Bryan Pettengill, the district’s assistant superintendent of administrative services said.
On Sunday, May 22, 2011, an EF-5 tornado hit the city of Joplin, about a two hour drive south of Raymore-Peculiar High School on Interstate 49.
Security footage from inside the city’s schools, which were empty at the time, show winds break glass, rip off ceiling tiles and blow tables across the cafeteria.
“The thought of a tornado coming, especially during times when we have all [students] together, is just a terrible thought for someone who oversees children,” admitted Pettengill, whose role includes overseeing safety and security at the district.
 

WASHINGTON — Workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been scouting shelters for the migrant children surging across the Southern border. They’ve been running coronavirus vaccination sites in Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington. And they are still managing the recovery from a string of record disasters starting with Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
On the cusp of what experts say will be an unusually destructive season of hurricanes and wildfires, just 3,800 of the agency’s 13,700 emergency workers are available right now to respond to a new disaster. That’s 29 percent fewer than were ready to deploy at the start of last year’s hurricane period, which began, as it does every year, on June 1.
FEMA has seldom been in greater demand — becoming a kind of 911 hotline for some of President Biden’s most pressing policy challenges. And the men and women who have become the nation’s first responders are tired.
Deanne Criswell, President Biden’s pick to run the agency, identified employee burnout as a major issue during her first all-hands FEMA meeting, according to Steve Reaves, president of the union local that represents employees.
“FEMA is like the car engine that’s been redlining since 2017 when Harvey hit,” said Brock Long, who ran the agency under former President Donald J. Trump and is now executive chairman of Hagerty Consulting. “It is taking a toll.”

For some categories of workers, the shortage is severe. Among the agency’s senior leadership staff, those qualified to coordinate missions in the field, just three out of 53 are currently available to deploy, the data show. Other specialized types of personnel, including operations and planning staff, have less than 15 percent of their workers available.

“As we prepare for hurricane and wildfire seasons, or whatever nature brings us, I am committed that FEMA employees will have the tools needed to continue our support of ongoing missions while ensuring that our deployed work force has time to rest and train to be ready for what comes next,” Ms. Criswell said in a statement.

After years of back-and-forth and a spirited discussion Tuesday night, the Frederick County Council voted to update fees for developers looking to build homes in crowded school districts.

Council member Steve McKay (R), who sponsored the bill, said the decision will bring the fees in line with inflation and rising school construction costs, easing an unfair tax burden on the rest of the county and eventually reducing crowding in classrooms.

The council voted 6-1 in favor of the bill, with Council member Phil Dacey (R) opposed. He argued the fee hike would hurt homebuyers, rather than developers, and that it ran afoul of the county’s goal to make housing more affordable.

As city officials plan to welcome all students back into classrooms this fall, they are ironing out space issues at the city’s most overcrowded schools, officials said Wednesday.

While “almost all” New York City public schools can accommodate their students five days a week under current social distancing guidelines, a number of schools “in the range of 10%” may have to use space outside of their classrooms, said Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark during a City Council budget hearing. That could mean using auditoriums and gymnasiums or turning to community-based organizations for help, officials said.

Currently, 3 feet of distancing between students is permitted inside elementary schools, except during meal times, per updated guidance that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released in March. The city’s middle and high schools are maintaining 6 feet, though the CDC has approved 3 feet of distance in these older grades so long as community transmission of COVID-19 is not considered high.

Some school leaders are already expressing concern about having enough space and staff to accommodate all of their students if social distancing requirements remain in place.

“For the small number of buildings where we have a capacity challenge, we’re working with each and every one of those buildings to develop a plan that will allow us to bring all of the children back,” Goldmark told City Council members.

Neither Goldmark nor department officials shared the exact number of schools with space issues or identified them by name. A department spokesperson said Goldmark was referring to buildings that have “historical spacing challenges,” indicating that these are the schools that are normally overcrowded.

COVID-19 has changed the way we understand school building ventilation and its importance in keeping us safe from viruses and bacteria in the air. The pandemic has motivated many school leaders to invest in improvements to ventilation systems, but the benefits of investing in a safe learning environment extend far beyond protecting children from the coronavirus. The evidence I present below suggests that pollution exposure is not only a factor in student academic outcomes but also a major driver of inequality in outcomes between wealthier and lower-income children, and between white and nonwhite children.
Why is it so important to invest in school infrastructure now? There is evidence that school ventilation protects children from contracting COVID-19 and other viruses in schools. Research suggests that COVID-19 spreads in schools in situations where there are high case rates in the surrounding community, and children can still catch COVID-19 in school buildings that are not properly ventilated.
I recently released a study (with Kathryn Johnson) showing that higher air pollution can make people more likely to get sick with and die from COVID-19. Because air pollution harms the immune system, it can increase the likelihood of infection from airborne diseases. It also can lead existing cases of COVID-19 to become more severe by harming the immune systems of infected people. We used the variation in pollution caused by a rollback of environmental enforcement during the pandemic to estimate the effects of increased pollution on county-level COVID-19 deaths and cases. We find that counties with more Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) sites (local factories or federal plants that emit harmful classes of pollution) saw an 11.8% increase in air pollution on average following the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) rollback of enforcement, compared to counties with fewer TRI sites. We also find that these policy-induced increases in air pollution are associated with a 53% increase in cases and a 10.6% increase in deaths from COVID-19.
 

The Alabama Legislature on Monday, in the final hours of the regular session, concurred with Gov. Kay Ivey’s executive amendments on a bill regarding school construction that gave public safety officials pause. 
House Bill 220 will remove state oversight by the Alabama Department of Finance’s Division of Construction Management for construction and repair projects under $500,000 at K-12 schools, universities and state parks. 
Proponents of the bill have said the change is needed to reduce costs and speed up projects, but the Alabama Association of Fire Chiefs, the Associated Builders and Contractors of Alabama, the Subcontractors Association of Alabama, the American Institute of Architects Alabama and the Alabama Contractors Association came out against the bill. 
Tim Love, president of the Alabama Association of Fire Chiefs and chief of the Alabaster Fire Department, told APR in April that he was concerned the bill would put students’ and first responders’ lives at risk. 
 

CARTHAGE, Mo. — Carthage and area residents will soon have more options to seek shelter in case of a tornado.

Carthage School District Superintendent Mark Baker announced this week at a Board of Education meeting a plan to open three school storm shelters to the public in the event of tornado warnings.

Baker said the school storm shelters at Pleasant Valley Elementary School and the Carthage Intermediate Center will be opened to the public as soon as three people for each shelter can be found and trained to open and manage them in case of storm warnings.

Baker said he didn’t know exactly when these shelters would start to be open.

“As soon as we can find people willing to be in charge and train them, we’ll start,” Baker said. “Obviously it will take a little bit of time for people to get comfortable with the action. It’s not just standing at the door and letting people in. You have to learn the requirements.”

In the next few months, the shelter at Columbian Elementary School will be added to that list, but Baker said he still has some planning to do before opening that school shelter to the public.

The opening of the three schools — in addition to the shelter at Carthage Junior High, which was funded in part by the Federal Emergency Management Agency specifically to act as a public shelter — means the district will offer storm shelters to the public in four locations around town.

May 25—Scranton School District buildings need $304.8 million in repairs, according to a draft of the facilities report presented to school directors Monday night.

The necessary improvements in the report, which include new roofs, upgraded heating systems and making buildings accessible for students or staff, are part of the larger discussion of how to consolidate schools and best use and update remaining facilities.

"It is extremely important that our facilities are healthy and safe for our students," Chief Recovery Officer Candis Finan, Ed.D., said. "It's really important our facilities support our educational needs and our educational programs."

The comprehensive report by D'Huy Engineering of Bethlehem also gives the district an option to complete the most necessary capital improvements, make schools compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and ensure "occupant comfort" — such as heating, cooling and ventilation. That option would cost $209.7 million and could take 10 years or more to complete, depending on how quickly the board wishes to progress.

While the 16 schools in the district are well-cleaned with floors that often sparkle, many of the larger problems went neglected for years, partially due to a lack of funds, officials said.