PARKERSBURG — Wood County Schools is using the district’s 19th Street bus garage to improve storage efficiency for school materials and records.
Assistant Superintendent of Operations Kaleb Lawrence said the initiative, which has already seen significant progress, aims to address both immediate needs and long-term goals for the district.
“We came up with the idea of, hey, we can actually move it over here to the bus garage, take these two bays and organize everything,” Lawrence said. “The long-term goal is to build a new bus garage over at Edgelawn. That’s part of a five-year plan.”
He said new shelves and walls were constructed to separate the two garage bays from the rest of the building. The area now houses a wide range of school materials from books to records.
“We had maintenance come in, build all these shelves, organize it. We have finance records over there. We have HR records over there. We had Chris Rutherford (Director of Attendance and Home Services) store his home school student records,” Lawrence said. “So the idea was, and my philosophy here is, I want the stuff labeled and laid out so people know what’s what and it can be easily found.”
 

As educational leaders, our primary mission is creating safe, productive learning environments where our students can thrive. Today, that unfortunately means addressing ever-evolving challenges that range from security threats to the growing epidemic of student vaping, all while managing tight budgets and (for many of us) geographically dispersed facilities.  
I believe our district’s recent journey to modernize our security approach while balancing safety requirements, budget constraints, and educational priorities can offer insights for other school administrators facing similar challenges.
The Challenges of Securing a Rural District
School districts face some unique security hurdles based on their geography and infrastructure. At Middlebury Community Schools in Elkhart County, Indiana, our district encompasses seven schools (plus an administrative building) spread across 100 square miles of largely rural terrain. This distributed campus model creates inherent security challenges for our 4,300 students and 550 staff members.  
For years, we struggled with an aging security infrastructure that no longer met modern requirements. Our outdated system provided limited visibility at key locations like entryways, hallways, and common areas. But arguably most frustrating was the fragmented nature of the system: each building maintained its own on-premises server, meaning that accessing footage required physical travel to each location.  
 

HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) - Tensions continue to rise between Rockingham County Public Schools and Harrisonburg City Public Schools over the future of the Massanutten Technical Center.

The disagreement started back in March when RCPS announced it was seeking updates to the MTC governance structure to ensure financial contributions and decision-making remained aligned between both governing bodies. However, the Harrisonburg City School Board voted against Rockingham County’s proposed changes, sending back its own revisions.

After back-and-forth conversations over the last five months, the two school boards are still in disagreement.

According to a June 19 letter from the Harrisonburg City School Board to members of the Rockingham County School Board, HCPS board members are concerned by what they’re calling “RCSB’s recent aggressive efforts to rush an expensive and complex procurement of a new MTC facility.”

The South Bend Community School Corporation will retain ownership of the former Clay High School building, following a 5–2 vote by the school board Wednesday night.

The resolution allows the district to continue using the facility for storage, office space, training, and potentially for expanded career and technical education (CTE) programs.

Board member Stuart Greene said a recent walkthrough of the property reinforced its long-term value.

“I think if the previous board had walked through Clay, and seen what assets it has...three of us walked through Clay recently, and it was reaffirmed for us just what an asset it is, and that we should be making use of it,” Greene said.Clay High School officially closed in 2024 as part of the district’s long-term facilities master plan. The building has since been used to house displaced equipment and materials and provide training space for staff.

Under Indiana law, school districts must offer any unused or vacant school building to a charter school for one dollar. That provision became a flashpoint during Wednesday’s meeting.

Nearly twenty years ago, Baltimore City schools shut off the majority of its drinking fountains to eliminate the risk of lead poisoning — instead opting to use five-gallon water jugs. That switch has caused a lot of relief, but it also comes with a new set of issues.

Baltimore Teachers Union Treasurer Zach Taylor says it’s “not as uncommon as it should be” for schools to run out of water, due to delayed deliveries or increased use.

“We've had teachers go to grocery stores or Costco before the day even begins and bring water themselves to provide drinking water for their students,” Taylor said. “It's created a big hurdle.”

The number of children with hazardous lead levels has decreased both statewide and in Baltimore City over the past decade. In 2023, 363 children in Baltimore City tested positive for elevated lead levels in their blood, beyond the acceptable health limit. That represents 28% of total new state cases.

Since 2018, all Maryland schools have been required to test their drinking water ways for lead contamination every three years. In the most recent report, Baltimore City only tested 14% of its schools. One in ten drinking water samples contained elevated lead levels.

Puddles on the floor, wet cubbies, and an entire hallway shut down due to hot water pouring from the ceiling.
That can be the reality on any given day at Hooksett Memorial School, Principal Brad Largy said.
“We’ve had tubs of sorted materials for students ruined, bookshelves have been ruined,” Largy said.
The destruction results from a range of issues, including roof leaks, control unit deterioration and poorly functioning boilers. At 24 years old, the roof is long past its expiration date, said Dean Farmer, director of maintenance for the Hooksett School District.
The control units, which are used to communicate with the cooling and heating systems, and the school’s two boilers are about the same age.
“As it gets older, it gets more and more expensive to fix, and at some point, you have to replace it, so that’s kind of where we’re at with all of our stuff,” Farmer said.
The district tried to fund those replacements in March through a nearly $6 million warrant article that fell 211 votes shy of the 60% required for passage of the bond issue (1,010 of 2,034 voted yes). School Board and Budget Committee members overwhelmingly recommended the project, 7-0 and 9-1, respectively.
 

The attorney challenging the Denver Public Schools district’s financing structure requested a court hearing to determine whether the Denver School Facilities Leasing Corp. is a “public entity” as district officials have claimed.
They have asserted in court documents that the Denver School Facilities Leasing Corp., as a public entity, is entitled to governmental immunity from lawsuits. But they also maintain its lease-financing structure is legal because a separate nonprofit organization — not the district — incurred the debt without voter approval.
It’s not just a semantics quibble. The district’s positions represent a substantive contradiction.
Government agencies entrusted with public funds are held to a higher standard than private organizations. If the court finds that the Leasing Corp. is a public entity, it would be subject to Colorado’s open records and public meetings laws. That would mean documents previously shielded from disclosure — agreements, board communications and financial disclosures —could become accessible under open records laws.
Stacy Wheeler, public information officer for DPS, has denied The Denver Gazette's requests for documents that should be in the corporation’s possession, suggesting district officials recognize Denver School Facilities Leasing Corp. (DSFLC) is a private, separate organization.
 

Des Moines Public Schools officials are moving forward with a scaled-back plan designed to overhaul Iowa's largest district — one that is millions of dollars less than the initial proposal.

The new $265 million plan reduces the number of proposed new schools being built from three to one, slates three schools for closure instead of seven and scales back the number of schools receiving updates or renovations, Associate Superintendent Matt Smith told the Des Moines School Board at its regular meeting Tuesday, July 8.

It also means the district would not be able to make its all-day 4-year-old preschool program universal or change many of its elementary schools from kindergarten through fifth grade buildings to pre-k through sixth grade, Smith said. The timeline from the original 10-year rollout also was cut to 5 years.

RSU 14 Superintendent Chris Howell stepped through damp soil imprinted with tire treads from large construction vehicles as machinery whirred and beeped on a stretch of land near Sebago Lake. In a few years, the site will be home to a nearly $156 million middle school.

Howell said the project is necessary because one of the district’s two middle schools, a nearly 50-year-old building in Windham, has reached the end of its life and isn’t large enough to fit all its students: classrooms are too small and no longer meet the state standard for instruction, and the 1977 air and construction standards used for the original build are no longer sufficient. There is also little space for special education services like speech therapy.

“It also gave us an opportunity. Jordan-Small Middle School is a 1964 building, and those students will be consolidating in as well,” he said, referencing the district’s second middle school in Raymond. “For the first time, we’ll be able to offer equal programming to students in both Windham and Raymond.”

A Springfield elementary school will receive $5 million in ventilation upgrades as part of a state grant program.

The Glickman School in the Sixteen Acres neighborhood is the latest of about a dozen across the city to receive, or are slated to receive, a modern HVAC system in recent years.

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno said while several new schools have opened in the city, it still has been a priority to upgrade some of the older ones, to provide a conducive learning environment.

"My administration has been very aggressive with the schools to get them retrofitted with the HVAC, which gives a much improved and healthier environment for the students, teachers and staff," the mayor said.

Sarno said times have changed since he went through the Springfield Public Schools and that keeping classrooms comfortable is important for students’ learning.

“We didn’t have any of that,” he said. “You opened the window, you closed the window, you had the old radiators, but it makes for a much better learning environment.”

The mayor added that with most of the projects, Springfield has received about 80 percent funding from the state for the HVAC upgrades, with the city paying for the rest.

With summer officially underway, students are out of the classroom and construction crews are in. The race is on to renovate buildings, improve security systems and upgrade student and community spaces before kids return to class later this summer.

The vast majority of construction projects taking place at districts throughout Oregon are fueled by voter-approved local bond measures. Some of those bonds are backed by additional funding from the state.

On Oregon’s central coast, the Lincoln County School District has already started work on a variety of remodels and renovations across its facilities. Some of the district’s summer projects will be funded by a successful bond measure from last May’s special election. Voters there approved the $73 million construction bond by a wide margin.

“The roof at Crestview Heights down in Waldport needs to be replaced,” said LCSD Superintendent Majalise Tolan. “That needed to happen if we passed the bond or not. So we’ve already done the bid work to be able to get that project started.”

The district is also moving forward with plans to expand career and technical education spaces, as well as the construction of new bathrooms and theaters.

Gov. Phil Scott on Tuesday signed a landmark education reform bill into law, laying the groundwork for a historic transformation of Vermont’s public education system.
“While this session was long and difficult and uncomfortable for some, we were able to come together and chart a path towards a system that better serves our kids and one that taxpayers can afford,” Scott said, surrounded by top legislative leaders and other dignitaries, before signing the bill.
He noted, however, that the legislation was “just the beginning,” and work to continue public education reform in future legislative sessions “will be just as difficult and just as important as what we did this spring.”
The signing marks a significant political milestone for the Republican governor, now in his fifth term, who used electoral gains in the state’s Republican Party in November to set the tone for education reform. While the ambitious plan that Education Secretary Zoie Saunders set before lawmakers in January was not adopted wholecloth, what came to Scott’s desk contained similar elements.
Over months of contentious debate this session inside committee rooms and both chambers, Scott put pressure on the Legislature’s Democratic leaders to press on with reforms he wanted, even through deep disagreement within their own caucus.
But lawmakers at the signing lauded what they called a bipartisan achievement. 
 

At Kealakehe Elementary School on the Big Island, functioning bathrooms are hard to find.

Students travel across campus to reach working toilets — sometimes resulting in embarrassing accidents — and poor plumbing has led to sewage leaking through classroom ceilings, according to more than a dozen pages of testimony from parents and teachers at a recent Board of Education meeting.

“My second-grade child now feels anxious every day at school — not because of tests or social pressures, but because they worry about having an accident due to the long walk to the only available restroom,” parent Linsi Nuzum wrote to the board.

Kealakehe Elementary could see some improvements later this year as the education department works on fixing the plumbing in one of its buildings, according to a statewide facilities dashboard. But similar repair projects may be harder for the department to fund and execute in the coming years, after lawmakers gave school officials much less construction money than they requested in January.

The new state budget, signed into law on Monday, sets the budget for school maintenance and construction at roughly $490 million over the next two years — $1.4 billion less than what the Hawaiʻi Department of Education originally requested. 

The Iowa Department of Education today awarded over $2 million in competitive grants to eight school districts to establish therapeutic classrooms for learners whose emotional or behavioral needs impact their ability to be successful in their learning environment. Two area schools will receive grants: Cherokee Community School District and Spencer Community School District.

According to Iowa Department of Education Director McKenzie Snow,Therapeutic classrooms across Iowa provide vibrant, safe and healthy learning environments that best support students’ individual cognitive and behavioral needs.

More than $10 million in summer construction projects are underway across Washington County Public Schools — ranging from major building system replacements to fire alarm upgrades and new playground equipment.

The 14 projects are expected to cost $13,389,827, even as more than half of WCPS’s school buildings constructed in the 1970s or earlier have never undergone full renovations or modernizations.

The 2025 Educational Facilities Master Plan, finalized in June, outlines a strategy to replace one school every two years, with the goal of updating all pre-1980 buildings by the 2060s.

“While a replacement cycle that will take approximately 40 years to replace just the oldest twenty-four (24) WCPS school buildings is not optimal … it is a starting point that brings the task before the community into sharp focus,” the master plan read. 

In the summer months, schools across Long Island bid farewell to their students until September and teachers, administrators and other school staff are afforded a much-needed break from the pace and rigors of the school year. However, there is no summer break for architecture, engineering and construction firms as they gear up for a season of extensive education projects, navigating strict regulations, limited budgets and rushed timeframes to deliver improvements to schools in time for autumn.
Throughout our region, the bulk of construction projects for education facilities are centered around maintaining a rapidly-aging stock of buildings developed several decades ago. “There are very few ‘new’ schools being built in the public sector,” says Alex Lipsky, co-owner and president of Lipsky Construction in Bayport. “Most were built as the population of Long Island expanded eastward after World War II during the 1950s through the 1970s and, as a result, most of the public school education projects are renovations, or revitalizations to existing facilities.”
 

COLUMBUS, Ohio — As aging school buildings across Ohio continue to struggle with infrastructure demands and modern educational needs, Columbus City Schools—the state’s largest district—is making investments to transform outdated classrooms into safe, technology-equipped learning environments.
Devonshire Elementary is among 65 Columbus City Schools undergoing major renovations this summer as part of the district-wide modernization initiative.
For Richelle Poeppelmeyer, a teacher and parent in the district, the improvements are personal.
“Students need comfortable spaces to learn successfully,” Poeppelmeyer said. “If they're sitting in leaky classrooms in cold or too hot classrooms, they're never going to achieve their best.”
Poeppelmeyer said, her oldest son would often return home sweating due to the lack of air conditioning and conditions only improved moderately for her middle child. She said now she looks forward to her youngest son entering a fully renovated classroom in the fall.
 

The dirt was soft in Kimberly Fermin’s hands. 
Shouting for attention, the third grader scooped it haphazardly, packing it around a pink flower under the watch of her teacher, Jennifer Egan.
“LOOK! LOOK!” the little girl exclaimed. “It smells good!”
On a spring afternoon at Trinity Basin Preparatory’s Pafford campus, special education students took part in a community garden cleanup and planting event. Led by Egan, the Functional Life Skills class transformed an overgrown patch of soil beds into a space for lavender, squash, tomatoes and pink flowers — a classroom favorite.
The new garden project is helping the school’s special education students learn more than how things grow, Egan said. It’s teaching them to show love, sometimes in ways words can’t.
The garden grew out of a science experiment comparing beans grown in sunlight versus the darkness of a closet. When one sprouted toward the light, the kids wanted to grow more. Now, they’ll tend to the garden twice a week, measure plant height, chart growth and eventually harvest what they’ve nurtured — some for the school cafeteria, some to take home.
 

ORANGE, Texas — Orangefield ISD is moving forward with major campus improvements across its high school, middle school and elementary facilities as part of a $40 million bond approved by voters in 2023.
The district plans to transition students from portable buildings to new brick and mortar classrooms, along with constructing a new library and cafeteria. 
The improvements will benefit approximately 250 students, according to Superintendent Shaun McAlpin.
Students have been attending classes in portable buildings since Hurricane Harvey dropped 60 inches of rain on the area, flooding the district's campuses. The temporary structures have created challenging learning conditions and safety concerns.
"My teacher's desk was all cramped together. She had to push stuff into the corner, and then us, we could basically just lean over and we could touch each other," said Jace Forse, an incoming sixth grader at Orangefield ISD.
The portable classrooms have been particularly problematic during severe weather events, including tornado warnings.
 

It may sound counterintuitive, but school gardens can offer students fertile ground to learn about technology, from using generative artificial intelligence tools to operating hydroponic or water-based growing systems.

That’s why the John Rex Charter School in Oklahoma City, which serves grades pre-K-8 with a focus on technology, has invested in creating a state-of-the-art school garden that features extensive use of technology.

Ally Audas, the school’s enrichment specialist, is informally known as the school’s “gardening teacher.” She makes the case that gardening is important for students living in the digital age, because it teaches them to see beyond instant gratification and understand that developing meaningful things usually takes time.

“With technology, you get what you want right now,” she said. “When we go and use the garden, you plant a seed and you aren’t going to harvest anything for months, potentially. They have to really nurture things and learn some grit, some hard work, and some patience. It’s a great life skill that I think a lot of kids don’t get right now.”