School safety remains top of mind for some Washington lawmakers as they began prefiling bills last week for the upcoming 2025 legislative session. With a looming $10+ billion budget shortfall, cries from public school districts to increase investments in K-12 public education — as well as a myriad of other pressing and evergreen issues — lawmakers in Olympia will no doubt have a busy laundry list when they reconvene Jan. 13 for a 105-day session.
Prefiling a bill does not give it preferential treatment and does not ensure that it will receive a hearing in committee. Washington lawmakers introduced nearly 1,200 bills earlier this year during the 2024 session, and only a fraction of them became law. Most educators feel safe in their workplaces, but less so since before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to a 2023 Education Week survey. Nearly one in four educators say they feel unsafe at work.
State Sen. Nikki Torres, R-Pasco, prefiled two bills last week that, if passed, would establish a school security infrastructure grant program and update laws on emergency response systems to include panic buttons.
 

North Hollywood High School is a construction zone.

On any day at the North Hollywood campus, workers at the center of the historic high school campus are busy erecting an auditorium, or gutting the school’s outdated pipes.  

Kids and teachers pick their way past the ongoing work, oblivious to the chatter of construction workers who are ensuring their safety for when the ‘big one’ loosens from the nearby San Andreas fault and shakes California.  

The $315 million renovation at North Hollywood High is part of an ongoing effort by the Los Angeles Unified School District to harden school buildings against earthquakes that’s getting a fresh kickstart after a $9 billion school bond was approved by voters last month.  

A state law compels LA Unified to evaluate schools for earthquake safety and make upgrades when needed. The district has completed evaluations at more than 200 schools considered at risk in case of earthquakes and needs to evaluate more than 400 more.  

The district has already completed earthquake fixes as less than 40 schools. Others, like North Hollywood High School, are ongoing. 

“At the end of this project, this school is going to be totally transformed,” said Julio Palacio, LAUSD’s north regional manager of asset management of the work at North Hollywood High. 

LAUSD schools held up safely when a moderately sized earthquake shook the region on the first day of class this year. 

In the midst of a tremendous budget deficit for the upcoming school year, Oakland Unified School District leadership must also figure out how to fix and pay for a lead crisis that could cost tens of millions of dollars.

Over the next several months, the board will vote on a controversial school merger plan to save up to $3 million, on top of a major restructuring of the district to trim nearly $100 million from the budget for the 2025-2026 year. At the same time, the board is grappling with the unforeseen costs of remediating the lead crisis, providing clean water for students and staff, and continuing routine water testing. Directors will have to decide whether that funding comes from OUSD’s general or deferred maintenance funds, facilities bonds, state and federal grants, philanthropy, or some combination of these sources. 

Four months after families were notified of dangerous amounts of lead in school fountains and faucets, OUSD has spent nearly $650,000 on providing filtered water stations and reusable water bottles for students and staff to use while water fixtures are being repaired. Maintaining those water stations and ensuring that schools have multiple stations on each campus could cost another $1.5 million. 

The San Diego Unified School Board is weighing recommendations to build 1,000 income-restricted apartments on five of its properties across the city, with a goal of housing 10 percent of its employees within the next decade, in what would mark a significant expansion of the district’s decade-old real estate strategy.

“The time has come for us to set some bold but achievable long-term goals together,” Lee Dulgeroff, the district’s facilities executive director, said at a board workshop last week.

School districts around California are increasingly pursuing the idea of building affordable housing for employees as a way to improve recruitment and retention amid a worsening housing crisis.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent Marie Feagins suggested last week that schools with severe maintenance needs will be recommended for closure in her administration’s proposed facilities plan. School buildings with smaller maintenance bills may not have an immediate recommendation. 

It is unclear when Feagins will make her recommendations, which would determine whether any closures happen in time for the 2025-26 school year.

Feagins has previously said she would offer a plan by April 2025, and use the results of the $2 million study to inform her suggestions. Results from that study are expected to give an assessment of each of the district’s 200 buildings and provide a cost estimate for restoring the building to a certain condition threshold. Costs could exceed $1 billion, officials have said, underscoring the financial pressure to align the district’s building portfolio with its enrollment. 

The closure of Eagle Academy Public Charter School continues to reverberate through the D.C. community months after its doors shut abruptly, leaving students and staff scrambling. As reported by DC News Now, the school, which served approximately 370 students, ceased operations on August 20, just before the onset of the 2024-2025 school year.
This sudden closure came on the heels of a rejected merger with Friendship Public Charter School – an option considered after it became evident that Eagle Academy was suffering from declining enrollment and significant financial issues, the kind where fiscal health wanes and puts a strain on sustainability, and to add, concerns were raised about the dual role of the school’s CEO Joe Smith, who also served as the CFO. According to a statement obtained by The Washington Post, in the wake of the school's collapse, the D.C. Council is contemplating legislation to prevent such incidents in the future, notably through mandatory training for charter school board members on operations and financial management.
 

This week, the Harford County Council unanimously approved legislation introduced by County Executive Bob Cassilly to increase impact fees on new home developments.

This move seeks to ensure developers contribute more equitably to the infrastructure demands their projects create, alleviating the financial burden on taxpayers and ensuring schools remain equipped to support a growing student population.

Impact Fees: A Tool for Sustainable Growth
Impact fees are one-time charges levied on developers to offset the costs of public infrastructure required to support new development.

In Harford County, these fees specifically fund school construction projects to accommodate increased enrollment, ensuring that new housing developments do not overwhelm existing resources. These fees address three key principles:

Need: Fees established on a demonstrated requirement for new infrastructure.
Benefit: Funds used for improvements that directly benefit the development.
Proportionality: Fees reflect the fair share of costs attributable to the development.

The Tri-Cities’ second Costco Wholesale store will generate $12.2 million for school construction in first 25 years and far more more in the decades that follow. That may not sound like much in the realm of public construction. But it’s an important figure that will multiply many times as school districts across Washington state marry state and local funds to build elementaries, middle schools, high schools and other facilities.
That’s the magic of leasing state-owned land for commercial development, said Hilary Franz, Washington’s Commissioner of Public Lands. Her department ironed out the 55-year land lease that allowing Costco to build a new store on 30 acres at 3125 Queensgate Drive, behind Grocery Outlet and Target in Richland.
The deal was sealed in early November and Costco broke ground immediately. It should open by early 2026. Franz will hand the reigns to her successor, Commissioner-elect Dave Upthegrove, in January.
 

HARDIN COUNTY, Ky. —
A new energy savings initiative in Hardin County Schools aims to put millions of dollars back into classrooms in the near future.
The district announced the major renewable energy project on Thursday at John Hardin High School.
According to Superintendent Terrie Morgan, the effort involves installing three types of energy-efficient equipment throughout the district in order to save energy and money and create learning opportunities for students.
Teacher Kiley Alcorn said it will be a hands-on experience for students taking Advanced Placement Environmental Science.
"To read about it in a textbook or watch a video about it is one thing, but being able to see how it's impacting them specifically is, I think, really valuable," said Alcorn.
Her class was present for Thursday's historic announcement.
"I thought it was really interesting that we got to go to a meeting and hear about the improvements that our school is making," said John Hardin High School junior Lauren Barbour.
Hardin County Schools is teaming up with energy solutions company Trane Technologies to install LED lighting upgrades in 16 of the district's facilities, geothermal heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems at Lakewood and New Highland elementary schools, and put solar panels on the roofs of 11 schools and the HCS bus garage.
 

NEW BEDFORD — The city’s school superintendent is calling on state and federal partners to step up their support for historically underfunded districts. 
Before he defends a new $1 billion investment strategy for the city’s school buildings on Monday, Andrew O’Leary has written a letter stating that an “invisible inequity” has contributed to delayed investment into New Bedford’s public school district.
That inequity: traditional public schools have a much harder time accessing public debt markets than charter, private, or regional public schools such as Voc-Tech or Bristol Aggie. 
The result is that charter and regional public schools have taken on and completed large construction projects in recent years, while New Bedford must wait at least another decade to replace its seven 100-year-old elementary schools with four new buildings. 
 

After years of deferred maintenance piling up, the Guam Department of Education will be investing $125 million in American Rescue Plan funds to overhaul 12 schools across the department’s four regions.
In a press release issued Wednesday, GDOE said the refurbishment project, which was awarded to Core Tech International, focuses on the refurbishment of critical infrastructure needs which are essential for creating a safe and conducive learning environment.
The Guam Daily Post is affiliated with Core Tech.
Projects “such as crack and spall repair, restroom renovations, exterior door replacement, walkway (and) canopy repair and construction and electrical upgrades” will be included, GDOE said in the release.
GDOE called the effort “an investment in the future of the students.”
“By addressing these five main areas, the GDOE is setting a standard for other educational institutions to follow, demonstrating a commitment to providing high-quality education through improved facilities. The electrical upgrades, for instance, will not only ensure safety, but also enable the integration of modern technology in classrooms, facilitating advanced teaching methods and learning experiences,”  GDOE said in the release.
 

Connecticut will not offer a third round of school air quality grants due to "funding constraints," the state says, despite $138.5 million remaining in a fund intended for that purpose.
Created in 2022 after years of advocacy to improve school air quality amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Connecticut's HVAC grant program has so far distributed $178 million to local school systems for new ventilation systems and other improvements, allowing districts to update infrastructure that was, in some cases, decades old.
Still, the money spent through the program represents less than half of what state lawmakers have allocated for it over recent years. Some of the money once intended for air quality projects has since been redirected for other uses, while much of it simply remains unspent.
Following one round of funding in spring 2023 and another earlier this year, Connecticut's Department of Administrative Services emailed superintendents and other stakeholders in August informing them there would be no additional grants.
 

Just six weeks ago, staff at Portland Public Schools floated an option to spend nearly half a billion dollars per building to completely rebuild or renovate the three high schools left to be updated in the district’s decade-plus modernization push, which has been funded by multi-million dollar voter-approved bond measures.

The eye-popping numbers raised eyebrows, because at a projected $490 million for Jefferson High School in Northeast Portland, $450 million for Cleveland High School in Southeast Portland and $435 million for Ida B. Wells High School in Southwest Portland, the three schools would have easily been among the most expensive school building projects in the country, Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong said Monday.

For example, the tony Boston suburb of Waltham just opened its new high school in September, which was completed at a cost of $374 million. That’s the most expensive school construction project in the history of Massachusetts, known as a state that spends lavishly on education. Closer to home, Beaverton is spending $253 million to rebuild Beaverton High School, while Lincoln High School in downtown Portland was completed in 2022 for $245 million.

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The School District of Philadelphia learned its lesson in 2013 when two dozen school buildings were closed in a budget crunch. The district said students suffered academically, as did overall performance at the schools where students were moved.
As a result, the district is now assembling advisory panels that will provide input on the future of its more than 300 school buildings.
Oz Hill, deputy superintendent of operations, said the district wants to hear from the public on what schools need as it develops a plan to best utilize its aging school buildings.
“That’s why the voice of the community becomes very important to inform or provide context to this large data warehouse,” he said.
The district’s 300-plus school buildings have capacity for 180,000 students, but enrollment — even though it went up this year — is at 118,000. At community meetings over the last month, many spoke about overcrowded schools, especially in the Northeast. However, Superintendent Tony Watlington said a draft plan that could see schools built or closed won’t be presented to the school board until next October.
“It’s premature at this time to say what might happen with this facility or that facility,” he noted.
 

There are many technologies that help keep a school running smoothly. Some of these are obvious, while others work in the background to keep everyone on track. Clocks, bells and paging systems may not be the flashiest educational technology tools in K–12 buildings, but without these systems, the school day would fall apart for lack of structure.

Whereas schools are regularly refreshing their other technologies, such as networks and student devices, there’s less emphasis on modernizing bell and paging technologies.

As a result, schools need updated communication technologies for their buildings. Some states, such as Hawaii, are working to fund and implement upgraded bell and paging systems. However, aging infrastructure hinders these projects. As of summer 2023, “a DOE source said that installing new Cisco equipment will likely require the rewiring of hundreds of DOE buildings with fiber-optic cables, which can cost tens of millions of dollars,” a Hawaii news station reported.

With more than 300 buildings under its purview, the School District of Philadelphia is beginning the final phase -- phase eight -- of its facilities planning process that could see schools throughout the city shuttered, renovated, repurposed or co-mingled.

And, officials said, they now need the voices of students, families, teachers and others to make sure officials will come up with a plan that both supports communities and improves academic achievement for students throughout the district.

"We want to make sure that the plan that we bring to the Board of Education is one that they can take action on, that represents the voices of our public across the City of Philadelphia," School District of Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington told NBC10's Neil Fischer.

Oz Hill, the district's deputy superintendent of operations, said that the upcoming meetings are intended to allow everyone across the city to have a chance to be involved in the creation of a plan that would have the students' best interests in mind.

"We are looking to engage with every stakeholder in the community in every corner of Philadelphia," Hill said.

 Some Pittsburgh residents may feel déjà vu as the city’s public school system considers yet another plan to close buildings and redistribute many of its 20,000 students.
Though many see the district as overspending and underperforming, the strategy of reconfiguring schools also raises questions among parents who say similar attempts over the last 20 years didn’t pan out.
Faced with declining enrollment and expensive facility upkeep, the district contracted Educational Resource Strategies, a non-profit organization, to reimagine the district’s operations. In the current model, the district’s 60 buildings have a 53% utilization rate.
In October, the group released the details of its plan. President Jonathan Travers said it “represents the best thinking on how PPS can evolve its schools to provide the best educational experience for every student.”
“Our team’s task for the last six months has been to learn as much as we can about this district, its students and families, and put together a proposal to make bold changes to the mix and configuration of PPS schools across the city, in service of the educational needs of all students,” he said.
 

A new state grant program designed to benefit Pennsylvania schools is now accepting applications until Jan 31, 2025.

Solar for Schools, introduced by state Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler, D-Phila., will help school districts install solar panels on their roofs or grounds. Solar is a cheap energy source that can free up funds for schools that currently rely on fluctuating, market-rate energy.

“While Solar for Schools will undoubtedly deliver tremendous savings to schools, I believe its positive impact will be even bigger,” Fiedler said. “The workers who install these solar panels will earn living wages that support their families. Kids in classrooms will get to see firsthand the careers of skilled trades workers and use the solar panels as an educational tool. And this is all while their school is contributing to a healthier environment for them to live in.” 

Some forward-thinking districts across Pennsylvania have already installed solar arrays and are reaping millions in savings. But not all schools have the necessary flexibility in their budgets to make such investments. In fact, the contrary is often true -- many PA school districts are recovering from decades of unconstitutional underfunding or face shrinking tax bases, expiring COVID-19 recovery funds and other financial challenges.

Solar for Schools grants cover up to 50% of the costs related to the purchase and installation of solar panels. Meanwhile the federal Inflation Reduction Act, which created the largest investment in clean energy in U.S. history, allows schools to recoup 30% to 50% of the cost of solar projects via direct pay. Combining state grants with IRA funding both defrays the cost of installation for schools and drives federal investment into Pennsylvania.

As Delaware begins to grapple with how to change funding of public education to improve student support, another major funding hurdle is emerging: deferred maintenance that is piling up at schools statewide.
A first-of-its-kind statewide evaluation of school buildings completed this year by the Delaware Department of Education has identified more than 1,200 needed repairs, ranging from minor issues such as cosmetic deterioration to major needs like leaking roofs, outdated dehumidifiers, malfunctioning air conditioning, and more.
While Delaware’s 19 school districts tracked their own facility needs in the past, Senate Bill 270 directed the Department of Education to develop a statewide facilities evaluation tool in order to get a holistic view of the state’s schools.
Each district was required to submit its evaluation along with a board-approved repair and maintenance plan to the Delaware Department of Education in May. All districts compiled, except for the Colonial School District in New Castle, which in a letter to the state said that it “requires a significant amount of time and energy to complete.”
After analyzing the responses from each school district obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, Spotlight Delaware found there were more than 1,200 repair notes — ranging in severity from minor to major — across the state.
 

BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. — People in Bonita Springs are coming together to protect one of the city’s oldest buildings. Bonita Springs Elementary School is at risk of being partially demolished as part of a planned renovation.
On Saturday, city council members, neighbors and members of the Bonita Springs Historical Society gathered at a town hall at the Bonita Springs Library to discuss ways to preserve the 100-year-old campus.
The Lee County School District’s renovation plans involve tearing down portions of the original structure, sparking a local movement to save at least part of the building as a historical symbol.