Charter schools scored significant funding wins in the legislative session that wrapped up this week.

Indiana lawmakers passed legislation that grants property tax revenues to charter schools statewide starting in 2028, a change that expands on a 2023 law that required only certain districts to share a portion of property tax revenue increases with charters.

Charters will also continue to receive $1,400 per pupil through the state’s Charter and Innovation Network School Grant over the next two school years.

One setback for charter schools statewide is that lawmakers decided not to continue a $25 million grant they created for charters’ capital needs in 2023. However, at least in Indianapolis, that could be offset by the property tax revenue charters will receive for the first time this year under the 2023 law. And over the long term, a new group will study the possibility of sharing Indianapolis Public Schools buildings and buses with charter schools.

“I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say this was the most successful legislative session for charter schools since the law passed in 2001,” said Brandon Brown, CEO of the Mind Trust nonprofit that grows charters in Indianapolis, referring to the law that allowed charters to open in Indiana. ”It was just an extraordinary session, from my perspective, in terms of moving towards a system where all kids are funded fairly.”

BOISE - The Idaho Department of Education distributed more than $91 million in facilities funding to Idaho schools this week. The payments are from the School Modernization Facilities bonds issued over the past year following the passage of House Bill 521 by the 2024 Idaho Legislature.

The legislature passed the bill to increase the state’s investment in public school facilities over the next decade. Governor Brad Little signed the bill March 29, 2024. The first payments went to school districts seven months later and $1 billion was distributed by the end of February. To facilitate the delivery of the funds, the Idaho Department of Education worked closely with the Idaho State Building Authority and local schools.

“The speed with which this law was implemented and the dollars sent to local districts is something to be celebrated,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield said. “The hard work and collaboration between the Idaho Department of Education, Idaho Building Authority and other state and financial partners in standing up this new law and getting $1 billion in schools’ bank accounts within 11 months is remarkable. That effort, along with the state’s very solid financial status, means that schools and communities continue to benefit from the initial investment.”

LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — The Clark County School District Board of Trustees voted Thursday night to pause construction on several campuses because of rising construction costs.
District leaders say project bids have increased by over 60% and material costs has also increased by 40%.
They also cite lower enrollment projections for the next few years.
Now they've decided to pause construction for 10 schools to make sure they're using the money they do have for construction most effectively.
"It's about looking ahead to where we want to be in 10, in 20 years, down the line," said Isaac Barron, the CCSD trustee who represents North Las Vegas.
Trustees unanimously voted to pause construction at several schools for a year both new construction and schools that are being replaced at their current locations.
That includes construction on Indian Springs and Cashman Middle School, and construction on new schools like Northwest Comprehensive High School and Southeast Choice High School.
"We have had a lot less students than we anticipated having you know ten years ago when they started the process," said Elizabeth Bether, of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada. "So we are going to need to reevaluate which schools need to be rebuilt, do we need more schools in the area."
 

Seventy percent of Alabama is forested. But when Chris Erwin asked a bus full of Alabama students to raise a hand if they’d ever been in one, only a single hand went up. And that was 20 years ago, before devices and screens became inescapable.
Today, as executive vice president of the Alabama Forestry Foundation, Erwin is bringing thousands of trees to school campuses. This “schoolyard forest” work is funded by the U.S. Forest Service, with partners including Alabama’s department of education, forestry commission and local governments.
The point of the planting, Erwin says, is to give students a life activity. “Take a shovel, plant a tree, care for that tree, learn how to nurture that tree — that’s going to build a sense of responsibility to the community over the long term,” he says.
Erwin’s relationship with forests runs deep. His father was a sharecropper, born into a sharecropping family. A job in a paper mill enabled him to lift his family out of poverty and send his wife and three of his children to college.
The GI bill covered Erwin’s college costs. When he left the Air Force, he chose a career in forestry because of his father’s affiliation with the industry. He’s worked for several nonprofits and as a conservation forester across the Southeast, helping private landowners enhance biodiversity on their lands. At the Alabama Forestry Foundation, he leads programs that encompass environmental education, conservation on private lands and forest certification.
 

Flint Community Schools — once a district with dozens of school buildings — will go from 11 to 7 active school buildings using $35.9 million from a state grant program encouraging districts to consolidate, the Michigan Department of Education announced April 24.
The state granted $75 million to three districts including Flint to "modernize school buildings" and "reduce square footage," according to Michael Rice, state superintendent of schools. The three districts are Flint, North Central Area Schools in the Upper Peninsula and Union City Community Schools in the south central part of the state.
But based on application for the grant, the demand for money to consolidate and improve infrastructure is high: The state received requests for more than $626 million from schools, 51 applicants total.
“There is great demand for additional state funding to improve learning environments for our children,” Rice wrote in a news release.
The grant to Flint in particular is important. The district's enrollment has been on a downward slide for decades, leaving more and more school buildings abandoned throughout the long-embattled city. The school district's population has declined by nearly 3,600 students in nearly a decade — from 6,533 in the 2014-15 school year to 2,605 this school year, a 60% decline. The loss of students is more staggering looking further back: In the 2004-05 school year, 19,025 students attended Flint schools, according to state data.
 

Ronlynn Arce typically starts her Sunday at 4:30 a.m. at Mililani Mauka Community Park — more than three hours before her kids’ flag football games begin. The park requires all visitors to find street parking, and space is scarce as dozens of teams gather on the weekends for games. 
“Parking is pretty hectic,” Arce said. 
Nine years ago, the city and state seemed to find a solution. Nearby Mililani Middle School was looking to expand its campus and build a parking lot using an acre of the park’s land. The city approved the expansion, with the condition that park users could access the school’s parking lot once it was completed. 
But residents say they have yet to benefit from the agreement.
Although the school finished construction in 2022, it has never left the parking lot gates open to the neighborhood, said Dean Hazama, chair of Mililani Mauka’s neighborhood board. 
“It goes against the entire concept of what this was about,” Hazama said.
Park users and community organizations can gain access to the lot by submitting a formal request to the school, education department spokesperson Derek Inoshita said in an emailed statement. Mililani Middle has approved less than a dozen requests for its facilities since 2023.
That’s not the kind of access the neighborhood board expected, Hazama said. It’s also less than what the parks department has asked for: public use on weekday afternoons and weekends.
The state and city are working on a formal agreement on public lot access, but there’s no estimate on when a deal will be reached, parks department spokesperson Nathan Serota said in an emailed statement. Mililani Middle School Principal Shannon Tamashiro did not respond to requests for comment.
The struggle over access to the school parking lot comes amid an ongoing push by lawmakers for the Department of Education to increase public access to school facilities islandwide.
 

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - A $100 million renovation at Colorado Springs’ oldest high school is set to begin this summer. Colorado Springs District 11 is planning a years long project to revamp the Palmer High School in downtown. The district held an open house Tuesday evening to discuss the plans.

It drew in dozens of people who were interested in learning more about what the renovations look like, what they mean for the school, and how it will impact the surrounding community.

" My parents graduated from here and then I did. My children did, so we have a long history,” said Pamela Steele, an alumni of Palmer High School.

The renovation project is set to start in June and wrap up early 2028. It includes tearing down several buildings, update classrooms, and designing a new athletic field area.

“For academics, just being able to really capitalize on the research that shows daylight information and quality of air information and getting kids out of the basement where there are no windows and the air is not super great,” said Krista Burke, Principal of Palmer High School.

AUGUSTA (WGME) -- A new interim summary from the Governor’s Commission on School Construction reveals the staggering scope of the crisis facing Maine’s public school infrastructure: an estimated $11 billion will be needed over the next two decades to repair or replace hundreds of aging school buildings across the state.

The commission’s summary, released this month, paints a sobering picture of Maine’s school facilities — many of which were built in the 1950s and 60s, and are now struggling to meet basic health, safety and educational standards.

This marks the first time in 25 years that Maine is conducting a full study of how school construction projects are funded.

500 Schools in Need of Major Upgrades
Last year, the CBS13 I-Team surveyed every public school district in Maine and found the average age of a school building in Maine is 54 years. Of Maine’s roughly 600 public schools, the commission estimates that 500 will need replacement or significant renovation by 2045.

The projected $11 billion price tag is nearly equivalent to the state’s entire two-year General Fund budget and more than three times what Maine collects annually in property taxes.

NEW YORK (PIX11) — A rally outside City Hall Wednesday called for access to basketball courts and other sports facilities in New York City schools during days of inclement weather.
“We have to get creative about how we make sure our basketball courts are open throughout the year,” said New York City Council member Shekar Krishnan.
Krishnan is a co-sponsor of the Indoor Hoops Act, a local law aimed at identifying and facilitating the use of indoor facilities for basketball games during inclement weather.
“Keeping youth recreation center programs open on weekends, when it’s raining, utilizing spaces we already have in the community. They can utilize these systems to make sure they continue activity every weekend,” said New York City Council member Kevin Riley, the bill’s sponsor.
Sponsors of the bill are asking the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Education to coordinate the use of underutilized indoor space, unlocking school gyms and recreational centers.
“This is a school, public space, why do we keep children out in wintertime? They can’t be out,” said New York City Council member Mercedes Narcisse.
 

Milwaukee Public Schools' buildings were constructed across three centuries, between 1882 and 2005.
Recent findings of unaddressed lead paint hazards in seven schools so far have drawn attention to MPS' broader ability to maintain its large portfolio of aging schools. The district has lost nearly 30,000 students in less than two decades, and administrators say it hasn't offloaded enough buildings to compensate.
MPS reported over $265 million in deferred facilities maintenance in 2024, according to a report submitted to the state Legislature. That facilities inventory logged 140 buildings.
The average deferred maintenance level across those buildings was $1.89 million, data show.
But those costs were not evenly distributed across the district. Eight schools had $0 in needed maintenance, and another seven had $5 million or more. The school with the most deferred maintenance was Milwaukee High School of the Arts, with $10.36 million.
Here's the data.
 

DECATUR, Ga. (Decaturish) - In a 5-1 vote on April 21, the DeKalb County School District Board approved the final $141.6 million contract with The Gilbane Building Company to construct new Sequoyah Middle and High Schools, despite looming funding concerns.

The project’s funding will come from the school district’s Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax VI (E-SPLOST) and be added to the $87 million already approved by the board at its May 2024 meeting, with a total guaranteed maximum price of $233 million.

Board member Whitney McGinniss was the only board member in opposition and expressed concern about approving any ESPLOST projects going forward until the district can be more transparent with the community and seek input about which projects may be pushed back due to a lack of funding.

“Another long-standing concern I have had is that we all, sitting up here, know that we will not be able to do all the projects, but we have not come clean with the public about what those projects are, and allowed for a chance of open discussion,” McGinniss said.

For decades now MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa has been known as the operations hub for the U.S. military’s missions in the Middle East.

It is home to the U.S. Central Command and the U.S. Special Operations Command, along with several Air Force groups.

But the 5,767-acre base sitting on Tampa Bay may soon be known for something else. A school built with a focus on hurricane resiliency.

Hillsborough County is in the process of building a new Tinker K-8 School on the base that will replace an existing facility with one that is cutting edge and being constructed with an eye on durability and safety.

Construction began earlier this year and a ceremonial groundbreaking was held in early April.

The 135,000-square-foot campus will be built in three phases over the next three years, according to Creative Contractors, a Clearwater firm working on the project. When complete, it will have five new buildings — including multiple two-story classroom wings — a gymnasium, an administrative and media building and a cafeteria with an integrated music hall.

Creative Contractors says the existing school was built in 1952 and expanded in 2015.

The new Tinker school is being built in part with an $86.37 million grant from the Department of Defense.

CANYON COUNTY, Idaho — The Middleton School District is facing challenges as student enrollment continues to rise, leading to overcrowded classrooms at local schools. "There are realities we are working on," said Carrie Woolstencroft, a second-grade teacher at Heights Elementary School.

Teachers at Heights Elementary express concerns that increased student numbers "do affect the quality of education our students are getting," according to Woolstencroft. District leaders report that the school is currently at 145% capacity.

Principal Nicole Kristensen noted that the school was originally built for 360 students. "When I first became the principal here, we were at about 400 students, depending on the day. I just checked our enrollment, and we are at 598," Kristensen said.

To accommodate over 200 additional students, the district has resorted to using temporary portables on campus—22 of them to be exact. This solution is not ideal for Woolstencroft, who stated, "Because we are outside of the building, students need to be able to come inside to use the restroom. When we do things like put our work in the hallways, the students love to walk by all the writing and all the wonderful things the other children are learning. Our students don't get that; our things are in our classroom."

LANSING – A nearly $23 billion investment is necessary to carry out much-needed infrastructure work in schools across Michigan over 10 years, according to a recent presentation to the State Board of Education.

The report, produced by Plante Moran Realpoint and in collaboration with Barton Malow Builders, overseen by the School Finance Research Foundation, focuses on school facility heating, ventilation, and air conditioning; plumbing; roofing; fire prevention; and electrical service needs.

In 2023, state lawmakers passed into law Section 11y of the State School Aid Act to provide funding for a comprehensive statewide school facility study. The School Finance Research Foundation recently delivered the 336-page report to the state House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on School Aid, state budget director, House and Senate fiscal agencies, and the Michigan Department of Education.

Ninety-three percent of the schools identified participated in the study. Traditional public schools participated in the study.

A bill to make it significantly easier for parents to trigger the conversion of a public school into a charter school is en route to the Senate floor after clearing its last committee on a divided vote.

The Senate Rules Committee voted 18-5 for the measure (SB 140), which would change Florida’s standard by which municipalities can turn over public school facilities to a private education company.

SB 140 would modify state statutes to remove district School Boards, principals, teachers and school advisory councils from being able to apply for a conversion charter school. It would also remove an existing requirement that at least half of teachers employed at a given school approve the conversion.

That decision would instead fall solely to parents with children currently enrolled at the school, and only a majority of them would have to support the change.

The bill would also allow municipalities to apply to convert a public school into a job engine charter school — a privately run public school with curricula designed to meet local employment and economic development needs — if the existing school received a state-set grade below “A” for five consecutive years.

AMHERST — Professional mold remediation in the music and instrument storage rooms during April vacation, along with recent roof repairs and replacement of HVAC air filters, are among steps being taken to improve air quality at the Amherst Regional Middle School.

The district leadership team announced this week the work taking place after the Regional School Committee in March directed Superintendent E. Xiomara Herman to assess the building conditions. The committee asked for the assessment after families and students complained about mold and mildew, and the administration closed off parts of the building where problems had developed.

“We are taking these concerns seriously,” Herman said in a statement. “Thanks to the diligence of our facilities team, outside experts and school leaders, we are implementing both short-term fixes and long-term improvements to ensure our learning environment is clean, safe and healthy for all.”

The Harwood Unified Union School District School Board has put the brakes on its consolidation exercise, shifting focus to invest over $110,000 in an architectural review of each school facility’s condition before any specific changes are recommended.  

The move came last week after hearing from community members opposed to closing schools in the district as outlined in recent presentations. 

Instead of further shortening its list of building consolidation scenarios from six to three now, the board agreed to redirect TruexCullins architects. 

“We are changing things. We are not going to narrow down options today. We're done talking until we get back all the information that we need,” board Chair Ashley Woods said at the April 9 school board meeting. “We have made changes to the Truex timeline to allow us to go forward with the assessments, however unpopular they are. We do this in response to the people's outcry from Fayston and Moretown and other towns in our district, teachers and everybody saying we need more information.”

The board approved a second phase of work with the Burlington firm for $110,740 to do a detailed assessment of the district’s five elementary schools and Crossett Brook Middle School. The review excludes Harwood for which a detailed review was done recently to inform since-paused renovation planning done in fall 2023 and early 2024. 

JUNEAU — The Alaska Senate on Tuesday unanimously voted to advance the capital budget, which has an emphasis on school maintenance funding.
The $2.9 billion capital budget is used to fund infrastructure and maintenance projects across the state. The vast majority of funding for the capital budget comes from federal sources.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy proposed a capital budget in December at a cost of over $280 million to the state treasury. The Senate’s version of the capital budget is much slimmer, costing the state $162 million.
Sitka Republican Sen. Bert Stedman, who manages the Senate’s capital budget, said the spending plan was the smallest since COVID-19 hit Alaska five years ago. He said that communities across Alaska requested $3.2 billion in projects, but with legislators facing a dire fiscal outlook, those projects were rejected.
“Communities will have to wait a year,” Stedman said.
He said the capital budget funds includes $26 million for maintenance of Alaska ferries and $6 million for renewable energy projects. One of the focuses of the Senate’s capital budget: school maintenance.
“Regardless of our financial condition, we need to educate our children,” Stedman said before the Senate’s final vote. “They need to be in a safe environment, and we need to give the next generation the best opportunity we possibly can.”
The Senate is planning to spend $19 million to help address Alaska’s deferred maintenance backlog at schools and $5 million for the University of Alaska.
An investigation published by KYUK and ProPublica in March highlighted the impacts of neglect of state-owned schools in predominantly Alaska Native communities. Last year, the Legislature funded 26 projects on the state’s major maintenance list for schools at a cost of $63 million.
This year, the Senate is proposing to fund the first five school projects. That would replace fire protection systems at schools across the Northwest Arctic Borough that are said to pose “a significant risk” to safety, among other school projects.
“We wish we could have done more,” Stedman said.
He said that in a typical year, around $30 million would be directed for University of Alaska maintenance to help address the system’s $1.5 billion maintenance backlog. Stedman warned that the state’s fiscal outlook could be similarly gloomy over the next few years.
 

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Voters in Livingston Parish will soon decide on a tax renewal that would help keep their schools up and running.

As Louisiana’s 8th largest school district, there’s a lot that Livingston Parish Public Schools’ Superintendent Jody Purvis has to take care of.

“We’re maintaining almost 600 buildings, we’re maintaining almost 800 acres each day, and we’re over 13 million square feet of buildings that we’re maintaining,” explained Purvis.

With some of those buildings dating back to 1911, you can imagine how much TLC it takes to keep these campuses up and running.

“Day-to-day maintenance. Something breaks, someone puts in a work order, and this is what fixes that,” said Purvis.

AUGUSTA (WGME) -- A long-awaited report that could shape the future of how school construction projects in Maine are funded has been delayed.

The Governor’s Commission on School Construction was expected to release its final recommendations on Tuesday, offering the first comprehensive look at potential fixes for Maine’s aging school infrastructure in decades. But commission members now say they need more time, calling the process “highly-involved.”

While a progress summary is still expected to be published later this month, any formal recommendations for lawmakers and the public won’t be released until later this year.

"I think it became very clear to all of us, pretty quickly, that the volume and scope, depth and complexity of information was more than we could come to some final recommendations within four months or so," Commission Chair Valerie Landry said. "So, we asked for an extension on that work and that was granted."