The price tag on a new elementary school in Bar Harbor is $63 million. An Auburn high school completed in 2023 came in at $122 million. And at the ballot box this fall, Cape Elizabeth voters will consider a $94.7 million bond that would be used to build a new middle school and renovate the district’s elementary and high schools.  Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the average price of school construction in the United States has increased by 32 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  There is no statewide data showing the change in the average per-square-foot cost of school construction, but Maine Department of Education data of state-funded major construction projects shows how construction costs have grown in recent years. 

-- Lana Cohen

When Lois Brink’s kids were in elementary school, she remembers being struck by how uninviting their schoolyard was. She described it as “scorched earth” — little more than a dirt field coated in “I don’t know how many decades of weed retardant” and some aging play equipment. But Brink, a landscape architect and professor at the University of Colorado Denver, didn’t just see a problem. She saw fertile ground for a solution. Over the next dozen years, she helped lead a transformation of nearly 100 elementary school grounds across Denver into more vibrant, greener spaces, dubbed “Learning Landscapes.” Public schools alone cover about 2 million acres of land in the U.S. Although comprehensive data is hard to come by, the “scorched earth” that Brink witnessed is the norm in many places — according to the Trust for Public Land, around 36 percent of the nation’s public school students attend school in what would be considered a heat island. And as with green spaces writ large, a dearth of schoolyard trees and other vegetation tends to be most common in lower-income areas and Black and brown neighborhoods.

-- Claire Elise Thompson

When the air conditioning broke in a Terrebonne Parish school, it sometimes got so hot that kids fainted or had asthma attacks, and the school had to call an ambulance.
More often, the school sent kids home early. In the best-case scenario, students packed into classrooms with working AC or relocated to the gym or cafeteria to escape the southeast Louisiana heat.
So when the school district got its final federal COVID-19 relief package in 2021, school officials made fixing the AC a top priority. Nearly $23 million — more than 40% of the district's aid allotment — went to replace the most dire HVAC systems in seven schools.
"It gives us the confidence that we're not going to have to cancel school, the kids are not going to get sick," Superintendent Bubba Orgeron said. "When it's either too hot or too cold … kids are focused on that instead of learning."
Handed billions of dollars with few strings attached, thousands of school leaders made a similar calculation that year. Across 21 states with publicly available data, schools on average planned to spend 18% of their third and largest COVID-19 aid package on facilities, a Chalkbeat analysis found. That's nearly as much as they were required to spend on academic recovery.
In Mississippi, schools put nearly 40% of their final aid package toward buildings. In South Dakota, it was more than half.
As the nation takes stock of its return on this massive one-time investment, many school leaders stand behind their decision to go big on facilities, and say this will pay dividends for academics and student engagement. A growing body of research suggests a child's learning environment affects their test scores and attendance.
But recent research points to a potentially troubling trend: High-poverty districts, like Terrebonne Parish, were more likely to budget a greater share of their final aid package for facilities and operations, especially costly projects like new construction and building repairs. That left them less to spend on academic recovery — even though they educate the kids who've had the most academic ground to make up.
 

-- Kalyn Belsha

The Eastern Cape Department of Education (ECDoE) in South Africa faces significant infrastructure challenges in rural schools, including inadequate funding, poor maintenance, and a shortage of essential facilities. These challenges hinder quality education provision and violate the Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure (MUNS-PSI) regulations. This study investigates these infrastructure challenges and proposes strategies to improve adherence to MUNS-PSI regulations. An interpretivist philosophy and inductive approach were adopted, focusing on a case study strategy. The study employed a mono-method qualitative approach, collecting data through semi-structured interviews with ten school managers and senior managers within the Chris Hani East District infrastructure delivery section. Purposive sampling was used to select participants, and thematic analysis was applied to the data. The findings revealed that the ECDoE lacks credible plans, sound systems, and effective leadership, resulting in poor governance and non-service delivery. Key challenges identified include the absence of a retention plan and a shortage of technological expertise. The study suggests forming a cross-functional group led by the head of the Department of Education to manage school infrastructure effectively. Training officials on technical skills related to the built environment and implementing the Infrastructure Delivery Management System are recommended. These strategies aim to enhance adherence to MUNS-PSI regulations, thereby improving the educational infrastructure and quality of education in the Eastern Cape.

-- Buyisiwe Ndungane, Gerrit Crafford, Tirivavi Moyo

Most Idaho school districts want their new facilities money all at once.
House Bill 521, passed into law this year, will deliver $1 billion to schools for facilities upgrades, and districts have the option to take their share in a lump sum or in annualized installments over the next decade. 
The $1 billion comes from state bonds, part of a total $1.5 billion investment in school facilities through HB 521. The Department of Education — which is responsible for distributing the funds — doesn’t yet have concrete data on school districts’ preferred method for receiving the money. 
“But everything we’re hearing from schools anecdotally is that most plan to take the lump sum payment,” said Scott Graf, communications director for the department. 
That includes large and small districts. Murtaugh School District — enrollment 388 — plans to take the lump sum, said Superintendent Michele Capps. Same goes for the Lewiston Independent School District, which has 4,512 students. 
Lewiston will receive about $17 million from HB 521. The money is slated for upgrades to windows and doors along with potential building expansions that would give programs, such as orchestra, more space, according to Lewiston Superintendent Lance Hansen.
Hansen said there are a couple reasons that the lump sum is more advantageous. First, districts can maximize the value of the money in the short term. Facilities construction and maintenance costs increase regularly, making far-off expenses difficult to predict. 
“We’ve seen projects escalate 10, 15, 20% just in a year,” Hansen said. 
At the same time, inflation is driving down the value of the dollar, meaning $1.7 million — what Lewiston would receive in 10-year installments — won’t go as far in years to come if inflation persists.
 

-- Ryan Suppe

Efforts to rightsize the Guam Department of Education in light of a decreased student population and to maximize resources continue, with the superintendent eyeing the upcoming school year to begin implementation. GDOE Superintendent Kenneth Erik Swanson reported to the Guam Education Board last week that the department continues to evaluate the island’s 41 public school facilities to make recommendations on the path forward. “An internal (kindergarten through 12th grade) team followed the plan to determine recommendations to the superintendent that would possibly combine campuses to utilize school facilities more fully. Stakeholder input continues to be gathered while the team analyzes data gathered to date. Online survey data are just now available to me for assessment,” Swanson said.

-- Jolene Toves

When 14-year-old Catherine Paton arrived at Thursday Island from Canberra, she knew starting school afresh would be an adjustment. New peers, new teachers, new surroundings. What she didn’t expect was classrooms with sagging roofs and holes in the walls, bathrooms filled with black mould, broken air conditioners and rusty desks. “Most students at Tagai state college have only ever gone to schools in the Torres Strait, and have nothing to compare school facility standards to,” the year 8 student representative says. “But I do, and I know these facilities are disgraceful.” New research from the Australian Education Union, provided exclusively to Guardian Australia, shows there has been a significant decline in the adequacy of public school facilities in the four years to 2024, with principals citing degrading bathrooms, school halls and science spaces as their biggest concerns.

-- Caitlin Cassidy

An interactive website that gave families crucial information about the physical condition of Philadelphia public schools went down last month.
The site contained data on 211 schools, more than two-thirds of which were found to be in “unsatisfactory” or “poor” condition, according to a previous analysis by the Logan Center. Parents could use the site to see the results of their school’s latest inspection and which aspects of the school were in the best and worst shape.
The district is currently developing a “warehouse” for data on all schools’ academics, environments, educational suitability, safety, maintenance, and enrollment, among other data points, said Alexandra Coppadge, the district’s head of communications. They anticipate it to be completed by December.
The website going down “is deeply problematic,” said City Councilmember Nina Ahmad, a member of the Education Committee. “This lack of information is very disempowering, and I think our constituents just feel like, what is going on?”
 

-- COLIN EVANS CHALKBEAT AND JULIA MEROLA

Local school funding disparities are not unique to Arizona, but in recent years, approaching the issue by suing a state is. Recent research by Bellwether found wealthy districts in 123 large metro areas across 38 states often had much more local funding per student than less-affluent districts as a result of economic segregation. In order to close the state and local funding gap within these metro area districts, $26 billion in additional state funding is needed on an annual basis, the study said. Bellwether researchers also suggested updating state formulas that include a generous allocation for students in poverty and those needing learning interventions. Arizona ranked 50th in overall education spending and last in funding education as of September 2023, according to the Education data Initiative, a team of data researchers who analyze figures on the U.S. education system. During that same period, Arizona’s schools spent $9,070 per pupil for a total of $10.3 billion annually. By comparison, the national average on spending per pupil was $16,080.

-- Anna Merod

Nearly half of St. Louis’ public schools need to be repaired or closed in the next 10 years due to their poor condition, a regional architecture firm has found. If the district decides to keep the schools open, upkeep will cost an estimated $1.8 billion by 2044, according to the Illinois-based firm Cordogan, Clark and Associates, which presented its findings at last Tuesday's school board meeting. Steve Raskin, a vice president of the firm, said it’s too early to make a recommendation as to the school district's course of action, whether that’s to close down schools or make major renovations. “At this point, I think it’s entirely premature to even have that conversation because really, we’re not there yet,” Raskin said. He said that after presenting the assessments last week, the firm now must work with the school board on next steps, including gathering more data and conducting scenario testing. He said both entities need to ask themselves questions before making big decisions.

-- Madison Holcomb

As the deadline nears for allocating the third and final round of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, concerns are mounting about what the financial future holds for school districts nationwide. Amidst this uncertainty, some districts have focused their efforts over the past three years on investing in an area important to student success, but one that won’t require major budget cuts when pandemic recovery funding ends: school facilities. In Mississippi, school districts are using the largest share of their $1.5 billion ESSER III allotment to improve the long-neglected spaces where students learn. While some may associate spending on school facilities with flashy sports complexes and state-of-the-art buildings, the reality is that schools nationwide have long grappled with aging infrastructure and outdated facilities in need of comprehensive renovations. For states like Mississippi with historically low educational spending, the one-time infusion of federal funds presented a unique opportunity for districts to not only address immediate Covid-19 concerns but also tackle long-standing renovation needs that predated the pandemic. This analysis, the latest in a series of FutureEd reports on state and local pandemic-response spending, draws on Mississippi Department of Education data to explore how school districts in one of the nation’s poorest states have used federal ESSER III funds to address long-standing inequities in school facilities, a significant barrier to student success.

-- Bella Dimarco

Requiring children to attend school when classroom temperatures are high is unsafe and reduces learning; yet closing schools for extreme heat has wide-ranging consequences for learning, safety, food access, and social determinants of health. Children are vulnerable to heat, and schooling is compulsory in the U.S. Families rely on schools for food, childcare, and safety. In order to protect the health and well-being of the nation’s children, the federal government must facilitate efforts to collect the data required to drive extreme heat mitigation and adaptive capacity, invest in more resilient infrastructure, provide guidance on preparedness and response, and establish enforceable temperature thresholds. To do this, federal agencies can take action through three paths of mitigation: data collection and collaboration, set policy, and investments. 

-- REBECCA MORGENSTERN BRENNER & AMIE PATCHEN & ALIST

Like many large buildings, schools suck lots of energy from the grid to keep lights on, halls warm and students comfortable, translating to high bills for school districts. However, a case study using a school in Quebec aims to challenge that status quo. Researchers from Concordia University studied a school that runs off electricity sourced from geothermal heat pumps that rely on energy from Quebec’s grid, which is almost all hydropower. They found that schools heated with electricity can use less energy and still keep students warm if they understand and adapt to the energy needs of each building. Researchers analyzed data from existing sensors in the school. Then, they combined it with weather predictions for the next day and other information to reduce power use at peak demand times when energy is most expensive. They tested the system in a few classrooms, where they reduced peak power consumption by up to 100 per cent. Their scenario found the school’s energy bill could be cut by up to 50 per cent if their approach was adopted school-wide because of cost savings from reduced power use during peak times.

-- Cloe Logan

BALTIMORE —
From broken doors to collapsed ceilings and buildings with no heat, 11 News Investigates learned there are more than 11,000 requests for repairs to Baltimore City Public School buildings waiting to be addressed — more than 2,300 of which are over a year old.
The data obtained by 11 News Investigates provides certain information on more than 1,000 reports of plumbing issues, 95 work orders for security and 77 for fire systems.
To get at what's causing this backlog of work orders, 11 News Investigates went inside one of the district's oldest schools and talked to the district official who oversees it all.
Problems persist amid open repair work orders
No single camera lens can capture the more than 15 million square feet that comprise the Baltimore City Public School System's buildings — that's roughly the size of 270 football fields.
Maurice Gaskins, City Schools' director of construction, listed problems at Baltimore City College that include plaster failure, a broken dehumidification system and antiquated pool filters.
"It's been out of commission for so long that we probably have a group of students that probably never experienced this," Gaskins told 11 News Investigates.
The pool lane lines hang suspended in mid-air, a reminder of the championship teams that swam there until 2019.
 

-- Tolly Taylor

MARION COUNTY, Fla. – The superintendent of Marion County Public Schools confirmed her district is in a crisis as it deals with aging schools and record growth.
“It’s not to be overly dramatic. When you look at the data, the growth and our facilities. When you have about half our facilities are over 50 years old, the cost of maintenance continues to climb,” said Dr. Diane Gullet, superintendent of Marion County Schools.
News 6 went inside some of the schools in need of repairs and upgrades.
At East Marion Elementary School in Ocala, none of its classrooms have doors. Instead, a large room is broken up into four pods. Each pod contains a different class.
“The students are adaptable. They are resilient, but there are times when you know we’re doing fun and exciting things and maybe the class next door is needing to be testing,” said Sarah Dobbs, principal of East Marion Elementary School.
East Marion Elementary was built in the early 1970s, and not much has changed.
“Thinking safety wise, these doors we walked through are the original doors for this pod, so they’re on a magnet system. When we release the magnet they lock us in. This is between us and 80 students,” Dobbs said. “Student safety is the first thing that goes through my mind when talking about this concept, this layout.”
Fort King Middle School was built in 1963. The school’s gymnasium still has its original bleachers and is now just getting air conditioning.
 

-- Erik Sandoval

WASHINGTON (February 15, 2024)—Nearly one-third of public schools (31 percent) have one or more non-permanent (portable) buildings in use on campus, according to data released today by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the statistical center within the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Additionally, major repair, renovation, or modernization work was being performed in 21 percent of all public schools as of December of this academic year, when the survey was administered. The average age of the main instructional building among reporting U.S. public schools is 49 years, with 38 percent constructed before 1970.1 “The condition of our school facilities plays a critical role in the education of more than 49 million U.S public school students,” said NCES Commissioner Peggy G. Carr. “School facilities provide a setting for learning and affect health and comfort of the school’s students and staff. As such, these data provide insight into the current condition of our schools as the nation continues down the road to learning recovery.”

-- Staff Writer

The average school building in America is nearly half a century old, and almost a third of the nation’s public schools have at least one portable or non-permanent structure on their campus, new federal data show. A growing body of research shows students perform better on tests when their school buildings are well-maintained and modern. The health consequences of prolonged exposure to toxins like mold and asbestos in school buildings can last long into adulthood. And the emergence of COVID put renewed pressure on schools to ensure students and staff are breathing clean air. But a large share of the nation’s 100,000 schools have buildings in major disrepair. Close to half of educators surveyed by the EdWeek Research Center in 2023 gave their buildings a “C” grade or worse. Advocates estimate the nation would need to collectively spend $85 billion a year on top of its current school facilities investments in order to ensure every school building gets adequately renovated.

-- Mark Lieberman

The Arizona Department of Administration (ADOA) is getting nearly $5 million from the U.S. Department of Education. The funds come from one of eight grants being disbursed under the federal government’s Supporting America’s School Infrastructure (SASI) program. The goal is to help districts in various states to improve their school facilities.   ADOA received endorsements from the Legislature, Governor’s Office, school districts and statewide education organizations to get the grant. A department spokesperson said the money will help modernize Arizona’s Building Inventory database so the state can more quickly address preventative-maintenance issues and new-school construction.

-- Bridget Dowd

Boston Public Schools officials shared their long-awaited “master plan” for school facilities Wednesday, after narrowly meeting a deadline set by state education officials.
The plan is presented as an opportunity to address long-standing problems with Boston school facilities, including under-enrolled schools, deferred maintenance and, generally, inadequate spaces for working and learning for students and staff.
And it imagines a future of larger, newer, greener — and fewer — standalone schools as it seeks to address present-day problems. The 80-page plan suggests that, at the very least, a little more than a dozen district schools eventually should merge or close.
Of the 119 school buildings citywide, the report finds that dozens are “underutilized,” or well-below capacity, after years of sliding enrollment. According to district data, just 18% of them are equipped to provide what it calls a “high-quality student experience.”
For example, the district has long argued that its many small, single-strand elementary schools — with just one class per grade — can severely hinder enrichment opportunities and administrators’ ability to best serve students with disabilities or those who are learning English.
 

-- Max Larkin and Carrie Jung

On the first day of the 2024 legislative session, state education officials presented lawmakers with the latest estimates for Vermont’s school construction needs — a whopping $6.3 billion in the next 21 years.  And that number, Agency of Education staff cautioned, is likely a significant underestimate. Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, chair of the House Committee on Education, called the figure “eye popping.” He signaled that his committee would make addressing school construction needs a priority this session. The cost estimate came as part of a school facilities assessment ordered by the Legislature in 2021, which gathered baseline data on 384 school buildings in Vermont and translated the findings into cost projections for every district statewide. The Agency of Education expects to create a public dashboard with that data later this year.  From fiscal years 2000-2008, the state provided more than $280 million in construction aid to schools, but amid the Great Recession it suspended state assistance for such projects. This year, lawmakers will consider how the state could revive some funding, though Conlon made clear that footing the entire bill was out of the question.

-- Ethan Weinstein

NEW YORK (WABC) -- You may not think much about the water your kids are drinking when they're in school, but maybe you should. The 7 On Your Side Investigates team found that 43% of schools in New York and 56% of schools in New Jersey had water outlets test beyond the recommended maximum amount for lead in drinking water, according to the most recent reporting data. Lead is particularly harmful to children - even low levels of exposure have been linked to learning disabilities, stunting of physical growth and damage to the nervous system. In our viewing area in New Jersey, we found the Toms River School District had the highest number of outlets - 56 - test beyond the Environmental Protection Agency's acceptable limit for lead. The Superintendent told Eyewitness News some of the water outlets were not used for drinking and if they were used for drinking they were shut off as a result of the testing results

-- Kristin Thorne

School districts in Wisconsin would have to comply with competitive bidding requirements for construction projects costing more than $150,000 under a new legislative proposal.
Wisconsin is one of only three states that allows a project of any size to be awarded on a no-bid basis, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Municipalities, meanwhile, have to seek a competitive bid for any project over $25,000. The same proposed legislation would increase that threshold for municipalities to $50,000.
During a public hearing Thursday before the Assembly Committee on Local Government, Chris Kulow, government relations director for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, testified against the bill. He argued that requiring a competitive bidding process would take away local control.
Kulow said most school boards are already using competitive bidding. He said having to choose the lowest bidder could mean having to sacrifice the best quality.
“Currently, districts that have long-standing relationships with local contractors have the opportunity to work with them to negotiate deals that include spending resources locally, keeping those dollars in the community,” Kulow said. “They result in the hiring of parents whose children attend the schools. They want to do a good job, and they’re less likely to ask for extra charges.”
 

-- Corri Hess

In the two years since Hurricane Ida damaged classrooms and wreaked havoc on an already strained school system, the federal government has promised $23 million for schools in New Jersey to assist with recovery efforts related to the storm, according to the latest federal data.
But, some school districts say they are still waiting for millions more in reimbursements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The total cost for all repair projects for schools related to Hurricane Ida is approximately $42 million, said Sgt. Joseph Walsh, a spokesman for the New Jersey state Office of Emergency Management.
After the September 2021 storm, 49 schools and nine colleges and universities filed for more than $83.6 million in public assistance from the federal government to cover losses and damage. However, the number was based on preliminary damage assessments completed by the school and district officials.
 

-- Jackie Roman

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The annual statewide school safety report shows areas of improvement remain.
The report was released by the state Department of Education last week.
The safety measure requirements for each school defined in the report include hiring a school resource officer, installing weapon detection systems, upgrading school building’s doors and windows, among other measures.
State School Facilities Director Micah Whitlow said during the state BOE meeting that the administration at each school has been instructed to report back to the department regarding any updates to their school’s safety and security measures, and the department has compiled the data based on what they have received from each school’s assessment this year.
 

-- Katherine Skeldon

Peter Drucker famously said, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” data on facilities helps public schools to make equitable decisions, prevent environmental health risks, ensure regular maintenance, and conduct long-term planning. Publicly available data increases transparency and accountability, resulting in more informed decision making and quality analysis. Across the U.S., public schools lack the resources to track their facilities and operations, resulting in missed opportunities to ensure equitable access to high quality learning environments. As public schools face increasing challenges to infrastructure, such as climate change, this data gap becomes more pronounced. Why Do We Need data On School Facilities?
School facilities affect student health and learning. The conditions of a school building directly impact the health and learning outcomes of students. The COVID-19 pandemic brought the importance of indoor air quality into the public consciousness. Many other chronic diseases are exacerbated by inadequate facilities, causing absenteeism and learning loss. From asthma to obesity to lead poisoning, the condition of the places where children spend their time impacts their health, wellbeing, and ability to learn. Better data on the physical environment helps us understand the conditions that hinder student learning. 

-- NAOMI STERN

Two Pioneer Valley lawmakers are seeking a more concrete plan — including the creation of a “watchdog group” — to improve the health of public school buildings and reduce their environmental impact. Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, and Rep. Mindy Domb, D-Amherst, were able to incorporate several pieces of their proposal for healthy and green public schools as part of a major bill focused on clean energy and offshore wind. That bill passed last year as part of the Legislature’s 2021-2022 session. Their goal was to collect data on the health of school buildings, including their energy and resource efficiency, to limit exposure to toxic chemicals and create an environment that is “conducive to learning,” according to the original bill. “It was really an exciting and pretty sweeping bill,” Comerford said of the measure, which “urged the collection of real data” on the conditions of school buildings and their infrastructure.

-- EDEN MOR

School districts, particularly those serving many students in poverty and students of color, can expect student test scores to rise significantly after they invest local dollars to fix leaky HVAC systems or patch failing roofs.
When school districts invest local dollars in new athletic facilities or expanded classroom space, however, student test scores don’t necessarily change. But local property values typically rise.
These are two takeaways from a recently published study of the far-reaching effects of school district investments in facilities. The sweeping report, published in working-paper form this summer, analyzes data from more than 15,000 school bond ballot referenda in 28 states between 1990 and 2017. The report was written by Barbara Biasi, an assistant professor of economics at the Yale School of Management; Julien Lafortune, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California; and David Schönholzer, assistant professor of economics at Stockholm University’s Institute for International Economic Studies.
The conclusions build on a growing body of evidence asserting that higher-quality school buildings translate to better academic outcomes for vulnerable children—and higher property values for the communities that surround the improved facilities.
The paper’s findings suggest that students benefit most when extremely low-quality facilities get better, rather than when districts improve buildings that were already in good shape, said Mary Filardo, executive director of the nonprofit 21st Century School Fund and a leading national advocate for school infrastructure improvements.
“All the more argument for intervention by states and the feds for schools in poor condition in low-wealth communities—a targeted program, from poor to good,” Filardo said.

-- Mark Lieberman

One of the hardest hit schools in the Eastern Kentucky floods is slated to reopen by August 2024, Perry County school administrators told parents at a local school board meeting Thursday. When widespread deadly flooding devastated multiple Eastern Kentucky counties in July 2022, Squabble Creek crested its banks and destroyed the interior of the rural K-12 Buckhorn School.
Since the flood, Buckhorn students have been attending classes at the old A.B. Combs Elementary School — resulting in more than an hour-long, one-way bus ride for kids living in the furthest reaches of the county. Before the flood, Buckhorn had over 300 students, data from the Kentucky Department of Education showed. A collection of parents and other supporters of the Buckhorn School packed a local school board meeting Thursday to request an update on the construction of the school.
 

-- Rick Childress

The first weeks of the new school year in D.C. have brought reunions, excitement — and complaints of leaks, rodents, and broken elevators and air conditioners.
As temperatures soared during a stretch of sweltering heat last week, parents at Whittier Elementary School in Northwest Washington complained of a lack of air conditioning and wrote on social media: “We can’t breathe!”
Temperatures that pushed HVAC systems across the city past their limits have since cooled, but other issues — including out-of-service elevators and faulty public address systems — continue to vex teachers, students and their families.
The problems span the city. Among the more than 80 outstanding work orders are requests for pest control at Deal Middle School in Northwest and to repair leaks on the Langdon Education Campus in Northeast, according to a city-run database of repair needs. The ongoing problems continue to frustrate families and city leaders, who had hoped these issues would have been resolved by the first day of school.
 

-- Lauren Lumpkin

Cracked walls, mold, sewage backups, even the risk of electric shock. That's what students at Druid Hills High School outside Atlanta faced for years — and they wanted the world to see.  
Chronic under-investment left school buildings and facilities there in disrepair. The problem got national attention after a video the students posted to social media went viral.  
In the video, one student shows walls peeling from water damage. Another points to holes in the ceiling. One shows a sign warning students not to touch a metal pole in a classroom because of the risk of electrocution.  
"This isn't really normal," said Harley Martz, a senior at Druid Hills who helped produce the video as a sophomore in 2022. "The bottom floor of our main building flooded … [students] had to relocate … and it was just very claustrophobic. I mean, those kids, I don't think they had class that week. I mean, it threw off just everyone's schedule."  
As a new academic year begins, many students, like Martz, face barriers from the very walls of their school buildings, rather than their teachers or textbooks. A CBS News analysis of federal data found school districts with more Black students were able to invest far less money in buildings than majority-White districts — and often-unequal funding practices by state governments can make the problem worse.  
7 miles apart, a world of difference   
Druid Hills High is part of DeKalb County Public Schools, a district where CBS News found one of the starkest examples of unequal school building investment. Between 2015 and 2020, the DeKalb County School District invested about $961 in its buildings for each student enrolled.
Jack Cole, now a senior at Druid Hills, said the impact of under-investment was clear to the students. 
"It's like there's no drive to want to be there and learn if I don't want to be in school in the first place," said Cole. 
But while their school building is crumbling, others nearby are new, modern and innovative.
 

-- CHRIS HACKER, AMY CORRAL, STEPHEN STOCK, JOSE SANC

The process of changing school boundaries for DC Public Schools (DCPS) is underway. The 2023 Boundary and Student Assignment Study, or Boundary Study, reviews boundaries and feeder patterns and District-wide public school student assignment policies and makes recommendations to the mayor for changes. Recommendations are due to be submitted to Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) no later than February 2024. The study was launched in March through the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME). It is the first update to school by-right attendance boundaries since 2013-2014, when DC undertook its first comprehensive review of boundaries in 40 years. DME is running a Master Facilities Plan (MFP) study at the same time and the two have some overlap in the review of  building condition, resources and utilization. Any potential boundary modifications and feeder recommendations would take effect no sooner than the 2025-26 school year, i.e., August of 2025. “We are embarking on a city-wide planning process that will provide strategic, data-informed recommendations to ensure more students have access to great schools and facilities that meet their needs,” said Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn.

-- Elizabeth OGorek

The Philadelphia School District and city have settled a lawsuit challenging a law that would have given the city more environmental oversight over school buildings — and the ultimate authority to decide whether they can open.
The school system has agreed to drop its lawsuit, and the city prevailed on the creation of an advisory panel to examine district environmental issues. But the district retains final say-so on whether schools can open, and will get an additional $2.5 million in city money to address data management issues around asbestos, lead and other environmental hazards.
City and district leaders praised the settlement, announced Wednesday afternoon, hailing it as a way to move forward with one voice. The lawsuit, filed in January in federal court, was an unprecedented move by the school board against the authority that created it and chooses its members.
 

-- Kristen A. Graham

The vast majority of Santa Monica schools are in need of repair according to recent data provided to state regulators, but the reality on the ground may not be as dire as the paperwork suggests.  The Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) Board heard an update to several state-mandated reports last week including a facilities update that said 71 percent of the district’s facilities are not in “good repair.” School Districts are required to self assess their physical facilities as part of a wide ranging evaluation that also covers topics like teacher assignments, student achievement and professional development.  For facilities, the system ranks physical assets into four categories, exemplary, good, fair and poor. To be considered “good repair” a building must rank in the exemplary or good category and most local schools scored in the bottom half of the rankings. “So, yes, the results of our, what is called our FITs inspection or facility inspections, this year is shocking,” said Carey Upton. “And that is not completely our fault.”

-- Matthew Hall

An updated school facility priority list released earlier this month came under fire as state officials raised questions at a committee meeting in Gillette last week. By the end of the hours-long discussion, legislators walked away with “a lot to consider,” said Sen. Bill Landon, R-Casper. In theory, the new list scores the capacity and condition needs for school district facilities across the state, prioritizing the buildings by which ones are in need of the most help, whether they’re over capacity or in need of serious repair. The list differs from past years when a consolidated schedule was used to prioritize projects that also used capacity and condition data. Changes are due in part to emergency rules that came about when the Legislature eliminated the consolidation schedule in the 2023 session. But the change in data collection and the use of a new firm has legislators and school officials questioning the validity of the updated list that dropped projects the state’s Select Committee on School Facilities has had on its radar for decades, or conversely, placed some schools that recently had major repairs near the top.

-- Cassia Catterall

Dare County Schools has announced that three schools in the district will receive NC GreenPower’s grant award for the Solar+ Schools program.  Cape Hatteras Secondary School, First Flight Elementary School and Manteo Middle School will receive a solar educational package that includes a 20-kilowatt (kW) solar array, STEM curricula, teacher training and more.  New for 2023, the program awardees will receive a grant to pay for all of the project’s construction costs, expected to be approximately $55,000-$75,000. The included weather station and data monitoring will incorporate live information from the array into classrooms. Teachers will be able to compare different weather scenarios and involve students in reading and interpreting the energy data.

-- Staff Writer

NEW YORK CITY — Rats and mice and filth flies, oh my! New York City's school cafeterias are a sty.
Hundreds of public and private school cafeterias had filthy conditions found by city health inspectors during the 2022-2023 year, data shows.
As the city's school year ends Tuesday, Patch decided to give students and parents more than a few creepy crawly reasons to be happy for summer break.
Before public school parents barf up their lunches, city health officials offered some reassurance.
No public school cafeterias needed to be closed during the 2022-2023 year, a health department spokesperson told Patch.
"The Health Department conducts routine inspections of NYC Public Schools, and it is rare that we observe conditions creating a health risk such that the Department will require the cafeteria to close," the spokesperson said in a statement.
Likewise, a city schools spokesperson told Patch that any pest issues discovered in cafeteria inspections are promptly addressed.
"Almost all violations are non-food related, and all violations are taken extremely seriously and immediately addressed," said Jenna Lyle, the spokesperson, in a statement.
 

-- Matt Troutman

The Omaha public school district is close to finishing an 18-month-long project that plans for the future of all 108 of its buildings.
The plan, which outlines each building’s maintenance and renovation needs over the next 20 years, amounts to a projected $2.29 billion in projects. While it still needs its finishing touches, school board members were able to get the first look at the plan during a workshop earlier this month.
“The intent of our facilities assessment is to catalog, identify our needs and look at them to plan for years ahead. Much like a homeowner would plan for a kitchen remodel or a bathroom remodel,” said Charles Wakefield, chief operations officer. “Our team walked every piece of our buildings — all 108 sites — looking at everything from above the roof to mechanical closets and looking at the windows.”
Wakefield said the district’s team of architects and OPS staff took photos of each item in every building, cataloged its condition and assessed the cost of replacement or renovation for the next five to 20 years. Each school has thousands of lines of data in the facilities assessment.
 

-- Chris Machian

Dare County Schools is pleased to announce that three schools in the district will receive NC GreenPower’s grant award for the Solar+ Schools program. Cape Hatteras Secondary School, First Flight Elementary, and Manteo Middle School will receive a solar educational package that includes a 20-kilowatt (kW) solar array, STEM curricula, teacher training and more. New for 2023, the program awardees will receive a grant to pay for all of the project’s construction costs, expected to be approximately $55,000-$75,000. The included weather station and data monitoring will incorporate live information from the array into classrooms. Teachers will be able to compare different weather scenarios and involve students in reading and interpreting the energy data. We are very excited to be able to install larger systems for the first time and save schools even more on their energy bills. Removing the fundraising burden and simplifying the application process has been well received by our applicants and enabled additional schools to consider installing solar,” said Vicky McCann, vice president of NC GreenPower. “We are proud to continue educating younger generations about solar energy. By the end of next year, we will have reached more than 62,000 students across North Carolina.”

-- WOBX Staff

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board agreed Tuesday that it needs more data and a clearer sense of purpose to do the comprehensive review of student assignment that board policy calls for every six years. The discussion came almost two years after CMS officials started talking about the latest round, and after massive turnover in leadership. Members said among the tasks facing them is defining exactly what they’re reviewing and what they mean by “comprehensive.” “Me as an individual board member, I don’t have a clear picture still … of what ‘comprehensive’ means. So I feel like we’re kind of running this on a hamster wheel a little bit,” said Vice Chair Stephanie Sneed, one of five new members elected in November. Student assignment involves redrawing boundaries, revising magnet programs and talking about school segregation and housing patterns — and it’s consistently one of the most controversial things any school board can do. To avoid constant turmoil, the CMS board voted in 2011 to get it all done at once with a big student assignment review every six years.

-- Ann Doss Helms

GREENVILLE, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - Greenville County is growing and so is the number of students attending South Carolina’s largest school district. On Tuesday, the Greenville County School Board voted to unanimously update the Long-Range Facilities Plan and Capitol Improvement Program, which helps guide the district on when, where, and what to build. “We review it, and we revise it annually so that we’re constantly watching growth patterns to make sure, again, that we’re staying just ahead of growth in the county,” said GCS Superintendent Dr. Burke Royster. Eleven projects, ranging from brand new buildings to renovations to additions to schools, are having their timelines moved up in the update. data the district has collected projects the number of students in elementary and high schools will increase over the next five years.

-- Zach Prelutsky

Schools across the country are being asked to take part in a huge citizen science project to help monitor and evaluate the quality of the air in our classrooms.
It is hoped more than 1,500 schools will sign up to SAMHE (Schools’ Air quality Monitoring for Health and Education) and help provide important data to scientists studying the quality of classroom air. 
It is expected to be the biggest study of air quality in schools anywhere in the world.
Experiments
SAMHE schools will get a free high-spec air quality monitor that measures carbon dioxide (CO2), total volatile organic compounds (TVOCs), particulate matter (PM), temperature and relative humidity. 
Through the SAMHE Web App, teachers and pupils can view the data in a range of interactive chart and graph formats and see how air quality changes over the course of hours, days or weeks and months.
 

-- Alistair Keely

Thirty of 37 New Brunswick schools that had peak carbon dioxide readings above the "desirable" level during air quality testing more than a year ago still lack proper ventilation systems, data quietly released by the Department of Education reveals. Among them is a school that had a peak more than double the targeted maximum of 1,500 parts per million, and another that also had an overall average above that peak limit. Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is commonly created indoors when people exhale. It's used as a proxy to measure air quality and the rate at which air is being renewed, which can contribute to the transmission of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses, according to experts. Infection control epidemiologist Colin Furness contends carbon dioxide levels should be kept below 800 to 1,000 ppm and describes the test results as a "public health crisis." "Let's be clear, the CO2 readings are a measure of how much of other people's exhalations you are breathing in. And I just, you know, I really want the 'ick' factor to sink in," he said. "This is not what we should have anywhere — particularly schools. … What could be more important than child health?"

-- Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon

As heavy storms keep pounding California with torrential rains and a record Sierra snowpack is poised to melt and send rivers surging over their banks, more than a fifth of the state’s 10,000 K-12 schools are at a high or moderate risk of flooding, an analysis of federal data by EdSource shows. Schools in flood-prone areas, in some cases protected by aging, weakened levees with poor safety ratings, face possible floods similar to those that have already swept through schools in Alameda, Merced and Monterey counties this year, causing millions of dollars in damages, Federal Emergency Management Agency data shows. Flooding in the Tulare and the San Joaquin basins in the Central Valley in the months ahead “is inevitable,” Jeffrey Mount, a geomorphologist and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California who studies flood and water management, told EdSource in an interview. “We’re looking at a pretty epic spring in those places. We’re really going to see some considerable hardship in these small rural communities once this snow begins to melt,” he said. He urged local communities and public agencies like school districts to start planning now.

-- THOMAS PEELE, EMMA GALLEGOS, AND DANIEL J. WILLIS

The process of changing school boundaries for DC Public Schools (DCPS) is about to begin. On March 21 the Mayor’s office announced the launch of the Boundary and Student Assignment Study 2023, or Boundary Study, through the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME). The study will review boundaries and feeder patterns and District-wide public school student assignment policies. It’s the first update to the Boundary Study since 2013-2014, when DC undertook its first comprehensive review of boundaries in 40 years. DME is running a Master Facilities Plan study at the same time and both studies will share foundational information. Any potential boundary modifications and feeder recommendations would take effect no sooner than School Year 2025-26, i.e. August of 2025. “We are embarking on a city-wide planning process that will provide strategic, data-informed recommendations to ensure more students have access to great schools and facilities that meet their needs,” Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn. The process will be essential toward the ongoing work to not only recover from the pandemic, but to continue efforts to close the opportunity gap, Kihn added. “We know that residents will have strong thoughts and feedback, and we look forward to engaging directly with families, educators, and stakeholders over the coming weeks and months,” he said.

-- Elizabeth O'Gorek

As if crumbling ceilings and rat infestations weren’t enough for San Francisco’s public schools to deal with, one middle school was recently found to have lead and arsenic in its water. These structural and maintenance issues have grown so dire that the district estimated a comprehensive fix would cost at least $1.7 billion.  In spite of visibly aging buildings and rodents on the grounds, routine state-mandated facilities inspections rated numerous SF schools as either “exemplary” or “good” between 2019 and 2021. Peering into San Francisco Unified School District’s own data, however, reveals that the condition of dozens of schools changed dramatically in a short period, and the district-hired inspector who evaluated them did so on a truncated timeline, calling into question accuracy of the district-mandated inspection reports. In 2022, a different building inspection survey run by Vanderweil Facility Advisors found that many of those facilities once rated “above average” on School Accountability Report Cards (SARCs) are suddenly listed as being in “poor” or “fair” condition—and not just a handful, either. At least 25 school sites received lower facilities ratings, when comparing older SARC surveys with more recent Vanderweil findings. Many schools are in low-income neighborhoods serving students of color.

-- Liz Lindqwister, Julie Zigoris

When Carlotta Berry viewed two TikTok videos of students giving a tour of their affluent high school less than 45 minutes away from her home in Avon, Indiana, she was speechless. 
The video, posted earlier this month and which has since gone viral, shows Carmel High School students showing off their sprawling school’s vast amenities — which include a recording studio, a 10,000-seat stadium, a café and a planetarium.
But when the video kept appearing on her time line, Berry, who originally planned on keeping her thoughts to herself, decided to post a response, pointing out the lack of diversity of the students in the video and the inequality of resources for neighboring schools in the region, like Avon High School, which her daughter attends.
“I think that was the most appalling part to me. … At what point do you say, ‘Let me stop throwing money at this high school and consider the other schools in the area,” Berry told NBC News. “If you’ve got a natatorium and three cafeterias, can we get all the schools within a 20-mile radius of the school to have one cafeteria? One gym?”
About 17% of students are Black, and 62% are white at Avon, which is in a suburb west of Indianapolis. At Carmel High School, which is in a suburb north of Indianapolis, more than 70% of students who attend the school are white and 3.6% are Black. Meanwhile, the median household income in Avon is $92,684 compared with Carmel, where the average is $119,772, according to data from the U.S. Census.
 

-- Claretta Bellamy

New Jersey has some of the most solar powered schools in the U.S., according to data from Generation 180, a nonprofit organization that compiles data on clean energy
At least 662 New Jersey schools have installed solar panels as of 2022, the data showed. Only California, with 2,819 schools with solar had more.
“California and New Jersey together account for more than HALF of the solar capacity installed on nationwide K-12 schools,” Tish Tablan, program director at Generation 180 told NJ Advance Media in an email.
From 2018 to 2022, solar installations in New Jersey K-12 schools has grown by nearly 50 percent, Tablan said.
Of the schools who’ve chosen to add solar, 59 percent have a higher numbers of children from low-income families, Tablan said.
Newark Public School district started installing solar panels at some of its schools in 2021. At that time, the federal Infrastructure Recovery Act solar incentives were not yet available, according to Rodney Williams, director of sustainability for the district.

-- Staff Writer

Not far from the intersection of Routes 9 and 192 in Wesley, you’ll come to a winding dirt road that disappears into a dense forest. Follow it and you’ll find yourself in what might feel like an episode of Little House on the Prairie. Deep in the woods, surrounded by nothing except blue skies above the whining pines, is the town’s humble schoolhouse. One class. One teacher. Four students.  Yet, remarkably, just like the TV episode when the fictional town of Walnut Grove was leveled and all that remained was its little one-room schoolhouse, Wesley’s little school is still standing — despite several contentious battles over the years to close its doors for good.  “The school is all we have left,” said former student, parent, and resident Julie Smith. Choking back tears she added, “We wouldn’t have a community, we’d lose it.” Last March, the three-member Wesley school board made the controversial decision to close the school after watching enrollment plummet from an historic high of about 25 students in its heyday. Once a thriving logging town of 5,000, all that remains is one school, a convenience store, a church, a museum, a Wyman’s storage facility and 114 residents. Nonetheless, the sharply divided community reversed the board’s decision at a public referendum in May, voting 39 to 24 in favor of saving the town’s only school, despite an enrollment at that time of merely eight students.  So the school reopened in the fall — by then with only four students. “You just don’t know what the magic number is enrollment-wise before they close it,” said the school principal, Mitchell Look. Wesley isn’t the only town facing the tough choice of whether to close its struggling school and send students to neighboring schools. According to Maine Department of Education data released this week, of Washington County’s 34 schools, 20 have enrollments below 100 students, including two high schools. Ten schools have enrollments under 50. The number of low enrollment schools in both categories is up from the previous year.

-- JOYCE KRYSZAK

More than half the energy used in K-12 schools goes toward heating and cooling buildings. And more than 60 percent of school HVAC systems’ energy use is tied to on-site burning fossil fuels, the primary driver of climate change.
All told, emissions from HVAC systems in schools each year roughly equal that of 5 million gas-powered cars, and imposes on society at least $2 billion in costs.
These are among the takeaways from a new report published Thursday by sustainability nonprofits RMI (Rocky Mountain Institute) and UndauntedK12. The report synthesizes federal data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and other sources to highlight K-12 schools’ substantial carbon footprint, and outlines how schools can reduce that impact by prioritizing energy efficiency.
And one way to do that, the report argues, may be to take advantage of funding opportunities available now to install HVAC systems powered by electric heat pumps.
Schools’ contributions to climate change are drawing greater scrutiny as the planet continues to heat up and governments around the world are slowly grinding into action to reverse its most devastating effects. HVAC systems have also entered the spotlight during the pandemic because of their role in preventing the spread of infectious disease.
Heating and cooling are among the biggest drivers of schools’ energy output, according to the report. Outdoor temperatures are becoming more extreme in both directions, which will only increase the pressure on schools’ HVAC systems—and hamper students’ learning experiences—in the coming years.
Right now, only roughly a quarter of schools use electricity for heating, and roughly one in 10 schools currently use heat pumps for heating and cooling, according to the report’s analysis of federal survey data.
 

-- Mark Lieberman

The Hoover school board and city of Hoover in 2023 plan to embark on at least $40 million worth of capital projects, officials said. The timelines and costs for capital projects are very fluid, so the dollar amount is subject to change and does not include projects for which costs were not yet known. School projects
The most expensive project the two entities have going this year is a $16.5 million performing arts center the school system is building at Hoover High. The 36,000-square-foot facility is being built right next to the new band room at Hoover High and will seat 940 people in the new auditorium, compared to the current 270-seat theater. School officials broke ground on the project at the end of September, and Blalock Building Co. expects the job to take 16 to 17 months to complete. Meanwhile, plans for a 10-classroom addition at Bluff Park Elementary School have been put on hold. Superintendent Dee Fowler said the school has experienced an unexpected decline in enrollment. The 10-classroom addition remains in the school system’s five-year plan, and money ($4.5 million) is still allocated for it, but “we will continue to gather enrollment data and monitor,” Fowler said. Another project put on hold is an estimated $2 million worth of upgrades to the bathrooms and concession stands at the on-campus football stadium at Hoover High. This project had been slated for fiscal 2023 when there was some talk of Hoover High moving its varsity football games away from Hoover Metropolitan Stadium and back on the school campus.

-- JON ANDERSON

It’s mid-November and Parr Elementary School in Arvada is lacking its typical upbeat atmosphere.
“You walk into these buildings, and you can feel it—there’s this air of sad,” said Kaylie Weese, a mother to four kids in the school and president of the parent-teacher association. 
On Nov. 10, Jeffco Public Schools announced that Parr and 15 other elementary schools would close and consolidate with other district schools. The decision came after a pair of elementary schools were abruptly shuttered over the previous two years. 
Weese knew that Parr Elementary might be on the chopping block before the district released its list of recommended closures in August. She has seen staff pulling extra duty — taking on breakfast and lunch duty or covering for teachers who are out. One of her daughters is in a combined kindergarten-first grade classroom. Her second grader is in a classroom with 25 kids; she regularly tells her mom that she has trouble learning because it’s too loud. (The school’s target class size for grades K-3 is 18-24 students; the Colorado public primary school average was estimated at 22.8 in the National Center for Education Statistics’ most recent data).
“I understand that they had to make a hard decision. I understand it’s not really good for anybody,” Weese said. “I see why [the school closure] is necessary because I see my kids struggling with it.” 
 

-- Daliah Singer

Meg Tarpey and her younger sister survived the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School 10 years ago, then watched the site of that massacre be demolished and a new school built in its place. In 2016, Tarpey, her sister and their mother visited the new building for the first time along with a comfort dog. Sandy Hook had been reimagined, with community input, incorporating a footbridge leading to the entrance of the school, a gate surrounding the campus and floor-to-ceiling windows for easy views of anyone approaching the school. “That day was really hard, because in a way I felt like they’re trying to get rid of what happened, like moving on from it,” said Tarpey, who was in third grade, and her sister in first, when the shooter with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle blasted into their Newtown, Connecticut, school.  Years later, Tarpey, now 18 and speaking in one of her first interviews with media since the Dec. 14, 2012, killings, said she's come to realize visiting the new site gave her back a piece of herself. “There’s an aspect of it that is really beautiful,” she said, “making something beautiful from tragedy.”  Since the 26 deaths at Sandy Hook, at least a dozen schools, from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, have been the site of mass shootings or killings, according to a USA TODAY, Associated Press and Northwestern University database. A compendium of guidance has been developed on constructing schools to prevent such killings. Yet no national database tracks remodeled or new buildings that incorporate school safety features. But many experts suggest the changes are creating a system of haves and have nots, where many school districts, particularly those in low-income neighborhoods of color, are left exposed, unable to afford significant upgrades. In addition, these changes may only slow someone intent on killing others and are unlikely to stop them altogether.

-- Kayla Jimenez and Alia Wong

By the time students poured back into schools this fall, the most disruptive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to have finally receded. But the lingering effects on children and learning are unfortunately still very much with us. 
New data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that the pandemic erased more than two decades of progress in reading and math for 9-year-old students. The effect was most profound for students from low-income communities—exacerbating the pre-pandemic achievement gap between those students and their higher-income peers.  
​​​Outside of school, the pandemic also magnified long-standing geographic and racial inequities in economic opportunity and overall health and well-being. A 2020 report from the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) found that approximately 78% of high-poverty neighborhoods in the U.S.—communities of color in particular—were highly vulnerable to the pandemic’s economic impacts, including loss of jobs and income, compared to just 15% of low-poverty neighborhoods.  
Federal relief funding is helping states and localities address these challenges. Large cities and counties have committed a significant amount of their State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds toward projects in economically disadvantaged communities. And according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, over $9 billion has been allocated for K-12 education and related purposes, including after-school programs and programs for students’ emotional and mental health needs.  
But money alone isn’t enough. Now is the time for local leaders to not only invest more in families and communities, but to invest differently. Given the intricate relationship between neighborhood well-being and school performance, championing and investing in community schools—a model focused on leveraging and coordinating the resources and voices of the entire community to support a thriving educational environment—could be one of the best ways for mayors and other local officials to confront both types of challenges.  
 

-- Jennifer S. Vey and Juanita Morales

According to state data related to school construction needs, Grayson, Franklin City, Martinsville, Bristol and Petersburg are the most financially strapped localities in Virginia. The five have fiscal stress ratings of around 107. By contrast, many divisions in the more affluent Northern Virginia have scores of around 90.The state average is set at 100. A school division’s financial situation is one of the major factors state officials consider in determining whether to provide a loan to help cover the costs of repairing and replacing aging buildings. More than half of all school buildings in Virginia are greater than 50 years old, according to a June 2021 presentation to the Commission on School Construction and Modernization.  Some common needs among school divisions are roof repairs and replacements, as well as safety upgrades and fixes for electrical and plumbing issues. Additionally, the June report found 19% of schools failed to meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, with estimated compliance costs totaling more than $204 million. The biennial budget signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin this August put $400 million into the state’s Literary Fund to be loaned out to local school divisions for construction projects at lower interest rates than previously allowed by law. However, some districts say the state’s criteria for those loans, which include the division’s ability to pay back the loan, has deterred them from seeking such assistance.

-- NATHANIEL CLINE

Newport News Public Schools has launched a Capital Improvement and Facilities Master Plan Dashboard to increase public visibility and accountability for the school division's capital needs and facilities master plan. The dashboard presents cost and management data for school facilities. It gives the public a one-stop location for capital data for each school (year of construction, total square footage, program capacity and student enrollment). The online tool also identifies major renovation needs, facility conditions, and deferred maintenance costs. The dashboard tracks the school division's progress on key initiatives identified by the NNPS Facilities Master Plan Steering Committee including safety and security enhancements, the replacement of learning cottages, maintenance projects deferred due to the lack of available funding, and computer lab renovations. The dashboard gives users an in-depth, transparent look at facility needs through a variety of visualizations, including maps, charts and graphs.   "The new dashboard is a significant milestone in our long-standing efforts to provide greater transparency and accountability around NNPS school facilities. It provides insight on maintenance needs and the funding needed to support the division's aging facilities," said Dr. George Parker, superintendent of schools.

-- Michelle Price

Children living in impoverished areas are exposed to increased levels of air pollution, which can lead to reduced cognitive abilities down the line.
That’s according to new research published Wednesday in the journal ScienceAdvances. Investigators explored the effects of early exposure to 50 pollutants known or suspected to harm the central nervous system. data from 10,000 U.S. children were included in the analysis. 
“Our findings suggest that children in poor neighborhoods are—disproportionately and with alarming frequency—poisoned by their environments from the moment they take their first breaths,” researchers wrote.
All children were born around 2001 and followed by researchers until they entered kindergarten. Researchers then assessed their early reading and math skills and compared findings based on neighborhood socioeconomic status and air pollution concentrations. 
Exposure to pollutants during infancy reduced cognitive abilities measured at age 4 by about one-tenth of a standard deviation — equivalent to the learning loss that would typically occur after one month of missed elementary school.
Around one-third of the effect is a result of air quality disparities, while exposure to particulate matter, traffic-related pollutants, industrial-source heavy metals and several petrochemicals may have the most impact on cognitive abilities in early childhood. However, due to the difficulty of singling out effects of individual toxins, researchers urged caution when discussing the impacts of specific pollutants.
Although previous research has detailed an association between growing up in a poor neighborhood and diminished cognitive abilities and lower levels of educational attainment, authors set out to understand the mechanisms behind these effects. 
Major roadways and other infrastructure are more likely to be located in, near or upwind of poor neighborhoods, disproportionately exposing these residents to air pollutants that can harm the central nervous system, they wrote. 
 

-- Gianna Melillo

The D.C. agency responsible for maintenance and repairs in school buildings and other government property has “multiple failures” in the way it manages work orders, according to a report from the city’s auditor.
The report, released Monday, described the Department of General Services’ use of a management system that is supposed to help it handle service requests. But auditors said the system has “serious shortcomings” — including incomplete data on work order costs, inconsistent photo documentation of repairs and a failure to provide requesters with an estimated completion date.
Auditors also said the agency fails to meet response times. Routine work orders must be completed within 45 days, but it takes DGS an average of 55 days to finish or close requests, according to data from more than 48,000 work orders. Sixty-two percent of work orders considered to be “high priority” were not finished within the mandatory 10 days, according to the report.
 

-- Lauren Lumpkin

On Nov. 14, the Center for Green Schools published new findings about how school districts are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically as it relates to investing federal relief funds to manage air quality and upgrade facilities. The American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds (ARP-ESSER or ESSER III) represented an unprecedented federal investment in K–12 schools and a lifeline over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the case of school facilities. The funding offered school systems a chance to address a critical backlog of deferred maintenance, needed equipment and infrastructure repairs, as well as upgrades to outdated building systems to improve health, air quality and comfort. The report looks at how school districts across the country plan to invest that federal aid, with a focus on planned funding for large-scale facilities related work. The analysis includes qualitative interviews with three school district facilities personnel and a quantitative analysis based on a data set of 5,004 school districts’ ESSER-III spending plans by the Burbio data service. The data set contained information from school districts from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, representing approximately 74% of public school students and roughly $83.1 billion in ESSER III funds. Access to the data set was generously supported by Carrier. Major findings include:

-- Phoebe Beierle

Lead exposure during childhood may lead to reduced cognitive abilities in later life, meaning people experience symptoms of dementia sooner, data suggest.
The study, one of the first to investigate the decades-long consequences of lead poisoning, suggests countries could face an explosion of people seeking support for dementia as individuals who were exposed to high lead levels during early life progress into old age.
“In the US, and I would imagine the UK, the prime years when children were exposed to the most lead was in the 1960s and 70s. That’s when the most leaded gasoline was getting used, lead paint was still common, and municipal water systems hadn’t done much to clean up their lead,” said Prof John Robert Warren at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who was involved in the research.
“Those children who are now in their 40s, 50s and early 60s, will soon be entering the time of life when cognitive impairment and dementia are really common. So there’s this coming wave, potentially, of problems for the people who were most exposed.”
Although scientists have long known that children and adults who are exposed to lead have poorer cognitive and educational outcomes, few studies have investigated the longer-term consequences.
 

-- Linda Geddes

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.
 

-- Christina Zdanowicz and Holly Yan,

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.”
 

-- Cara Buckley

Some D.C. public school students may return next week to buildings that lack working heating and cooling systems. Additionally, some students may be unable to return at all to classes due to missing key vaccination requirements. Why it matters: DCPS and DC Health were required to report on the readiness status of schools by Aug. 19, including the condition of HVAC units and air quality monitors, and the routine pediatric immunization rates of children, per the Back to School Safely Emergency Act of 2022. Children across the nation have fallen behind on their routine vaccinations, which include shots that prevent measles, mumps, chickenpox, and polio. D.C. students ages 12 and up are also required to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Yes, but: On Monday, D.C Council chair Phil Mendelson tweeted that the Department of General Services still hadn’t sent the required documents on school readiness. A spokesperson for Mendelson told Axios that the office will meet with DGS on Thursday. What’s happening: The office of Ward 4 council member Janeese Lewis George, who co-authored the emergency legislation, says it has received some, but not all of the required readiness data.

-- Chelsea Cirruzzo

As school districts and charter schools begin spending down an unprecedented infusion of federal Covid-relief aid, it looks like nearly $10 billion could go toward a single priority: improving heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. Recent stories in The Wall Street Journal and Kaiser Health News underscore how school districts are scrambling to spend the federal aid on these and other capital projects. While some schools are simply adding new filters, others plan to replace aging systems that haven’t worked well for years. These repairs can influence how students learn, ensuring classrooms aren't too hot or too cold, and removing conditions that can make students and teachers sick. As I told KHN’s Liz Szabo, “If you look at the research, it shows that a school’s literal climate — the heat, the mold, the humidity — directly affects learning.” FutureEd’s analysis of spending plans compiled by the Burbio data-services firm of 5,000-plus school districts serving 74 percent of the nation’s public school students shows that about half of the districts plan HVAC projects. Nearly a third of districts expect to spend on repairs to prevent illness, a broad category that includes lead and asbestos abatement, as well as mold and mildew prevention.

-- Phyllis W. Jordan

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — As enrollment rates continue to drop at Grand Rapids Public Schools (GRPS), the district is now considering a restructuring plan that could include closing and consolidating some schools.
On Monday, the Grand Rapids Public Schools Board of Education met for a special work session begin work on a plan to optimize its operations in response to the declining enrollment.
The most recent enrollment data from 2020 shows 14,314 students enrolled in the district, a 26% decrease from the 19,364 enrolled students in 2008.
That lower enrollment has pushed building utilization in the district to approximately 53%, which is significantly less than the 85% recommended by the state.
Through a facility demand summary conducted by a consulting firm the district estimates that of their 42 facilities, only 21 are considered being essential to operations based on enrollment and capacity levels.
During the meeting, GRPS leaders discussed possible actions they could take to make all schools in the district viable options across the district. In addition, they want the process to be transparent, while also building a culture of collaboration with the district's stakeholders.
The district is calling this their "Facilities Master Plan," which will start to take form after planned town hall meetings with the community later this fall.
 

-- Steven Bohner

Conversations about “hardening” schools resurface after every mass school shooting. And so do questions about how the shooters manage to get into classrooms.
There have been 27 school shootings in 2022 that resulted in injuries or deaths, according to the Education Week school shooting tracker, and 119 since 2018, when Education Week began tracking such incidents.
To prevent school shootings from happening, some security experts and educators suggest adding more physical security measures, such as surveillance cameras, metal detectors, bulletproof glass, and door-locking systems, as well as adding more law enforcement and armed staff in schools.
On the surface, it would seem like locking classroom doors would be one of the simplest and easiest ways to secure classrooms. But about 1 in 4 public schools in the United States lack classroom doors that can be locked from the inside, according to the most recent data from the National Center on Education Statistics from the 2019-20 school year.
Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas, where a shooter killed 21 people in May, had problems with locks on both interior classroom doors and entrances and exits to the school building, according to a report from a special committee of the Texas legislature. The building had a classroom door system that required teachers to lock their doors from the outside using a key to secure their classrooms when they weren’t in them. Teachers often propped the doors open or instructed substitute teachers to do so if they did not have keys for the locks, which were limited and no longer in production.
 

-- Lauraine Langreo

Modern school buildings support student achievement. But Washington’s reliance on local voter-approved funding for public school building projects has left some students relegated to buildings that are outdated, cramped and potentially unsafe. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal wants to change that. He intends to ask state lawmakers to revamp the state’s Common School Construction Account, earmarking those public-land revenues for cash-strapped rural schools. More details are forthcoming, but on its face it’s a good idea. It could bring the state closer to resolving the systemic funding inequities between districts with different tax bases. The funds, from timber sales and other revenues generated on Common School trust lands, are now used to augment locally funded school remodeling and construction projects. But historically, growing urban and suburban school districts have tapped a disproportionate amount of that money, even though the rural communities where the revenues are generated have a harder time raising local funds. About 90 percent of public school construction and renovation is funded through local bonds and levies, Reykdal said. Revenues from public lands are a dwindling supplement to those local dollars. They accounted for just 1.38 percent of the total state and local funds for K-12 schools’ capital expenditures in fiscal year 2021, down from more than 3.3 percent a decade ago, according to Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction data.

-- Seattle Times Writer

Rising temperatures due to climate change are causing more than just uncomfortably hot days across the United States. These high temperatures are placing serious stress on critical infrastructure such as water supplies, airports, roads and bridges. One category of critical infrastructure being severely affected is the nation’s K-12 schools. Ideally, the nation’s more than 90,000 public K-12 schools, which serve over 50 million students, should protect children from the sometimes dangerous elements of the outdoors such as severe storms or extreme temperatures. But since so many of America’s schools are old and dilapidated, it’s the school buildings themselves that need protection – or at least to be updated for the 21st century. Twenty-eight percent of the nation’s public schools were built from 1950 through 1969, federal data shows, while just 10% were built in 1985 or later. As a researcher who studies the impact of climate change, I have measured its effects on infrastructure and health for over a decade. During that time, I’ve seen little attention focused on the effects of climate change on public schools. Since 2019, climate scientist Sverre LeRoy, at the Center for Climate Integrity, and I have worked to determine if the nation’s schools are prepared for the heat waves on the approaching horizon.

-- Paul Chinowsky

There has been a substantial drop in the number of young children living in cities, portending even more punishing enrollment losses in urban schools across the country. That’s the jarring message of a new analysis examining population trends since the pandemic hit.  Cities across the country have already lost enrollment in their public schools, and this decline may well continue and even hasten in coming years. That might mean that urban districts face financial pressure to lay off teachers and close schools. “The population data suggests that the shoe has yet to drop for K-12 school districts,” wrote researchers with the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan economic policy organization. “Today’s smaller crop of children under five will translate to lower K-12 enrollment in years to come.” Using recent U.S. Census data, researchers Adam Ozimek and Connor O’Brien show that large urban counties were already seeing fewer young children before the pandemic hit — and then it got worse. Between the middle of 2020 and 2021, large urban areas experienced a 3.7% decline in children under 5 and a 1.1% dip in children between 5 and 17. 

-- Matt Barnum

The Maryland Energy Administration (MEA) granted awards to seven Maryland public school districts through its Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22) Decarbonizing Public Schools program, totaling more than $700,000. The grants will help finance projects “reducing greenhouse gas emissions and overall lifecycle costs while planning the development of high-performance schools.” Two categories of projects were awarded: energy data management and net zero energy school planning.

-- Brianna January

The rickety outdoor stairs leading to the second floor of Hilo Intermediate School are loosely blocked off by yellow caution tape. Wood chipped off the building’s exterior earlier this year, threatening nearby students.
Problems at the nearly century-old Big Island school are on a long list of statewide repair projects that are part of a growing backlog as the Department of Education’s facilities maintenance team struggles to keep aging buildings safely in operation.
Aaron Kubo, a social studies teacher at the school, also said tile pieces have fallen from the ceiling indoors in past years.
“With these repairs, if they’re not addressed somebody is going to get hurt,” Kubo said. “Safety should be on the forefront of our minds and taking care of those who are our future should be a priority.”
The DOE’s facilities maintenance branch is responsible for 4,425 buildings statewide, which is more than 20 million square feet of space, according to the department’s figures. It’s kept busy as some 20% of Hawaii’s 257 public schools are more than 100 years old and the average age of school buildings in the islands is 72.
The department has long been criticized for its hefty repair and maintenance backlogs, and data shows not much has changed.
A backlog of more than 4,600 repair projects with an estimated cost of $1.4 billion is a sharp increase from 3,800 backlogged projects in 2018.
 

-- Cassie Ordonio

As enrollment has increased in Cape Henlopen School District, so has a call for equity in the funding of major school construction and renovation projects to house the growing numbers of students. Since Beacon and Mariner middle schools opened in 2003, district enrollment has grown by more than 2,000 students, with the biggest increases occurring in the last 10 years, according to data provided by Assistant Superintendent Jenny Nauman.  In 2011, the student population was 4,845. As of Sept. 30, 2021, 6,078 students were enrolled, and as of May 19 enrollment increased to 6,265 students. Along with this growth has come a burgeoning need for new schools. The Cape district has churned out a school a year for six years for a total construction cost of $212 million, according to data provided by Cape Director of Capital Projects Brian Bassett. Love Creek Elementary opened in 2017 and cost $30 million; H.O. Brittingham Elementary opened in 2018 and cost $32 million, including demolition costs; and Rehoboth Elementary opened in 2019 and cost $33 million.

-- Ellen Driscoll

The Tennessee Comptroller’s Office has released a report detailing the amount and types of capital spending for local school districts and an overview of the methods districts and local governments use to pay for capital and debt spending. Spending for public school capital projects by both local school districts and their county and city governments totaled an estimated $2 billion in fiscal year 2019-20, including spending for land; building construction and renovation; related facilities like parking lots and athletic fields; as well as equipment like desks, chairs, playground equipment, and buses. The bulk of capital spending on K-12 school facilities, and any related debt payments on loans, is paid from local revenues, including revenues from bonds and notes issued by local governments, adequate facilities taxes, and dedicated property taxes. The state supports capital spending for schools primarily through the state’s share of Basic Education Program (BEP) funding for several components related to capital needs. State dollars allocated in fiscal year 2019-20 totaled $503 million for the BEP’s capital outlay, equipment, and technology components. (The BEP’s capital outlay component will be folded into the newly-approved Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) base funding formula, which will be implemented in school year 2023-24. Equipment and technology components are to be split between TISA’s base, weighted, and direct funding components.) The report reviews the factors that can increase capital spending for schools, including student enrollment growth, classroom size limit, the age and quality of school buildings, and the cost of building materials and labor. The report’s focus on spending and revenue data from 2019-20 captures more typical spending patterns that occurred mainly before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the large injections of federal emergency relief funds known as ESSER.

-- Staff Writer

As the Philadelphia district aims to tell the public how it is managing its aging infrastructure, parents and community leaders remain concerned about possible school closures, lack of enrollment data, and transparency when it comes to school building maintenance and safety. The district is in the middle of public engagement about its long-term plan to improve school facilities. During this round of talks, which will take place over Zoom, the district’s facilities planning team is providing an overview of the process, including project goals and data collected from the district. These sessions began May 10 and are open to the public. Additional sessions are scheduled for May 18, 19, 24, and 25. To participate, residents can register online.  In addition, as part of that plan, all district school buildings will be evaluated over the next 12 months, with the goal of creating recommendations for each building. To identify problems with school buildings and identify recommendations to address them, the district also launched a $1.3 million Facilities Planning Process last month. School officials unveiled a website with an interactive map that the community could use to access information about each school building’s condition, as well as facility assessments conducted by third-party industry professionals. 

-- Johann Calhoun

The entrance to Washington, D.C.’s newest elementary school building leads right to an open-space library painted in blue, green and yellow, with a makerspace that hangs above like a treehouse. On the side, a massive touchscreen invites students to tap away at an interactive dashboard with real-time data detailing how the building is performing for a new climate reality.
“Students can see bar charts of how much energy their building is generating and consuming — for the kitchen, for the mechanical systems, and for the lights,” says Juan Guarin, a sustainability expert at the architecture firm Perkins Eastman. “We also try to use it to teach topics like climate change, social and environmental justice, and human health.”
Guarin is part of the team behind John Lewis Elementary School and the Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, the district’s first net-zero schools — meaning they are supposed to eventually consume only as much energy as they generate on-site annually. 
Both have sustainability features that prioritize natural lighting and fresh air flow, with expansive windows and a beefed-up ventilation system. Geothermal wells beneath the playground provide heating and cooling. Cafeteria kitchens use electric rather than gas stoves. The city is also in the process of contracting with a solar developer to install photovoltaic panels throughout the rooftops, which will help offset energy use. 
The new facilities are part of D.C.’s ongoing school modernization effort funded through the city’s Capital Improvement Plan, and their debut this school year comes as the U.S. is increasingly targeting schools for greening efforts.
 

-- Linda Poon

When Muriel E. Bowser (D) first ran for mayor in 2014, she vowed to be the “education mayor.” She would transform the city’s lowest-performing schools and tackle a problem that has long vexed District leaders: middle schools. But seven years later, as she runs for a third term, her promises are still unfulfilled in the city’s poorest wards. While she has poured more money into these schools, families continue to abandon the system after elementary school, choosing charter schools and campuses in wealthier areas over their assigned neighborhood schools. The middle schools serving the most low-income populations are struggling, and the challenges are most acute at the five middle schools east of the Anacostia River in Wards 7 and 8, according to an analysis of city data and interviews with more than 20 parents and education leaders. Despite funding schools at unprecedented levels, the poor reputations of the five campuses in these wards persist — and standardized test scores show academic outcomes are still lagging far behind city averages.

-- Perry Stein

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — A top administrator in Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney’s office asked the city’s independent auditor in January to consider making changes to a 2020 audit on school construction costs. Nearly two months after the auditor declined, the city administrator sent him a text saying that the audit was “being used to beat us over the head on false premises.” The messages that Richmond’s Chief Administrative Officer Lincoln Saunders sent to the city’s independent auditor Louis Lassiter, revealed through a public record request and first reported by Virginia Public Media, came amid debates between Stoney’s administration, the city council and school board over the construction of a new George Wythe High School. The 2020 audit showed that Richmond had higher construction costs for two elementary schools compared to the state average and ones in Chesterfield County. Saunders sent Lassiter an email on Jan. 26, more than two years after the audit was released, asking if his team would consider updating their findings by including other schools in the area using new data from the Virginia Department of Education.

-- Dean Mirshahi

TREASURE VALLEY, Idaho — It's no secret that Idaho is growing – bringing hordes of new families to the Treasure Valley and pushing some school facilities to their limit.
U.S. Census data from 2020 reported a 17.3% increase in the Idaho population since 2010. Much of the growth is in Treasure Valley, Ada County, and the cities of Star and Meridian.
Now, schools must figure out how to accommodate the new wave of students while tending to the current infrastructure.
taxpayers
By: Madison HardyPosted at 9:38 AM, Apr 14, 2022 and last updated 11:44 AM, Apr 14, 2022
TREASURE VALLEY, Idaho — It's no secret that Idaho is growing – bringing hordes of new families to the Treasure Valley and pushing some school facilities to their limit.
U.S. Census data from 2020 reported a 17.3% increase in the Idaho population since 2010. Much of the growth is in Treasure Valley, Ada County, and the cities of Star and Meridian.
Now, schools must figure out how to accommodate the new wave of students while tending to the current infrastructure.
Recent Stories from kivitv.com
Scott Dorval's Idaho News 6 Forecast - Tuesday 5/3/22
A draft copy of the Nampa School District Facilities Master Plan states that 11 – of the approximately 30 – district buildings are in "critical" condition. Fourteen, the report reads, are considered "poor."
NSD executive director of operations, Peter Jurhs, said a facility FCI score (Facilities Condition Index) measures the level of risk if maintenance is deferred. According to the plan, a building with a more than 30% FCI score was labeled a "critical" condition.
 

-- Madison Hardy

OGDEN — Ogden School District is increasingly turning to renewable energy to power its facilities and save money.
The Ben Lomond High School Athletic Center, which opened in December 2020, is fitted with solar panels and data from the first year of operations shows the shift is paying off, district officials say. data the district recently crunched shows power generated by the panels, located atop the new facility, offset nearly 97% of its power needs in its first year of operation, through November 2021, surpassing the goal of 92%.
“The system saved the district $10,000 in energy costs last summer alone indicating that the investment in solar energy will more than pay for itself in the future,” the district said in a statement.
Placement of the panels represents the extension of a standing Ogden School District energy-efficiency initiative that dates to 2007. The Mound Fort Junior High School Innovation Center, completed in 2019, was the first district facility fitted with solar panels and they were also placed on East Ridge Elementary, which opened last August. They’re to be placed on Polk and Liberty elementary schools, under construction but to open later this year for the 2022-2023 school year.
 

-- Tim Vandenack

A new report released Wednesday by the Vermont Agency of Education highlights the deteriorating conditions of Vermont’s decades-old school buildings — a situation that could force lawmakers and school officials to make difficult decisions in the future. 
That report, compiled by the French inspection and certification company Bureau Veritas, does not show in-depth information about any schools; instead, it is a precursor to a more thorough assessment that has not yet begun. 
But the data “indicate an aging portfolio of key systems across the state of Vermont,” the authors of the report wrote, raising the specter of increased construction and renovation costs in the future.  
With coffers full of federal pandemic aid last year, Vermont’s legislature passed a law directing the state Agency of Education to conduct a statewide study to determine how well the state’s school buildings were holding up. 
Now, the first phase of that study is complete. 
For about the past six months, Bureau Veritas has been gathering information from surveys sent to local school officials around the state. The data represents 305 public schools and 384 school buildings from every district and supervisory union in Vermont.
Those buildings are 61 years old on average, the study found, and have gone an average of 22 years without a major renovation.  
Of those 384 buildings, 196 were known to have hazardous materials present, according to survey results, while officials suspected their presence in another 52 buildings. The report did not specify which hazardous materials officials were asked about. 
Roughly 80 buildings had “Indoor Air Quality Issues” while about 50 had “Fire / Life Safety Issues,” although it’s unclear what those issues were. 
 

-- Peter D'Auria

Nearly 2 million Pennsylvania students spend hours a day in thousands of schools across the state. They breathe air that circulates through the buildings, drink water from hallway fountains, and touch surfaces in spaces from classrooms to restrooms.
Years of surveys, policy research, and media reports from around the state suggest that some of these buildings likely pose health risks to students and staff. Schools are subject to safety, sanitation, and health inspections, but these requirements are handled by a mix of local, state, and federal agencies. Those records aren’t kept in a centralized, statewide database.
This makes it difficult for a family or taxpayer to easily access comprehensive information about whether a school facility is up-to-date on maintenance and inspections, information that is readily available for the state’s hospitals, nursing homes, and even local restaurants.
“It’s fragmented because there’s no requirement for it not to be,” said David Lapp, director of policy research with the Pennsylvania education nonprofit Research for Action.
And while most information can be requested from individual schools or districts, they don’t have an obligation to make those records or reports easy to understand, he added.
“Just like with any other kinds of school records, there’s some things that have to be reported, and there’s some things they don’t have to report, or can even keep from the public.”
 

-- Jamie Martines

About half of Montana schools that had tested their water by mid-February under a new state rule had high levels of lead, according to state data. But the full picture isn’t clear because fewer than half of the state’s school buildings had provided water samples six weeks after the deadline.
For many schools with high lead levels, finding the money to fix the problem will be a challenge. The options aren’t great. They can compete for a dwindling pool of state money, seek federal aid passed last year, or add the repairs to their long lists of capital improvement projects and pay for the work themselves.
“We prioritized emergency needs and then will follow up with the next-most-serious thing,” said Brian Patrick, Great Falls Public Schools’ director of business services and operations. “Obviously, this is something we want to get addressed right away. We want safe water for our kids.”
Lead, a toxic metal long known to cause lasting organ and nervous system damage, can make its way into drinking water through pipes and fixtures. Children are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, which can slow development and cause learning, speech, and behavioral problems. Although federal rules require that community water sources be tested for lead, schools have largely been free from that oversight and can decline to be tested.
 

-- Katheryn Houghton

Key Takeaways
California’s K–12 school facilities require significant new and ongoing investments. Funding for facilities comes mostly from local sources, and depends crucially on local property wealth. The state provides some funding for facilities through the School Facility Program (SFP), which usually requires local matching contributions. Does the SFP promote a more equitable distribution of school capital funding? This report finds: SFP funding has disproportionately benefitted more affluent students and districts. Low-income, English Learner (EL), and Latino students have received less funding than higher-income, non-EL, and white students since 1998. Per student state funding has been highest in the districts with the fewest high-need students. →
Disparities are driven largely by modernization funding—and partially addressed by hardship funding. Higher-wealth and lower-need districts have received more funding for modernization, one of three major SFP programs. Funding for new construction, a second major program, goes mainly to growing districts; it has been higher in lower-wealth districts, but also in districts with fewer high-need students. Funding for both financial and facility-based hardship—the third major program—has been significant enough for higher-need and lower-wealth students and districts to partially address disparities. →
Suburban districts have received the most SFP funding, while funding for rural districts has been “boom or bust.” Suburban districts received the most funding per pupil and are the least likely to have received no funding at all. Most districts that have received no SFP funding are rural. However, higher levels of hardship funding have kept average per student state funding in rural districts comparable to funding per student in cities and towns. →
Districts allocate funding across schools in ways that reduce inequities across districts. Districts target more funding to schools with higher shares of low-income and Latino students. However, within-district allocations generally have a small impact on across-district disparities. This suggests that focusing on which districts receive funding may be more impactful than efforts to influence which schools within districts are targeted for facility improvements. →
State policies could improve the equity and efficiency of facilities funding. Recently proposed changes—including a sliding scale for district contributions keyed to local wealth and/or need, prioritization of facility needs, and greater funding for hardship cases—could help narrow funding inequities. To make it easier for small districts with lower organizational and fiscal capacity to qualify for and receive funding, county offices of education and/or the California Department of Education could provide greater technical assistance. Finally, improving current data on facility conditions would go a long way toward accurately assessing needs and targeting the schools and districts with the greatest need.

-- Julien Lafortune and Niu Gao, Joseph Herrera

The Maryland Energy Administration (MEA) announced the launch of the Decarbonizing Public Schools Pilot Program to expand the capacity of local education agencies (LEA) for managing energy data, reducing operating costs, and for inserting energy performance criteria into capital improvement planning.
The Decarbonizing Public Schools Pilot Program was developed by MEA and the Interagency Commission on School Construction (IAC) to “foster LEAs’ long-term capacities for energy management and net zero energy (NZE) school design and construction, where the total amount of energy used is equal to or less than the amount of renewable energy created.”
Notably, the program provides $2 million in state funding from the Strategic Energy Investment Fund to help local school systems develop and expand their capacity to address ongoing energy challenges and opportunities for controlling costs through data management, as well as adopting cost-effective net zero energy design considerations for public school portfolio planning.
“MEA has been helping make Net Zero Energy schools a reality, having recently supported three projects, including the Holabird and Graceland Park/O’Donnell Heights schools in Baltimore City and Wilde Lake Middle School in Howard County,” said Dr. Mary Beth Tung, Director of MEA. “Early lessons from these projects indicate lifecycle operating costs can be greatly reduced when sound energy management and design principles are incorporated early in project identification and design.”
A total of $2,000,000 is anticipated to be available for distribution to grant participants between AOI.1 and AOI.2. The amount awarded may vary depending on the quantity and quality of applications received.
 

-- Brianna January

About half of Montana schools that had tested their water by mid-February under a new state rule had high levels of lead, according to state data. But the full picture isn’t clear because less than half of the state’s school buildings had provided water samples six weeks after the deadline.
For many schools with high lead levels, finding the money to fix the problem will be a challenge. The options aren’t great. They can compete for a dwindling pool of state money, seek federal aid passed last year, or add the repairs to their long lists of capital improvement projects and pay for the work themselves.
“We prioritized emergency needs and then will follow up with the next-most-serious thing,” said Brian Patrick, Great Falls Public Schools’ director of business services and operations. “Obviously, this is something we want to get addressed right away. We want safe water for our kids.”
Lead, a toxic metal long known to cause lasting organ and nervous system damage, can make its way into drinking water through pipes and fixtures. Children are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, which can slow development and cause learning, speech and behavioral problems. Although federal rules require that community water sources be tested for lead, schools have largely been free from that oversight and can decline to be tested.
 

-- KATHERYN HOUGHTON

On his first tour of Wilde Lake Middle School in Columbia, Christopher Rattay watched a fleet of solar cars whiz up and down the sixth-grade hallway. He would learn from the enthusiastic young operators that they were built for a class project. The new principal knew right away that Maryland’s first net zero energy school would be a wild ride, that the $34-million facility, which opened in 2017, had the potential to be something special, both as a learning laboratory and a model for school construction.
“The [building] itself is gorgeous and contributes to good health and a sense of emotional well-being,” said Rattay, who was struck by the “open spaces and natural light” in the halls, stairwells and classrooms.
“Net zero energy [means] any electricity we use is electricity that we produce, whether it’s our solar panels on the roof, or those on the grounds,” said school resource teacher Doug Spicher. He said the construction plan also called for 112 geothermal wells to heat and cool the building, a large array of light and water sensors and other conservation measures. Sunshades and coatings on the windows decrease the amount of sunlight that penetrates the building so school rooms don’t get sweltering hot or cold, Spicher said.
The new school, completed in 2017, is nearly 50% larger and uses 50% less energy than the building it replaced.
Wilde Lake can also serve 760 students, up from 500 at the previous building. Mariam Abimbola said she was “privileged” to be one of them. Now a junior, she said she made frequent stops at the energy kiosk in the front hall that streamed environmental data in real time.  “[The display] made you look at the electricity we were using, the electricity we were saving,” she said. “Before that we weren’t really conscious of our energy use, that we could really do better, and change our ways, at school and at home.”
 

-- Rosanne Skirble

EPA and indoor air quality experts are pushing ventilation and filtration as a key means to keep kids healthy during the pandemic as other measures to stop the spread of Covid-19 have become increasingly polarized. “The pandemic has provided us with a defining moment on indoor air quality for schools,” said EPA’s Tracy Washington Enger, who works in the agency’s Indoor Environments Division. Enger was speaking during an EPA-hosted webinar that aimed to help school officials at the local level “make the case” to school districts that they should invest in air quality improvements and ventilation, through upgrades to heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems and replacing filters, among other strategies. The training comes as a string of states, including New York, New Jersey and Delaware, have announced they will soon lift mask mandates in schools, putting pressure on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Though CDC Director Rochelle Walensky as recently as this week stressed the importance of “masking in areas of high and substantial transmission,” the agency is reportedly considering updating its guidelines for which metrics states should use when considering lifting mask mandates, and whether such guidelines should still rely as much on case and transmission rates or incorporate more information on hospital capacity data. The changing landscape on masking makes other Covid-19 mitigation measures like improved ventilation and filtration in schools all the more important, according to indoor air experts. “Here we are two years into the pandemic, and what we are starting to hear is a shift in how we are thinking about coronavirus in this nation,” Enger told the webinar. Though she did not directly address mask requirements, Enger said the nation is facing a question of “how we as individuals and institutions will make the shift from a crisis response to a pandemic to living with an endemic disease.”

-- Ariel Wittenberg

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic Atlanta Public Schools (APS) has lost about 2,000 students, according to data presented to the community during the Facilities Master Plan meeting. The district began the process of creating the district’s 18-month Facilities Master Plan with a community meeting on January 25. The plan is made to act as a guide for the district to follow when making decisions about APS owned buildings and sites. The district works with multiple government and private organizations to put the plan together. During the meeting representatives from the Sizemore group presented the data that the district will be using to put together the final Facilities Master Plan. The majority of the losses are occurring at the elementary school level while high schools and charter schools have seen growth in the last two years. Projected kindergarten enrollment numbers play a significant role in the district’s longer term planning. In order to get accurate predictions the district’s consultants look at national and local birth rates and trends to look five years ahead. While the birth rate has been steadily declining, the large drop in enrollment the district experienced last year is not expected to be a long term trend. When it comes to capacity and enrollment numbers the district also has to consider the steady growth of charter schools is expected to plateau. In the coming years the majority of growth is expected to come from new housing developments, the majority of growth will be in the Midtown cluster and some in the Jackson cluster. 

-- Madeline Thigpen

Few would argue there are higher priorities than protecting children from harm. We agree with the need to provide protection for children, and want to see that protection extended to those who work with children in the places where they spend vast amounts of time: schools. Our work to identify and eliminate toxic chemicals in schools has been ongoing for decades, but a big push in recent years has been targeting polychlorinated biphenyls, also known as PCBs. While the government banned the manufacture of PCBs in the U.S. in 1979, the chemicals remain in buildings that were constructed or renovated before or around that date. PCBs are a group of human-made compounds that contaminate air, water, land, and sediments. They last for decades in the environment, building up in the food chain, causing toxic effects to the immune, reproductive, nervous, and endocrine systems in people and animals. PCBs also cause cancer in animals and are believed to cause cancer in people. The Plan
In 2014, the Washington Legislature passed a law requiring state agencies to purchase PCB-free products whenever possible. In 2015, we culminated years of research and data with the release of a chemical action plan addressing PCBs. The report made a number of strong recommendations to reduce PCBs in the state, including:

-- Erich Ebel

A new report estimates Idaho’s public K-12 school maintenance backlog to be at least $874 million while the state isn’t enforcing a law requiring districts to report their buildings’ needs. A 2005 Idaho Supreme Court decision found the state legislature failed to meet its constitutional duty to sufficiently fund school buildings. Lawmakers at the time boosted some funding and required districts to regularly submit 10-year maintenance plans, which most schools don’t follow. The report from the Idaho Office of Performance Evaluations released Monday estimates the backlog for school repairs to be at least $874 million to bring them up to a “good” condition. Casey Petti, the analyst who wrote the report, said that figure is likely lower than the real deficit because of the lack of data available. Rep. Steve Berch (D-Boise) said that number is eye-popping, considering lawmakers are on the cusp of passing a historic $600 million tax cut. State economists are forecasting a $1.9 billion surplus this year.

-- James Dawson

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.

-- Lauren Cook

Students, parents, and advocates are calling for the School District of Philadelphia and elected officials to rebuild public school facilities by creating an open, participating plan for fixing environmental health and safety issues.
“In the last four months, we have seen no change in school infrastructure even though the district had more than a year to address the issues in school buildings,” said Ashley Tellez of the Latinx advocacy organization Juntos.
“Our schools deserve a reinvestment because this is where we build our future, where ideas flourish and where minds grow,” she added.
The proposed plan includes: information being transparent and accessible to school communities; data being shared by the city, school district and individual impacted schools; and an independent citywide board, separate from the school district, that will oversee spending priorities, construction progress, and decide on best practices for construction processes and environmental testing.
The plan also asks the school district to create a master facilities plan with input from school community members to rebuild or repair every school, remediate environmental toxins, and reduce each school’s carbon emissions using union labor and minority-owned companies.
 

-- Staff Writer

Atlanta Public Schools is resuming work on its facilities master plan, a document that will guide building decisions over the next decade.
APS halted work on the plan a year ago, citing a need to better understand how the COVID-19 pandemic would impact enrollment forecasts.
Now the district is relaunching the planning effort with a virtual meeting at 6 p.m. Dec. 13. The session will include information about current and projected enrollment data and what those numbers mean for the district’s future building needs.
 

-- Vanessa McCray

There are more than 3,000 empty public school seats in New Orleans, each one costing the district money it doesn’t have, according to data shared at a special school board meeting Thursday morning.
“Based on what we are presenting, we are not looking for [charter] applicants who are going to apply and expect to open a school on a normal timeline,” said district superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr.
Instead, Lewis said their focus will be on “rightsizing” the district, which could include condensing, consolidating and closing schools.
“This work is about our students and the viability of our public school system,” he said.
Lewis described Thursday’s presentation as a preview and said enrollment trends and downsizing strategies will be discussed in greater depth at the board’s January meeting.
Litouri Smith, the district’s chief school accountability officer, gave a brief overview of enrollment trends and said moving forward the focus will be on cutting expenses by eliminating seats, and in some cases, entire facilities to ensure remaining schools have enough resources.
“Currently the district has approximately 20% more seats available than students enrolled,” Smith said. “This percentage of unused seats will grow as enrollment continues to decrease.”
Options the district could look into include working with operators to reconfigure school grade offerings and the number of sections or students each school enrolls per grade. Additionally, Smith and Lewis said there are instances in which the district could ask charter operators to consolidate or close schools.
 

-- Aubri Juhasz

ALBANY, N.Y. (WWTI) — The New York State Education Department is requesting more flexibility in the process for identifying schools needing improvement.
New York State Education Commissioner Betty A. Rosa announced on December 1 that a public comment period has opened on a proposed waiver request to the U.S. Department of Education. This proposal is related to state accountability requirements under the Every Students Success.
Currently, under certain provisions of the federal ESSA, NYSED is required to report school district data from the previous school year, which qualifies them for funding if they are identified as a school for improvement. NYSED is seeking to eliminate accountability indicator requirements to identify these schools as this designation in fall 2022 based on 2021-2022 school year results.
According to Commissioner Rosa and Board of Regents Chancellor Lester W. Young Jr., this waiver is being proposed as schools are still being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic,
“The Department is committed to determining the most appropriate timeline and manner for re-starting the ESSA accountability system,” Commissioner Rosa said in a press release. “In a year that tested the resolve and ingenuity of our educators, we continue to work with identified schools to provide support models that encourage growth. Stakeholders may rest assured that even if USDE approves a waiver, the critical work to support our schools will continue.”
“New York’s schools continue to feel the impact of the pandemic and the unprecedented circumstances it has caused,” Chancellor Young, Jr. added.
 

-- Isabella Colello

Syracuse, N.Y. -- The state cleared the way for Syracuse to begin its final phase of school renovations, which is expected to cost $300 million.
Ten schools will be renovated. This is the third phase in a plan to renovate all of the school district’s more than 30 buildings, at a cost of $750 million.
The renovations include:
Nottingham High School: $34 million. New school-based health center; auditorium renovations; classroom renovations; new sidewalks and paving; cafeteria, kitchen, and loading dock renovations; pool renovations; gym renovations; turf field and tack; roofing; complete mechanicals, electrical and plumbing renovations
Latin School: $22 million. Interior upgrades and ADA renovations in classrooms and bathrooms; sidewalk replacement and paving; courtyard upgrades; roof replacement; replace windows, exterior doors and masonry repairs; upgrade middle school science classrooms; gym upgrades; mechanical, electrical and plumbing; upgraded technology including white boards, wireless access points, data drops.
Corcoran High School: $30 million estimated total project cost. Complete classroom renovations; roofing replacement; auditorium renovations; gym and pool renovations; complete mechanical, plumbing and electrical renovations; kitchen and loading dock renovations.

-- Marnie Eisenstadt

The school infrastructure crisis in Virginia is well-documented and longstanding. The most recent data provided by VDOE shows that the total cost to replace schools that are at least 50 years old, would carry a price tag of more than $25 billion. Unfortunately, school divisions that serve high poverty communities are disproportionally represented in this data set. Furthermore, high poverty communities often have fewer local resources to address the issue as it is difficult, if not impossible, to increase local taxes on families who struggle to pay rent and receive free or reduced priced lunches. Funding streams and policy options exist in Virginia to begin addressing these issues. Resources are not the issue, it’s political will that’s in question. A new study put out by the National Council on School Facilities and the 21st Century School Fund shows that the issue of crumbling schools is a nationwide problem. Unfortunately, the same report declares that Virginia is one of the worst states in the nation regarding state contribution to school infrastructure. The national average for state contribution for school capital expense and debt service in FY2009-2019 is 22%. Virginia does not come close to this average contribution while other states contribute over 50% of the expense.

-- Keith Perrigan

What a year 1925 was. The Scopes Monkey Trial ended with a Tennessee high school science teacher found guilty of teaching evolution. F. Scott Fitzgerald published the Great Gatsby. Calvin Coolidge continued his presidency after winning the 1924 election and, the building that would eventually house Grand River Academy was built. It’s still in use. Grand River Academy is far from the only school in Mesa County School District 51 that could qualify for social security benefits. Gateway High School was originally built in 1942. Fruita Middle School dates back to 1936. Appleton Elementary School came along two years later. All those schools have had improvements and additions that came later, but the average age for a school in D51 is 42 years old, according to district data, and the average building age is about 30.

-- Sam Klomhaus

PHOENIX — The Arizona School Facilities Board has not been inspecting school buildings properly and could be giving schools access to grant funds they should not be entitled to, according to the Arizona Auditor General.  
A recent review of the board, which regulates the conditions of Arizona's classrooms, found it lacked sufficient staff to inspect schools and failed to have a formal review process in place.
"The Board has not conducted statutorily-required school building inspections since at least January 2017, except for 4 inspections it did not document," the auditor's report states. 
The board further admitted to not conducting any inspections in the fiscal year 2021, telling auditors that they instead focused on lobbying for legislation that could improve the board's ability to inspect schools. 
Arizona law obligates the board to annually publish a list of the state's vacant or partially-used school buildings. Auditors noted how this list could contain misleading data if the board wasn't routinely conducting campus inspections. 
"If the information the Board publishes or provides to meet this requirement is incomplete or inaccurate, districts may miss opportunities to reduce their building maintenance costs and increase revenue by leasing or selling vacant buildings," the report states.
 

-- Staff Writer

VALDOSTA – Lowndes High School construction has been delayed, pushing the move-in date back to next year. “We are not comfortable with sticking to the schedule to move in by Nov 1,” Jeff Hill, Lowndes County Schools executive director of facilities and operation, said. “We have had many setbacks due to unforeseen things and we wanted to make the call sooner than later.” There have been several factors that contribute to the change in schedule, including labor shortage, inclement weather and material delays. The new move-in date for LHS has been moved to February 2022. Lowndes County school board also heard concerns from parents and teachers regarding COVID-19 procedures at the board meeting earlier this week.  Dr. Treva Gear, Lowndes High School instructional coach, spoke on behalf of teachers across the school district who are fatigued and stressed. “I do not want to see another teacher come to me crying, anxious and stressed out. We are being overexposed, even those that wear masks and are vaccinated are getting sick.” Gear said. “I come to you asking for compassion because teachers do not feel like you all care. We are not OK.” Amanda Bushey, a parent of two children in the Lowndes County school system, brought her concerns to the board. “Since the beginning of the school year, the only communication you all have had with the community is the relaxing of the quarantine plan.” Bushey said, “You have lost the trust of students, parents and the community.” The board reviewed the return to school policy implemented in August. “All of the data information within the return to school plan reflect recommendations from the three agencies (Georgia Department of Public Health, Centers for Disease Control, pediatrics) emphasized the need for students to be face to face and they all recommend masks which is the basis for our plan,” Lowndes County Superintendent Wes Taylor said.

-- Brittanye Blake

Schools face many hurdles as students return to classroom learning, but one of the more challenging ones in some school buildings is making sure that the air is safe for staff and students to breathe.
data from the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) show that 787 school buildings across the state have “poor” ratings for their heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.
Ventilation in older school buildings has long been a problem, but with the spread of COVID-19 and the delta variant, it has moved to the front burner.
“It’s huge. We’ve said from the beginning that we need more ventilation,” said Nancy Bernard, a Washington State Department of Health school environmental health and safety expert, who advises districts across the state.
OSPI requires school districts that receive state money to upgrade their buildings to file inspection reports on HVAC systems for all their buildings.
The KING 5 Investigators have created this searchable database that allows users to find inspection “grades” for specific school buildings in Washington.
 

-- Chris Ingalls

A recent survey of state educators shows that 97% of teachers say improved ventilation is a top concern while only 27% say it’s being implemented in their schools, according to data released Friday by the Connecticut Education Association.
Representatives from the CEA met outside Manchester High School on Friday to highlight some of the findings of the organization’s Back-to-School Survey. The survey was taken by 955 educators between Aug. 20-25.
“What resulted is a very solid and reliable cross-section of information about teachers in the state of Connecticut,” CEA President Kate Dias said.
Dias, a former Manchester teacher, said the top concern among educators surveyed is improved ventilation in school buildings. About 47% of educators said their schools’ ventilation system was not providing enough protection from COVID-19 for them to feel safe working in-person, while 27% said they did feel safe, and 25% said they were unsure.
“We see a disconnect between a priority — a real considerable working condition — and whether or not people feel it’s being responded to,” Dias said.
Dias highlighted Manchester a one municipality that has made a commitment to improving school facilities through bond referendums, but said more needs to be done statewide in general.
 

-- Skyler Frazer

After a year of prolonged school closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic, California’s educators have been hard at work readying to open to full-time, in-person learning across the state.
Schools face falling enrollment and learning loss that will impact schoolchildren for years to come, making successful reopening essential to regain lost ground.
While Gov. Gavin Newsom expects 99% of schools to reopen to full-time in-person learning in August, schools may be derailed by an entirely different calamity threatening children’s access to a stable education: worsening wildfires due to climate change.
Wildfire smoke threatens children’s health. Breathing toxic pollution from wildfires is roughly 10 times more dangerous for children when measured against comparable air pollution from other sources.
The fine, inhalable particles found in wildfire smoke, called PM2.5, can cause increased emergency room visits for asthma and increased upper respiratory infections in children.
Long-term studies on wildfire smoke in children is currently lacking, but we know from data on firefighters that repeated exposure results in higher lung cancer rates and greater risk of death from heart attacks and stroke.
Before the pandemic, schoolchildren in California had started to miss an increasing number of school days due to wildfires. Schools close for evacuation or because they lack the protocols and infrastructure to keep indoor air quality safe during poor air quality days.
The state has increased infrastructure investments in schools due to the Covid-19 pandemic that could be beneficial for schools’ wildfires readiness as well, but substantially more funding and support will be needed to help schools navigate the worsening threats of climate change.
Learning loss and lost school days are a growing problem in California, with counties like Sonoma seeing upwards of 40 cumulative days lost. Since the state began collecting data in 2003, wildfires have accounted for two-thirds of school closures through 2018.
 

-- ZOE LEW, LISA PATEL AND ERIKA VEIDIS

Gov. Ralph Northam wants to allocate $250 million in federal relief funding for HVAC improvements in K-12 schools but education advocates and actual school system administrators want more equity in how the money is doled out and more flexibility in using it.  The investment in ventilation systems, a recurrent focus amid the COVID-19 pandemic, didn’t come as a surprise, said Chad Stewart, manager of education policy and development for The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis. But he and many advocates, including other members of the Fund Our Schools coalition, say they were taken aback by the structure of the proposal, which must be approved by the General Assembly in a special session next month.  “What’s unique, at least based on the details we’ve seen so far, is the complete lack of equity,” Stewart said. Many of the state’s school funding programs are based on a division’s local composite index — a measure of its ability to afford education costs. But under Northam’s proposal, localities would be required to use their own rescue funding required to match the state’s contribution, which would be calculated based on student attendance counts, for a total of $500 million.  In practice, the program would advantage large districts like Fairfax County while largely ignoring small, high-poverty districts without the same ability to pay, said Rachael Deane, director of the Legal Aid Justice Center’s JustChildren program. But for many local administrators, there’s an even more fundamental problem.  Since the start of the pandemic, Virginia schools have received more than $2.8 billion in federal aid earmarked specifically for public education. Divisions were given the flexibility to use that money for HVAC improvements, and many already have. In Richmond City, for example, there have been 47 completed upgrades since March of 2020, according to data from the state’s Commission on School Construction and Modernization. In Brunswick County, there have been 61, with another 189 still in process.

-- Kate Masters

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.

-- Opinion - Akira Drake Rodriguez and Ariel H. Bierb

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.

-- Chris Montcalmo

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.
 

-- GREG TOPPO

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.

-- Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Emily Anthes, Sarah Mervosh a

The Bowling Green City Schools Board of Education is going to start a capital improvements program which may include renovations and additions to existing buildings as well as new construction. At Tuesday’s meeting, the board also approved spending $333,884 for boiler work at two elementaries. The board hired Fanning/Howey Associates to design a master plan. Fanning/Howey will perform an onsite review of facilities to determine current conditions, using the 2015 Ohio Facilities Construction Commission facility assessment as baseline data. “I think this is certainly a very positive step forward to address the needs of our district’s academic facilities,” said Superintendent Francis Scruci. The architects also will gather existing site information to identify current conditions and possible constraints; facilitate an educational visioning process with staff to understand facilities improvements that may be needed to support curriculum delivery goals; facilitate a community engagement process to share facilities data and to gather stakeholder preferences regarding facilities improvements. They will then develop a facilities master plan that summarizes all recommended improvements and related budgets and offer conceptual graphic representations to help illustrate facilities improvement goals. The cost to the district is not to exceed $40,000.

-- Marie Thomas-Baird

US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona says there "is much work to be done" to continue the progress being made on school reopenings nationwide. He notes the biggest challenges include aging school buildings and ventilation, adequate transportation, and ensuring overall equity and access to education, according to a memo Cardona sent President Biden's Chief of Staff Ron Klain on Friday that was obtained exclusively by CNN. The memo outlines Cardona's findings from visiting 10 schools across nine states and Washington, DC, to observe how districts were handling reopening more than a year into the coronavirus pandemic. In some cases, he suggested the $130 billion of American Rescue Plan funding destined for schools could help districts address those challenges.
"I saw firsthand during my tour how difficult the school year has been for students, parents, teachers, and school staff," Cardona wrote. "Whether the school had just recently transitioned into a hybrid model or been fully open for months, the work has been challenging for all." Since January, the number of public school districts offering hybrid or full-time in-person education has been on the rise, with more than 90% of K-8 schools open in April, according to the latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics. That does not, however, include high schools, which have reopened at a slower pace than elementary and middle schools.
That number is also not reflective of student attendance, which hovers just over 50% for fourth-graders and just over 40% for eighth-graders attending school fully in-person for the month of April.
In his memo to Klain, Cardona notes the racial and ethnic disparity in school enrollment, citing April 2021 data from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES).

-- Elizabeth Stuart

RICHMOND — Virginia schools received nearly $2 billion from the federal government in its latest round of COVID-19 relief funding for public education. But while current guidance allows that money to pay for pandemic-related improvements — including new HVAC systems, window repairs or replacing carpeted areas with tile — it strongly discourages new school construction, according to James Lane, the state’s superintendent for public instruction. Local administrators are worried those restrictions could lead to millions of dollars in spending on school buildings that should be replaced. “Outside of teacher pay, I can’t imagine there’s a bigger need for public education in the state than school construction,” said Keith Perrigan, superintendent for Bristol Public Schools and president of the Coalition for Small and Rural Schools of Virginia. “So the fact that we may be forced into a situation where we put good money into old buildings is very frustrating for us.” It’s an issue that’s become especially resonant as state legislators consider how to address years of underfunding in public school infrastructure. School construction is a perennial debate in the state’s General Assembly, but the most recent session led to the formation of a commission specifically tasked with studying the issue. At a recent meeting, Lane presented new information on the state’s current building inventory — the first time data has been updated since a 2013 study ordered by then-Gov. Bob McDonnell. A survey of nearly every local division found that more than half of all school buildings are more than 50 years old (the state’s oldest facility was built 184 years ago, according to the Virginia Department of Education). Eight years ago, VDOE estimated it would cost roughly $18 billion to renovate all schools more than 30 years old. The department’s latest survey now estimates it would cost the state more than $24.7 billion to fully replace every building more than 50 years old. “When we surveyed school divisions, there were more than 1,000 buildings that met that criteria,” Lane told legislators. Some of those could potentially be renovated rather than fully replaced, he said. But a review of capital spending by local districts over the last decade indicated that renovations and additions were only slightly less expensive — and generally don’t last as long as a newly constructed facility. “I would not assume you’d get the same longevity out of renovation as you would with a brand-new school,” Lane said.

-- KATE MASTERS

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC)-More than half of the state’s school buildings are more than 50 years old and the price tag of a total replacement would be nearly $25 billion, according to a new survey conducted by the Virginia Department of Education. 
The results were presented to the General Assembly’s Commission on School Construction and Modernization on Thursday morning. Members of the group called it the most comprehensive look at school infrastructure problems since 2013.   
Bristol City Schools Superintendent Dr. Keith Perrigan, who also serves as President for the Coalition of Small and Rural Schools, said the findings represent little progress since the last time this data was collected. 
“We are in much more of a dire situation than I ever imagined,” Perrigan said in an interview after the meeting. “The needle has not moved at all.”
It comes amid a bipartisan push to increase state spending on this issue and as some school districts are hoping to tap into federal coronavirus relief funds to offset the cost of long-overdue construction needs.   
“It’s a moonshot opportunity, especially for high poverty school divisions,” Perrigan said. 
The VDOE survey was based on self reporting from 128 of 132 school divisions, accounting for 97 percent of about 2,005 school buildings, according to State Superintendent Dr. James Lane.
State Sen. Jennifer McClella, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate who also chairs the commission, said the theoretical $25 billion estimate for a total rebuild of the state’s oldest schools doesn’t include the cost of renovations elsewhere. 
 

-- Jackie DeFusco

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.

-- James Salzer

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.

-- Christopher Flavelle and Zolan Kanno-Youngs

Replacement of aging county government buildings was among issues discussed by the Wilkes County commissioners in their first fiscal 2021-22 budget work session on Feb. 25. The board received data showing how Wilkes County’s demographics are changing and how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted low income Wilkes residents, plus data comparing Wilkes with peer county governments in funding education and other needs. Commissioner Keith Elmore said the Wilkes board built a jail, converted former bank office buildings into a law enforcement center and ag center and built a culinary center at Wilkes Community College in recent years. He said the commissioners upgraded high school facilities and built four middle schools before that. “It seems to me there may have been some neglect. We’ve got 50- to 70-year-old buildings” for the Wilkes Health Department, Wilkes Department of Social Services and other county government departments, he said. “I would love to see us address these buildings and conditions and maybe combine our health department and social services” so citizens can have one location for addressing many basic needs. Elmore said new facilities are needed to replace the Wilkes County Office Building. He recommended starting with cost estimates. Elmore added that the commissioners have been good stewards of county finances and the county has a good fund balance. When he was in the health department building to be sworn in as a Wilkes Board of Health member, said Elmore, “it was obvious to me that it’s not really conducive to work.”

-- JULE HUBBARD

In 2019, Elizabeth Goldberg, an emergency physician and associate professor at Brown University, stumbled upon an ecoRI News article about air quality in Providence schools. Goldberg read about how Providence has 24 schools within 1,000 feet of major roads, when the recommended distance for newly constructed school buildings is at least 1,500 feet. She also read how Vartan Gregorian Elementary School, which is at the corner of Wickenden and East streets and directly adjacent to Interstate 195, had high rates of black carbon and nitrogen dioxide both inside and outside the 67-year-old building. As an emergency physician with a master’s in epidemiology, and as a parent of a child at Vartan Gregorian, Goldberg was shocked that nothing was being done about this. “I take care of patients with asthma, kids and adults, and as a parent of a kid in the Providence public schools, at Gregorian, which is within 200 feet of a major highway … I was surprised that there wasn’t any kind of regular air monitoring,” Goldberg said. “I started looking at some air sensor data … and I saw that Boston generally had better air quality than Providence, and well, that was kind of eye-opening.” Goldberg began advocating for stand-alone air purifiers to be put in all Providence schools, started contacting local officials, and was appointed to the Providence School Board. Then, the coronavirus pandemic hit, and air quality monitoring and purification became hot topic issues.

-- GRACE KELLY

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WV News) — The West Virginia Board of Education passed a motion Tuesday requiring grades pre-K to eighth to return to full, five-day instruction. The motion replaces a Jan. 13 one that required counties to offer at least blended learning for families.
During a special meeting Tuesday, board members heard from the state’s coronavirus czar, Dr. Clay Marsh, who presented data on the transmission of COVID-19 within schools and noted minimal transmission, especially among younger students.
“Early in the pandemic, we thought school transmission was closely tied to community transmission rates,” said Marsh. “We’ve since learned this is not correct. We are finding that when mitigations are followed, schools are among the safest places for our children.”
In a unanimous vote, board members approved the motion to send pre-K-8 students back to school in-person five days a week no later than March 3, regardless of the county’s designation on the Department of Health and Human Resources’ County Alert System map.
The board also voted unanimously to include in the motion a provision that high school students will attend classes in-person unless their county is red on the County Alert System map. Also included in the motion is a recommendation that students in grades 9-12 in counties that are not red attend school five days per week.
 

-- Kailee Kroll

MANCHESTER SCHOOL OFFICIALS still are trying to verify data behind a controversial facilities study that recommended closing several Manchester schools because of declining enrollments and $150 million in deferred maintenance and other costs. A facilities study by MGT Consulting Group recommended closing four elementary schools and one high school and merging two other high schools. Superintendent John Goldhardt told school board members last week he had “a very productive meeting” with MGT staff that focused on two items — the legitimacy of the data and questions board members have about the study. “Based upon my own reviews and a meeting I had with MGT, I do believe their data is sound,” Goldhardt said. “However, we have to remember their data is based upon national standards for school capacity. Based upon your feedback, my understanding is that this body wants MGT to use the Manchester school board capacity numbers. They are (now) doing that.” According to the audit, the average age of Manchester school buildings is 70 years.

-- Paul Feely

Washington Teachers’ Union and D.C. Public Schools representatives spent Thursday in front of a mediator weighing charges that the city breached its agreement with the union over how to reopen schools.
A ruling in the union’s favor could jeopardize parts of the city’s already complicated push to resume in-person learning on Monday. Both groups said they expect a ruling before school starts.
The union alleges the District has not met all safety guidelines outlined in the agreement signed last month, and it also says the city needs to share more school-specific data on the number of students returning to campuses. The union fears the city is calling for more teachers to return than necessary. Under the agreement, schools that do not adhere to the guidelines that cover safety and staffing issues are not allowed to reopen.
D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee called it the union’s “last-resort effort to prevent schools from reopening” and said the complaints were “meritless.” He has said schools will reopen Monday.
“We have spent many months and millions of dollars to prepare,” he said in a statement. “We know our students are ready, we know our buildings are ready, and we know our staff is ready and efforts to reopen schools on Monday will continue as planned.”
If the arbiter does not rule in the union’s favor — or takes too long to rule — Washington Teachers’ Union President Elizabeth Davis said she is considering seeking an injunction, which she believes could delay the reopening of schools.
The city does not need an agreement with the union to reopen, but an agreement would make it more likely that teachers will show up to school buildings Monday. The city canceled its November reopening plans after it failed to reach an agreement with the union.
How D.C. and its teachers, with shifting plans and demands, failed to reopen schools in the fall
Davis said calling for an emergency hearing with an arbiter was a necessary step to ensure that school buildings are safe for students and staff. She said some of her members have found violations on walk-throughs of the buildings, including inadequate supplies in bathrooms and HVAC systems that lack documentation showing they have been repaired and upgraded.

-- Perry Stein

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — Schools at all but one U.S. military base in Germany will continue remote instruction through at least Feb. 12, officials announced Thursday.
Schools at Spangdahlem Air Base are the sole exception, the Department of Defense Education Activity-Europe said.
“We will continue to work with military and public health officials to monitor the situation and will provide updates as necessary,” DODEA-Europe said in a statement. “The health and safety of our students, staff and community is our top priority.”
DODEA’s 34 schools in Germany have been closed for in-class learning since mid-December when Germany shut down its schools as part of strict lockdown measures.
DODEA officials had considered reopening classrooms as early as Monday.
The Bitburg-Pruem district, which includes Spangdahlem, had a relatively low average of 51.5 daily coronavirus cases per 100,000 over seven days as of Thursday, according to data posted by Germany’s Robert Koch Institute. That’s just above the average weekly rate of 50 new cases per 100,000 residents that Chancellor Angela Merkel has said must be reached in Germany before restrictions can be eased.
The incidence of new cases is higher in other parts of Germany where there are DODEA schools. According to RKI, the rates in the city of Kaiserslautern and the district surrounding the city were both above 90 per 100,000; Wiesbaden averaged 82.6 new cases in one week and Stuttgart, 70. The district housing Grafenwoehr averaged more than 155 new infections over the last week while Bavaria, which houses several U.S. military installations, including Grafenwoehr, averaged 97 new cases per 100,000.
 

-- JENNIFER H. SVAN

Just down the road from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a community flush with resident health professionals, the Decatur, Georgia, school system had no shortage of expert input on whether to resume in-person classes amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Scores of public health and medical professionals from the affluent, politically liberal Atlanta suburb have weighed in about what's best for their own kids’ schools.
One emergency medicine doctor said initial reopening plans for the district's 5,000-plus students weren’t safe enough. A pediatrician doing epidemiology work for the CDC advocated delaying. Others, including a leader of the CDC's COVID-19 vaccine efforts, argued the district could get students back in classrooms safely — and that not doing so jeopardized their development and mental health.
“The challenge for me has been trying to weigh all of these things that I’m being told by experts and non-experts alike to try to make the best decision that we can,” Superintendent David Dude said. “And that’s what I, and I’m sure other superintendents, have been struggling with.”
Each side argued data and science supported their view in a debate over reopening schools that sometimes veered into vitriol. The division in Decatur illustrates the challenges U.S. schools — many in communities without so much expertise — have faced in evaluating what’s safe.
 

-- KANTELE FRANKO, Associated Press

What does it mean to go to public school in the United States during the pandemic?
The answer looks so different in different parts of the country, it is hard to tell that we are one nation. In some rural and suburban areas, especially in the South, Midwest and Great Plains, almost all students began the 2020-21 academic year attending school in person, and they have continued to do so, except for temporary closures during outbreaks. In many cities, the bulk of students haven’t been in a classroom since March. And in some districts, like New York City, only younger students have the option of going to school in person, with many attending only part time.   With little guidance from the federal government, the nation’s 13,000 districts have largely come up with their own standards for when it is safe to open schools and what virus mitigation measures to use. Those decisions have often been based as much on politics as on public health data. Through all of this, there has been no official accounting of how many American students are attending school in person or virtually. We don’t know precisely how many remote students are not receiving any live instruction or how many students have not logged into their classes all year. Nor has the federal government tracked how many coronavirus cases have been identified in schools or which mitigation methods districts are using.

-- Kate Taylor - New York Times

The Virginia Department of Health, along with the Department of Education, has released an updated interim guidance for schools navigating when to bring students back to in-person classes.   The new guide incorporates and replaces the phased guidance for schools released in July. The guidance and a letter addressing how it should be used was sent to school districts Thursday.   It asks Virginia school districts to consider community needs, COVID-19 data, and understand socioeconomic factors, literacy barriers and other educational needs when making plans to bring students back in person.   The guide encourages prioritizing younger learners, students with disabilities and English-language learners.   It also urges prioritizing learning over activities. When it comes to adding extracurricular activities, including sports, the guide states that school districts should only move forward once all students have been given an opportunity for in-person instruction.

-- Valerie Bonk

Atlanta Public Schools is pushing ahead with plans to resume in-person classes later this month for the first time since March, even as COVID-19 cases surge and teachers express concern. At a Monday school board meeting, district officials discussed the reopening plan that could bring more than 13,000 students back to school buildings starting Jan. 25. That’s about one third of the students who attend the district’s traditional schools. The January date marks the second time APS has proposed bringing students back. In October, the district backed off a plan to reopen buildings, citing a rise in cases. This time around, a couple thousand more students indicated they want to return even though the virus is spreading much faster. Board Chairman Jason Esteves said academic and attendance data show that face-to-face learning needs to resume, and that postponing will harm the most vulnerable students. He said mitigation strategies, such as mask requirements and social distancing, will reduce the risk. Superintendent Lisa Herring said she’s made reopening decisions with “thoughtfulness and carefulness” and “rooted in safety and health.”

-- Vanessa McCray

Since the beginning of this pandemic, experts and educators have feared that open schools would spread the coronavirus further, which is why so many classrooms remain closed. But a new, nationwide study suggests reopening schools may be safer than previously thought, at least in communities where the virus is not already spreading out of control. The study comes from REACH, the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice, at Tulane University. Up to this point, researchers studying the public health effects of school reopening have focused largely on positivity rates. As in, did the rate of positive coronavirus tests among kids or communities increase after schools reopened? The REACH researchers worried that testing in the U.S., especially among children, is still too varied and unpredictable. Instead, Susan Hassig, a Tulane epidemiologist who worked on the study, says they focused on hospitalization rates as a more reliable indicator of virus spread. It's easy to imagine infections going undetected in communities with spotty testing, Hassig says, but "if you get infected with coronavirus and you become substantially ill, you're going to become hospitalized." Mining nationwide data from 2020, she and her colleagues looked to see if more people ended up in the hospital after nearby schools reopened.

-- Cory Turner

Atlanta Public Schools will delay the completion of a facilities master plan because of uncertainty brought on by the pandemic.
The planning effort, along with an accompanying demographic study, is important because it will guide the district’s building and property needs for the next 10 years. The document will serve as a key decision-making tool as officials determine which schools could be expanded, closed or merged based on factors such as enrollment forecasts.
Work to update the plan began in June 2019, when the district signed a $900,000 contract with the Atlanta-based firm Sizemore Group to develop it.
Under the original time frame, APS expected to be wrapping up work on the document.
Instead, officials recently announced they will press pause for a year to 18 months, citing concerns about how the coronavirus pandemic could impact enrollment projections.
“We need better data, and COVID has kind of changed the landscape on a lot of things,” said board Chairman Jason Esteves.
Accurately predicting enrollment trends is a critical component of the planning work. Officials rely on population forecasts and anticipated housing growth to predict which schools may add or lose students.
But the pandemic has cast uncertainty over those projections. Larry Hoskins, chief operating officer for APS, told board members last month that he’s “extremely concerned” about whether population forecasts made before the pandemic will change.
“We are now kind of wondering if, in fact, the region will experience the same growth projected prior to COVID, post-COVID,” he said.
 

-- Vanessa McCray

Positive cases of the coronavirus have prompted New York City leaders to close more than 100 school buildings on Monday, News 4 has learned.
The Department of Education plans to close 128 buildings, which are made up of classrooms for younger grades attending in person as well as those in Learning Bridges and early childhood daycare.
A map of building closures due to coronavirus cases can be found on the city's website.
City Hall says there is no plan for a larger district-wide closure of buildings while state data for the city holds below the 9 percent benchmark that would trigger an automatic closure by the state.
New York City, like the state's other regions, has seen a significant rise in case numbers and deaths amid a winter surge of the coronavirus. As of Sunday, New York state's coronavirus dashboard showed New York City's seven-day rolling average at 6.24 percent. Despite the concerning number of COVID cases following the long holiday break, Mayor Bill de Blasio insists keeping schools open is important and safe.
"About 100,000 students, teachers, staff got tested across the entire school system ... the positivity level was .68 percent. Much, much lower than anything we're seeing anywhere else in New York City," de Blasio said. "So, the safest place to be in New York City of course is our public schools."
 

-- Staff Writer

The Los Angeles school district will not reopen campuses when the spring semester starts Jan. 11, and in a Monday statement Supt. Austin Beutner provided no timetable for bringing students back to campuses, citing the dangerous coronavirus surge and “alarming” data from the district’s own testing program.
Beutner also announced that the nation’s second-largest school system would continue to provide households with free meals over the holidays. In addition, people with a district connection can make an appointment for free virus testing at one of 41 sites across the sprawling school system, which encompasses all or parts of 26 cities.
But the news that all families were awaiting was the status of in-person instruction.
“It will not be possible for us to reopen school campuses by the time next semester starts on Jan. 11,” Beutner said in a pre-recorded briefing. “We’ll remain in online-only mode until community health conditions improve significantly.”
His remarks also contained a foreboding data point: 10% of students coming in to school-based coronavirus testing sites were positive for the virus.
“The most recent data from our testing program is alarming,” Beutner said. “Over the past week, 5% of adults — who did not report any exposure or symptoms — tested positive, and close to 10% of children.”
He added: “Think about that — 1 in 10 children being tested at schools show no symptoms but have the virus. It’s clear we’re a long way from reopening schools with the level of virus this high.”
L.A. Unified’s action is in line with those of other large urban school systems in the region. Students in Long Beach Unified, the fourth-largest system in California, will not return to campus until at least March 1. San Francisco won’t reopen campuses before February.
The status of campus reopening varies across Southern California.
 

-- HOWARD BLUME

An empty classroom at an elementary school in Baltimore after closing during the coronavirus pandemic, April 14, 2020. Across the U.S., some large school districts have attempted to reopen, with mixed success. Minnesota is staying the course with its guidelines for school opening and closing decisions during the pandemic, even as political pressure to reopen schools intensifies and some large districts elsewhere in the U.S. make plans to return students to classrooms. Five months after the state released its "Safe Learning Plan," state officials have no immediate plans to update the metrics schools have used this fall to determine when they must shift in and out of in-person, hybrid or distance learning. Rising spread of COVID-19 across Minnesota and widespread staffing shortages have sent more than half of the state's public districts and charter schools into full-time distance learning. And under the existing guidelines, which focus on county virus data as well as how much the virus is spreading within cities and school buildings, there's little indication that students could be back to schools anytime soon. State officials, however, remain confident that the guidelines they developed over the summer are still the right plan for this stage of the pandemic. Deputy Education Commissioner Heather Mueller said the "concrete set of parameters" outlined in the state's guidance for schools have worked through the fall.

-- Erin Golden

NEW YORK — New York City and its teachers union think the nation’s largest school district should be the gold standard for how to get kids back in class in the middle of a pandemic.
Other districts are turning to the city for answers, the mayor said, but have yet to open their doors.
“I’m on a thread with about 20 mayors — major cities around the country — we often are comparing notes on different issues,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in an interview. “Most of them have been honest with me that they can't figure out how to get out of remote, that they didn’t have the pieces ready and they don’t know how to put together in real time all the pieces they need.

“It’s not lack of will but they just find it a huge challenge.”
New York City began reopening for some students with the powerful local teachers union on board in September, then briefly shut down in late November. Some schools are already open again for in-person classes.
Officials are touting the city’s use of data, a “situation room” for agencies to coordinate and rapidly respond to school cases, and collaboration with the union on safeguards for teachers and students. The American Federation of Teachers is promoting the plan as part of a blueprint for safely reopening schools. De Blasio said his message to local leaders is, “just do it. We have proven you can keep school safe if you are willing to adopt enough rigorous measures.”
 

-- NICOLE GAUDIANO and MADINA TOURÉ

Washington state health officials are considering changing the disease metrics that guide school district reopening decisions during the pandemic. If adopted, up to half the state’s 300 school districts would meet the benchmark to start educating their youngest learners in person at least part time. The proposed changes were outlined in a state Department of Health (DOH) presentation given to Gov. Jay Inslee’s office Nov. 6. The presentation also contains detailed data about coronavirus outbreaks in schools and information about a coronavirus school testing pilot that has not been shared with the public. Under the state’s current reopening guidelines, which aren’t legally binding, school districts are advised to educate students remotely unless their county posts a coronavirus infection rate of fewer than 75 cases per 100,000 residents over a 14-day period. The draft changes to those guidelines would increase that threshold to 200 cases per 100,000.  Only about 32 of the state’s 300 school districts meet the current benchmark to start educating their youngest learners based on their county infection rates. But if the proposed changes are eventually implemented, the number of districts would increase to around 150. Because they aren’t required to follow these guidelines, some districts have decided to remain closed or reopen regardless.

-- Dahlia Bazzaz and Hannah Furfaro

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday he is working toward reopening city schools, which he said would involve even more coronavirus testing, and provided an overall reopening plan.
During his daily coronavirus press briefing, the mayor provided no timeline for a schools reopening, other than saying it will possibly happen in the "upcoming weeks" and that it will require "a lot of work."
"We can and we will bring back our schools. It will take a lot of work. I just want people to understand that from the beginning," de Blasio said. "Bringing back the schools this next time will take an extra effort. It can be done."
De Blasio went on to say that part of reopening New York City schools is "to take our core vision, which is health and safety first, and intensify it."
"The data and the science govern all our decisions. We saw these number rise, we made a decision based on the standards we out forward months ago, but now a new reality is coming into play," he went on to say. "We’ll take additional measures to reopen schools. There is a clear protocol for that, it involves a lot more testing. It’s a very conservative, cautious approach."
Part of those additional steps is to have students and staff undergo more testing in advance of school reopening and throughout the school year and urged parents once who want their children to participate in in-person learning to submit their testing consent forms.
"That whole approach was working and working very well," the mayor said. "We are going to now build upon that."
 

-- Staff Writer

Montgomery County’s Board of Education is continuing with its plan to eventually reopen schools — depending on the spread of the coronavirus — and will take a final vote on its reopening plans in a meeting Dec. 3.
In a Monday morning briefing on Zoom, Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Jack Smith said the plans for reopening will also be influenced by the results of parent surveys. Parents are being asked if they want to have their children return for a combination of in-person and virtual instruction, or stick with a virtual instruction-only plan.
“We understand this is an incredibly difficult decision to make, and there are a tremendous number of unknowns,” Smith said.
Asked about hiring needs to staff schools once they are opened, Smith said, “The ratio of students to staff will be determined by the number of students that come back. One school system I spoke to recently had more staff that wanted to return to a facility than students.”
Noting that Montgomery County continues to see a spike in its 14-day case rate average — now at 19.9 per 100,000 — Smith said getting children back into schools will be dependent on the data related to COVID-19.
“If we can come back in January, we will,” he said.
Smith responded to criticism that the school system’s back-to-school metrics are too stringent.
He said the goal has been to make sure that conditions allow for a safe transition to in-person instruction. “Several school systems that tried to use somewhat lower metrics have now had to close across the nation,” Smith said.
He added, though, that Montgomery County could also find itself having to close down schools, depending on the course of the spread of the coronavirus.
 

-- Kate Ryan

Both Wausau School District referendums fail to pass. For the first referendum, 15,228 voted no (54.53%), and 12,698 voted yes (45.47%). A second referendum, which was reported earlier as too close to call also failed. A total of 14,183 voted no (50.67%), and 13,810 voted yes (49.33%). Superintendent spoke to News 9 as the vote became clear Tuesday night. "We were surprised right now, there are only about ten thousand votes for the referendum. We were expecting a larger number so we are not sure what that means," said Dr. Hilts, "We will have to do some digging into the data with the community and have a conversation." WAUSAU, Wis. (WAOW) — A proposed referendum by the Wausau School District fail to pass, a second is too close to call. A referendum that would have dedicated over over $150,000,000 to improvements within the district will not pass. As of 9:50 pm, 98% of votes were in, only one precinct was left to report. 14,891 (54%) voted no for the referendum, 12,492 voted yes (46%). The referendum proposed a number of changes to its schools for the purpose of safety and security, school modernization, building infrastructure, technology systems and site improvements, including:

-- Sierra Rehm

SENATE DEMOCRATS URGED the Trump administration this week to create a centralized database to track school-related coronavirus cases and school reopening plans in order to provide more reliable information for school leaders trying to reopen for in-person learning.
"As schools have begun the new academic year operating in-person, remotely, or with a hybrid approach, there has been wide variation in both the reporting and tracking of COVID-19 cases at schools that provide in-person learning," Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota wrote in a letter dated Oct. 27 to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield.
"The Trump Administration has not formulated or disseminated a national method for reporting and tracking COVID-19 cases in these schools, resulting in inconsistent, unreliable, and unavailable information," the Democratic senators wrote.
The letter comes in the wake of remarks by DeVos last week that it's not her responsibility or that of the federal government to track school districts, their coronavirus infection rates and how they're reopening – the most direct response to education leaders across the country who have been urging the Trump administration for a comprehensive database to help them navigate the pandemic.
 

-- Lauren Camera

Faced with more coronavirus cases at school and in the community, Norwin School District officials said Monday the middle school will close for at least two days this week and the full reopening of its schools will be postponed from Nov. 4 until at least Nov. 18. Two positive cases were identified in the middle school. Superintendent Jeff Taylor said Monday the community spread and transmission rates in the North Huntingdon-Irwin area remain in the “substantial category” and has increased in the past two weeks. The positivity rate for school district residents being infected with coronavirus has increased from 11.5% on Oct. 5 to 16.3% as of Oct. 26. The most recent data shows more than one-third of the coronavirus cases in Westmoreland County are now among youth ages 12 to 17, Taylor said. The school district has had about 25 students and staff test positive for the virus since the school year began on Aug. 31. State guidelines required the quarantining of 267 students and staff since classes began, including 122 students and staff now in quarantine, Taylor said. The school district anticipates at least 40 middle school students will be quarantined over the next 48 hours, he added. The combination of employees who call off sick and the number of employees who are quarantined places a significant strain on the school district, Taylor said.

-- Joe Napsha

ILLINOIS — With more students currently receiving in-person instruction than any time since March — and at a time when coronavirus cases are again starting to spike — school leaders, parents and teachers have been calling on state health officials to release more specific data regarding COVID-19 cases in the state's schools. The state does not make that information public, but some databases, including one by the National Education Association, show that at least 481 cases have linked to schools across the state since early August. You can see the full list here. In addition, according to a recent report from ProPublica, the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 44 outbreaks in school buildings across the state. But state health officials would not say where the outbreaks, which affected 105 students and 75 employees, occurred. The Illinois Department of Public Health and local health departments do release statistics regarding outbreaks in long-term care facilities, prisons and those under the age of 20 infected with COVID-19 in each county. In addition, some school districts, including Crystal Lake Elementary District 47 and New Trier Township High School District 203, have started posting positive cases in schools on their websites.

-- Amie Schaenzer

ALBANY (AP) — At least 116 schools across New York state that opened their doors to in-person learning have had to close for at least a day since the academic year began because of the spread of COVID-19, according to state data obtained by The Associated Press. That tally excludes additional school closures in New York City, which reports data separately. About 1 in 10 of the state’s roughly 700 school districts has had at least one school temporarily shift to online learning only, according to a list of closures reported to the New York State Education Department. Roughly 3,300 school-aged children in New York have tested positive for COVID-19 since Sept. 1, according to state data. Locally, impacted districts have included Holland Patent, which went to remote instruction for a week after three positive cases emerged in the district, and also Remsen, which went to remote instruction for one learning area of its elementary school after a positive test. Several Syracuse-area schools have also had to close buildings temporarily and shift to online instruction as a result of positive COVID test results. Fowler High School in Syracuse was forced to switch to remote instruction today after a faculty member tested positive. In-person instruction on a hybrid basis had begun in the district on Monday. Some 77 students and six faculty members were forced to quarantine in the Baldwinsville district, according to published reporters, after one positive test was reported in that district. Among the districts to recently shut down schools was the Horseheads School District in the state’s Southern Tier, which has seen the number of positive COVID-19 tests shoot up since late September. It moved to 100% remote learning Tuesday. Superintendent Thomas Douglas told parents he hoped to return to hybrid “within a few weeks.”

-- Staff Writer

BOSTON -- The next phase of the Boston Public Schools reopening plan was delayed Wednesday because the city's coronavirus positivity rate has climbed higher than 4%, Mayor Marty Walsh said.
“We believe it is prudent at this time to pause the school reopening plan," Walsh said at a news conference.
Preschoolers and kindergartners who were scheduled to report to school the week of Oct. 15 instead will now start Oct. 22, Walsh said, although he added that the date is dependent on how the virus data develops between now and then.
He called it a difficult decision, given the benefits of in-person instruction.
“I understand the importance of having school for our young people," he said.
Remote learning began on Sept. 21 and families were allowed to opt for hybrid learning scheduled to start this month.
Some students, including those with special needs, English learners, those experiencing homelessness, and those who are in state care have already been allowed to return to in-person classes. They will continue to be taught in person, the mayor said.
 

-- MARK PRATT Associated Press

Atlanta Public Schools' revised reopening plan expands in-person learning options and could return students to classrooms by the end of the month. Superintendent Lisa Herring will present her latest recommendation — a 96-page document— to the school board Monday. While board members can provide feedback, Herring will make the decision on how and when school buildings reopen. APS shifted to online classes in mid-March as the coronavirus began to spread. The district started the current academic year in August with virtual-only classes. The reopening plans are contingent on public health data. The district initially proposed that students in prekindergarten through second grade could choose to return to buildings twice a week. Certain special education students could opt for in-person classes four days a week. The revised plan, released late Friday, expands the in-person option to allow students up to fifth grade to return to school buildings four days a week starting Oct. 26. Wednesdays would be reserved for at-home independent work, providing time for mid-week cleaning and for teachers to complete training.

-- Vanessa McCray

Schools in Orange County are beginning to reopen. For parents trying to gauge the safety of their school’s plan, it may be useful to put the county’s numbers and procedures in context with how places around the world have handled school reopenings.
Orange County got to this stage because new state guidelines announced at the end of August introduced colored tiers based on a county’s coronavirus cases.
Los Angeles County is still in purple, the worst tier, while Orange County is in red — which signifies substantial transmission. But if a county stays in the red tier for 14 consecutive days, it is allowed to reopen schools.
The red tier requires that COVID-19 infections per day per 100,000 people be from four to seven, as measured by the state, as well as a COVID-19 test positivity rate between 5% and 8%.
Orange County entered the red tier on Sept. 8 — it’s currently at 6.4 cases per day per 100,000 people and a 3.6% positivity rate.
For comparison, Los Angeles is at 7.7 cases per day per 100,000 (2.8% positivity rate); San Bernardino is at 6 (5.7%); Ventura is at 7.4 (3.8%); Riverside is at 5.8 (5.8%); and San Diego is at 6.8 (3.8%).
Ten out of 29 districts in Orange County have announced plans to reopen by the end of September. The Irvine Unified School District, along with schools in Tustin, Los Alamitos, Fountain Valley and Cypress, opened this week. In Irvine, a petition with more than 2,500 signatures is urging the district to remain online at the secondary school level.
Experts say that the safety of school reopenings is partly about the measures that schools put in place — including masks or other shields, physical distancing guidelines, reduced class sizes, increased hygiene, routine screenings, contact tracing and protocol for when a coronavirus case is found.
Also important is how much the coronavirus is circulating in the community.
There is emerging data about how school openings have fared in the United States. Places such as Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas were recording test positivity rates between 10% and 25% when schools began opening in July and August, and some of the results are beginning to be seen.
 

-- ADA TSENG

At least four school districts in Oregon have identified coronavirus cases among students or staff in the past week, The Oregonian/OregonLive has confirmed, and state agencies plan to publicly share more comprehensive data next week.
Infected students or staff attended school in-person at two districts. The third case involved a student participating in online comprehensive distance learning with no classroom exposure, while a fourth school district identified cases involving staff who have not been in the classroom because of online learning.
The cases involve 10 people in all, including family members who did not attend school. It does not appear any of the cases involved spread within a school setting, state and district officials said.
It’s unclear how many of the state’s roughly 600,000 students are currently being educated in brick-and-mortar classrooms this fall. State education officials say it’s at least 8,579, or about 2%.
To answer that question, the Oregon Department of Education will begin requiring districts each Friday to provide detailed tallies quantifying how students are being taught. The state will post its data online beginning next week, offering the fullest picture yet about where Oregon students are learning amid the pandemic.
 

-- Brad Schmidt

Boston students with higher learning needs are expected to return to classrooms starting next week, but the Boston Teachers Union is raising concerns that “extensive” safety issues related to transmission of COVID-19 remain in many district buildings.
The union issued a report with the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, or MassCOSH, on Thursday outlining the concerns that were developed during walkthroughs of six buildings — seven schools — last week. 
In a statement, MassCOSH executive director Jodi Sugerman-Brozan said the group is “very concerned” about the condition of some of the buildings. 
“The organizations found major issues relating to windows and fans, ventilation and filtration, indoor air quality inspection data, and cleaning protocols,” the teachers union said in a statement. 
According to the BTU, many of the items that were on the organization’s “checklist” for a safe return were not in place or lacking during the walkthroughs, including window fans, sanitizer in every classroom, and N95 respirators for nurses. 
 

-- Dialynn Dwyer

CHARLESTON, WV – Gov. Jim Justice joined West Virginia health leaders and other officials today for his latest daily press briefing regarding the State’s COVID-19 response.
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION NOW REPORTING SCHOOL OUTBREAKS ONLINE
During Friday’s briefing, Gov. Justice announced that the West Virginia Department of Education has posted a list of schools across the state that have active outbreaks of COVID-19 on the WVDE website.
A confirmed outbreak is described as two or more confirmed COVID-19 cases among students and/or staff from separate households, within a 14-day period, in a single classroom or core group.
The Current Outbreaks in Schools chart lists the school and county where the outbreak has been identified, the number of cases in that facility, the date when the outbreak was identified, and information about whether the outbreak led to full remote learning. 
The chart is based on information provided by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources and will continue to be updated regularly. 
“It’s important to remember that the data will be delayed by a day or two between us getting the information from the counties and getting that reflected on the chart,” Gov. Justice said.
COUNTY ALERT MAP UPDATED TO MATCH SCHOOL ALERT MAP; MOST COUNTIES NOW GREEN
Also on Friday, Gov. Justice and West Virginia Coronavirus Czar Dr. Clay Marsh announced that the County Alert System map, provided throughout the week on the DHHR’s COVID-19 Dashboard (Click "County Alert System" tab) has been updated to match the two-metric color-coding methodology used in the School Alert System map; the official 5 p.m. Saturday map update by the WVDE that determines the level of scholastic, athletic, and extracurricular activities permitted in each county for each particular week.
 

CONCORD, NH — Another 29 people have become infected with the new coronavirus in New Hampshire including two children, state health officials reported Sunday. More than half of the cases were female and investigations are still open on three cases. The state has 7,947 accumulative COVID-19 cases since March 1 while 7,201 or 91 percent of all patients have recovered. Five of the new cases reside in Rockingham County while one lives in Merrimack County and one lives in Hillsborough County outside of Nashua and Manchester. No new hospitalizations were reported by the state but the current hospitalizations number was revised up to 10. According to the latest data, 9 percent or 725 of all new coronavirus cases have required hospitalizations.

-- Tony Schinella

Wichita public schools reported eight more positive COVID-19 cases among employees this week.
The weekly report, released on Fridays, list tests from Sept. 11-18 and shows five positive tests at elementary schools and one each at a middle school, a high school and a non-attendance center. The report does not identify where cases occurred.
There is no data showing how many students have tested positive.
Additionally, 69 more employees are in quarantine for a total of 198.
Most of the new quarantines happened at elementary schools, which saw 41 more. The quarantines include “close contact with (a) confirmed case, experiencing symptoms, or travel,” the report says.
Wichita schools reported one case last week, which included testing during the first few days of school, and four cases the week prior. There were also cases reported at six schools back in mid-August.
Sedgwick County reports triple-digit increase
The Sedgwick County Health Department reported 103 new cases Saturday and 1,099 more tests, bringing the totals to 7,972 and 95,602 or a 8.33% positive rate overall.
Sedgwick County’s percent of positive cases is under 5% for the first time since June 24, according to the 14-day rolling average. Thursday, the latest day available, it was at 4.92%.
That rate has been mostly dropping in Sedgwick County since Aug. 21, when it was more than 12%.
 

-- MICHAEL STAVOLA

Even before the pandemic erupted last spring, Boston’s aging schools faced a backlog of repairs and problems. The average school is 80-years-old — older than schools in most communities across the state. The city acknowledged as much in a report called “BuildBPS” that found rooftops, windows and critical systems like ventilation were either severely inefficient or in need of outright replacement. Throw the risk of a deadly airborne virus into the mix, and parents like Mary Pierce cringe at the thought of sending her fifth-grader into a classroom at the Boston Teachers Union School. Built 30 years before the other pandemic — in 1918 — Pierce is unsure whether the Jamaica Plain school even has a ventilation system. “It’s extremely concerning,” she said. “It’s just not built for a pandemic.” In Boston, that’s not unusual. A $1.6 million school facilities assessment for the city conducted by the architectural firm Symmes, Maino & McKee paints a grim picture of a worn out school buildings system. The Cambridge firm produced the in-depth report to lay the groundwork for Mayor Marty Walsh’s “BuildBPS” plan to modernize school buildings. data from the report show that nearly three-quarters of the school facilities' ventilation distribution systems were either “functioning minimally,” in need of replacement or non-existent. So were more than half of the schools’ plumbing systems. The rating of schools’ toilet fixtures found that half needed to be replaced or were barely functioning.

-- Meg Woolhouse

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — In its latest attempt to push back on in-person learning in Providence’s aging school buildings during the coronavirus pandemic, the Providence Teachers Union is asking a federal agency to investigate the health and safety of the buildings. In a seven-page letter sent to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which is part of the CDC, the union requested a “Health Hazard Evaluation or modified research
initiative on the heightened risk or impact of coronavirus exposure on school employees as they return to an in-person school setting.” The letter, signed by Union President Maribeth Calabro, says the district’s plan “fails to adequately address the latest scientific data that shows that the coronavirus is not only transmitted by droplet or fomite transmission, but by airborne/aerosol transmission. Classrooms are places where a lot of talking takes place; children are not going to be perfect at social distancing; and the more people in a room, the more opportunities for aerosols to accumulate if the ventilation is poor.” The union is not currently considering any court action to try and halt in-person school, Calabro said. (The Providence Teachers Union backed out of a lawsuit filed late last week by the Bristol-Warren Education Association to try and stop schools from opening, which turned out to be unsuccessful on Friday.)

-- Steph Machado

Schools in Alma, Auburn Hills and Birmingham were among 11 reporting COVID-19 outbreaks since school resumed, although state data released Monday shows the positive counts remain low.
The 11 include five outbreaks considered by the state's health department as new and six deemed ongoing, and the positive case counts were as small as two and as large as six.
All were much less than what has been recorded this fall semester at Michigan's universities and colleges. Grand Valley State University, for example, has had 438 positive cases, and Michigan State University and Central Michigan University have both reported spikes in cases since students returned.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services identified the K-12 schools with COVID-19 outbreaks for the first time on Monday, although the data lags identification of cases by several days.
Among them, Luce Road Elementary in Alma has the most reported illnesses — six cases — in its preschool and elementary school program, impacting both students and staff there.
Alma Schools Superintendent Donalynn Ingersoll sent parents an email on Sept. 5 informing them of a second positive case of COVID-19 within a first-grade classroom at Luce Road Early Childhood Learning Center.
"Under the direction of the MidMichigan Health Department, we believe the safest action at this time is to close Luce Road School for a 14 day period, from the date of last possible exposure (September 3)," Ingersoll said in the letter. "Beginning Tuesday, September 8, Alma’s Kindergarten and first grade students will transition to Panthers On-Line."
 

-- Jennifer Chambers

FAYETTEVILLE -- Schools in Northwest Arkansas are continuing to report increases in covid-19 cases and the number of students, staff and faculty in quarantine after coming into contact with others with the virus. Rogers Public Schools has had 27 cumulative cases and had 186 people in quarantine as of Friday, according to the district's website. The Springdale district has had 25 cases and had 172 people quarantined, according to the district's website. The districts' data include students, staff and faculty. Bentonville's School District had 19 cumulative covid-19 cases, according to the district's website. The district had 283 students and 18 faculty or staff members who were quarantined and unable to attend school. The Fayetteville district has had six students and two staff or faculty members test positive for the virus. Sixty-five students and 41 staff and/or faculty members were in quarantine as of Friday, according to the district's website. Hospitals in Benton and Washington counties had 23 patients in covid-19 units as of Friday, according to a statement from the region's largest health care organizations by Martine Pollard, a spokeswoman at Mercy Health System. Twenty-two patients in the region were on ventilators. The number includes patients with and without covid-19, according to the statement. Washington County had a cumulative 7,203 cases, including 381 active cases as of 4 p.m. Friday, according to the Arkansas Department of Health. Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Friday during his daily news briefing that Washington County had the highest number of new cases in a 24-hour period with 215 of the state's 1,094 new cases. Of the new cases in Washington County, 82%, or about 176, were among people ages 18-24, he said.

-- Alex Golden

At least 107 Iowa schools have reported cases of COVID-19, according to a new tracker launched this week by an education employees' union. At least 76 public school districts and four private schools have reported cases since Aug. 24, the reports compiled on behalf of the Iowa State Education Association show. There are more than 1,500 schools in 328 public districts in the state. The teachers' union started the website after state officials said they would not be reporting school outbreaks or requiring school districts to do so. The union says it is confirming reports through official school publications or district officials before posting them. Some schools have declined to provide basic information being collected by ISEA, including the specific sites or buildings attended by a student or staff member that tested positive for the disease. At least 857 students and 384 staff were being quarantined late this week, the data shows.

-- Jason Clayworth

Florida continued its first week with all its school districts open, under the new normal that people have come to expect — classroom quarantines, remote learning technology woes and efforts to get sports teams going without getting anyone sick. How long will this go on? With a dump of backlogged case results flooding the data, it’s not so easy to tell. Some educators and families are already fed up. Read on for the latest. Never mind the state’s push to keep kids in schools. Districts continue to quarantine students and staff as coronavirus cases emerge. • Pasco County reported four new cases. • Pinellas schools closed down eight classrooms, Florida Politics reports. • Brevard County shut down one elementary school for three days, effective immediately, to avoid spreading the illness, Space Coast Daily reports. • More than 100 students were sent home from Manatee County’s Palmetto High after being exposed to a teacher who tested positive, the Bradenton Herald reports. • Cases continued to rise in Polk County, the Ledger reports. • Walton County had few cases, with 80 percent of its students in the schools, the Northwest Florida Daily News reports. • Duval County schools stopped reporting their numbers, but local doctors have encouraged them to restart the practice, WJXT reports. • A Leon County principal is urging his district to be transparent about cases, too, the Tallahassee Democrat reports.

-- Jeffrey S. Solochek

Looking for a snapshot of coronavirus outbreaks in U.S. schools? The National Education Association has just launched a tracker of cases in public K-12 schools. The tracker is broken down by state and shows schools and counties with known cases and suspected cases and deaths, as well as whether those infected were students or staff. It also includes links to the local news reports so users know where the virus data comes from. The NEA tracker builds on the volunteer efforts of a Kansas theater teacher Alisha Morris. In early August, just ahead of the new school year, Morris was looking for data about coronavirus cases in U.S. schools. She could find local news reports about positive cases at individual schools across the country but nothing that gave her a cohesive picture of how the virus was spreading in schools. So Morris built it herself. She started with a simple Internet search. "I put in the words 'school, positive' " she tells NPR's Morning Edition. "I clicked on the news tab and would search the articles from the past week or the past 24 hours and then I would input those articles into my spreadsheet."

-- Staff Writer

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Thursday outlined new data that he says show it is safe for every school district in the state to begin reopening and he criticized districts that have committed to virtual learning through the fall. During a press conference, Hogan and state health officials said school districts are allowed to reopen if there are fewer than five cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents in their jurisdiction and if the test positivity rate is below 5%. Each metric should be maintained for at least seven days. Hogan said all 23 Maryland counties have met the new state benchmarks and should begin reopening school facilities for at least some in-person learning. His statement is a stark contrast to repeated assertions by Montgomery County health officer Dr. Travis Gayles, who has said he does not believe it is safe for local school facilities to reopen in any capacity.

-- CAITLYNN PEETZ

NEW YORK/GENEVA, 13 August 2020 – As schools worldwide struggle with reopening, the latest data from the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) reveal that 43 per cent of schools around the world lacked access to basic handwashing with soap and water in 2019 – a key condition for schools to be able to operate safely in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Global school closures since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic have presented an unprecedented challenge to children’s education and wellbeing,” said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director. “We must prioritize children’s learning. This means making sure that schools are safe to reopen – including with access to hand hygiene, clean drinking water and safe sanitation.”  According to the report, around 818 million children lack basic handwashing facilities at their schools, which puts them at increased risk of COVID-19 and other transmittable diseases. More than one third of these children (295 million) are from sub-Saharan Africa. In the least developed countries, 7 out of 10 schools lack basic handwashing facilities and half of schools lack basic sanitation and water services. The report stresses that governments seeking to control the spread of COVID-19 must balance the need for implementation of public health measures versus the associated social and economic impacts of lockdown measures. Evidence of the negative impacts of prolonged school closures on children’s safety, wellbeing and learning are well-documented, the report says. “Access to water, sanitation and hygiene services is essential for effective infection prevention and control in all settings, including schools," said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. "It must be a major focus of government strategies for the safe reopening and operation of schools during the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic.”

-- Staff Writer

The U.S. Department of the Interior – Indian Affairs, which oversees the Bureau of Indian Education, announced last week that it would reopen "brick and mortar schools" under its jurisdiction to the "maximum extent possible" on Sept. 16. That will affect 53 Bureau of Indian Education schools run by the federal government across 10 states. With President Donald Trump pushing for schools to reopen for in-person learning despite the coronavirus pandemic, his administration has a direct say in the fate of some schools on Native American reservations. An internal memo sent to bureau-operated schools Friday and shared with NBC News included details of the return to in-person teaching. Families can opt for virtual learning, according to the memo, but instructors must still teach in person, said the memo, signed by Tara Sweeney, the assistant secretary of the interior for Indian affairs. Schools would move to entirely virtual learning only if an outbreak occurred that led to a schoolwide shutdown. Boarding schools and dormitories will operate as day schools under the new order. Native American reservations across the U.S. are among the jurisdictions hardest hit by COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. If the Navajo Nation were its own state, it would have the highest infection rate in the country. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that Native Americans have the highest hospitalization rate of any ethnic group in the U.S. Many who live on reservations do so in multigenerational homes in small, confined spaces. Underlying health conditions are common, as is limited access to health care and even running water.

-- Miranda Green

NASHVILLE — Facing criticism over state plans not to ask Tennessee school systems for information about coronavirus cases in their facilities — so it can be publicly reported — Gov. Bill Lee said Tuesday his administration is now working on a data strategy that protects privacy.
"We're working a plan to in fact be able to report school cases," he said during his weekly briefing, a change in the state's policy to let local systems call the shots on disclosures. "We do want to protect the individual privacy of families and students. Patient re-identification is important. Transparency is also important."
There have been concerns that some districts won't share information with parents and the community about what is going on.
"We agree with that assessment, and we need to make certain that the reporting is accurate," the Republican governor told reporters.
A number of districts have already or soon plan to reopen schools for in-person education for students. Hamilton County Schools is set to reopen Aug. 12 using a four-phase response ranging from all-online to in-person education, depending on local coronavirus cases. As of Tuesday, the schools were projecting Phase 3, in which individual campuses are closed as needed to respond to the pandemic. But officials said the case volume indicates a transition toward Phase 2, in which all students alternate on two-day-a-week schedules.
 

-- Andy Sher

The majority of Defense Department schools that educate the children of the US military are moving ahead with plans to return with in-class instruction later this month amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. More than 110 intend to return children to the classroom but 43 on bases where the highest level of restrictions have been imposed due to the outbreak plan to start the new school year teaching virtually. "We believe it's important to make sure that the kids are being educated. And so we're taking those steps to make the schools open and make it safe," chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman told reporters Thursday. "We have always believed that instruction in the classroom is the optimal learning environment for most of our military-connected students," the Department of Defense Education Activity director Tom Brady wrote in a statement earlier this month. "Restoring teaching and learning to the familiar environments of our classrooms, provides students with stability and continuity," he added. The issue of getting children back to school safely has become politically controversial with the Trump administration pushing for in person re-openings even as the virus surges continues to surge across the US with the number of cases now at more than 4.5 million and the death toll at over 153,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Of the 15 biggest school districts in the country, only one is offering schools the option of in-person instruction, 10 of them have opted to begin the school year with online learning only and three are planning a hybrid approach. There are 159 Defense Department schools located on US military installations around the world, including on bases that are situated in areas that have seen major spikes of coronavirus cases, including Florida, Texas and Georgia.

-- Ryan Browne

The Pima County Health Department says it’s unsafe to reopen schools for traditional face-to-face learning as the coronavirus continue s to heavily impact the Tucson community. The guidance to Tucson-area schools, released Tuesday, says the earliest traditional instruction could be anticipated to resume is after Labor Day. Pima County Health Department Director Dr. Theresa Cullen and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francisco Garcia used public health data to form their recommendation — which schools are not required to follow. A memo from Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry outlined the reasoning for delaying in-person traditional instruction: Local, daily COVID-19 infections are at the highest amounts since the pandemic began. Pima County’s total monthly infections have gone from 153 for March to more than 6,700 confirmed cases thus far for the month of July alone.
Coronavirus transmission rates are above 11%. The World Health Organization recommends rates should be below 5% before reopening.
Masks were only recently mandated, and it will take six weeks to see if the mitigation strategy is working.
COVID-19 hospitalizations are at record levels. Local hospitals have nearly exceeded their ICU bed capacity, transferring some critical patients to hospitals around the state.
Widespread testing is just now becoming available, and timely test results to allow for contact tracing do not exist in Pima County.
Though the guidance does not advise resuming traditional face-to-face learning, it does recommend the opening of school facilities for at-risk youth on a limited basis as envisioned in Gov. Doug Ducey’s latest executive order.

-- Danyelle Khmara

With the Maine Department of Education (MDOE) scheduled to release its first round of color designations pertaining to the individual levels of risk for the state’s school districts on Friday, July 31, officials with the region’s education units have been busy making plans for how students return to classes in the fall. In a July 22 letter posted on the district website RSU 68 Superintendent Stacy Shorey wrote that she wanted to reach out with some additional information, “We were told last week that each school district will receive a color designation of red, yellow or green based on a few pieces of data which includes the number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in your county. We will receive that designation on July 31 by the (MDOE) and then every two weeks the designation will be updated.  We will not be making any decisions about what our programming will look like in the fall until we have that color designation.”

-- Stuart Hedstrom

One of the biggest challenges facing the Philadelphia School District as it struggles with how to start the 2020 school year is concern over whether the city’s aging buildings are properly ventilated. Opinions differ on how much ventilation improvement may be needed to protect students and staff from COVID-19. But a look at District data shows that the scale of the challenge will be significant. According to a Notebook analysis of more than 200 Facilities Condition Assessments from 2017, at least 80% of Philadelphia public schools had ventilation systems that weren’t up to current codes. The reports, one for every District school, catalog a multitude of concerns citywide, including problems with fans, ducts, and schoolwide systems, with replacement costs estimated at more than $600 million. And although city health officials say that ventilation concerns can be allayed if students and staff consistently follow proper protocols — including wearing masks and social distancing — experts worldwide agree that poorly ventilated indoor air is one of the major risk factors for COVID-19 transmission. Under the District’s current “hybrid” reopening plan, some students would attend an all-virtual “digital academy,” while others would enter school buildings twice a week, in Monday/Wednesday and Tuesday/Thursday “cohorts.” Each teacher would be in the building for all four days. 

-- Neena Hagen

Colorado gave schools guidelines for reopening this week, but the state’s largest teacher's union said Tuesday there shouldn't be any in-person learning and schools should operate remotely unless demands about safety and teacher input are met. They sent a petition, signed by 13,000 school staff, to state education and health officials, school principals, school board members and local health department officials. The Colorado Education Association, which has 39,000 members, are asking that educators play a central role in any decisions on school reopening and want teachers to vote on any plan to return to school. They want safety protections and protocols for staff and students spelled out, as well as transparency on the planning and health data used to drive decisions. And they want school districts to make sure all students have access to learning, after inequities were exacerbated this spring when thousands of students could not get connected to teachers because they didn’t have devices or lacked internet access. “Unless those expectations can be met, we should not move to in-person learning,” said Amie Baca-Oehlert, a high school counselor and president of the Colorado Education Association. State officials say they agree with the spirit of the four expectations for employee engagement, safety protections, transparency and equity.

-- Jenny Brundin

Early this spring, school gates around the world slammed shut. By early April, an astonishing 1.5 billion young people were staying home as part of broader shutdowns to protect people from the novel coronavirus. The drastic measures worked in many places, dramatically slowing the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
However, as weeks turned into months, pediatricians and educators began to voice concern that school closures were doing more harm than good, especially as evidence mounted that children rarely develop severe symptoms from COVID-19. (An inflammatory condition first recognized in April, which seems to follow infection in some children, appears uncommon and generally treatable, although scientists continue to study the virus’ effect on youngsters.)
Continued closures risk “scarring the life chances of a generation of young people,” according to an open letter published last month and signed by more than 1500 members of the United Kingdom’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH). Virtual education is often a pale shadow of the real thing and left many parents juggling jobs and childcare. Lower-income children who depend on school meals were going hungry. And there were hints that children were suffering increased abuse, now that school staff could no longer spot and report early signs of it. It was time, a growing chorus said, to bring children back to school.
By early June, more than 20 countries had done just that. (Some others, including Taiwan, Nicaragua, and Sweden, never closed their schools.) It was a vast, uncontrolled experiment.
Some schools imposed strict limits on contact between children, while others let them play freely. Some required masks, while others made them optional. Some closed temporarily if just one student was diagnosed with COVID-19; others stayed open even when multiple children or staff were affected, sending only ill people and direct contacts into quarantine.
data about the outcomes are scarce. “I just find it so frustrating,” says Kathryn Edwards, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine who is advising the Nashville school system, which serves more than 86,000 students, on how to reopen. Her research assistant spent 30 hours hunting for data—for example on whether younger students are less adept at spreading the virus than older ones, and whether outbreaks followed reopenings—and found little that addressed the risk of contagion in schools.

-- Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, Gretchen Vogel, Meagan We

Connecticut schools should plan to reopen in the fall, with mask-wearing, frequent cleaning of facilities and social distancing protocols in place, the state announced Thursday. As the state sees positive trends in COVID-19 transmission, Gov. Ned Lamont and Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona presented the statewide schools reopening plan for daily in-person instruction. But the state also is asking districts to prepare alternate plans, should there be an uptick in cases. “As you might imagine, developing a plan for school reopening that predicts where we will be as a state in terms of COVID spread in two months is extremely challenging, but we are pleased to have a plan for Connecticut that promotes health and safety for our students and staff,” Cardona said in unveiling the plan. The state reported on Thursday that two fewer people were hospitalized due to COVID-19, for a total of 122. The state also reported 81 additional COVID-19 cases for a total of 45,994, and 11 additional COVID-19 deaths for a total of 4,298. The data showed 1,157 COVID-19 cases and 62 probable cases in New London County as of Thursday evening, as well as 76 COVID-19 deaths and 26 probable deaths, the same as on Wednesday. Two people were hospitalized with the disease in the county. As long as current trends continue, he said school districts will reopen in the fall and must maximize social distancing, provide frequent hand-washing opportunities, and enhance cleaning and disinfecting measures. Students and staff are expected to wear face coverings, except in cases in which teachers are instructing from a distance or when there is a medical reason. The state is asking districts to reconfigure available classrooms and spaces, such as gymnasiums and auditoriums, to maximize social distancing as much as possible, he said.

-- Kimberly Drelich

RALEIGH, N.C. (WBTV) - North Carolina leaders and health officials are working on plans that will allow schools to reopen on time in August.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services provided guidance that will allow schools to open its buildings for students and staff for 2020-21 school year if the data and metrics are trending in a positive direction.
The schools will reopen if data has shown improvement.
“We very much want to open the school buildings but won’t open them and make a reckless decision when it is so important,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said. “We know this coming school year will be like no other.”
[ Guidance for reopening NC schools for 2020-21 year ]
Cooper said that students and staff will go through new measures during the next school year.
He said students and staff will be screened for illness before entering the school, and students will be asked to stay distant from classmates, and they won’t be sharing pencils or textbooks.
Schools will also be directed to sanitize the buildings throughout the school days.
“We will all need patience as the plans for each school come together in the coming months,” Cooper said. “This guidance is an important first step. Now, the hard part will be done by local social boards, superintendents, principals, school nurses to tailor the plans for their particular school.”
Cooper was joined by Dr. Mandy Cohen, with the NCDHHS, State Superintendent Mark Johnson and Eric Davis, Chairman of the State Board of Education, to lay out the guidelines.
As of Monday afternoon, North Carolina reported 36,484 COVID-19 cases, including a new single-day increase of 1,300 on Saturday. There have also been more than 1,000 deaths with 739 hospitalizations.
“We know schools are more than buildings,” Cohen said. “How we move forward has immediate and long-term consequences. We want to be able to open schools for in-school learning for the next academic year, but we are going to have to work together to make that happen.”
 

-- Staff Writer

As social distancing restrictions ease across Washington, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction is preparing for how best to reopen schools come fall.
The state education department is expected to announce early next week how schools can reopen for the 2020-2021 school year. Educators across the state have spent weeks discussing options, from reopening schools on a split schedule, to continuing virtual education, to some hybrid of the two.
While reopening is an obstacle in and of itself, underneath the surface are questions of equity: Will all students be able to access whatever programs their districts put in place? How will families return to work if their children are attending class only a few days a week?
Maria Flores, OSPI’s executive director for the Center for the Improvement of Student Learning, described the upcoming school year as a complex tree of unique situations and challenges families will face.
“How will we know what each family’s unique situation is, and how will they be able to accommodate that?”
The options
A group of more than 120 educators, union leaders and community members have spent the last month weighing options for returning to school, including the following possible scenarios:
• Split or rotating schedules by age, classroom, content, student need or family choice.
• Split or rotating schedules that include distance learning online or via paper packets.
• A staggered opening with or without distance learning.
• An improved version of distance learning.
Flores, however, said all those options present challenges for families used to sending their children to school five days a week. There may be gaps in services, for example, for students with disabilities who need access to special services. Students living in poverty whose families may not have access to child care outside of school may struggle with a split schedule.
“We realize we’re going to have families at all different places along the continuum to do a split or rotating schedule,” she said.
Meanwhile, with standardized testing on pause while the pandemic rages on, Flores said it can be difficult to measure how students may be falling behind.
“We are going to see the (opportunity gap) widen and not have the data because we didn’t do spring testing,” Flores said.
 

-- Katie Gillespie

Twenty-five leaders in education and health care will serve on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's COVID-19 Return to Learn Advisory Council, state officials announced Wednesday,
The advisory council was created by Whitmer on May 15 to formalize a process for determining how schools may be able to reopen in the fall. The council includes students, teachers and principals as well as union leaders, a psychologist, health officer and medical director.
“This group brings together experts in health care and education, including students, educators and parents to think about how to ensure the more than 1.5 million K-12 students across Michigan get the education they need and deserve,” Whitmer said.
“On behalf of our kids, their families and the more than 100,000 educators in our state, we must all work together to get this right. I know this group is prepared to carefully examine the data and consult with experts when helping me determine what is best for our kids.”
The council will advise the governor and the COVID-19 Task Force on Education and will develop recommendations on how to reopen K-12 classrooms.
 

-- Jennifer Chambers

HONOLULU, Hawaii (HawaiiNewsNow) - The state Education Department has released new guidelines for reopening schools this fall, including how officials will have to implement social distancing.
The guidelines are effective July 1, and also call for mask wearing and sanitation procedures.
What isn’t clear: How schools will be able to socially distance in crowded classrooms.
The state also hasn’t officially said when campuses will reopen, but leaders are looking at Aug. 4.
The DOE will continue to use the summer break to formalize the plan for next school year.
Schools Superintendent Christina Kishimoto said Tuesday they are working with the state Department of Health to develop specific guidelines to safely bring students back to in-person classes.
Other options include to continue distance learning for some students in grades 6 through 12.
This month, Kishimoto says the DOE will be collecting data from parents, students, teachers, and principals to better understand the challenges with online education.
“That will give us a school-by-school view of what the distance learning looked like this quarter four, what were some of the struggles, what were some of the things that worked well, how many devices do our schools have, how many families per school need support with devices or need support with connectivity,” Kishimoto said.
The DOE purchased 10,000 new devices for students without access to technology.
 

-- Staff Writer

As schools in Washington and across the U.S. (remotely) wind down for summer break, many families, teachers and state decision makers are hoping for an answer: Did closing school buildings ultimately help curb spread of the novel coronavirus? New epidemiological and social science research hints that shuttering school buildings did indeed help slow the virus's spread. The findings, based mostly on unpublished data and a handful of peer-reviewed studies, don't definitively prove that closing schools altered the epidemic's course. But such emerging data may help policymakers decide if and how it's safe to return to school come fall. Those officials will also have the advantage of watching how some other countries and states are reopening their schools -- and the consequences of those decisions. To understand the role of school closures, researchers are homing in on two angles: the biological ability of children to spread the coronavirus, and what we know so far about how school closures tracked with the disease's trajectory. Researchers have already moved beyond a big biological question that marked the early days of the coronavirus's spread: whether children actually contract it. They do, several studies find. But children tend to be spared from its worst effects, with some exceptions. Now, scientists are racing to unravel other important aspects of the condition in children. Epidemiological studies are attempting to trace infected children's contacts to decipher how well kids transmit the coronavirus. Some researchers are examining children's so-called "viral load" -- the concentration of virus a person has inside them -- compared to adults, which may also lend insight into this question. A major project funded by the National Institutes of Health aims to track incidence of the disease in children.

-- Hannah Furfaro

It has been around two months since schools closed in more than 190 countries, affecting 1.57 billion children and youth - 90% of the world’s student population. Closures happened in quick succession as a measure to contain the Covid-19 virus. Just as speedily, governments deployed measures for learning to continue through platforms, television and radio in what has been the most far-reaching experiment in the history of education. But when it comes to reopening schools, the tempo is far more uncertain. According to UNESCO data, 100 countries have not yet announced a date for schools to reopen, 65 have plans for partial or full reopening, while 32 will end the academic year online. For 890 million students however, the school calendar has never been so undefined. When and how to reopen schools is one of the toughest and most sensitive decisions on political agendas today. Is it safe to reopen schools or is there a risk of reigniting infections? What are the consequences to children’s mental health and to the social development of young children? Are students engaged in remote learning actually learning? And when the time comes, how will schools ensure students return and help learners who have fallen behind during school closures? The decision is complex because the pandemic continues to evolve, and not in linear manner. There is insufficient evidence on risks of transmission. Everywhere, confinement will be lifted gradually, with many question marks on how the process will be managed, to a great extent because there are many characteristics of the virus that we just don’t know. Yet, even with the current uncertainties, governments can anticipate and prepare to reopen schools successfully, putting the necessary safeguards in place.

-- STEFANIA GIANNINIROBERT JENKINSJAIME SAAVEDRA

LANSING, MI— Governor Gretchen Whitmer has announced the creation of the Return to Learning Advisory Council via Executive Order 2020-88, formalizing a process for determining how schools may be able to reopen in the fall.
The panel – which will be comprised of students, parents, frontline educators, administrators and public health officials – will be tasked with providing the COVID-19 Task Force on Education within the State Emergency Operations Center with recommendations on how to safely, equitably, and efficiently return to school in the Fall. The State of Michigan will also partner with a national nonprofit organization called Opportunity Labs to bring national expertise to this project.
“It’s critical we bring together experts in health care and education, as well as students, educators, and families to think about how and if it’s possible to safely return to in-person learning in the fall and how to ensure the more than 1.5 million K-12 students across Michigan get the education they need and deserve,” Governor Whitmer said. “This panel will use a data-informed and science-based approach with input from epidemiologists to determine if, when, and how students can return to school this fall and what that will look like.”
 

-- NICOLE WALTON

They’re the big questions of the day.
What does the timeline look like for deciding when to and how to reopen North Carolina’s public schools?
And when they do reopen, possibly as early as Aug. 17, what will they look like?
What directives will school staffs, parents and students be given about protecting themselves against the contagious and deadly COVID-19?
There are no definitive or answers, for now.
But they’re coming, says Susan Gale Perry, chief deputy of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS).
“Very, very, very quickly here, within the next week or so, we’re going to have to start getting some clarity on school guidance,” Perry said Thursday, noting that virus data will drive school reopening decisions.
Perry’s remarks were made to the House Select Committee on COVID-19 focused on educational issues.
The committee met remotely with Perry and school leaders to receive an update on the work being done by the Schools Reopening Task Force (SRTF) created to address the challenges of reopening schools.
 

-- Greg Childress

At a time when officials are looking to reopen schools, but with more distance between students, a group of health experts, parents, teachers and community members is asking Gov. Gavin Newsom to issue an executive order that would halt any permanent school closings during the pandemic.
The group supports stopping all permanent closures until a COVID-19 vaccine is developed or the threat of spreading the virus is greatly diminished through immunity or effective treatments.
Although most schools are doing distance learning through the end of the school year, six districts — from the San Francisco Bay Area to Southern California — are slated to close or merge at least 16 schools when the school year ends.
Those districts include Pasadena Unified and Oceanside Unified in southern California; and the Evergreen Elementary, Ravenswood Elementary, San Rafael City Elementary and Oakland Unified districts in the Bay Area.
The 16 schools were identified in an analysis of the state’s 30 most densely populated counties by Advancement Project California — a racial justice organization with offices in Los Angeles and Sacramento that focuses on research and advocacy.
“This is a statewide issue affecting thousands of students, unfortunately impacting students of color most of all,” said Chris Ringewald, director of research and data analysis for the organization. “Black and Latinx communities are disproportionately experiencing school closures and mergers at the same time these communities are disproportionately suffering from COVID-19.”
 

-- THERESA HARRINGTON

Coronavirus lockdown measures have partially or fully closed schools for more than 90% of the world's student population across 186 countries and territories, according to UNESCO.
After closing schools to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, a handful of countries like Denmark and Japan have started reopening them.
New safety measures range from keeping windows open for ventilation to spacing desks six feet apart and resuming classes for students of a certain age.
Here's a look at some countries and provinces that have reopened schools so far.
In late January, China instituted a lockdown for the 11 million residents of Wuhan, where the novel coronavirus outbreak originated. Fifteen other cities soon followed, and at its peak, China's quarantine extended to 20 provinces and regions, according to the Wall Street Journal. Due to lockdown measures, some 200 million students transitioned to online learning in February, the Washington Post reported.
On March 18, China reported no new local coronavirus cases for the first time since the outbreak and has gradually lifted restrictions in the weeks since.
While schools in nine mainland provinces had reopened for graduating students as of early April, according to the South China Morning Post, UNESCO's data shows that most schools remain closed in larger regions. High school seniors in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou only just returned to school on April 27 to prepare for their college entrance exams.
BBC reported that China's Ministry of Education is requiring that students have their temperatures checked at school entrances and that they display a "green" code of health via China's smartphone health code program.
Taiwan reopened schools on February 25 after extending winter break by ten days.
 

-- Melissa Wiley

As of Friday, the Pennsylvania Department of Education was still planning to see schools reopen in the fall. While decisions on reopening will depend on the health and safety of students, "at this time, there are no plans to keep schools closed in the 2020/21 school year," said department spokesman Eric Levis in a statement Friday. The statement follows comments by Education Secretary Pedro Rivera to ABC 27 News on Wednesday which offered a more cautious assessment about whether schools throughout Pennsylvania would reopen for the fall term. “We’re going to track the data and we’re going to hope for the best, but unless we can really work towards solving this pandemic and lessening the number of cases, there’s a chance that students may not return to school,” Rivera told the TV news station.

-- Lindsay C VanAsdalan

As the coronavirus pandemic continues in the United States and around the world, millions of students are doing schoolwork from home with varying degrees of help from their frazzled parents. States will make their own decisions about whether schools will return for the rest of the academic year, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issuing guidelines about how that might be possible. Even as some areas consider re-opening parts of their economies or returning to everyday life, schools remain shut and students are expected to continue learning online. Below, we've collected the most recent data about which states have closed schools for the rest of the year, which states are still intending to return to the classroom and which states have yet to give a definitive answer. Note that this information is all current as of our publication date, and we'll try to keep it updated, but please check with your local school district for the most accurate information.

-- Kerry Breen

With school canceled through the end of the school year, construction at the Seaside School District campus in the Southeast Hills will see an acceleration in completion dates, especially at The Heights. Crews will be able to begin roof replacement, a project originally planned for summer. Middle and high school construction is expected to see completion by the end of July, and the elementary renovation and new construction by mid-August.  “That they can get the roof ripped off early has really enhanced our timeline,” project manager Jim Henry said at a livestream meeting of the Seaside Construction Citizen Oversight Committee Tuesday. “That was a tight schedule. This was a situation that really helped with the roof and interior renovations.” The elementary school’s gym received a March completion and the city delivered a certificate of occupancy on April 13. Subcontractors originally scheduled for June are being contacted to see if they can work early to adjust to new timelines, Henry said. Along with roof replacement, work ahead at the campus includes plumbing, electrical and data installation.

-- R.J. MARX

A 580-page intermediate report outlining consultants’ findings about Montgomery County school boundaries was released this week, outlining data about schools’ history, student body diversity and enrollment. WXY Architecture + Urban Design, commissioned for $475,000 to complete the boundary analysis, was originally expected to release an interim report by the end of February. The release was delayed twice — once so consultants could further examine “complicated data,” the other so MCPS could focus on closing schools as mandated by the state amid the coronavirus outbreak. The interim report culminates more than a year of work since the school board authorized the comprehensive review of the boundaries that determine which schools students attend. In it is a review of consultants’ community engagement efforts; an analysis of data about schools’ demographics, capacity and enrollment; and next steps. It’s not clear exactly when the highly anticipated report was released. It was found on the MCPS website late Wednesday night. As of early Thursday morning, MCPS had not sent or posted any notices that the report was available.

-- CAITLYNN PEETZ

ENR New York is pleased to announce the Owner of the Year for 2020: the New York City School Construction Authority. According to Dodge Analytics, the SCA started 396 new projects in 2019, such as a $78M new school on Staten Island. All of the authority's 3,144 projects listed in Dodge's database are valued at almost $14.8 billion total. Led by Lorraine Grillo — who hadn't yet been named president and CEO of the organization when it won ENR New York's 2009 Owner of the Year honor — the SCA broke ground on several new school projects in 2019, including the brand-new East New York Family Academy; an annex for the Benjamin N. Cardozo High School in Bayside; and the $68 million IS 419 in Flushing. In September, 18 school sites opened, starting with the new, $62 million PS 398 in Queens, which serves prekindergarten through fifth grade students with 476 new seats. Another notable school that opened in 2019 is PS 46X in the Bronx. The DeMatteis Organization, one of the project team members, earlier told ENR that the project comprised construction of a new five-story, 77,000-sq-ft building and renovation for an existing 81,700-sq-ft adjacent building. Joining them involved careful planning of structural tie-in work between both.

-- Eydie Cubarrubia

Georgia schools have received a grant of $1.1 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to identify sources of lead in drinking water at schools or child care facilities. The Georgia Department of Education will use the funds for testing in high-risk communities across the state.  Georgia was one of 22 states that received a failing grade on protecting students from lead in water at school, based on data in a 2019 report from Environment America, a group of environmental advocates. In Atlanta, water sources at 25 of 60 schools tested had lead above 15 parts per billion, the level at which the EPA recommends remediation. There is no amount of lead that is safe for children. Exposure can lead to lowered IQ, damage to the brain and nervous system, slow growth and behavioral problems in young children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Few states have provided funding for lead testing through school drinking water programs. A 2017 bill in the Georgia Senate that would have required school water testing died in the House. It was reintroduced in the last legislative session. In 2018, the EPA introduced the Federal Action Plan to Reduce Childhood Lead Exposures and Associated Health Impacts. Part of that includes a proposed rule that would require water systems to take drinking water samples from the schools and child care facilities they serve. The grant announcement came just days after the EPA held a public meeting to discuss the cleanup of lead-contaminated soil at 66 properties in the Westside neighborhood of English Avenue.  Of 124 samples taken in the neighborhood, more than half have shown lead concentrations above the risk levels set by the federal agency.

-- Nedra Rhone

TABERNACLE — The township school board voted Monday night to move some of its elementary school students into the middle school next school year, an effort officials say will cut costs as the district loses state funding.
The move will go into effect on July 1, and second- through fourth-grade students classes will relocate across the street from Tabernacle Elementary to Kenneth Olson Middle School. The measure passed by a 6-3 vote.
“That was probably the hardest decision any of us up here have had to make so far,” Board President Megan Chamberlain said at the meeting. “Not every one of us agreed, and I’m OK with that, because every option we had on the table stinks.”
“To have a different opinion on what stinks worse than the other is everybody’s prerogative. I do not begrudge any of my board members. It all stinks, and I hope none of you out there would begrudge any of us our opinion.”
According to estimates from the district, the move would save between $196,000 and $241,000 and help avoid staff layoffs and cuts to extracurricular programs.
Pre-K, kindergarten and first-grade classes will remain in the front wing of Tabernacle Elementary, and the back of the school would be closed, operating on a no-occupancy setting that maintains minimal heat and air-conditioning to avoid mold.
Because of low enrollment, there is enough room at Olson for four of each class from grades 2 to 8, board of education member Victoria Shoemaker previously told the Burlington County Times.
Tabernacle’s two schools serve just over 700 students, according to state data. The township sends students to Seneca High School, which is part of the Lenape Regional district.
The district estimates that it will lose about $2.6 million in state funding over a period of seven years. Due to changes in the state’s school funding formula, aid to districts with shrinking enrollment or changing demographics is being phased out over seven years and being redistributed to growing districts, which had previously been underfunded.
The idea of consolidation has been met with mixed reactions from families, some of whom wished the district took more time to research the option.
 

-- Gianluca DElia

WOODSTOCK - The Shenandoah County Board of Supervisors and the Shenandoah County Board of Education held a joint meeting Tuesday night to continue the ongoing discussion of the school division's long-term facilities plan.
A long-term facilities master plan final report was authored by Dejong - Richter, an educational planning firm, in June 2016. The report has been discussed since then but no action has been taken.
“We have been crowded in our elementary schools for some time. That is not changing,” said Shenandoah County Public Schools Superintendent Mark Johnston.
To address the immediate needs of elementary school overcrowding, the division in 2018 shifted Ashby Lee Elementary School’s fifth-grade class to North Fork Middle School, and North Fork’s eighth-grade class was moved Stonewall Jackson High School in Quicksburg.
Shenandoah County Supervisor Bradley Pollack questioned the need for new schools.
He pointed out that there has been a decrease in student enrollment over the past 10 years, according to data from the Virginia Department of Education. He said over the last 10 years the student population has dropped from 6,326 to 6,002, or 5.4%.
 

-- Melissa Topey

Public health experts all agree that there’s no such thing as a safe level of lead exposure for children.
But new state data show that thousands of children across Pennsylvania have likely been exposed to the toxic metal in their school drinking water. 
Water at more than 100 buildings in 32 school systems across Pennsylvania had unsafe levels of lead in the 2018-2019 school year, according to a list the Pennsylvania Department of Education published in late November.
From center city Philadelphia to rural Jefferson County, the test results forced school officials to replace plumbing fixtures, disable drinking fountains, and distribute bottled water to protect students and staff from contamination, according to reports they submitted to the state.
“This really is an issue that criss-crosses Pennsylvania — rural, urban and suburban,” said Chris Lilienthal, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, a union representing 187,000 educators. “Lead in schools is a huge health concern.”
Even in low concentrations, lead exposure can have disastrous, permanent effects on a child’s physical and developmental growth. It has been linked to nervous system damage, learning disabilities, impaired physical growth and hearing, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 
Before scientific research made its dangers apparent in the 1970s, lead was a common component of house paint and pipes. It remains an environmental hazard in old buildings and plumbing systems across the United States.
Lawmakers and public health advocates have long known that Pennsylvania’s old pipes and housing stock make its children particularly vulnerable to lead exposure. 
Even so, the state does not require universal lead testing in homes or schools. 
 

-- Elizabeth Hardison

SALISBURY — Kevin Jones, new chairman of the Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education, says he’d like members to come to a decision about the future Knox Middle and Overton Elementary schools “sooner rather than later.”
“Hopefully at our next meeting, in January,” Jones, who took over as chairman of the board Monday night, told the Post. “It’s obviously still an important issue.”
And while the board’s first meeting in January is the 13th at 4 p.m., it’s unclear if the board will reconsider renovating Knox and closing Overton then. Before he turned over the reins to Jones, former chairman Josh Wagner said staff still needed to gather data.
“Not doing anything is the worst thing,” Jones told the Post. “We’ve got to continue to have conversations and consider all options.”
The board in November paused its plans for a $26 million renovation of Knox Middle School, which would result in the closure of Overton Elementary, after dozens of students, parents, grandparents and community members voiced their opposition. Instead of a renovation, members of the Knox-Overton community are pressing the school board to return to a proposal to build a K-8 school on a football field between the two facilities. The cost of that endeavor would be north of $50 million.
A number of people returned to the school board Monday night to reiterate they opposed the renovation plan. The school board, with the renovation plan, would spend roughly $260 per square foot for a facility that would be at 96% capacity, said parent and architect Elizabeth Trick. It would be a poor use of tax dollars, Trick said. While a K-8 school would be more expensive, up to $300 per square foot, the higher price tag would be worth it, she said.

-- Josh Bergeron

The New Jersey Department of Education has recently released a centralized database designed to provide lead testing information on school districts in the state.
The database is part of the state’s three-pronged approach to strengthen New Jersey’s response to lead testing and remedy elevated lead levels in drinking water in state schools, according to officials. Princeton Public Schools was one of more than 24 districts in the database that had too much lead discovered in its water samples in the database’s latest report. For the Princeton, the most recent lead sampling and analysis was done in 2017. “The only issues identified in earlier testing involved a few older faucets and water fountains. Those issues were immediately addressed. We were attentive back then,” Superintendent Steve Cochrane said. “Our water has tested fine, as has our pipe infrastructure. “We are happy to report that the water in our schools meets all acceptable standards.” He said everything has been fine since the 2017 test.

-- ANDREW HARRISON

PROVIDENCE — The Vartan Gregorian Elementary School sits at the intersection of Wickenden and East streets. It’s close to a cafe, a doughnut shop, India Point Park, residences, and the bustle of city life. Behind it is Interstate 195, and close by is Interstate 95. “It's at the intersection of two highways. That’s really quite close,” said Gregory Wellenius, director of the Center for Environmental Health and Technology at Brown University. “The last time I looked at the building, the areas where the kids play and have recess, those are actually right adjacent to the highway.” According to the Center for Public Integrity’s data visualization map of school proximity to highways, the interstate nearest Vartan Gregorian is used by more than 30,000 cars daily. That’s a lot of pollution passing by the windows of the elementary school. The vehicles of today, be it a Prius or a Ford F-150, aren’t nearly as clean as we may think. These vehicles spew a cocktail of particulate matter (such as soot, which is less than a tenth the width of a human hair), volatile organic compounds (which are often carcinogenic and contribute to increased ozone), carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide, among other pollutants. These contaminants are linked to a slew of childhood development issues, ranging from stunted lung growth and worsened asthma symptoms to increased risk of heart disease and cancer to learning disabilities.

-- GRACE KELLY

THOUSANDS OF Californians are being forced from their homes and hundreds of thousands more are without power as wildfires spread rapidly across the state, fueled by dry, windy conditions. Overshadowed by the threats to lives and landmarks and property, the fires are also disrupting things like local economies, the delivery of social services and education, with students increasingly missing more class time as a result. Since the 2002-2003 school year – the earliest for which the state has retained records – nearly two-thirds of emergency school closures in the state have come as a result of wildfires, the threat of wildfires or the fallout from wildfires. California public schools have reported 34,183 cumulative days missed across all public schools because of emergency closures, which include closures due to weather, natural disasters, student safety and infrastructure. Of those total closures, wildfires were responsible for 21,442 days at 6,542 schools, affecting more than 3 million students, according to data from Disaster Days, a report by the nonprofit news site CalMatters that tracks school closures in California. About half of those missed days occurred in just the last two school years. And the problem is only expected to grow worse, as wildfire season begins later, stretches longer and becomes ever more destructive. Currently, 11 wildfires are burning in California, with the largest, the Kincade Fire, scorching nearly 76,900 acres. Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for more than a dozen areas with even more voluntary evacuations in place. Entire school districts, as well as more than a dozen individual schools, have been closed this week because of the wildfires. Wildfires can result in school closures when they pose a hazard to schools or surrounding areas and it isn't safe to travel, when the air quality is poor and it's recommended that people remain inside or when the fire has created physical barriers, such as damage to roads or educational facilities. Even the threat of wildfires was enough to impact schools this month when PG&E shut off power to try and prevent fires from sparking.

-- Alexa Lardieri

At the new Menchaca Elementary School in South Austin, the glass wall in the art room can roll up so the classroom opens into an outdoor space. In another area of the campus, students can climb onto cascading wooden platforms to watch presentations, and classrooms abut large workspaces for students to collaborate on group projects. Slated to debut in January, Menchaca is an example of a “modernized school” officials want to replicate throughout the Austin school district. To do so, district leaders want to shutter 12 schools and consolidate them with others, eventually housing the students at these updated campuses, some of which have yet to be built. The ambitious plan, which spans five years, has prompted concern among families at the schools proposed for closure. They don’t want a modernized facility if it means locations being uprooted, teachers losing their jobs and academic programs being compromised. They also are uneasy with the fact the district doesn’t have the money to build the new schools, which they fear equates to consolidated campuses without any improvements. In the next few years, district officials intend to call for another bond election — likely topping the $1.1 billion bond package voters approved in 2017 — but said they needed to start the process somewhere. This includes developing a plan to close Brooke, Dawson, Joslin, Sims, Maplewood, Metz, Palm, Pease, Pecan Springs and Ridgetop elementaries, as well as Webb Middle School and Sadler Means Young Women’s Leadership Academy. Those campuses, more than half of them east of Interstate 35, have aging facilities that are diverting desperately needed dollars from improving academic programs, which can be better accommodated in modernized schools, administrators say. The total cost of deferred maintenance is $26,858 per student at the campuses slated for closure, and $17,759 per student at the schools that would remain open, according to district data. Teachers constantly worry about the conditions of their rooms, and the schools are uncomfortable environments, district operations officer Matias Segura said.

-- JULIE CHANG

Gov. Phil Murphy and lawmakers said Wednesday that the prevalence of water with dangerous amounts of lead found in schools around the state in recent years should bolster a drive to finally eliminate the longstanding health hazard.  Although officials have known for at least two decades that lead was leaching from pipes into homes and pouring from school drinking fountains, an analysis by the Trenton bureau of the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey published Wednesday added new details showing the extent of the problem. The analysis estimates that in one year of testing, between 2016 and 2017, more than 250,000 students were exposed to water with lead levels above the federal government's 15 parts per billion standard requiring corrective action. But it's likely that many more students may have ingested toxic water, since the state did not require testing until 2016, when about half of Newark's schools shut off their taps because of elevated lead levels.  And although health officials agree that there is no safe level of lead for children, the state does not require schools to report levels below the federal standard.  "It’s another data point that this is not a Newark issue or a New Jersey issue. This is a national issue," Murphy said in an interview Wednesday. "I’m looking forward to working with leadership to move the lead-related things" pending in the Legislature, he added. 

-- Dustin Racioppi and Stacey Barchenger

ANNAPOLIS — A proposal to assess school construction projects in Maryland based on need may be conducted through a $50 million pilot program. A work group comprised of Maryland state, county and school officials met Wednesday but didn’t determine specific details on the plan, but a draft outlined the pros and cons of implementing the program. The good: Priority funding would maximize limited state and local resources, promote sufficient facilities for every child and allow taxpayers to monitor and evaluate the program. The bad: School systems with the greatest needs, such as Baltimore City, could receive the lion’s share of funding. Del. Marc Korman (D-Montgomery County) made that point last month with the group and reiterated it Wednesday. “What is the value of ranking all the schools if you’re only going to solve the top three?” he said. “The pilot program is really going to deal with a small number of problems. You can create some negative situations among all the jurisdictions.” State Sen. Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City), also a member of the group, said a statewide assessment fits best, especially when some data already exists. “It’s going to have the same score, but it’s just cutting the data,” he said. “The data will be available.” Some of the figures would be based on a colored chart based on categories such as red, which represents number one, as the highest priority with immediate needs such as asbestos, electrical hazards and mold. Green represents number nine would be the lowest ranking for school and other buildings “that are within the expected life cycle and do not require replacement.”

-- William J. Ford

Each year, millions of Californians send their children to public K-12 classrooms, assuming that, from around Labor Day to early summer, there will be one given: A school day on a district’s calendar will mean a day of instruction in school. But that fixed point is changing, according to a CalMatters analysis of public school closures. From massive wildfires to mass shooting threats to dilapidated classrooms, the 21st century is disrupting class at a level that is unprecedented for California’s 6.2 million students. Last year, the state’s public schools closed their doors and sent kids home in what appear to be record numbers, mainly as a result of sweeping natural disasters. It was the third significant spike in four years.  The trend largely tracks the rising frequency and severity of climate-fueled wildfires, with big bumps in 2003 and 2007, the years of San Diego County’s huge Cedar and Witch fires, and then, in recent years, a more sustained but equally dramatic climb with the historic wine country fires and Camp Fire of 2017 and 2018. But fire —which just this month shut down the entire Murrieta Valley Unified School District in Southern California — has not been the only big reason for lost school time. California students also lost instructional days for emergencies such as breakdowns in school facilities that make it unsafe to operate a normal school day — mold or plumbing problems, for instance — as well as threats of potential gun violence.  In the latter case, state data shows, even when school officials don’t deem a threat credible enough to cancel classes, fear alone has increasingly led parents to keep significant numbers of students at home.

-- Ricardo Cano

School is back in session, and San Diego Unified School District anticipates educating about 1,200 fewer K-12 students than last year. Student enrollment has declined steadily at the region’s largest public school district in recent years. The district taught less than 103,000 students last year – 7,700 fewer than just five years ago and 14,700 fewer than 10 years ago, according to district records. And there is no sign the slide will slow anytime soon. Budget documents show San Diego Unified officials anticipate a loss of about 1,500 more students next year, and again the year after, when enrollment may dip below 99,000 students. That’s bad news for district leaders who are routinely left searching for millions of dollars in spending cuts. Since the state funds public schools on a per pupil basis, lost students means lost money – about $13,000 per student annually for San Diego Unified, according to state data. That means this year’s anticipated enrollment drop alone could end up costing the district $15.6 million. San Diego Unified’s latest $1.4 billion operating budget counts on $58.3 million in ongoing cuts in 2020-21 and another $24.5 million the following year. It is still unclear where that money will come from.

-- Ashly McGlone

Back to school means new classmates, new teachers and, for some students, new buildings.  Across Massachusetts, 10 brand new public schools opened this academic year and many more are in some phase of construction. 25 Investigates Ted Daniel examined state data to determine why some communities have been able to get shiny new state-of-the-art facilities and others - despite crumbling school buildings - have not.  Massachusetts has a system like no other in the country when it comes to funding school construction. Everyone pays for it. A penny of every dollar collected under the sales tax goes directly to funding public school projects. "We have created what we believe is probably the best system in the country right now," said Jack McCarthy, Executive Director of the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), the agency that allots state dollars to school construction projects. "The greatest thing for us is our source of revenue. We don't need to rely on an appropriation each year. That helps us plan." The formula used to determine which construction and renovation projects get funded is based on a set of established priorities, adds McCarthy. The list includes: structural integrity, present or future overcrowding issues, loss of accreditation, outdated HVAC systems, replace or add to obsolete buildings. According to McCarthy, the process was created to level the playing field between wealthy and distressed communities.  "It's very measured and very prescriptive, but we feel that it leads us to finding the most urgent and needy buildings," said McCarthy. 

-- Ted Daniel , Patricia Alulema

States' spending to build, upgrade, and equip school buildings has fallen over the last decade, exacerbating budget challenges many schools already face, an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds.  Thirty-eight states cut school capital spending as a share of their overall economy between 2008 and 2017, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Census Bureau. "As a share of the economy, state capital funding for schools— for example, to build new schools, renovate and expand facilities, and install more-modern technologies—was still down 31 percent in fiscal year 2017 compared to 2008, when the Great Recession took hold," Michael Leachman, senior director of state fiscal research at the progressive think tank, wrote in a blog post. "That's the equivalent of a $20 billion cut."  At the same time, spending on K-12 education in general continues to lag in many states, Leachman said, creating additional challenges for schools struggling to keep up with changing academics and facilities needs. The analysis comes as national debates put a spotlight on school resources. The majority of spending on school facilities comes from local sources, like property taxes, but some lawmakers and educational administrators have pushed for expanded funding from other sources. President Donald Trump has discussed a broad infrastructure plan to overhaul the nation's bridges, roads, and railways. And groups like,the [Re] Build America's School Infrastructure Coalition, or BASIC, have pushed for lawmakers to include school facilities in any plan they eventually greenlight. (The coalition wants $100 billion over the next decade to be set aside for schools, Education Week's Denisa Superville wrote last year.)

-- Evie Blad

NASHVILLE — The Nash-Rocky Mount Board of Education last week heard two recommendations about where the district’s new elementary school should be located. The school district already has been told that it should receive $10 million from a state grant for construction of the new school and another $10 million from Nash and Edgecombe county commissioners. The school board heard a presentation from the Operations Research and Education Laboratory (OREd) at N.C. State University, an organization it hired to help select a site for the new school. According to the grant presentation presented to the state, the school board plans to close Red Oak, Cedar Grove and Swift Creek elementary schools — all aging and outdated facilities — in order to build a single state-of-the-art school. Thomas Dudley, program manager for the OREd team, said his team has two different scenarios to propose. “We are here presenting the results of our study looking in the optimal location for your new elementary school according to a rigorous demographic analysis we conducted,” Dudley said. As part of the process, OREd interviewed multiple government officials and planners in Nash and Edgecombe counties and created a “data-focused membership and utilization forecast study” based on factors including land-use studies, community growth factors, a housing development inventory, current and projected school capacities in the district, the resident live birth rate and membership forecasts for Nash-Rocky Mount Public Schools.

-- AMELIA HARPER

A few weeks after the DC Council voted, with enthusiastic guidance from Chairman Phil Mendelson, to disapprove the DC Public Education Master Facilities Plan 2018, Mayor Muriel Bowser sent a letter indicating her “disappointment” with the legislators’ decision to reject the plan. She was equally dissatisfied that their July 9 disapproval resolution was attached to legislation naming the newest Ward 4 middle school in honor of famed African American journalist Ida B. Wells. Consequently, Bowser chose not to sign that act rather than veto it. In Bowser’s view, the facilities plan — or MFP in Wilson Building parlance — provided critical analysis that will help officials “address schools with over- and under-utilization” while also enabling the city to “more efficiently prioritize and allocate capital funding, better utilize the DC Government’s real estate assets, and make better use of available resources in our growing public education system,” she wrote in her July 26 correspondence.  Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn, who developed the MFP, also pushed back against criticism by council members and others who asserted that the document didn’t provide important information, including solutions that would address the problems revealed in the collected data. “The District was fully compliant with the law as the [MFP] met the required provisions,” he told the The DC Line through a spokesperson soon after the council’s rejection.  “In moving forward, the District will submit supplements to the plan annually,” added Kihn, noting that additional data related to school quality and family/student demand will be collected through EdScape Beta, a new system with which Kihn and Bowser have become enamored.  The responses from Bowser and Kihn are illustrative of what ails DC school reform: too much talk, insufficient action and nauseating government intransigence. Mayoral control of public education was supposed to provide clean and clear lines of authority, establish a solid political buffer, create stability, and use smart innovations to fuel the system while producing improved student outcomes. None of that has occurred.  It may be the start of the new school year. But issues of the past still haunt the District’s multibillion-dollar public education system.

-- jonetta rose barras

(Reuters Health) - Elementary schools with the greatest proportions of poor children may have the least amount of shade in their schoolyards where kids spend their recess, a new U.S. study finds. Researchers analyzing available shade in St. Louis elementary schools found a steady decrease in the amount of shade, especially from trees, with an increase in the number of children who qualified for subsidized lunches, according to the results in JAMA Dermatology. And that means poor kids are more exposed to the sun’s damaging rays, said the study’s lead author, Jolee Potts, a medical student at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “Shade on playgrounds is important because UV exposure is cumulative - meaning as you age, all of the sun exposure over your entire life adds up and contributes to your risk of getting skin cancer, including melanoma,” Potts said in an email. “About half of lifetime UV exposure occurs in childhood, making this time especially important for prevention. Adequate playground shade can also help immediately protect kids that are especially susceptible to the sun, including those with very fair skin, kids with conditions like lupus, or kids taking medications that make them more sensitive to the sun.” Potts and coauthor Dr. Carrie Coughlin analyzed data from 174 elementary schools, including 139 in St. Louis County and 35 in the city of St. Louis. They used subsidized school lunches as a proxy for household income and socioeconomic status. Their data on free and reduced-price lunches came from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Comprehensive data System.

-- Linda Carroll

The cafeteria of Bedichek Middle School in Southwest Austin was chaotic as almost 100 parents fought for the attention of AISD administrative staff. Some were still in work clothes, some in T-shirts. Almost all of them were asking questions – and sometimes things got heated. A district staffer had to pull a father into the hallway at one point when his language became combative. This was the Austin Independent School District’s first community meeting to explain its plans to close and consolidate schools. Maps of different sections of the city were set up along the edge of the room and large signs displayed school data. But one concern brought passionate discussions from many parents here: whether their children would be sent to new schools. That’s one possible outcome of this process, which nobody working for the district or living in its boundaries is thrilled about. The superintendent and school board said they are being forced to consolidate schools because of budget issues and declining enrollment. AISD hasn’t announced which schools it’s considering closing – that announcement will come in September. The district has said, however, that it won’t close schools in just one part of the city; it wants the changes to affect the entire district. AISD says it wants to make schools more equitable, to make sure all students have access to good academic programs, sit in renovated buildings and have experienced teachers at the front of their classrooms. To achieve that equity, the district might have to redraw school boundaries that assign certain neighborhoods to certain schools.

-- Claire Mcinerny

MORE THAN 900 classrooms in New York City public schools tested positive for lead in recent months, according to data released by the city's Department of Education. The presence of lead-based paint and visible deterioration was found in 938 classrooms, according to the inspection by the city of more than 5,400 classrooms in nearly 800 schools built before 1985. Officials found deteriorating lead paint in 302 of the schools and deteriorating paint in 2,245 classrooms. The findings were the result of typical end-of-year wear and tear, according to department officials, and will be fixed by the start of the school year. The inspections follow a local news investigation that found dangerous levels of lead in four schools. "These inspections were done at the end of the year when classrooms have been used all year and are transitioning out and teachers are taking down posters," says Miranda Barbot, the first deputy press secretary for the New York City Department of Education. "It wouldn't be uncommon for there to be this type of wear and tear in the classroom." Barbot says the city has always done regular inspections year-round and that the release of the data is the first step in implementing a reporting system that will be made public three times a year. "We are moving toward a more formal reporting structure and creating transparency for parents," she says, adding that the department recently launched an online notification portal for parents and others in the school community.

-- Lauren Camera

  MARSHALL — Getting through traffic around Marshall Middle School can sometimes take a while — especially in the mornings before school starts, a traffic study by engineering firm SEH said. And with plans to build a new elementary school nearby, Marshall Public Schools needs to figure out how to handle additional traffic from school buses and parents dropping off students. While there currently aren’t any official plans set to deal with that challenge, it’s something that the school district, the city of Marshall, and designers for the new school are starting to work out. At a meeting Tuesday afternoon, representatives from MPS, the city and other community stakeholders weighed in on where to put the new school building and features like bus unloading zones. The discussion was part of preparations for a bond project approved by voters this spring. The project will build a new elementary school to replace West Side Elementary on land near the current Marshall Middle School. Currently, traffic around MMS is the heaviest in the mornings, according to study data collected in May. SEH representatives said they set up 13 traffic cameras at sites all around the middle school, including on Saratoga Street and C Street. Camera data showed that traffic at MMS and public intersections picked up the most before school, when there is morning rush traffic at the same time as student drop-offs. In the afternoons there was a lot of activity at the school, but it didn’t come at the same time as peak rush hour traffic, the study said. Vehicles waiting to make left turns also play a big part in traffic conditions around the middle school. David Maroney, of ATS&R, the firm designing a the new elementary school, said ATS&R found there tended to be longer lines of traffic coming to MMS from the north, along Saratoga Street. Motorists waiting for an opening to turn left led to “stacks” of vehicles forming, he said. But traffic patterns weren’t the only concerns to consider, community members said Tuesday. The school design will also have to balance the needs of school bus drivers, kids who walk or bike to school, and neighborhood residents.

-- DEB GAU

It took six months to compile the initial data according to Dan Schmidt with MGT Consulting. One Hamilton County School Board member did raise concerns during Tuesday's meeting about what this data could mean for her county.  Two of the 15 Hamilton County Schools that could close are in District 5 school board member Karitsa Jones' district. Tyner Middle School and Lakeside Academy are both on the list of closed schools. Hillcrest Elementary could have their students split up between two other schools, and that building would be re-purposed for other programs. Dalewood Middle School Students would be moved to Orchard Knob MS, and that building would be renovated and re-purposed for CCA.  "I know that since I've been on the board in 2014 it's are they going to close our schools, and no they're not closing them because they're low performing or its not being recommended that they close for low performing, it's being recommended for population and I know that numbers matter," said Jones. "I get it, I get the rationale but it's just going to kill our community." Schmidt said the list was compiled using data.  "But that doesn't mean that we are ignorant of reality, and that doesn't mean that we aren't ultimately factoring emotion in as well," said Schmidt. The data shows it will cost $1.36 billion dollars to put the ten year plan to work.  They use a formula for each school: (100-score) x building square footage x cost per square foot = cost to renovate school. That price tag came from the sum of the cost of all the school's renovations.  "We develop these guidelines through meetings with your academic leadership with the district," said Schmidt. "So it's drawn from national standards but it's tailored to expectations here." An engineer or an architect, someone with a background in educational facilities, and an educator toured all 74 Hamilton County Schools. They focus on four categories: Building Condition
Educational Suitability 
Technology Readiness
Grounds Conditions  Educational suitability and Technology readiness both have an even more focused set of criteria.  Environment: The rooms should provide an inviting and stimulating environment for learning
Size: The room should meet the sq. footage standards
Location: The rooms should be appropriately located for the program.
Storage/Fixed Equipment: The rooms should have adequate storage space and fixed equipment appropriate to the program.  "Anytime we score something less than good, there's a comment saying why we scored it less than good," said Schmidt. Here's an example of a school assessment sheet. Sequoyah Vocational High School scored a 68. There are comments left on the side like, "interior classrooms don't have natural light, and the HVAC system is inconsistent. 

-- WRCB Staff & Claudia Coco

The impact of their physical environment on student success is a concept that didn’t receive much attention until the last few decades. But poor conditions can lead to increased truancy, vandalism and bullying, a lack of focus for students and high teacher turnover. When facilities are well-maintained and obsolete structures make way for retrofits or newer buildings with technological advances, improvements on student outcomes will follow, according to several national studies. Gwinnett County school officials are keeping that in mind as they undertake a multimillion-dollar program of school construction and maintenance this year. As the largest district in the state, Gwinnett County experienced a construction boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Averaging about five new schools a year, it needed to keep up with growing enrollment. The district went from 80,000 students in the 1994-1995 school year to 136,000 in 2004-2005. The 2019-2020 school year has a projected total of 180,500 students. To pay for that growth, the school system has sizable debt. According to data from the National Council on School Facilities, Gwinnett is paying over $50 million in interest on $1.2 billion debt.

-- Arlinda Smith Broady

The findings were recently released in a peer-reviewed paper by researchers Claudia Persico of American University and Joanna Venator of the University of Wisconsin. At least 200 million people in America — two-thirds of the population — live within three miles of a Toxics Release Inventory site. Of those, 59 million live within one mile. And 22 percent of all public schools are within one mile of a TRI facility, according to 2016 data. There are roughly 22,000 TRI sites in the US, and many are located in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. These facilities emit thousands of types of contaminants, many of them unregulated. Persico spoke about the research findings Monday night at NC State University. She said during certain times in children’s development — between birth and age 1, as well as in middle childhood, in grades 3 through 7 — the brain is especially vulnerable to the effects of contamination. At these ages, a child’s brain is forming new neural connections, known as neuroplasticity, that can determine learning ability, well as emotional behavior. “These are bad times to be exposed to pollution,” Persico said.

-- Lisa Sorg

NEW PHILADELPHIA After receiving feedback from more than 1,200 individuals, the New Philadelphia City School District is nearing a decision on the adoption of a master plan to improve its aging facilities. Members of the board of education hope to adopt a plan by the end of June. “We’re getting close to a decision, but we still have to analyze the data,” Superintendent David Brand said. “With aging facilities, overcrowding and security concerns, we knew we needed to do something, but the question was what,” he said. “We’re whittling down the options.” The district is running out of space because it has a growing student population. Enrollment is up 12 percent to 14 percent over the last four years. To cope with this situation, the district is utilizing every space available in its buildings. For instance, at West Elementary all fourth- and fifth-grade students are attending classes in modular trailers. The district conducted a series of more than 25 public meetings over the past several months to gather input from New Philadelphia residents. The board is weighing a number of options: n Do nothing and make necessary repairs to the district’s buildings, which would cost around $14.5 million; n Take advantage of an offer from the state of Ohio to pay 55 percent of the cost of constructing new buildings to unify the district and reduce operations expenses; n Or a combination of the two other options.

-- Jon Baker

A first-of-its-kind look at the physical conditions in Montgomery County’s 206 public schools was published online this week. The new data was released after the school system hired a consultant to analyze the schools, looking at more than two dozen components ranging from roofing and plumbing to fire protection and wall and floor finishes. Along with infrastructure components, data collected examined the quality of aesthetics such as classroom shapes, temperature control and natural light. Most schools were given color-coded ratings that indicated little to moderate work is needed in the near future, but a handful were in a category indicating the school is near the end of its anticipated life span and may soon need major repair, rehabilitation or replacement, according to school staff. “This is an important tool, but it is just one tool in our capital planning,” said Essie McGuire, executive director of the office of the chief operating officer. “There’s nothing to draw automatic conclusions from in this data. The answer to the ‘what’s next’ question is still combination of factors.”

-- CAITLYNN PEETZ

Although New Jersey is in better shape than the country as a whole for school debt, paying off construction bonds costs about a quarter of state’s annual debt service. New Jersey provides several ways to help school districts fund construction projects, but that hasn’t stopped some districts from amassing huge amounts of debt as they construct state-of-the-art facilities, sometimes for relatively small numbers of students. In total, New Jersey public school districts ended the 2016 school year $6.9 billion in debt, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data provided by The Hechinger Report as part of its Districts in Debtseries. That amounts to about $5,100 per student. While that sounds like a lot, New Jersey is in better shape than the nation as a whole. School debt in the United States totaled $434 billion in 2016 — the latest year for which complete numbers are available — which averages out to about $8,900 per student, Hechinger reports.

-- COLLEEN O'DEA

WHITMORE LAKE—Whitmore Lake Road is a two-lane stretch of blacktop cutting through wide fields and dense woods. In the predawn hours, around a curve, the community’s high school, a modern brick and glass edifice, beams out of the darkness. For the small, unincorporated community of 6,000 just north of Ann Arbor, the 12-year old building is a crown jewel — one that’s all the more precious given how close it came to slipping away. The public comes on weekends to swim in the competition-size pool, throw events in the recreation center and watch performances in the 700-seat theater. The school features geothermal heating and cooling, a high-tech computer lab and a two-story atrium. In 2003, before the Great Recession, Whitmore Lake was like thousands of other school districts across the country. Its school buildings were outdated and overcrowded. The district relied on seven portable classrooms, and some teachers were assigned to teach in modified storage closets. But the district was also luckier than most: The community was expecting a large-scale housing development to be built across the road from the high school, bringing with it a potential enrollment bump and the extra state dollars that would follow the additional students. Voters approved nearly $48 million in bonds for remodeling and renovating existing facilities, adding the pool complex and construction of the new high school that would hold 100 more students than the previous building. The housing development never came. The recession hit, and the local tax base fizzled. By 2014, the district had just $24,000 in the bank with a $600,000 payment coming due for salaries, benefits and day-to-day operating expenses recalls Superintendent Tom DeKeyser. According to administrators, it also still owed about $60 million for long-term bonds, and was relying on a state loan to help make the $3.6 million in payments that would be due that school year. The district was basically using a second credit card with a better interest rate to pay off another credit card’s debt. “I can feel myself sweating just thinking about it,” DeKeyser said. Plenty of school district officials across the country likely feel the same way.Nationally, school district debt has grown substantially, from nearly $323 billion in 2006 to $443 billion in 2016, according to U.S. Census data. In Michigan, school districts’ long-term debt is just over $13 billion, according to the state’s Treasury Department.

-- Emily Richmond

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Something that hasn’t happened in 10 years gets started Monday with the latest technology. State law requires all 55 West Virginia county school districts to formulate a Comprehensive Education Facilities Plan (CEFP) every 10 years. The 18-month lead-in to the December 2020 deadline begins this week. “They basically decide how they intend to use their facilities in the next 10 years,” state School Building Authority Director of Architectural Services Ben Ashley told MetroNews. “This is big picture planning. We’re asking for them to dream big and to think of big ideas for the delivering of education.” The counties will hire architects and facilities planners to do an inventory of all of their existing buildings. The individual school boards will then take that information and marry it to the county’s education needs. It’s anticipated there will be public meetings as part of the process. The SBA doesn’t want the counties to hold back, according to Ashley. “The theme has been dream big. We’ve asked them to use the ideas from the educational forums, use input from all the different levels of communication and folks that they interact with in their districts. We want to take those ideas and translate those into facility needs and then create great well-rounded projects from that.” The SBA is not going to end up with 55 three-ring binders full of CEFPs, instead, the SBA has teamed with the state Department of Education to hire contractors to create a statewide digital CEFP planning efforts. Ashley said all counties will be using data bases and resources on a cloud-based scenario. The site goes live Monday.

-- Jeff Jenkins

Montgomery County will place four school clusters under a one-year housing moratorium beginning July 1. So, homes in the process of being permitted or built won't be. This isn't likely to help school crowding, though it is likely to make it more expensive to live in Montgomery County. WAMU’s story about the moratorium gives a great deal of credence and validity to a worried parent, who claims that “her children have reported seeing dozens of kids file off school buses into new apartment buildings in the Bethesda area.” WAMU did not confirm whether or not “dozens of kids” are indeed filing off school buses and, if so, whether they are entering new apartment buildings in Bethesda. That's unfortunate, because this anecdote is strongly counteracted by the Montgomery County Planning Department's analysis: Anderson has repeatedly argued that freezing new housing growth isn’t the right solution to the public schools’ overcrowding problem. Analyzing data from MCPS, his office has concluded that most new students aren’t coming from new housing — they live in existing homes. Of the roughly 4,000 new students attending schools targeted for moratoria, Anderson says, only about 200 of them — or 5 percent — occupy new developments. Also unfortunate is County Executive Marc Elrich's skepticism of his own planning department. Elrich says things that sound pretty good when you read them. That development needs to be reasonable, and rationed, so as to not outpace what existing resources can offer, is a sentiment that most people find agreeable, and worth supporting: “I’m not in favor of trading off long-standing residents to accommodate simply new development,” Elrich said. “We need a way to make sure that if development is going to go forward in a place that’s overcrowded, that they provide enough money to solve the problem.” But adding things you can tax (like homes and people) to a municipality is how we pay for public services (like schools) in the US. If people who already live in Montgomery County—not the people who are moving there—are the reason why lots of kids are going to Montgomery County schools, saying “no new homes” for a year is poor public management that responds to an imaginary assumption based on a false narrative, not the reality of what’s actually happening.

-- Alex Baca

The Montgomery County Commission voted this week to support a bill that would create additional funding for the construction of schools in Clarksville-Montgomery County. CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (CLARKSVILLENOW) – The Montgomery County Commission voted this week to support a bill that would create additional funding for the construction of schools in Clarksville-Montgomery County. The decision to support the bill was unanimous with a vote of 21-0. House Bill 124 (TN Local Education Capital Investment Act), sponsored by Rep. Jason Hodges of Clarksville, would provide funding for “rapid growth school districts” in need of assistance with school construction. “Clarksville is growing at a tremendous pace right now,” Hodges said. “Communities are having a really tough time keeping up with the growth, especially for schools. ” Enrollment growth in the district continues to rise at a 30-year average of approximately 654 students per year, according to a study by the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System (CMCSS) based on 2017-2018 enrollment data. The study says capacity at the elementary school level continues to be strained throughout the district, which requires the construction of new schools to avoid overcrowding. Middle school capacity is currently at a ‘critical’ level across the district with little room to absorb additional growth. Hodges said new schools can cost upwards of $25 million to construct, a price tag that becomes unsustainable for local governments. These costs have led to property tax increases and higher vehicle registration fees for citizens.

-- Nicole June

A joint committee of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and the Prince William County School Board has had its eye on eliminating 206 portable trailers used as classrooms at 44 schools in the county, and the price tag on that effort just went up. The committee voted 5-1 on Oct. 29 to approve a $143.2 million plan to eliminate the trailers. The plan could be added later this year to the to the school division’s 10-year Capital Improvement Program, which accounts for all new school construction and expansion projects. After student enrollment data was finalized in January, school division staff added two elementary school additions to be built in 2028, said Diana Gulotta, the division’s spokeswoman. Those two additions total more than $28.9 million and provide 13 classrooms, increasing the proposed plan’s cost to more than $174 million.

-- Emily Sides

In Texas, local taxpayers fund the majority of educational facilities construction and maintenance costs, with local wealth influencing facilities outcomes. The traditional school districts that comprise the predominantly Latino and segregated San Antonio area vary considerably in property wealth as well as district capacity and expertise. We conducted an analysis of 12 San Antonio area school districts to address the questions: 1) To what extent do state and local investments vary by district? 2) How do district actions and constraints affect facilities quality and equitable investment? Methods include descriptive quantitative analysis of facilities investment data and qualitative interviews with school district leaders, staff, and school finance experts. Examining Texas school finance data demonstrated the variance in school district investments in educational facilities. Despite some districts with lower property wealth exerting higher levels of tax effort, they were able to raise less money per student for educational facilities through interest and sinking taxes. Interview findings revealed that several districts acknowledge lacking the capacity to maintain high-quality facilities for all students. Respondents frequently criticized current state policies and funding for educational facilities as inadequate, inequitable, and inefficient and expressed a need for policy improvements in an era of increasing state disinvestment.

-- Marialena D. Rivera, Sonia Rey Lopez

There are 51 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the United States with population levels above one million. Drawing from ConstructConnect’s data pool for those 51 cities, Table 1 ranks the Top 25 markets in America for educational facility construction starts last year. (Map 1 showcases the Top 20.) Leading all cities was the Big Apple, New York, with groundbreakings on school projects valued at $3.4 billion. In second place, not far behind, was Dallas-Ft Worth, at $3.1 billion. The Dallas portion of the $3.1 billion was two-thirds (67%) and the Fort Worth portion, one-third (33%). Near the summit of the rankings, also, were: Los Angeles and Houston, each at $2.6 billion; and Seattle-Tacoma, $1.6 billion. In the latter dual-city combo, Seattle was 70% and Tacoma 30%. There was another ‘twin-city’ result that was noteworthy. In San Francisco-Oakland (8th spot), the former’s piece of the pie was only 37% while the latter’s slice was a more taste-satisfying 63%.    

-- Alex Carrick

West Carrollton’s decision to seek state help to fund new school buildings did not prompt plans to close an elementary, according to its superintendent. The process to become eligible for a Ohio Facilities Construction Commission program, however, did help the school district uncover data showing Frank Nicholas Elementary should be shut down because of dropping student numbers, Andrea Townsend said. “Through the OFCC project and looking at the enrollment trends, that’s how we determined we had declining enrollment,” Townsend said. “So the conversation did spark from the OFCC project, but they’re not related.” Student population figures for West Carrollton – an open enrollment district that includes parts of Miami Twp. and Moraine – dropped more than 6 percent from 2014-17, according to Ohio Department of Education data.   K-12 enrollment for the district was 3,911 in 2015 and dropped to 3,540 last year, according to said Jack Haag, West Carrollton business manager. Nicholas is lowest in the number of students. The 62-year-old building on Vance Road in Moraine has 167 students. That’s less than 50 percent of the populations of CF Holliday (439), Harry Russell (383) and Harold Schnell (442), other elementaries in the district that house grades 1-5, records show.

-- Nick Blizzard

As a result of the St. Joseph School District canceling classes Wednesday, students were able to stay home and keep warm, yet those empty schools and facilities were working overtime to keep classrooms and hallways at a comfortable level. The St. Joseph School District’s Director of Operations Chris Silcott said that normally the heating systems, whether they be boilers or heat pumps, operate on a clock, where the thermostats are set back to a cooler temperature. “But when it gets this cold, we don’t do that,” he said. “We just basically let them run as much as they need to. (Otherwise) it would be hard to recover to get those rooms warm enough to where they should be for when the kids come back to school.” Silcott even has computer access to a system that can effectively monitor the room temperatures as well as ventilation throughout the schools. Such data can help him and a team of directors pinpoint trouble spots and respond to them more promptly. Usually, larger areas like hallways and gymnasiums take a bit more heat, which also can be monitored through the computer system. Silcott said that in his 31 years with the district, he’s never seen temperatures get so cold that pipes within the school were affected or damaged. “The biggest problems are those rooftop units,” he said. “They’re exposed to the weather and it’s just a constant battle to keep them going. You get mechanical failures, and then, of course, it’s extremely difficult to do those repairs when it’s this bitter cold. They just take constant monitoring.”

-- Daniel Cobb

BEDFORD — A $3 million bond for various energy efficiency projects throughout the district is being proposed to try to save money on electricity and fuel costs. All of the projects included in the bond are expected to have a complete return on their investment within 10 years, according to Jay Nash, school board chairman. The improvements include new LED lighting, fuel switches, pipe insulation, numerous building controls, kitchen upgrades, heating and ventilation updates and more.   “The bond is to invest in energy efficiency projects and energy infrastructure,” said Nash. Last year, local voters approved spending up to $93,000 on an energy efficiency feasibility study. Now, some of the recommendations from that study are being proposed in the $3,057,814 bond. On average, the district spends a total of nearly $900,000 a year on energy costs, according to data collected throughout the past decade. Heating costs about $335,933 a year, while it costs about $236,272 a year to operate mechanical equipment. Lighting the schools costs about $161,094 a year, while plug loads cost nearly $140,000 a year, according to information previously presented to the school board. To save on some of these costs, improvements are being proposed at every school in the district, as well as the central office.

-- KIMBERLY HOUGHTON

Roanoke School Board members are considering ways to alleviate crowding issues in the school system. Moving attendance zone boundary lines, seeking families to volunteer to transfer their child within the school division and reopening a dormant aerospace laboratory were all discussed as possible solutions Tuesday during the board’s winter retreat. Although not a crisis, school board member Laura Rottenborn said, multiple city schools are either above or near enrollment capacity.   The most prominent example of crowding is at James Breckinridge Middle, where enrollment was 44 students over its 630-maximum at the end of September, when fall enrollment data is sent to the state. The school board approved a central office request in the fall to rent a prefabricated, three-classroom building for $326,491, plus $5,654 per month and install it directly next to the school. The school expected to activate the unit by the end of November, but weather conditions stalled the installation process, Assistant Schools Superintendent Dan Lyons said. The unit should be in use within the next few weeks, Lyons told the school board. But the modular building is designed as a temporary fix. Based on recent trends, the population of Breckinridge, and its feeder elementary schools, is on track to keep growing. Monterey Elementary had an enrollment of 534 at the end of September, about 14 over capacity. Enrollment has fluctuated but typically remained over capacity in recent years. Preston Park, even with a three-classroom trailer, was about 34 students over capacity at September’s end.

-- Andrew Adkins

It was standing room only at the Fort Bend ISD Board of Trustees meeting Jan. 14 as the board discussed proposed boundary change recommendations affecting the Elementary 51 area and high schools in the southeast portion of the county. Among the crowd were parents and residents who wore colorful shirts in support for certain areas affected by proposed boundary changes. To make way for the new Malala Yousafzai Elementary School being built in the Aliana community, school district officials recommended a two-phased plan: In the first phase taking place in the fall of 2019, Madden Elementary students living west of Westmoor Drive and south of West Airport Boulevard would move to the new school. In addition, an undeveloped area in the Neill Elementary boundary south of Texas Department of Criminal Justice property will be rezoned to Brazos Bend Elementary. In the second phase to happen in the fall of 2020, the Chelsea Harbor and Stratford Park Estates neighborhoods, along with land in Cullinan Park and Sugar Land Municipal Airport, will be rezoned to Oyster Creek Elementary, according to the recommendation. “This proposal will provide minimal impact on communities rezoned already when Madden opened,” said Scott Leopold, partner at Cooperative Strategies, who is working with the district on enrollment data related to the boundary planning. “It also lays the groundwork for future schools in the area, including Elementary School 56.”

-- Christine Hall

The latest round of testing for lead in water at Howard County public schools found levels exceeding federal standards in six buildings — bringing the total to 18 schools where lead has been found since the start of a state-mandated review. Jurisdictions across Maryland are being required to test for lead under a law passed last year. By 2020, all 77 Howard County school facilities will be tested for lead. Twenty-nine county schools were tested between September and December, and lead levels exceeding federal health standards were detected in water from some fixtures in 18 overall, according to the school system’s test results. Cafeteria sinks, drinking fountains, ice machines and any other outlets that dispense cooking or drinking water are sampled. If elevated levels of lead are detected, the water fountain or faucet is shut off until repairs are completed. In the latest round of sampling at 13 public schools, elevated levels were detected in various sinks and fountains at Harpers Choice Middle School and Waterloo Elementary School in Columbia; Centennial High and Manor Woods Elementary in Ellicott City; Glenelg High School in Glenelg; and Hammond Middle School in Laurel. The tests were completed between Nov. 3 and Dec. 22. The samples testing positive for lead showed readings in a range between 20 parts per billion — which is the federal threshold — and 78.3 parts per billion, according to school data.

-- Jess Nocera

In the past 15 years, the Orange County school district has built 50 new schools, and it plans to build 14 more in the next five -- all to handle increasing student enrollment. Three of those new campuses are expected to be ready for students in August, all in the fast-growing Horizon West community. There is so much residential growth in that section of Orange that the district is now building so-called relief schools for schools that were built to relieve crowding on other campuses not so many years ago. Population surges south of Orlando and in the Lake Nona area have prompted school construction, too. And a voter-approved sales tax — given the OK in 2002 and again in 2014 — has provided money for the district to renovate or replace more than 100 old schools, spurring campus construction projects across the county. But building new schools because existing ones are packed with students is most prevalent in a swath of southwestern Orange where Horizon West has sprung from former citrus groves. “This is one of the fastest-growing areas of the country,” said Pam Gould, the Orange County School Board member whose district includes Horizon West. “It’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy.” Here’s a by-the-numbers look at what’s happening, based on school district data.

-- Leslie Postal

HONOLULU (AP) — THE Hawaii Department of Education is rolling out an online database to track the estimated $868 million backlog of repair and maintenance projects in the public school system. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports the state plans to launch the database early next year to show when money is appropriated for projects, when it is allocated, when contracts are awarded and how much of the contract has been paid. Hawaii schools have about 3,800 pending projects that are broken down into 11 categories. Roofing projects make up the biggest category at $196 million followed by grounds projects at $185 million.

-- Associated Press

Relief from crowding is in sight for Boca Raton elementary schools, as the state on Friday approved a new campus to be located in the city. The school will be built on city-owned land next to Don Estridge High Tech Middle School, adjacent to Countess de Hoernle Park, 1000 Spanish River Blvd. It’s the same site where Verde Elementary students will attend school next year as their campus is demolished and rebuilt. “Christmas has come early,” School Board chairman Frank Barbieri Jr. said. “The approval to build this school did not come easily, and I’m proud of the district team for being able to provide data-based answers to the Department of Education’s questions and concerns through this process.” The school district had to show that even though there was room for more students in many schools in Palm Beach County, Boca Raton schools remain crowded.

-- Lois K. Solomon

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As the region's largest school district tries to manage a growing number of students, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools data shows 40 percent of its schools are overcrowded. Some by hundreds of students; one high school by more than a thousand. A report identified 67 overcrowded schools in all, 11 times more than nearby Gaston County, and there's currently only funding to renovate or replace about a third of those schools. Collinswood Language Academy, a well-respected magnet school in Charlotte, is at the top of the list of overcrowded schools based on student enrollment alone. "We have I think 800 students in a facility that's probably supposed to hold 400," Parent Teacher Association President Kerry Richman-Connors said. "The original building is only for kindergarten through fifth grade and so we have the sixth through eighth grade, which adds a lot more bodies." As a result of the high number of students and many modular units, Collinswood is also at the top of CMS' new school list, thanks in large part to the longtime work of the PTA. Voters approved $922 million in bonds last year. The money will help the district relieve overcrowding at 20 schools, including number two on the list, Ardrey Kell, which is almost 1,400 students above the planned enrollment.

-- Nathan Morabito

Repair and maintenance work at any one of the Hawaii Department of Education’s 256 aging school buildings is so commonplace, the budget for this work surpasses that of desired classroom upgrades, including facilities for new STEM labs. The DOE has a whopping backlog of 3,800 repair projects statewide. But even with a budget of $274 million, it can’t get to those repairs quickly enough, with the appropriation/design/bid/construction cycle averaging a glacial seven years. But under a new DOE initiative that leverages a new contract procurement process and database to track the pending backlog in real time, the DOE hopes to shorten those years to months, leading to much quicker fixes to sagging roofs or faulty ventilation systems. “We’re making it much less cumbersome,” said Dann Carlson, assistant superintendent for school facilities and support services, during a presentation to community stakeholders at Impact Hub Honolulu on Tuesday morning.

-- Suevon Lee

POWHATAN, Virginia — Alex Campbell was just 7 years old when, he says, his principal dragged him down the hall to the school's "crisis room." Administrators reserved the room, a converted storage closet, for children who acted out. He still remembers the black-painted walls. The small window he was too short to reach. The sound of a desk scraping across the floor, as it was pushed in front of the door to make sure he couldn't get out.     Alex, who has autism spectrum disorder, says he was taken there more than a half-dozen times in first grade, for behavior such as ripping up paper or refusing to follow instructions in class. The room was supposed to calm him down. Instead, it terrified him. "When I asked for help or asked if anyone was still there, nobody would answer," Alex said. "I felt alone. I felt scared." According to the latest data collected by the U.S. Department of Education, public school districts reported restraining or secludingover 120,000 students during the 2015-2016 school year, most of them children with disabilities. Families and advocates have documented cases of students being pinned down, strapped to their wheelchairs, handcuffed or restrained in other ways. Both practices, experts say, can traumatize children, and may lead to severe injuries, even death.

-- Hannah Rappleye and Liz Brown

The Hawai‘i State Department of Education (HIDOE) is reconfiguring its facilities maintenance program to align the Department’s strategic focus on providing respectful learning environments with its core value of ensuring access to a quality public education for every student in every community across the state. Superintendent Christina M. Kishimoto said the effort reflects the Department’s commitment to a well-defined accountability structure and to making project data both understandable and publicly available. The three-part initiative involves streamlining how the Department contracts repair services to fast-track priority projects, increasing the community’s access to project details with an online database under development, and implementing a data-driven analysis to plan for future school needs. The initiative, already underway, is being called Future Schools Now, conveying the urgency of modernizing all Hawai‘i public schools to foster innovation and world-class learning. HIDOE’s facilities maintenance branch oversees 4,425 buildings and more than 20 million square feet of space across 256 campuses statewide with a fiscal 2018 facilities budget of $274 million.

-- Staff Author

An initiative that clears the San Diego Unified School District to borrow $3.5 billion won the majority vote in 85 percent of precincts, according to data from the midterm election. Some 152,500 people were in favor of the initiative, which is the largest bond in district history and its third request for extra funding in the past decade. According to the 204-page measure, the money will help the state’s second-largest school district improve aging classrooms and bring updated technology to the classrooms, among other things. Among precincts with more than 100 votes, Measure YY was most popular in an area of Montezuma — between Montezuma Road and Aztec Walk — with more than 88 percent of voters approving the bond. Registrar of Voters data show 88 percent of voters in a Chollas Park precinct, near Logan Avenue and Interstate 805, voted yes, the second highest percent among voting precincts. In a Southeastern San Diego neighborhood, near Imperial Avenue and South 28th Street, four out of every five voters approved the measure.

-- Lauryn Schroeder

Findings in a new report on school safety show that most of Tennessee’s schools meet or exceed standards on many items related to school facilities and operations, but data gathered in the study revealed the greatest weaknesses to be in vehicle control, access control, and surveillance for schools across the state. Education Commissioner Candice McQueen on Wednesday released the report to provide insight on the strengths and challenges in school security seen across districts. This new report allows the state to increase awareness, prompt further conversations, and spur future action. “We take seriously the responsibility of providing a safe and secure learning environment for Tennessee students and will continue to support our schools in this daily effort,” Commissioner McQueen said. “Critical work to improve school safety has been started under Governor Haslam’s leadership and this report shows us several ways we can continue to improve our practices moving forward. “I am grateful for the partnership of our state legislature, other departments, school districts, and law enforcement agencies to make this work a priority in Tennessee.” While Tennessee has made several efforts in recent years to promote student safety and prepare schools for potential threats, Haslam took further action in March 2018 by convening a School Safety Working Group that recommended a statewide review of school facilities and safety procedures and precautions. These recommendations were swiftly accepted by the governor, which led to the first statewide individual school safety assessments that rated each school on 89 safety standards and was overseen by the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, in coordination with the Department of Education and local school officials. “My goal was to ensure the committee work carefully yet swiftly to develop a well-informed plan that would provide security guidelines for our TN school districts,” Department of Safety and Homeland Security Commissioner David W. Purkey said. “A 17-member committee represented by professionals in the area of education, mental health and public safety from across the state were able to accomplish this mission.”

-- Mark Cook

Columbus, Ohio — Ohio would be required to study which of its schools have air conditioning under a state lawmaker’s proposal to put school construction funding specifically toward meeting standards for climate control, among other school infrastructure improvements. HB 738, introduced Oct. 4 by Rep. Niraj Antani (R-Miamisburg), requires the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC) and the Department of Education (ODE) to study the status of school buildings regarding air conditioning, accessibility, and school safety. The bill also requires that once the study is completed, 25 percent of future school construction money be dedicated to air conditioning, disability accessibility, and safety. The state lacks data on how many Ohio schools have air conditioning or how much it would cost to air condition school buildings in Ohio that do not already have it. Earlier this school year, a heat wave caused multiple Ohio schools to close or send students home early, sparking debate on social media from educators and parents over whether climate control is necessary for a good learning environment.

-- Staff Author

Voters across the U.S. were backing at least $20.6 billion of bond sales to support school construction and infrastructure upgrades including road and bridge repairs, led by multi-billion-dollar measures in California. Results are still pending on hundreds of state and local measures. The nationwide election brought about $76.3 billion of bond referendums from California to Maine, the most in an election since 2006, according to data from market research company Ipreo by IHS Markit. It signals an increasing willingness by states and local governments to borrow for needed public works while they reap the financial gains from the nearly decade-long economic expansion. The debt sales would finance infrastructure projects and housing programs in California, school construction in Texas and North Carolina, and affordable housing in Oregon, where rising home prices have been a strain on many residents.

-- Bloomberg Writer

A week after recommending the closure of Lacoochee Elementary in northeastern Pasco County, school district officials have turned their attention to possibly shutting down two west side schools serving primarily low-income students. Under a plan announced to staff Tuesday, Hudson and Mittye P. Locke elementary schools would close and merge into nearby campuses. Hudson, like Lacoochee, has long been the focus of efforts to turn around lagging student performance on state testing measures, with limited positive results. The concept, which quickly circulated into the community through social media, also includes the creation of a magnet school at Marlowe Elementary, and the addition of advanced academic offerings at several other elementary schools along the US 19 corridor. Most of them use only about 80 percent of their capacity, or less, according to district data. "It makes sense to look at these schools and look for the best use of our capacity, while providing innovative, challenging programs in all of the schools," district spokeswoman Linda Cobbe said. The concept would shift much of the $11 million in Penny for Pasco funds slated for remodeling Locke to two classroom wing additions at Marlowe, less than two miles away. Cobbe said a district analysis has determined Locke is "unrenovatable," and that the money could be better spent improving Marlowe. Marlowe would become a magnet school with room for 1,000 students. Its current capacity is just over 600.

-- Jeffrey Solochek

 Lack of time and staff support are the two biggest barriers to school garden success, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health. “The physical space itself doesn’t seem to be the problem,” Dr. Kate G. Burt of the City University of New York in The Bronx, who led the study, told Reuters Health in a telephone interview. Across the US, 44 percent of schools reported growing edible gardens during the 2013-2014 school year, up from 31 percent in 2011-2012, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s most recent data. Over the same period, the number of school gardens rose from 2,401 to 7,101. School gardens have been shown to help students eat more fruits and veggies, be more active and do better in math and science, to name just a few of their benefits. But for a school garden to succeed, it must be well-integrated, meaning it “fosters meaningful educational experiences for students, and is valued as part of the school’s culture,” Dr. Burt and her team note in their September 25 report.

-- Anne Harding

It was, to paraphrase architect Jack Mousseau, a bitter pill. But one that will have to be swallowed if Pueblo City Schools' (D60) mission of providing a high-quality education as a high-performing school district is to be fulfilled. On Tuesday, Mousseau, a principal in the Denver-based MOA Architects, presented to the board of education an in-progress review of a district-wide master plan and facilities assessment commissioned by the district. It's a report that paints a dismal picture of aged and failing buildings, severely underutilized square footage, continual declining enrollment and, perhaps most telling, nearly $785 million in needed repairs. "We're not coming to tonight with resolution but with the situation," Mousseau told the board. "It's what I would call the state of the school district." A state that was revealed through well-researched data on enrollment projections, student capacity of schools, facility conditions and operations, and maintenance costs. In all, D60 has 30 permanent buildings, with but a single one built in the last 25 years. Five were constructed between 1993 and 1968 with 24, or 80 percent, built before 1968. And with a dwindling life span comes a host of problems and issues. District-wide, $785 million is needed to address what's defined as a "condition issue," with $218 million required to rectify what are deemed top-priority, or critical issues, that could lead to a school closing itself.

-- Jon Pompia

Boston Public School leaders are proposing to close three schools as part of a broader plan to upgrade the district's aging buildings. The West Roxbury Academy and the Urban Science Academy, which share a building in West Roxbury, are slated to close at the end of this school year. Officials said the building is in such poor condition that closure was a matter of safety. "That building is not in enough shape to continue being used even into the next school year," Interim Superintendent Laura Perille said. A district data/schools/011B/011B_West_Roxbury_report.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(112, 143, 189); box-shadow: rgb(185, 214, 249) 0px -2px 0px 0px inset; text-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 1px 1px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -1px 1px 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 150ms ease 0s;">report of the school facilities from 2016 projected that repairs and renovations would cost $51 million at the complex. Those items include replacing the windows and the roof. It also noted that work was needed on the plumbing and fire sprinkler systems. Officials also plan to close the John W. McCormack Middle School in Columbia Point by the summer of 2020. That move, Perille said, fits into the district's larger plan to slowly phase out the use of middle schools with the hopes that students only change schools once. Over the last six years, enrollment at district middle schools has dropped by about 1,800 students.
-- Carrie Jung

Frederick, Md (KM) The Frederick County Council on Tuesday approved a bill to adjust the school construction fees over a seven-year period.. The vote was 5-3 with Councilmembers Jerry Donald and MC Keegan-Ayer in the “no’ column. The fees are paid by developers with projects in areas which fail the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance schools test. These builders can either build the new school capacity and let their projects go forward, or they could stop building homes until the schools are adequate. A law enacted by the last Board of County Commissioners lets developers pay a certain amount toward school construction, and their project is allowed to continue. This legislation adjusts the fees annually, starting in January 1st, 2019 to January 1st, 2026,  without any action by the Council, and are based on the recent school construction cost data from the state, plus two-percent. The annual increase will be no more than six-percent. Supporters of the bill  say the fees  have not been adjusted since 2014, and school construction costs have increased since then. But opponents say it would bring up the cost of housing. Developers pay the fee, opponents argue, but it’s reflected in the price homebuyers pay. The Council also approved bills to set up limited food waste composting.; establish a Senior Services Advisory Board; and allow farm based craft breweries to hold promotional events.

-- Kevin McManus

ROBESON COUNTY, NC (WBTW) - Schools in Robeson County will reopen on Tuesday more than a month after closing for Hurricane Florence.  Superintendent Shanita W. Wooten said in a post on the district's Facebook page and dataID=132611&PageID=1" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; color: rgb(105, 123, 153); text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px;" target="_blank">website that Public Schools of Robeson County will open for students on Tuesday, October 16 after closing on September 11.  School employees were asked to report to work on Monday to inspect classrooms, report additional concerns, and to prepare for the return of students, according to Wooten.  The district's deadlines for vaccination records and health assessments for Pre-K Title I students has been extended until November 1, Wooten also said. Students now have until December 1 to submit proof of immunizations. "North Carolina Law requires all students entering kindergarten must have a health assessment and completion of required immunizations. 7th grade students must receive a meningococcal and TDAP vaccine." "Bus drivers are prepared to safely transport students to and from school beginning Tuesday," Wooten added. Detours will impact Green Grove Elementary School, Fairgrove Middle School, and South Robeson High School.  Breakfast will be served on Tuesday and "all services will be available at the two Shining Stars program sties," according to Wooten. School principals and support staff will help with the student transfer process for the coming weeks.  "Students displaced by storm damage to their homes are protected by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Act," Woooten said. "Students displaced by the storm have the right to remain in their schools of origin (i.e., the school the student attended when permanently housed or in which the student was last enrolled) if that is in the student’s best interest, regardless of whether they are currently staying in that school’s district attendance zone."
-- Jessica Minch

While hearing a committee’s plan to address more than $910 million in Midland ISD facilities needs, some members of the district’s board of trustees seemed to be receptive of work that went into the report. The board during its meeting Monday heard a presentation about the Facility Master Planning Committee’s report and had the opportunity to ask questions of James Riggen, chief operations officer. Some questions focused on future capacity and enrollment, which is expected to grow by 2.5 percent based on current grade projections. “This is something that the community has talked about,” he said. “There’s work to be done…. But that’s a vision that we have — that there be a choice for students in the future.” Overall, the committee’s plan calls for a $545.8 million bond in May and lists a project total of more than $910.3 million over the next decade, according to previous Reporter-Telegram stories. Trustee Bryan Murry said the committee examined data to come up with an option to serve capacity needs and to save money. “As a taxpayer myself, I want to do what’s best for our district for this capacity,” said Murry, who sat on the committee. “But I also want to make sure that we do it financially (responsibly).” Highlights of the plan for the May bond include a new high school, a replacement for Midland High School, a new middle school, a partner public school and a young women’s academy, according to the previous stories.

-- Simone Jasper

This week D.C. will hold its third and final round of public meetings for a little-known planning process that could reshape the city’s balance between neighborhood schools and charters. For the past 16 months, Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office has been developing a blueprint for the future of the city’s schools, known as a “Master Facilities Plan.” By law, this comprehensive report will provide city leaders with an overview of the state of school buildings across the District. The goal is to analyze population projections and school building data so that policymakers can plan for the next decade of D.C. public education. How should resources be directed? What schools need to be built? Where? The stakes are high. Though D.C. has one of the largest charter school sectors in the country—educating nearly half of all city students—most families assume they could still send their child to their local neighborhood school, a District of Columbia Public School, if they wanted. A 2014 advisory committee on student assignment led by the deputy mayor for education found strong public support for maintaining schools that students living within a certain distance are entitled to attend.  But since 2008, the number of charters in the city has increased from 93 to 120, while the number of neighborhood schools has declined from 134 to 114. Only four new DCPS schools have opened in the city during this period, compared with 27 charters. Many advocates say there needs to be more coordination between the two school sectors if D.C. wants to ensure that all families have access to a neighborhood public school in the future.  Expected demographic shifts add another layer of complexity. The D.C. Auditor projectsschool enrollment to grow by 12,000 to 17,000 students in the next 10 years, with the bulk of that growth occurring in the middle and upper grades. A separate analysis produced by the D.C. Policy Center puts those estimates even higher, predicting just over 21,000 new students by 2026.

-- RACHEL M. COHEN

Troubled with roof leaks, broken air-conditioners and overcrowding, Alachua County Public Schools officials assert that a districtwide facilities crisis adversely affecting how students learn. The district maintains that state lawmakers have cut funding for local schools to improve facilities by $168 million over the last 10 years. A lot of the district’s schools are out of date and have maintenance issues, said Jackie Johnson, the district’s public information officer. Facilities are just one of the topics on the agenda at the “Making Our Schools Everyone’s Priority” forum set for 9:30 a.m. Saturday at Gainesville High School. The Education Foundation of Alachua County, the Education College Council, the League of Women Voters and the Alachua County Council of PTAs are sponsoring the forum. Other topics include the district’s dataid=40786&FileName=Closing%20the%20Achievement%20Gap--2-2018.pdf" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: none; list-style: none; border: 0px none; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(12, 0, 179); transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">education gap and students’ mental health needs. Alachua County Schools Superintendent Karen Clarke; Valerie Freeman, director of equity and outreach, and Veita Jackson-Carter, the Systems of Care program administrator, are scheduled to speak. If voters approve a half-cent sales tax referendum on the ballot in November, the county would reap an extra $22 million annually each of the next 12 years. The measure would cost families around $5 more a month, according to the school district.
-- Christina Morales

With the continued regional growth that is projected for the coming years, Berkeley County School District will have to consider erecting a new middle school, two new elementary schools, and in the next decade or so, also a new high school. However, a number of questions about how to properly plan for growth remain unanswered - one vital question being how the district will cover the related costs. “That’s going to be a tough one,” said Tony Parker, the district's former superintendent. Parker is also with consulting firm Harding Parker & Associates, LLC, which signed a contract with the district in July, though at the time there was controversy about whether the firm was even needed. At their Sept. 18 board meeting, board members reviewed the facilities master plan the firm compiled. Parker said there have been conversations about a one-cent sales tax to help fund building new schools and renovating old ones, and there is also the idea of a bond referendum. Parker also brought up an impact fee on new construction. “All of these are issues that are going to have to be considered by this board of education to come to a consensus on how do you address the growth that is going to be coming into Berkeley County in the future,” he said. Mike Miller, founder of Numerix, LLC in Charleston, reviewed the area's growth forecast data. Miller said the forecast models are built from historic trends and future development potentials and are intended for medium to long-range planning – or three to 10 years. Miller said the forecast predicted an average annual growth of 759 students in the district over the next decade, which equates to a growth rate of about 2.1 percent annually.

-- Monica Kreber

RALEIGH, NC — Florence, which was downgraded to a tropical depression Sunday, continues to linger over the North Carolina coastline and many schools won't be able to reopen for days or weeks due to flooding and structural damage. But some have already announced they'll reopen as soon as Monday. Below is a list of the largest school districts in the state and whether they've indicated they're reopening.

Wake County Schools

All Wake County Public School System schools will be closed for students Monday due to "after effects" of Florence on school facilities. Athletic and extracurricular events are also canceled.   Click here to see scheduled weather dataID=133181&PageID=16" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(68, 159, 55); text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;" target="_blank">make-up days.

Durham Public Schools

Durham Public Schools will resume operations Monday. The early release day previously scheduled for Wednesday has been canceled and that will instead be a full school day.
-- Daniel Hampton

Between state and local governments, in 2016 Virginia spent 33 percent less than in 2008 on school capital projects, like building new schools or renovating existing ones, according to a new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington, D.C., research and policy nonprofit. Virginia is among 36 states in which capital spending fell in that time period, the report states. Several localities across Virginia are struggling with school maintenance. Norfolk faces complaints from parents about mold and insect infestations in its schools, and students in Lee County rearranged seats to avoid leaking ceilings. Richmond schools have grappled with everything from ceiling tiles falling on students to broken stall doors in the bathrooms. However, the school system and the city had to recently make a joint admission that the school system had nearly $7 million in leftover money from past projects that was previously unaccounted for. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities used data from the Census Bureau to generate its report, along with state budget documents. It shows that, in 2008, state and local governments spent $1.72 billion on school construction, renovations and upgrades. But in 2016, adjusted for inflation, that number dropped to $1.16 billion.

-- Katie O'Connor

After a countywide review of school water, elevated lead levels were detected in water outlets at 86 Montgomery County public schools. Water stations with high-level readings were immediately taken out of commission as the school system has worked through testing since winter, but 153 of the 238 outlets with elevated lead levels had been accessible to students, according to district data finalized last week. In 2017, the Maryland General Assembly passed a bill requiring periodic testing for the presence of lead in each drinking water outlet located in all schools. The law required all initial testing to be done by July 1. Montgomery County Public Schools tested 13,248 outlets at 208 school sites. About 1.8 percent of the outlets showed lead levels over 20 parts per billion, a guideline for lead levels set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and specified in the state law. About 1.1 percent of the water stations with high-lead levels were accessible to students.

-- DANIELLE E. GAINES

At some point during the year, many school districts will fall into one of these three areas:

1. Thinking about planning a bond or levy measure
2. Attempting to pass a bond or levy
3. Trying make the most of the bond or levy they just passed

No matter which category your district finds itself in, the end goals are the same: alleviate overcrowded classrooms, get facilities sited in the best possible location, and—if existing facilities are being expanded or new facilities are being built—make sure attendance area boundaries are redrawn to accommodate community values while balancing school capacities. Easier said than done. School district planning involves a lot of decisions and a lot of data, regardless of size or number of students. Reaching that end goal will never be simple, but you can make your bond or levy campaign run smoothly by taking the time to update your long-term facilities plan, determine your school siting criteria, and start thinking about whether you’ll need to update attendance area boundaries. Tip 1: Update your long-term facilities plan

-- TYLER VICK

SOUTH KITSAP — Voters in South Kitsap School District will see not one but two revenue measures for school construction and renovation on the Nov. 6 ballot. The school board on Wednesday approved a 25-year, $185 million bond measure for a second high school plus a four-year $22 million capital levy for major renovations at existing schools, new technology and improved security throughout the district. The last time the district passed a bond was 30 years ago to build three new elementary schools. There have been seven failed measures since then, including a $163.2 million bond in 2007 that would have covered a second high school, a new South Colby Elementary school and districtwide school improvements. The district ran two proposals in 2016 and one in 2017 for a second high school. The data-show/98016594/" style="color: rgb(25, 144, 229); text-decoration-line: none;">2017 bond measure for $172.6 million included more than $40 million for renovations at all existing schools.
-- Chris Henry

Chicago Public Schools officials say their efforts to improve school cleanliness are working, but data they released late Tuesday showed that one in four schools still failed “blitz” inspections despite heightened awareness prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports. Just ahead of the July 4 holiday, CPS released school-by-school summary results of inspections by central office staffers and employees of Aramark and SodexoMAGIC, which have major contracts to clean and oversee facilities services in the school system. CPS officials still would not release copies of the new inspection reports, though. Following the news reports of filthy conditions at many Chicago schools, 306 of the 408 schools examined between April and the last day of school passed, according to CPS. That’s an improvement from an earlier round of inspections but still represents just three of four schools making the grade. After a rodent infestation at a South Side elementary school, CPS quietly began a series of inspections last December and had completed 125 when the Sun-Times sought copies of the inspection reports. Documents the newspaper ultimately obtained showed 91 of the schools failed those inspections.

-- Lauren FitzPatrick

A child born on the same day as the oldest maintenance work order on file with Shelby County Schools would now be in middle school. The district has a database reflecting 25,000 pending maintenance requests dating to 2006. That doesn't mean 25,000 projects are left undone. An unknown number of requests were made multiple times, and the system filed them each separately, according to district officials. A chunk of the requests may be from schools that are closed, often due to the building's condition, or occupied by charters or other entities now responsible for facility upkeep. But the real number of unaddressed requests is a mystery. Chief of Operations Beth Phalen told the school board this week that she discovered employees were not properly using the online system to handle maintenance requests. Either they were using other methods of deciding which projects to fix, or they were not marking completed projects in the system. Teachers and principals still use it to submit work orders. Many of those orders were likely addressed, Phalen said, possibly through other means of summoning staff to fix a broken toilet or a window that wouldn't close just right.

-- Jennifer Pignolet

Austin's school district is responding to a new report that found elevated levels of lead in the drinking water at five schools. data obtained by Environment Texas -- a non-profit advocacy organization that protects the air, water and open spaces in Texas -- showed that lead was found in the drinking water at Boone and Patton elementary schools, Bailey and Covington middle schools and Lanier High School. This comes after Environment Texas reported in September 2017 that a harmful amount of lead was found in water at five AISD facilities, including Ridgetop Elementary School, Sanchez Elementary School, Widen Elementary School, the Burger Activity Center and Noack Sports Complex.

-- Rebecca Flores

Capital projects are a complex undertaking. A great deal of preparation goes into them from determining that one is needed to the completion of the project. A lot of capital projects formulate from a building condition survey that New York state education law mandates school districts to perform every five years. The BCS is intended to provide districts and BOCES with all of the detailed information necessary to properly maintain safe and healthy school environments for New York’s public schoolchildren. The data allows school districts to properly plan and prioritize capital improvements and allows the state to properly plan for building aid reimbursements to districts.

-- Michael McCole

BEATRICE �" Following defeat of a couple of bond issues for a new elementary school building, Beatrice school officials will be leaning on public input to help determine building priorities over the next several years. The District 15 School Board Thursday night heard a presentation from an architecture and planning consultant on data gathered about district needs, aimed at determining priorities.

-- Doug Kennedy

The Sarasota County School District has construction for a new elementary school near Ashton Elementary School tentatively on the books in the next five years, according to their district facilities plan. Plans for the new school come as enrollment at Ashton Elementary, located at 5110 Ashton Road near Proctor Road and Honore Avenue, is projected to reach 100 percent capacity by 2021. Ashton is the second-highest occupied school in the district, at 92 percent capacity in the 2017-2018 school year with 1,025 students, an increase in almost 100 students from last year. They are beat only by Phillippi Shores Elementary, which is at 110 percent capacity with 731 students, according to data provided by the district.

-- Elizabeth Djinis

UPPER DARBY >> The bills keeps piling up for services rendered for a facilities study of the Upper Darby School District. ADVERTISING With anticipation of the school board may pass a contract for demographer services at its January meeting, at least $160,000 has been spent since March 2016 when Bonnett Associates Inc. was first contracted to work on the study. The costs increased when in the year before Bonnett’s help a demographer software called School Vision was purchased for in-house use at $15,000 with an annual cost of $3,750 for database updates. To date, $120,000 in contracts has been awarded to Bonnett for the unfinished study and $26,000 to Montgomery Educational Consultants. The MEC is expecting to be awarded a $14,300 contract in January to make middle school building utilization scenarios. The $26,000 contract in May was to provide valid date for the study’s completion.

The city contributed $41.5 million to the school district’s 2017-18 budget. However, that’s less than half of the $91 million local taxpayers should have contributed to educate their children, according to an estimate based on the school funding formula. Local taxpayers underfunded the school district by $49.5 million, according to data from Newark-based Education Law Center. This combined with the state, which provided $401.4 million rather than the required $458.4 million, underfunded the district by a combined $106.5 million.

-- Jayed Rahman

Private K-12 school renovations have become fertile ground for construction companies as parents and administrators increasingly push for both needed upgrades and flashy amenities that will attract prospective students. From January 2014 to September, construction and renovation starts for private K-12 schools in the city reached more than $948 million, according to Dodge data & Analytics. Compare that to the four years that ended in 2007, when starts totaled $377 million (not accounting for inflation). The surge in construction can be partially attributed to low-interest rates and increasing school enrollment, the Wall Street Journal reported.

-- Leslie Brody

An ongoing study of Greene County Schools’ facilities and programming needs is on the verge of entering a new and increasingly focused phase, members of the steering committee guiding the process were told Tuesday evening. Meeting at Chuckey-Doak High School, about 35 members of the steering committee were told by the president of the consulting firm handling the study that much of the general data has been collected and the process is soon to shift to development of more specific recommendations about schools.

-- Cameron Judd

A proposed rendering of the new Dore Elementary School. A proposed rendering of the new Dore Elementary School. Chicago Planning Department CLEARING �" Plans to build a new three-story Dore Elementary School in Clearing Thursday won the endorsement of the Chicago Plan Commission. At Dore, 715 students study in a building meant for 420 students, giving it an utilization rate of 170 percent. The school also has an eight-classroom modular building, giving the school an adjusted utilization rate of 98 percent and a rating of efficient, according to data provided by CPS.

-- Heather Cherone

Boston’s public schools are in line for a massive overhaul in the next decade, with the majority of facilities in need of some repair and changing educational standards expected to push the limits of the district’s existing building capacity, according to a city report released by Mayor Martin Walsh on Wednesday at the Boston Municipal Research Bureau’s annual meeting. The document is the culmination of more than a year of work under the BuildBPS initiative, the city’s 10-year educational and facilities master plan.

-- Jennifer Smith

The Education Law Center and Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Education has just published “Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card” and a companion study, “Is School Funding Fair? America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts.” Together, they analyze school funding using recent U.S. Census data on school funding along with broader economic data to depict how current state funding formulae meet the needs of our children. The value of any given level of education funding, in any given location, is relative. While all districts need a level of funding that is sufficient to meet the needs of their students, relative funding levels are also consequential. How a district’s funding compares to that of other districts operating in the same regional labor market, and, in addition, how that money relates to other conditions in the regional labor market, affects a district’s ability to compete. Public education is supported by a mix of federal, state, and local funds that has remained relatively flat for the past decade. With federal funding making up only around 10 percent of the total, the actual funding level per pupil results from a combination of state and local funds that depends heavily on the approach taken at a state level. According to Education Dive, the data show that not all states are effective at ensuring education funds get to the children with the greatest needs. Only “Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey and Ohio are all taking spending on low-income students seriously, while most other states are not. In those five states, which all have what the report calls ‘generally high’ funding levels, significantly more money is funneled to districts with high levels of student poverty.”

-- Martin Levine

More than half of the school districts and colleges responding to a recent survey expect to initiate construction projects in 2017, the majority of which will be major renovations or modernizations. College Planning & Management, which conducted the survey for its annual “2017 Facilities and Construction Brief,” also found that few school districts or institutions are banking on more funds being made available for future construction projects. The magazine bases its mostly optimistic projections partly on demographic data that project enrollment of 18 to 24 year olds by degree-granting postsecondary institutions to increase by 13% between 2013 and 2024. Enrollment of 25 to 34 year olds during that period is expected to grow by 17%, and by 10% for enrollees 35 or older.

-- John Caulfield

Despite no good baseline for comparison, there are clear trends that go beyond lead alone. Among the most significant culprit is apparently “water age” (i.e., the water retention time). The green school buildings sampled had exceptionally high water age, and it appears that elevated water age is inherent in achieving sustainability goals of green building plumbing systems. The magnitude is daunting. The first green building for which this firm reviewed data has water use which is more than 50 times lower a typical similar building. Very low use at each fixture in bathrooms, coupled with large diameter pipes stipulated by plumbing code, resulted in an average overall premise plumbing water age of 8 days. Water age of 8 days raises concerns with respect to the chemical and microbiological stability of the drinking water.

-- Stuart Kaplow

Detroit parents whose children attend schools targeted for potential closure by the state have received a letter from the state suggesting alternatives largely in the suburbs. It raises a sobering reality for Detroit parents: They have few high-performing school options for their kids in the city. None of the 25 schools in the city that could shut down at the end of this school year have nearby schools that are doing much better academically, a Free Press review of academic data shows. Only 20 Detroit schools are ranked at or above the 25th percentile, the threshold recommended by the state. A school that ranks at the 25th percentile performs better than 25% of the schools in the state. Only four Detroit schools are ranked above the 50th percentile. And schools that are high-performing tend to be at capacity.

-- Lori Higgins and Kristi Tanner

St. Louis Public Schools will close Langston Middle and Cote Brilliante Elementary at the end of this school year because of low enrollment. The district’s Special Administrative Board finalized the decision, which Superintendent Kelvin Adams had recommended in November, at a special meeting Tuesday night. “Consolidation is a natural process to free up additional dollars to support all of our schools,” Adams said. “When you have small enrollment numbers, it impacts how we can spread dollars to other schools that have larger enrollment.” The vote was made with little discussion and no public comments. The board meeting was over in about 20 minutes. Adams believes the decision was made quietly, swiftly and with no controversy on Tuesday because those involved already understood the numbers were stacked against their schools. “I think they saw that we exhausted every opportunity to try and keep the schools open, but the data did not support it, so I think they were realistic in that sense,” Adams said.

-- Kristen Taketa

MANHATTAN — Navigating the high school admissions process is challenging for anyone, but there's an extra layer of difficulty for students with disabilities. Parents not only have to find programs that can support their children's academic needs, they also have to navigate confusing and incomplete information about whether their students will even be able to get around inside the school if, for example, they use a wheelchair or other assistive device. Only 56 of the city's district high schools are considered �"fully accessible” and meet the standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to Department of Education data — less than 12 percent of the city's roughly 480 high school programs. About 61 percent of high schools are considered �"partially” accessible, meaning that people with limited mobility or in wheelchairs can access part, but not all of the building — but the city's high school directory doesn't outline exactly what �"partially” accessible means in detail at each school, according to Jaclyn Okin Barney, a lawyer who runs the grassroots group Parents for Inclusive Education, or PIE.

-- Amy Zimmer

Oregon health officials released an interactive map Wednesday showing which schools have tested their water for lead, and which have not. The Oregon Health Authority’s map lets you click on most local schools to see their lead test results. Almost every public school in the city of Portland has submitted results �" with several charter schools as the main exception. All the Grant and Morrow county schools have submitted results, but so far Oregon’s database doesn’t show results from any schools in Hood River County. Some schools tested in recent months, after Portland and other districts found high levels of lead in drinking fountains and sinks. Other districts run their own water systems and are under federal mandate to test them, particularly in rural parts of the state. Schools face a January 2017 deadline to submit Healthy and Safe School Plans with the recommendation that all school facilities be tested for lead.

-- Rob Manning

For months, Memphis school leaders have pledged a new approach to closing schools, based on data from a long-awaited building analysis, along with a community report from meetings with stakeholders across Shelby County. On Wednesday, before the public release of either the analysis or the report, Superintendent Dorsey Hopson presented his recommendations to begin “right-sizing” the bloated school district. The massive overhaul would impact 13 schools and up to 4,600 students. Under Hopson’s proposal, seven schools would be closed. Five of those would involve consolidations that would require building three new schools. The other two would be outright closures. The consolidations would be similar to the recent project in South Memphis that opened a new Westhaven Elementary School to serve students in the Westhaven neighborhood, as well as those in two nearby schools that were closed. The plan’s surprise rollout is a major deviation from Hopson’s original pledge to wait until a “footprint analysis” provides a snapshot of building needs before making recommendations on closing up to 24 schools over the next five years. The release of that analysis already has been delayed twice this fall, and no new release date has been announced.

-- LAURA FAITH KEBEDE

President-elect Donald Trump is promising an infrastructure boom once he is sworn in. In some parts of the country, a burst of new construction spending by states and cities is already under way. State and local governments around the U.S. have issued $149 billion in bonds for new infrastructure projects thus far this year, putting 2016 municipal borrowing on track to surpass each of the past five years, according to Thomson Reuters data. Much of the new bond issuance happened in the second and third quarters, after a long stretch of low borrowing. Total bond issuance, including refinancing, has reached $388 billion, also a five-year record. On Tuesday, voters across the country authorized state and local governments to borrow another $55.7 billion for similar projects, according to Ipreo. It was by far the most borrowing approved since 2008. “I think there’s a lot of momentum, not only at the political level but also by the general public, to start spending more on infrastructure,” said Dan Heckman, senior fixed-income strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.

-- HEATHER GILLERS

After years of elevated lead levels in Newark Public Schools' drinking water, NRDC and the Education Law Center have sent a letter to New Jersey agencies on behalf of the City's public school children demanding access to funds for a lead filtration system. In March 2016, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection released a statement indicating that after the Newark Public School district's annual testing of water taps, 30 schools recorded levels of lead above the federal action level set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at 15 parts per billion. Since then, annual water testing data from the Newark Public Schools district has been released dating back to 2010, indicating that more than 80 percent of the school facilities assessed had a sample in excess of the federal action level. Almost one-quarter of the tested schools had at least one sample that was more than ten times higher than the action level in that time.

-- Sara Imperiale

Up to 14 million American school students sitting in aging classrooms could be exposed to unsafe levels of toxic chemicals that were banned almost 40 years ago, according to a new report. Now, some environmental and health experts are calling for a federal law to mandate testing, after the revelation that so-called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) may be leaching from caulking, fluorescent lighting, floor finish, and paint in an estimated 13,000 to 26,000 schools. The push to rid schools of PCBs, a class of chemicals produced by agrochemical giant Monsanto between the 1920s and late 1970s, received some high-profile attention in recent years after celebrity Cindy Crawford headlined a parent-led campaign in Malibu, Calif. The study’s authors say it’s now clear the problem extends beyond the small beach city. US Sen. Edward Markey (D) of Massachusetts on Wednesday put out a report estimating that up to 30 percent of students could be spending their school days in buildings contaminated with PCBs, which research has shown can cause serious health problems. “This data demonstrates that PCBs in schools are a national problem,” said Dr. Robert Herrick, primary author of the study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which formed the basis of Senator Markey’s report. “And while the scope of the problem remains poorly characterized, it is clear that where people look for PCBs in schools, they are very likely to find them.”

-- Josh Kenworthy

Two Southeast schools in tiny towns have shut their doors this year after their enrollments were expected to sink below 10 students, the minimum for full state funding. The school in Port Protection, on the north end of Prince of Wales Island, had only 13 students last school year, while the other, Tenakee Springs School on Chichagof Island, had seven at the time of the October 2015 enrollment count, according to state data. Residents in both towns said in the past, the school districts had opted to draw from their savings to keep the schools open when enrollment declined, but now they saw little chance of a future boost in student numbers unless new families moved in. "There are no more kids here," said Litzi Botello, a 57-year-old resident of Port Protection, an isolated fishing village of about 50 people who must boat a few miles to the nearest road. Botello has lived in Port Protection for 35 years and said she remembers the school building arriving in the community on a barge. It came from an old logging camp, as did the school's floating gym. Both buildings long served as a hub for events — Thanksgiving dinners, bake sales, basketball games and an annual bazaar. She said she feels that absence already.

-- Tegan Hanlon

When students arrive for their first day at Theodore Roosevelt High School on Monday, they will walk up a grand staircase surrounded by large, colonial columns and into the results of a $127 million renovation that includes an Olympic-size swimming pool. The restored 1932 building has a capacity of about 1,100 students; just 460 are enrolled at the long-struggling school in the District’s Petworth neighborhood. But Monday �" the first day of class for most D.C. schools �" marks a renewed city effort to transform Roosevelt into a high-achieving neighborhood school that parents from all demographics in the gentrifying area want to choose for their children. And it’s going to be a challenge: In 2012, there were 1,906 high school students living within Roosevelt’s boundaries, and just 301 of them attended the school, according to data from the 21st Century School Fund. In the 2014-2015 school year, no Roosevelt students met or exceeded expectations on math and English standardized tests linked to the Common Core state standards. Just 9 percent of students approached expectations, making it one of the lowest-performing high schools in the city.

-- Perry Stein

With the new school year just weeks away, Maryland’s largest school system has projected that its enrollment will continue to surge, rising to a record level of more than 159,000 students. School officials in Montgomery County said the growth continues an eight-year trend of enrollment increases of more than 2,000 students a year. The county, with more than 200 schools, is among the state’s fastest-growing. Maryland officials said Wednesday that they also expect statewide enrollment to tick up for the coming school year. No official projections were available. Enrollment in Maryland’s public schools hit a record high of nearly 880,000 students in 2015-2016, a trend driven by growth in the Baltimore-Washington corridor. School systems that recorded enrollment spikes last year included Montgomery, Prince George’s, Howard, Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties, according to state data.

-- Donna St. George

Everything's bigger in Texas, and we're talking more than cowboy hats, cattle and the 268,820 square miles within our borders. Texas remains one of the most sought after destinations for businesses and families from all across the U.S. data from the U.S. Census puts three Texas cities - Austin, Houston and San Antonio - in the top five fastest-growing cities in the U.S. And, Fort Worth and Dallas aren't far behind, ranking among the top 10. But with all of this success come substantial and significant challenges. There's the familiar refrain about the need for Texas to address the public's demands for more roads, to meet increasing water needs and to support other critical infrastructure as the population here explodes. And, how we meet the needs of roughly 80,000 new public school students each year joins that chorus of concerns. Seventy-six school districts across Texas, all in sought-after locales, represent 72 percent of student enrollment growth in the state. Independent school districts like Katy, Cypress-Fairbanks, Northside, Leander, Frisco and Lubbock-Cooper were among the recipients of "The 2016 Destination District Awards" from the Fast Growth School Coalition.

-- Michelle Smith

Getting started: • Check the database of Washington schools to find out when the building was constructed, soil type and expected ground-shaking. Schools built before 1975 tend to be the most vulnerable. Schools built since the mid-1990s are generally safer because of improved building codes. Soft soils amplify shaking and can increase the potential for damage. Earthquake shaking intensity is expressed as “peak ground acceleration.” PGAs of 30 percent or higher can damage well-constructed buildings. (For a fuller explanation, see pages 75-76 of this OSPI report). • Ask school officials about construction type and whether the building has been seismically retrofitted. If local school staffers don’t know, the district facilities manager should. If you know the building type, this FEMA guide will tell you when the benchmark building codes considered safe were enacted.

-- Sandi Doughton

Interactive classroom projectors, security cameras, a remodeled cafeteria and a new artificial turf field are a few of the improvements public schools in the Hamline Midway and Como neighborhoods will see in in the next few years. Construction will begin this month for the Saint Paul Public School’s (SPPS) five-year facilities master plan. This is after two years of gathering data on 72 schools and facilities and 465 acres of land that belong to SPPS, in addition to collecting input from over 1,000 people who work and study there. “Most of the work we’re doing this summer is maintenance, bread and butter stuff,” said Tom Parent, the Facilities Director at SPPS, with the exception of Johnson High School in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood. The district has always had long-range maintenance plans, said Parent. But making improvements has been a technical expert focused process in the past. This is the first time that there has been a strategic five-year plan laid out for students and parents.

-- MARIA HERD

Big Apple public school classes are bigger than ever �" with younger students bearing the brunt of the overcrowding, a new analysis of city Education Department data shows. A report issued Wednesday by the nonprofit Education Law Center shows that class sizes in city schools crept up again in the school year that ended in June and class sizes in all grades exceeded limits established by the city under 2007 state law. The group’s analysis of preliminary city data found class sizes for city high school kids inched up from 26.6 students in 2015 to 26.7 students in 2016. Likewise, average junior high class sizes bumped up from 27 to 27.1 kids. Average elementary school class sizes increased from 26.1 kids to 26.2 kids for grades four and five, but were nearly flat at 24.6 kids per class on average for students in kindergarten through grade three. Education Law Center senior attorney Wendy Lecker said that too many city students are confined to overcrowded classrooms, even after the small increases in class sizes posted this year.

-- Ben Chapman

WESTERLY �" The condition of the town’s elementary school playgrounds is once again in the spotlight after a comprehensive report on municipal fields and parks showed that the town spends less than 40 hours annually on upkeep. School Committee member Gina Fuller, who had previously raised concerns about the state of the playgrounds at State Street, Bradford, Dunn’s Corners and Springbrook schools, said the playgrounds are in “complete disrepair and have been almost all school year.” During the committee’s meeting Wednesday, Fuller pointed out that the playground surfaces are uneven and have holes, and there are missing swings, for example. “We dedicate nine hours a year to each individual playground,” Fuller said. “Just over a thousand elementary students have recess twice a day for 184 days a school year. I still haven’t seen any improvements. “I would like to see, now that we have some data, a plan put in place and some money to take care of our playgrounds properly.”

-- Anna Maria Lemoine

As Shelby County Schools embarks on a process to cut costs by closing schools, two dozen Memphis schools already have three strikes against them. Twenty-five schools have test scores so low that the state could require them to be overhauled; enroll fewer than 70 percent as many students as their buildings can hold; and operate in space that would cost more than $1 million on average to bring up to date, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of district data. Those schools could be most vulnerable for closure in the near future as the district looks for ways to reduce costs and capacity in response to declining student enrollment. They include Raleigh Egypt High School, East High School, Bruce Elementary School and 12 iZone schools.

-- Laura Faith Kebede

The Palm Beach County School District needs nearly $1.2 billion to make critical repairs put off due to recessionary budget cuts, according to a newly released review of 196 district buildings. District facilities are about 20 years old on average and about half are in good condition. The report by the Maintenance and Plant Operations Department found the vast majority require "major" capital improvements, including work on their roofs and windows, classroom lighting and fire alarm systems. "As a result of the significant reductions in both staff and capital budget, the District has accumulated a lengthy list of deferred, basic needs maintenance projects," the report said. Administrators on Wednesday presented school board members with the data, which was collected as the district pursues a one-cent sales tax increase set to go to voters in November. District officials say the funding is desperately needed to make repairs. Of the 196 buildings, 51 percent are in good condition, 28 percent are in fair condition, 16 percent are in poor condition and 5 percent are in unsatisfactory condition, according to the report. About 20 percent of the funding needed �" or $229 million �" would go toward air-conditioning repairs. Eighteen percent �" or $214 million �" would be used for improvements to roofs, gutters, windows and walls. Other major costs include work on building interiors and plumbing.

-- Brittany Shammas

The Mobile County Public School Board of Commissioners voted to close Belsaw- Mt. Vernon Elementary and move students from Mae Eanes Middle School to Williamson High School. The proposal was introduced by Superintendent Martha Peek on Monday and approved the next day, leaving several members of the public feeling blindsided. ‘This is not going to fix the problem. This is an open wound and a band aid is not going to cure it,” said Kathy Batiste, a parent at Williamson High School who has concerns about the middle schoolers from Mae Eanes merging with the high school. Peek says declining enrollment is the reason behind the decision. According to School System data, over the past Decade enrollment at Mae Eanes has dropped from 764 students to 264. Enrollment at Belsaw-Mt. Vernon has gone from 321 to 99. Mt. Vernon Mayor James Adams said he was disappointed by the decision because Belsaw is the city’s only elementary school, and they’ve seen improvement this year with a new principal. “It’s like any town. When you close a school, that makes people lose a lot of respect for your town. People don’t want to come in and businesses don’t want to come in if you close the school,” Adams said.

-- Emily DeVoe

This post has been updated with a statement from DC Public Schools. As DC Public Schools prepares to open its only all-boys public school, more opposition has arrived, this time in the form of a research report. After collecting data from D.C.'s public records and other sources, the American Civil Liberties Union and its local chapter released a report today that charges DCPS to axe the concept of its forthcoming Empowering Males High School. Leaving Girls Behind focuses on the exclusion of women and girls in D.C.'s Empowering Males of Color Initiative, which has several components, including a school that is slated to welcome 9th grade boys this fall in Deanwood. It notes that girls of color suffer from many of the same problems as their male counterparts �"including poverty, a highly racially segregated school system, overpolicing, racial bias, and high incidence of family violence and trauma.” They also face �"unique obstacles, such as gender-based violence, teen pregnancy, and family obligations that undermine their academic progress,” the report continues. The high school's academic programs will focus on reading, writing, and languages like Spanish and Latin. The curriculum will also push math and technology proficiency as well as college and career preparation. "I think what we need to do overall is give our young men a place where they're comfortable trying to prepare themselves,” Dr. Benjamin Williams, the school's principal told DCist earlier this year. �"I'm excited about the opportunity because we really get to individualize the academic program, we'll get to know where students are intimately, and gear our instructional practices toward helping them reach their goals.”

-- CHRISTINA STURDIVANT

Protecting the health and safety of Philadelphia’s school children from hazardous school conditions is a fundamental and urgent public obligation. While certainly not all of the 214 District-operated schools have widespread, persistent and dangerously unacceptable building conditions, currently available data indicates there may be as many as 60 percent or more of our schools that are in need of serious remediation in order to adequately protect students and staff from exposures to lead, mold growth, inadequate air quality, and numerous “asthma triggers” in addition to other hazards. According to District data, about 85 percent of all Philadelphia school students are people of color and 87 percent are considered to be “economically disadvantaged.” These numbers matter when it comes to student health, well-being and educational achievement because this population is placed at increased risk from exposures to in-school environmental hazards. In my first blog post, I talked about how I believe that deficient building conditions are at an unacceptable degree for students and staff. I also said that the Philadelphia Federation of Teacher’s Union and Health and Welfare Fund were developing an action plan to remedy the situation. A critical first element of that plan requires incorporating all relevant data to understand the true scale and scope of the environmental hazards and building condition deficiencies we face. Describing, in detail, the current state of our schools, what specific problems exist where, how widespread the issues are, and what has been done to address them to date is crucial.

-- Jerry Roseman

Almost a third of elementary schools in Detroit, Michigan tested positive for unsafe levels of lead or copper �" or both �" in their water, prompting the city’s health chief to suggest that every child in the district get screened for exposure. According to data released by Detroit Public Schools (DPS), 19 of the city’s 62 elementary schools featured lead or copper levels over the safety thresholds established by the Environmental Protection Agency, with officials pinpointing old infrastructure with lead pipes as the root cause of the problem. Drinking fountains at the schools have been shut down and bottled water is being provided for the students.

-- Staff Writer

School facilities is second only to highways as the largest sector of public infrastructure spending, but it’s been more than 20 years since the federal government conducted a comprehensive review of the nation’s school buildings. The fill this void, the Center for Green Schools teamed up with 21st Century Fund and the National Council on School Facilities to comb through any and all relevant data to answer this question: Are we spending enough on school facilities to support student learning? According to the just-released report, State of Our Schools: America’s K�"12 Facilities, the answer is we’re falling short �" to the tune of $46 billion. That’s the size of the funding gap needed to bring all U.S. public school facilities up to modern standards. “The current system of facilities funding leaves school districts unprepared to provide adequate and equitable school facilities… In total, the nation is underspending by $46 billion �" an annual shortfall of 32%,” the report states. The importance of modernizing school infrastructure cannot be overstated. Too many buildings across the country have been allowed to deteriorate as budget cuts have forced districts to forgo maintenance to pay for programs. Millions of educators and students teach and learn surrounded by peeling paint, crumbing plaster, and poor ventilation and faulty heating and cooling systems.

-- TIM WALKER

For parents of young children, is there anything more important than knowing your kids are safe ... at school? And that is beyond physical safety. Today, we all make assumptions about safety, including safe and healthy environments. But in recent weeks, that has changed dramatically. The Flint, Michigan water crisis opened up a torrent of new concerns about an old issue. Now news stories and reports about pollutants in city and community drinking water, including lead and Teflon chemicals, are destroying those old assumptions and raising fresh worries about problems we all thought were solved. Here in my state, Ithaca, one of New York’s greener cities, recently tested school water and found high lead levels. In Los Angeles, elevated lead in school drinking water was also found in the district’s new systems, but leaching from new brass fixtures, not old pipes. This is truly back to the future. There are laws across the county �" local, state and federal �" that require potable water in schools. But we ask, is testing taking place at the tap or only at the water source, and what happens if the test at the tap shows contaminants ? Aging �" and new �" water infrastructure must be fixed when problems are identified. And that’s not cheap. So, for too many school districts and nonprofit child care centers, planned ignorance is the chosen path: no data = no problem. Schools are up against hard times: if they close the water fountains, can they afford to give kids free water?

-- Claire Barnett

Washington, D.C. �" (March 23, 2016) �" The State of Our Schools: America’s K-12 Facilities report, released today by the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the 21st Century School Fund and the National Council on School Facilities, shows that the nation faces a projected annual shortfall of $46 billion in school funding, despite significant effort on the part of local communities. “One out of every six people in the U.S. spends each day in a K-12 public school classroom, yet there is very little oversight over America’s public school buildings,” said Rick Fedrizzi, CEO and founding chair, USGBC. “It is totally unacceptable that there are millions of students across the country who are learning in dilapidated, obsolete and unhealthy facilities that pose obstacles to their learning and overall wellbeing. U.S. public school infrastructure is funded through a system that is inequitably affecting our nation’s students and this has to change.” The report features an in-depth state-by-state analysis of investment in school infrastructure and focuses on 20 years of school facility investment nationwide, as well as funding needed moving forward to make up for annual investment shortfalls for essential repairs and upgrades. The report also proposes recommendations for investments, innovations and reforms to improve learning environments for children in all U.S. public schools. “The data on funding school infrastructure paints a clear picture of the importance of a national conversation regarding the way improvements are funded. The conversation surrounding student achievement must also include a component addressing the places where our children learn,” said Mike Rowland, president, National Council on School Facilities and director of Facilities Services for the Georgia Department of Education.

-- Leticia McCadden

Congress is currently holding hearings calling Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to task for his handling of the Flint water crisis. But Flint isn’t the only city that has been hit with lead-contaminated water. The Atlanta Blackstar recently reported that students at 30 schools in Newark, New Jersey were told to start using bottled water only. According to a USA Today report, there is a major problem with lead-contaminated water in school facilities. data provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency showed about 350 water systems that supplied schools and child-care facilities were contaminated with lead. And the problem could be even more extensive than imagined, since government regulations only require testing at 10 percent of the nation’s schools. USA Today reports there are several reasons why lead-contaminated water occurs: Since the government does not mandate testing at education facilities, it happens on a haphazard basis. Parents don’t conduct regular testing for high lead levels in children’s blood, so they only discover it when it’s already a problem. USA Today said it is usually done in babies but not school-age children. By the time the effects show up in behavioral problems and slowed academic development, it’s already too late. Contaminated water doesn’t only come from the drinking fountain. It can also be found in formula or in food preparation. According to USA Today, another problem is that leaving water pipes unused for long periods of time can cause a buildup of lead particles. School facilities are unused on vacations and weekends.

-- Manny Otiko

CHARLESTON �" After months of waiting, the process for developing a countywide facilities plan for Fayette County is finally getting started. School Building Authority Executive Director David Sneed outlined the process for the State Board of Education Wednesday. The authority will collect and review data without the mindset that any schools need to be replaced or consolidated, he said. “This is going to take our best efforts. This has been going on for a number of years and Fayette County needs attention. We all realize that. We are all prepared to address that,” he said. “We don’t want to sit down and talk about school closures. We don’t want to get that far ahead at all.” Sneed said first the SBA will explain the process to the public and solicit participation from the community at a March 17 public meeting at 6 p.m. in the Fayetteville High School Auditorium. This is an informational meeting for the community, and Sneed is expected to address how the community can participate in the process, but public comments may not be accepted on March 17. The timeline to review the school system is extremely tight, stressed Sneed. The School Building Authority (SBA) will collect statistical data to present to the community in April.

-- Sarah Plummer

After a tax hike, two ballot propositions and $1 billion in spending, San Diego’s city schools are in worse condition today than they were eight years ago, according to new data the district handed over to its Independent Citizens’ Oversight Committee. The report shows the agency’s Facility Condition Index is significantly worse than it was in 2012, when Proposition Z was passed. And even worse than it was in 2008, when voters approved Proposition S. Proposition Z was a property tax hike officially called the San Diego Neighborhood Schools Classroom Safety and Repair Measure. It had a main objective of “repairing deteriorating 60-year-old classrooms, libraries, wiring, plumbing, bathrooms and leaky roofs,” according to the ballot language voters saw. Proposition S was an extension of a previous tax hike. Combined, they were worth $4.9 billion. Now, after the district has spent $1 billion, buildings are in worse shape than they were in 2008. The index, or FCI, is a standard industry measurement calculated by dividing the total cost of facility replacement, repair and renovation needs by the replacement value �" determined by multiplying the district’s total square footage by the current cost for new construction per square foot. The amount to totally repair San Diego Unified’s buildings is $1.25 billion. To replace them entirely comes in at $5.5 billion, the latest figures estimate. An index below 5 percent is good. Six to 10 percent is fair. Above 10 percent is poor.

-- Ashly McGlone

GREAT FALLS - The Great Falls Public School District spent months laying down the groundwork and on Monday night, the Board of Trustees unanimously passed the $98.8 million plan. The facilities action plan would impact every school building in the district. It includes replacing Longfellow Elementary, razing Lowell Elementary and building a new Roosevelt Elementary school on the site, upgrading infrastructure & building a multi-purpose center at C.M. Russell High School and upgrading and connecting the two Great Falls High School campuses. The plan originally would have cost about $108 million dollars. That changed when the board budget committee decided not to convert Skyline into an elementary school, after receiving new data showing lower kindergarten numbers than projected. The change means the preschool program will stay at Skyline instead of the proposed move to the west wing of Paris Gibson Education Center.

-- Cody Proctor

In the waning days of the state's legislative session last spring, an innocuous bill about kids' teeth was headed toward a vote. But things changed quickly. The wording about school-related dental exams was wiped out. Added in was a little-noticed bonanza for Highland Park-based North Shore School District 112, which was planning a school construction project that had already become contentious. In an unusual but not unprecedented move, lawmakers allowed the district to amass more debt, sort of like raising the limit on a credit card. It's significant because the district could borrow more for the project, issuing bonds that taxpayers would have to approve and pay back. The new borrowing leeway helped pave the way for a $198 million bond referendum in District 112 — the largest bond issue for school construction in a decade in Illinois, state elections records show. If voters approve, the 12-school district would renovate six schools, close others and build a middle school for 1,800 students that would become the third-largest middle school in Illinois, based on current enrollment data. All the district's fifth-graders would attend, in addition to the usual sixth- through 8th-grade middle schoolers. The referendum has divided the community, sparking passionate support by proponents but distrust among critics about everything from the legislative maneuvering, the so-called "big-box" middle school and the state of the district's finances. State records show the district for years was building up millions in surpluses, sitting on taxpayer money while holding off on some school renovations and maintenance projects. Now voters would be asked to approve a $198 million bond issue for construction and repairs, some of which could have been done earlier.

-- Diane Rado

Dozens of workers swarm around an unfinished building at West Mesa High School, welding, fitting and fabricating. Behind them, an enormous crane soars into a sunny sky. In November, crews broke ground on an $18.8 million upgrade for the aging school on Fortuna Road NW, launching a plan to add more than 60 new classrooms and a refurbished courtyard. This project, and others underway at area schools, are designed to provide the best possible learning environments for teachers and students. But they also provide a less obvious benefit �" jobs. Construction workers, plumbers, electricians, engineering firms, decorators, architects and contractors all depend on Albuquerque Public Schools, which dominates the local construction industry. Since 2009, the district has accounted for 65 percent to 85 percent of all building permits in the city and Bernalillo County, according to an APS analysis of city and county data. That percentage is so high because New Mexico is still struggling with the aftermath of the economic crash that hit in late 2007 and slowed other sources of commercial construction, said Mike Puelle, CEO of Associated General Contractors New Mexico.

-- Kim Burgess

CHARLESTON, W.Va. �" Fayette County School Superintendent Terry George has been collaborating with the School Building Authority to come up with a Facilities Plan that would be more likely to receive SBA funding next year. The SBA turned down Fayette County’s Comprehensive Education Facilities Plan in 2015�"where they requested 39 million dollars over three years to consolidate, close, and build anew. “Our plan is to work with the School Building Authority, the State Board [of Education], and Dr. Martirano to come up with a project that could be funded and successfully completed with an award in December of 2016 at the SBA,” George told MetroNews. George and SBA Executive Director David Sneed met with the State School Board of Education Wednesday to provide an update on what the parties are doing to attempt to improve the Fayette County facilities through short-term and long-term projects. The collaboration began January 5, according to George. “We’ve been quietly working to develop a process where we can assess our situation, collect our data, and begin working on a long-range plan,” he said. “That’s what they would like to look at. We have all agreed to cooperate and get on the same page and try to put together a long-range plan for the county that alleviates the current facility issues.”

-- Alex Wiederspiel

TALLAHASSEE Setting the tone for an adversarial debate, Florida House Republican leaders want to rein in what they call a “disturbing pattern” of school districts “glaringly and grossly” exceeding a state-imposed limit for spending on school construction projects. Citing annual data that districts report to the state, House education budget Chairman Rep. Erik Fresen, R-Miami, said public schools have spent more than $1.2 billion over the last nine years in excess of a legal cap that dictates how much in state money schools can spend “per student station,” or the space required for each individual student. His findings were discussed by the full House Appropriations Committee last week and offer a prelude to further conversations this session about both the annual education budget and proposed new restrictions traditional public schools might face in how they spend capital dollars. But some Democrats and public school representatives said Fresen’s findings aren’t the whole picture. They said requiring accountable spending of taxpayers’ dollars is a conversation worth having, but they said Fresen’s conclusions over-simplify how school construction projects are funded. In addition to state aid, districts have their own local sources of revenue �" such as local sales tax and bond referendums �" which they’ve had to rely on more and more as the state has cut funding and shifted dollars to charter schools.

-- SCOTT KEELER

DALLAS – Texas school districts began 2016 by doubling the volume of bonds they issued compared to the same month of 2015. Counting the deals scheduled for the final week, January will see about $2.2 billion of Texas school bonds, twice the $1.1 billion in January 2015. The high volume comes after a year of record issuance for Texas districts. Volume of $16.2 billion from the districts in 2015 grew 36% compared to 2014, according to Thomson Reuters data. With 595 deals, school districts accounted for 58% of total Texas bond volume, up from 42% in 2014. "It looks interesting," said Noe Hinojosa Jr., chief executive of financial advisor Estrada Hinojosa & Co., who attributed the volume to "growth, successful elections, current refunding bonds and interest rates being lower by as much as 35 basis points versus December." Hinojosa is scheduled to open The Bond Buyer's Texas Public Finance Conference in Austin Feb. 1, where a panel of experts will discuss the future of independent school district financing on Feb. 2. One of the scheduled panelists, Dallas Independent School District chief financial officer James Terry, is preparing for a spring issue of some of the record $1.6 billion of bonds approved by voters last year. Voters in 38 Texas school districts approved $6.3 billion of school construction bonds on the November ballot, one of the largest authorizations in the state's history. In January, 38 districts are pricing bonds.

-- RICHARD WILLIAMSON

Stillwater public school administrators continue to push a proposal to close three elementary schools despite growing opposition from parents and community leaders. School board members are expected to vote Feb. 11 on Superintendent Denise Pontrelli's Building Opportunities to Learn and Discover plan, or BOLD. Introduced last month, the proposal calls for closing Withrow, Marine and Oak Park schools, and moving their students to Stonebridge, Rutherford or Lily Lake schools. Local elected leaders have joined parents to oppose the consolidation. Since the BOLD proposal was made public Dec. 17, city, township, county and legislative leaders have publicly and privately urged school officials to either reconsider or delay their decision to close the schools. Lance Cunningham, a Withrow parent and a leader of the "Stop BOLD Cold" opposition group, said there has been an "outpouring of support" for the three schools. However, district leaders have not been swayed. "Our focus now is to poke holes in the data the district is using," Cunningham said. "It doesn't paint an accurate picture of the outcome this proposal will have."

-- Christopher Magan

If the Chippewa Falls School Board agrees to a $167 million proposal to build a new high school and address other building needs, the referendum that would go to voters would be the largest of any school referendum in Wisconsin in the past 20 years. Only two other times in that span have school districts in the state proposed referendums of more than $100 million, according to data from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. West Bend’s bid for $119 million was soundly defeated in 2007, while voters in Racine passed a proposal asking for a total of $127.5 million over 15 years in 2014. The bill that came with the recommendation of the Facilities Committee, the details of which appeared in Wednesday’s Herald, will be impossible for anyone to ignore. Even several committee members acknowledge winning over the public at that price tag won’t be easy. Some said they had to be won over themselves, and not everyone on the 35-member committee was convinced. However, many were able to justify the cost because they said the district’s needs are not going to go away, while the cost is only going to go up.

-- ROSS EVAVOLD

The amount of money a new home buyer pays toward classroom construction should more than double to nearly $10,200, according to a consultant's recommendation to the Pasco County School District. A draft report of the district's impact fee update, compiled by TischlerBise of Maryland, calls for increasing the current charge of $4,876 on each newly constructed single-family home to $10,197. Proposed charges for townhomes, apartments and mobile homes range from $4,106 to $6,265. The county's current fees have been unchanged since 2007. A previous impact fee study, based on 2009 data, called for a fee of $8,606 per single-family home, but that information was never presented to the Pasco County Commission for formal consideration. Though the school district is in charge of building and maintaining classrooms, authority for setting impact fees rests with county commissioners. "The last couple of impact fees have never been funded at the full study, and the one prior to this never even went before the commission. So, the amount of the fee doesn't surprise me at all," said Ray Gadd, deputy school superintendent. "We think the fee is appropriate."

-- C.T. Bowen, Pasco Times

EL PASO, Texas - data shows some EPISD elementary schools losing students to transfers. EPISD is dealing with declining enrollment and tough choices are ahead. The district is looking at a $650 million facilities master plan that could include closing 14 campuses. The district plans to hold a bond election next November to fund phase one. EPISD said it is losing 1,000 a year. But individual schools are also losing students to transfers. New data show a better picture of which school students are leaving and which ones are are transferring in. Bonham on the east side has the most with a 34 percent transfer rate. Most of those students are going to two other east side schools. McArthur and Cielo Vista. In central El Paso, Rusk has a 32 percent transfer rate with students going to Clendenin and Coldwell. Crockett is also in central with a 30 percent transfer rate. Those kids are leaving to also go to Clendenin and Coldwell. Many are also attending Mesita in west El Paso instead.

-- Genevieve Curtis

Each year, the Faribault School District releases a new Strategic Facilities Plan, but with the upcoming addition of the new Long Term Facility Maintenance funding, the plan will look a little different from years prior. Director of Buildings and Grounds Kevin Hildebrandt, Director of Finance and Operations Colleen Mertesdorf and Superintendent Todd Sesker have complied information about the district for the fiscal year 2015-16 Strategic Facilities Plan which was presented to the school board at a work session meeting on Monday. The purpose of the Strategic Facilities Plan is to gather information about the district and its building and land in one document as well as to list budget information, building layouts and maps. On Monday night, Hildebrandt presented the plan to the board, walking the board members through it and the data listed within. The plan itself includes information on the mission and vision of the district and a facilities overview. The plan also includes information about plans for making the buildings more sustainable, identifying each building’s handicap accessibility and Capital Planning and budget. While presenting to the board, Hildebrandt spoke about areas that could be improved for accessibility for the handicapped, current sustainability options and deferred maintenance on the buildings.

-- BRITTNEY NESET

With forecasts of a super wet California winter, findings released today by UC Berkeley’s Center for Cities and Schools may set off alarms: More than half of the state’s K-12 public school districts fail to meet minimum industry standards for annual spending on maintenance and operations, or on capital improvements like new roofs. Center researchers took a look at 93 percent of the conventional K-12 districts in the state between 2008 and 2012, the most recent year for which data is available. They found 57 percent of the 879 districts examined fail to meet benchmarks in capital improvement spending, and 62 percent failed to reach the standards for basic maintenance and operation in that period. Approximately 2.2 million of California’s 6 million K-12 students attend these struggling schools. “This trend signals costly long-term consequences for the state as accumulated facility needs risk becoming a health and safety crisis,” according to the analysis, which notes that more than two-thirds of the state’s public school buildings are more than 25 years old.

-- Kathleen Maclay

The state’s system of school construction and upkeep is inadequate and inequitable, with districts serving low-income students more often underfunding construction, then overspending on patching up facilities that needed major renovations, a new research study has found. “California must bolster �" not recede from �" its role in the state-local funding partnership for K-12 school facilities,” concluded the paper by Jeffrey Vincent, deputy director of the Center for Cities + Schools in the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at UC Berkeley. “Moving forward, the state should ensure that all school districts can reasonably meet both maintenance and capital investment needs” by combining local dollars with “stable and predictable state funding.” The release of the study, with new data showing disparities in facilities funding, is well-timed. School construction could become a contentious issue in Sacramento next year. With voters last passing a state-funded construction bond in 2006, the state has run out of money, with about $2 billion dollars worth of state-approved district projects waiting for funding. A coalition of school districts and building and design contractors, the Coalition for Adequate School Housing or CASH, already has gathered enough signatures to place a $9 billion bond on the November 2016 ballot. About $2 billion would be dedicated to community colleges and the rest divided among K-12 districts, charter schools and technical education partnerships. But Gov. Jerry Brown, in his budget message last year, said that the state should not take on more school construction debt and that local districts should increase their contribution.

-- John Fensterwald

STAMFORD �" Fewer children are attending the city’s public schools than in the past three years, but district officials say the slight dip doesn’t affect the major problem facing students and teachers: overcrowding. While statewide enrollment in public schools has been shrinking over the past decade, Stamford’s enrollment numbers largely defied that trend. As Connecticut’s public school enrollment declined by more than 5 percent, Stamford witnessed a small but steady rise. But after years of increasing enrollment, the number of students has dropped to the 2012 level. The current numbers are a departure from the steady increase predicted by consultant Milone and MacBroom in a 2013 study, which used historical enrollment and housing data to foresee district growth. But Judith Singer, who heads the district’s research department, said enrollment was still on the rise.

New York City knows it has a problem with school crowding. It recently acknowledged nearly 540,000 students attended schools that were over capacity in the 2014-15 school year. But a new report by the advocacy group Make the Road New York finds schools in immigrant neighborhoods are prone to being especially packed. Using census figures and data from the city's own capital plan for school construction, the group's research coordinator, Daniel Altschuler, said overcrowding is "particularly pernicious in immigrant communities." "As the immigrant population in a particular district increases, so too does the overcrowding problem," he explained. This doesn't mean the problem is limited to a few school districts with a heavy percentage of foreign-born families, such as Jackson Heights and Corona, in Queens. Throughout the city, Altschuler said, when the number of immigrants in a district rises, the Department of Education's plan to build new seats has even more trouble keeping up with demand. "For every 1 percent increase in the immigrant population of the district, the overcrowding problem is 100 seats greater," Altschuler said. The report calls on the city to go beyond its commitment to fund about 33,000 new seats in the coming years. Although the city has acknowledged the need is actually 49,000, many advocates believe it's really much closer to 100,000.

-- Beth Fertig

State and local officials hope switching Flint back to Detroit’s water system, announced Thursday, will solve lead contamination issues there in the short run, but the situation exposed a health issue that may be happening in other parts of the state. Water sampling at Flint’s schools discovered a few instances of lead levels that exceed the federal safety standard. The findings raised the possibility that lead problems may exist in other parts of the state, including Metro Detroit. Private and public schools are not covered under federal testing guidelines, said Dan Wyant, director of Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality. State testing of four water samples from three Flint schools came back with lead levels exceeding the 15 parts per billion standard set by the federal government. A total of 37 water samples were taken from 13 Flint schools. “This data underscores the need for a complete and thorough evaluation of the plumbing system in each school,” Wyant said. State officials plan to contact all schools in the state, urging them to assess their lead levels in drinking water. Facilities built in the last quarter-century are unlikely to have lead issues, but others built before the mid-1980s may have lead connections and could be a problem, according to the agency. “Schools that have lead infrastructure should be testing,” Wyant said.

-- Jim Lynch

FLINT, MI �" The Flint School District is sitting on 24 closed schools. The two dozen buildings often become havens for vandals, crime and are dangerous to the public when left unsecured. Closed Flint schools have received thousands of 911 calls for police and firefighters to shuttered buildings over the last five years, according to information obtained by The Flint Journal in a Freedom of Information Act request. The data showed there were 2,639 calls for service to closed schools, with an average of 1.3 calls per day. There were 49 calls to 911 for a shooting or shots fired. Use the database below to search 911 calls to closed Flint schools. A $16.4 million deficit has left the Flint School District will few options for maintaining the buildings -- they do have security systems and the grass is cut every other week, district officials said. It costs the district $64,800 on average per elementary school per year to pay for security and utilities, while it cost $70,800 for the same services at closed secondary schools per year, the district said.

-- Dominic Adams

Welcome to the first two weeks of school, when an estimated $330 million will be spent fixing a myriad of problems that arise in K-12 facilities, according to a company that tracks such maintenance. More than half of the "school's in session" repair bill—nearly $170 million—will be spent to fix air conditioning, according to SchoolDude, the company that conducted the study. Other pesky, and costly, problems schools address in the opening weeks include fixing leaks, repairing doors and floors, and removing pests. After air conditioning, the most frequently reported problem involves locks and keys, with more than 166,000 incidents. (See the table below.) To arrive at the national figures, an analyst extrapolated data from reported repairs in the more than 4,100 public schools that use SchoolDude's maintenance management platform. The estimate of how much schools spend in each category comes from reports of hourly labor costs, money spent on hiring contractors, and the price of parts. The average public school devotes 15 percent of its repair budget to planned maintenance, according to Jed DeGroote, community engagement manager of SchoolDude. "The best in class do more than 30 percent," he said. These numbers reflect the state of affiars after budgets for maintenance in school facilities have been cut for more than 15 years, he said.

-- Michele Molnar

ltimore school officials will review boundary lines of elementary schools for the first time in more than a decade as part of a broader plan to close or renovate dilapidated buildings and reduce class sizes. The prospect of redrawing school zones has raised concerns among real estate agents, parents and political leaders who say changes could complicate efforts to attract and keep residents. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and several organizations have launched campaigns to retain families, as recent surveys have shown that many people leave Baltimore when their children reach school. Decisions about redistricting would be at least two years out, school officials said, and could look different than the traditional neighborhood school zones that are based on population and proximity. Lynette Washington, director of facility planning for the district, said that the last time the district did any significant rezoning was in 2004, when "spot zoning" took place to adjust for a high number of school closures. Washington said the next review would be "comprehensive." "We're looking at it not just from a demographic standpoint," she said. "If you only look at certain areas, it's like a Band-Aid. It won't address issues in a comprehensive way." It will be a hot button issue for highly sought-after schools like Roland Park Elementary/Middle, where class sizes have swelled to more than 30. The most recent state data show the average elementary school class size in Maryland is 21.

-- Erica L. Green and Natalie Sherman

So how much does it cost to purchase a house within the boundaries of what is considered to be a high-performing school? A lot. The median price for a typical three-bedroom home, for instance, zoned for a D.C. Public School elementary school where 80 percent or more students are proficient or advanced in reading costs more than $800,000. The always-interesting District, Measured �" a blog from the city’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer �" sifted through this data to determine how much it would cost to purchase a house in a neighborhood zoned for a top public elementary school. The main, and expected, takeaway: The best schools are not equally distributed throughout the city. The most expensive homes and best schools are in upper Northwest neighborhoods, and the cheapest homes are east of the river, along with a high concentration of low-performing schools.

-- Perry Stein

DENVER — A year after Colorado's marijuana tax for schools came in far short of its goal, the fund is setting records and has accrued more money in the first five months in 2015 than it did for all of 2014. Recently released tax data showed the 15 percent excise tax for school construction hit $3.5 million in May, the most recent data available. That brings the 2015 total to $13.7 million, edging the $13.3 million it raised in all of 2014. The jump is partly because there are more marijuana stores and partly because shops last year were given a one-time tax-exempt transfer of their medical plants to the recreational pot side. "It sounds very encouraging," said state senator Pat Steadman, D-Denver. "Voters wanted the school capital construction program to benefit, and despite some bumps in the road at the beginning, it looks like what was intended is coming to fruition." There are three types of state taxes on recreational marijuana: the standard 2.9 percent sales tax, a 10 percent special marijuana sales tax and a 15 percent excise tax on wholesale marijuana transfers. The new pot tax data also showed that recreational marijuana sales in Colorado plateaued in spring 2015. Those retail sales hardly fluctuated between March and May, staying between $42.4 and $42.7 million, totaling $42.5 million in May.

-- Staff Writer

(Calif.) School districts, already required to provide free, fresh drinking water for students during meal times, could soon be mandated to make sure that water, if it comes from the tap, is also safe. Under SB 334 by Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino, districts would have to provide “free, fresh, clean and cold” drinking water throughout the entire school day. In addition, the Department of Public Health would be required to test drinking water at a sampling of school sites for lead contamination. A second bill, AB 496, authored by Assemblyman Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, would require the California Department of Education to identify funding sources schools can access to improve drinking water quality. “In 2013, California declared a ‘Human Right to Water,’ affirming a state priority to have universal access to safe, clean and affordable water,” Rendon said in a statement following Assembly approval of his bill last week. “Now is the time to invest in the health of our children and the integrity of the water systems they rely on at school.” Both legislators cite research indicating that “unsafe drinking water plagues school water systems at a startling rate” as their impetus for proposing statutory mandates to address the issue. Indeed, a 2009 Associated Press evaluation of 10 years’ worth of Environmental Protection Agency data found that California led the nation in number of schools in violation of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. Drinking water at those schools and thousands across the country were found to contain unsafe levels of bacteria, lead, pesticides and other toxins. The AP study focused on schools that operate their own well systems �" but found that contaminants had surfaced at public and private schools, both rural and inner city, in all 50 states.

-- Kimberly Beltran

Infrastructure and how to pay for it has been a topic of great interest recently. The Legislature returned to Santa Fe with the primary purpose of passing a capital outlay bill. Also, as David Abbey, Chair of the Public School Capital Outlay Council told legislators in testimony recently, New Mexico’s schools were facing serious funding problems. Among Abbey’s concerns was the volatility of funding due to oil and gas prices. Abbey also said there are more needed projects than available funding. Abbey’s most newsworthy statement was that there are 16 schools that are in such poor shape they need to be torn down. Notably, the problem is not inadequate spending. According to data from the National Education Association, New Mexico’s per-capita capital spending on K-12 schools was 7th-highest in the nation for the most recent school year on record. There are immediate solutions to New Mexico’s infrastructure problems and they don’t require any more tax dollars. Unfortunately, liberal Democrats who, despite recent legislative losses, remain quite powerful would rather funnel tax dollars to supportive special interest groups than adequately fund schools and other infrastructure needs. The solution is for infrastructure to be built with labor paid at market rates. This is actually contrary to New Mexico law �" known popularly as Davis-Bacon �" which mandates that labor on such projects be paid a higher wage set by labor unions.

-- Paul Gessing - Opinion

The report was so big, the copies of it had to be brought in on a pallet. But for a document calling for up to $645 million in capital improvements to Richmond schools over the next decade, the heft seemed necessary. “It’s a doable plan. It’s costly, but I think it’s more costly to not do anything,” said School Board member Kim Gray, one of two board members who helped lead a facilities task force. The Richmond Public Schools Facilities Needs Report, presented at Monday’s School Board meeting, is the most comprehensive look ever at the city’s stock of 45 schools and school buildings and how they meet �" and don’t meet �" the needs of the 23,000 or so students and more than 2,000 teachers who spend their days in them. There have been similar studies in recent decades, but none has been as thorough in scope or reach. Unlike the others, this one was created not just with school data but also with a variety of community growth and change markers, including housing data and birth rates.

-- ZACHARY REID

Wyoming officials have begun looking at ways to bolster school security. About 25 people have begun examining the nooks and crannies of school, administrative and support buildings in Wyoming to determine what sort of improvements can be made. The task involves examining some 25 million square feet of space, said Bill Panos, the director of the Wyoming School Facilities Department. The ultimate goal is to protect schools in the event of an intruder, said Jeremy King, an architect with MOA Architecture, which is a contractor for the job. To do that, the inspectors are studying schools' keying and locking systems, intercoms and communication devices, fencing and video surveillance systems. They are also examining buildings' perimeters to analyze how well they are protected from a car driving into them, King said. When the inspectors are done, buildings are rated and scored, and the data is sent to the state, King said. He expects the assessment phase to last through May

-- Nick Balatsos

The fifth-largest school district in Iowa isn’t the only one expected to grow over the next 10 years. The Iowa City School District’s growth is a combination of progression, birth rates, and survival rates in Johnson County. School Board President Chris Lynch said the district has been aware of these estimates for a long time, which is why construction of new schools and additions to others has been a recent priority. “We continue to see significant growth in the district,” he said. There were 13,050 students enrolled in the district for the current school year, up from 12,774 last year. The three new elementary schools being built, a upcoming new high school, and other school additions have been a result of data from annual reports on district growth, Lynch said. To accommodate the growth, he said, the more students in the district means the more funding they bring in, which allows the district to hire more teachers. “Providing an excellent learning experience for our students is our main goal,” Lynch said. “We want our students to have an excellent learning environment.” The district’s budget for the growth comes from a variety of taxes. A little more than half comes from state taxes, and a little under half comes from local property taxes. Five percent is funded federally. “Remember that the facilities master plan is based on most extensive community plan,” Lynch said. “So far we’re on schedule and in budget.”

-- GRACE PATERAS

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg reinvented the public school system, closing more than 160 failing institutions and opening 654 new, smaller ones in their place. Roughly half of the city’s more than 1,700 schools share a building �" and one in the Bronx is split among nine schools. Supporters say the Bloomberg overhaul helped boost academic achievement during his tenure �" with high school graduation rates climbing from 50.9% in 2002 to 61.3% in 2013. But critics say he created a system of winners and losers among students, with needier kids pushed into lower-performing schools. A Daily News analysis of city and state Department of Education data from the 2013-14 school year examined the disparities between schools that share a building and found significant variations in graduation rates, test scores, race and wealth. “The school system Bloomberg created shows marked differences in student populations,” said David Bloomfield, an education professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Grad Center. “Concentrations of students in poverty led to predictable outcomes,” Bloomfield said. Often, a charter school moved into the extra space made by closing a failing school. Privately operated, city-funded charters now make up about 11% of all schools. The imbalances between schools within a single building can be striking. Of the 55 buildings with multiple schools that teach the third grade, 33 buildings had a disparity of 20 percentage points or greater in third-grade math proficiency rates. Twenty-six buildings had the same level of disparity in third-grade reading proficiency.

-- SARAH RYLEY , KERRY BURKE , GINGER ADAMS OTIS

WASHINGTON, D.C.) �" The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) partnered with Department of General Services (DGS), DC Public School (DCPS), and the DC Public Charter School Board (PCSB) to release the 2014 Master Facilities Plan (MFP) Annual Supplement. An annual supplement to the MFP is required pursuant the “Comprehensive Planning and Utilization of School Facilities Act of 2014.” The 2014 MFP Annual Supplement was publicly released March 4th, 2015 and includes the following facility data from DCPS and some from public charter schools: • Facility utilization, • Facility conditions, • Facility needs, • Public school enrollments and enrollment projections , • DCPS facility designation, and • DCPS education plans for buildings categorized as under-utilized or over-utilized “The release of the Master Facilities Plan (MFP) Annual Supplement is a critical step as we increase transparency of our public facility landscape,” said Deputy Mayor Niles. “Moving forward, this data will be a valuable resource for our school planning efforts.” The 2014 MFP Annual Supplement establishes a process and timeline for collecting all public facility data. The report also serves as a data resource for the development of the Capital Improvement Plan for DCPS and provides insight into the potential use and availability of vacant DCPS buildings.

-- Shayne Wells

The Bureau of Indian Education doesn't know the state of its schools across the country due to inaccurate or incomplete data collected by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, says a Feb. 27 Government Accountability Office report. GAO's investigation shows that issues with the quality of data on school conditions – such as inconsistent data entry by schools and inadequate quality controls – make determining the number of schools in poor condition difficult. "These issues impede Indian Affairs' ability to effectively track and address school facility problems," the report says. GAO's found that BIE schools in three states faced a variety of facility-related challenges, including problems with the quality of new construction, limited funding, remote locations and aging buildings and infrastructure. But even when BIE recognizes a school is in poor shape, there are still challenges to get it back in good standing. GAO found declines in staffing levels and gaps in technical expertise among facility personnel at the schools. And the report found that BIA did not provide consistent oversight of some school construction projects.

-- Ryan McDermott

PANAMA CITY BEACH �" The Beach is booming. Bed tax collections and sales tax revenue show visitors are returning to Panama City Beach in record numbers. But as the Beach recovers from the Great Recession and Deepwater Horizon oil spill, it’s not just visitors who are contributing to the Beach economy. More full-time residents are moving their families over the Hathway Bridge, eating at restaurants and shopping in stores. According to Census data, in Panama City Beach the count for people ages 18 to 64 years old in 2010 was 7,988 individuals. In 2000 the count was 5,167 individuals. That was an additional 2,821 people in that decade. And they’re going to Beach schools. That has resulted in overcrowding at two Beach elementary schools, with no end to the trend in sight. Steve Moss, Bay District School Board chairman, said there are now plenty of affordable condos, apartments and single-family homes on the Beach. He said the board saw the growth, but enrollment accelerated faster than they thought it would. Moss drew a contrast with schools in Panama City, which he said have “plateaued.” Mainland schools such as Cedar Grove Elementary and Jinks Middle are not at a risk for tipping over the enrollment limit set by the School Board, according to 2014-2015 school enrollment data.

-- COLLIN BREAUX

The Ocean View School District, already beset by financial woes after closing three campuses because of asbestos problems, lost 152 students in the first half of the school year, district records show. That decline could mean a loss of $1.3 million in state funding annually unless those children return to the district or an equivalent number of new students enroll, according to estimates from the California Department of Education. The number of students who have left this school year as of January is more than three times those who left for that same time period last year, and eight times the number who left during the same period in the 2012-2013 school year, according to school district data obtained through a public records request. The sudden and drastic enrollment loss could further eat into the district’s $75 million budget, which is already racking up costs related to removing asbestos and moving students to new campuses in the interim. The district had 9,223 students enrolled last academic year, the last year for which information is available from the California Department of Education.

-- Lauren Williams