TROY — The pouring rain didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of Troy City Schools supporters as the district held a groundbreaking Thursday for a new elementary school on the site of Hook Elementary School.

The symbolic event celebrated the coming construction of three new elementary schools, one new intermediate school and an update to Troy High School. The buildings will be the first new ones in the district since the Troy Junior High School construction in 1972. School leaders said the average age of current buildings is around 85 years.

The initial construction will place a foundation for the future of the district, said Superintendent Chris Piper.

He described the groundbreaking day as one “full of hope, dreams and gratitude.” The best days for the schools, and the community, are yet to come, Piper said.

Three Portland Public Schools board members have drafted a resolution to earmark almost all unspecified spending from its proposed $1.83 billion bond for seismic upgrades at elementary and middle schools.

The eleventh-hour resolution comes amid a firestorm of questions about the specifics, or lack thereof, in the bond proposal, the bulk of which is dedicated to replacing or modernizing three high schools. Most of the district’s voters already have ballots in hand and the deadline to vote is May 20.

The resolution, drafted by outgoing board members Julia Brim-Edwards and Gary Hollands along with Herman Greene, who is running for re-election, will be up for a vote at the school board meeting Tuesday. Hollands said he believes there is enough support from the other four board members to pass the plan.

There’s a lot of music in the air in Washington Heights.
That’s because there was a concert celebrating the opening of a new building for a charter school for the musically gifted.
Anthony McGill, the principal Clarinetist at the New York Philharmonic, attended the opening of this new $44 million Washington Heights and Inwood Music Community Charter School building.
Jazz Great Wynton Marsalis gave a Citizen Artistry Award to the dean of Juilliard’s preparatory division, Weston Sprott.
And composer Kebra-Seyoun Charles performed on the double bass.
But the real stars were the WHIN Students, who have two periods, five days a week of choir and Orchestra.
This charter school was founded in 2016, but it hasn’t received this state-of-the-art building until now.
Its eight-story facade was inspired by sheet music, with the windows looking like music notes.
The school aims to instill a love of music and learning in its 500 students, who attend Kindergarten through eighth grade.
 

The Sandwich Public Schools proposed budget tops $40 million for fiscal year 2026 but School Superintendent Joseph Maruszczak has warned that deferred maintenance has caused infrastructure across the district to deteriorate and more money is needed.

"There are critical points where you need to make major investments in capital projects," said Maruszczak on Tuesday, April 29. "That's where we are right now."

The school budget is among 22 warrant articles that Sandwich town meeting will consider when it meets May 5 at 7 p.m. at Sandwich Middle High School.

Article 2 on the annual town meeting warrant will ask residents to vote on a $99.5 million fiscal 2026 total budget.

The school district budget, as proposed at $40.8 million is about 60% of the town’s proposed operating budget, and outlines a roughly $1.1 million increase from fiscal 2025, according to the warrant.

Albuquerque Public Schools celebrated a week of progress on capital projects, with groundbreakings for two schools and a grand opening for another.

On Tuesday, APS leaders joined the Corrales Elementary School community for a groundbreaking to expand the school into a K-8 facility. The $56.7 million project includes new buildings, renovations and site redesign. 

The nearly 121,000-square-foot facility is designed to accommodate about 525 students and 50 staff members. Voters approved funding for the project in 2021, and the estimated completion date is July 2027.

The plan to turn Corrales Elementary into a small K-8 school is aimed, in part, at retaining more students. Roughly 60% of outgoing Corrales Elementary students currently transfer out of APS for middle school.

On Wednesday, Harrison Middle School held a groundbreaking for the first phase of a three-phase school replacement. The $30.3 million first phase includes the construction of a 54,480 square-foot facility to house various classrooms and support spaces. Completion for that first phase is expected by March 2026. Voters also approved funding for that project in 2021.

WAUKESHA, Wis. (CBS 58) -- Waukesha is known as the birthplace of electric guitar pioneer Les Paul, but when it comes to the future of its schools, this community is striking the same chords as many others across Wisconsin. Declining enrollments are forcing tough decisions, and administrators on Thursday presented a plan to adapt by reducing the district's building space by 10-15%.

District leaders pointed to declining birthrates as reason to expect enrollment to keep falling in the years to come. It's a demographic challenge facing most of Wisconsin's school districts.

In the School District of Waukesha, the on-site enrollment of 9,675 students is nearly 4,000 fewer than the 13,526 seats available throughout the district. 

Harvey Stowe served as a middle school principal and assistant superintendent in the district before retiring in 2008. Before Thursday's meeting, he said the district weighed closing schools amid declining enrollment toward the end of his career.

"About 2002, 2005, around there, and people discussed the need down the road with population that we may have to do some things differently," he said.

At the start of the legislative session, Hawaiʻi school officials came to lawmakers with a bold request: stop funding pet construction projects and let the Department of Education take control of its budget instead. 

The department receives an average of $454 million in capital improvement funds each year. But over the past decade, more funding has been set aside by lawmakers for specific projects in their districts that don’t always align with what DOE says schools and students need. 

In a year when the DOE listed upgrading softball fields, addressing gender inequities and improving a science classroom at Leilehua High School as top priorities, lawmakers funded — among other things — a $4.3 million covered playground, a $7.2 million covered walkway and $21.6 million for projects at Leilehua that did not include the science classroom.

When school officials asked for $34 million for a new classroom building for ʻIlima Intermediate School in 2022, lawmakers responded with $2.5 million for a new performing arts center instead. The project was so off base from DOE’s original request that officials recently proposed returning the performing arts money to the state.  

Nine public schools in Baton Rouge are closing, four are relocating, seven are getting new grade configurations and 12 will have redrawn attendance zones under sweeping action taken Monday by the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board.
The school board, without opposition, approved Supt. LaMont Cole's long-in-the-making realignment plan. The vote sets off a three-month race to put the changes into effect for the start of the 2025-26 school year in August.
The 7-0 vote — board members Dadrius Lanus and Patrick Martin V were absent — was a strong show of support for Cole, who is just finishing his ninth month leading Louisiana’s second-largest traditional school district.
The closures, consolidations and other changes have been a long time coming for the school system, which was built for 60,000-plus students but is now educating fewer than 40,000. It’s a thorny issue that previous superintendents have considered and largely shied away from. The School Board, however, made it one of Cole’s first orders of business when it hired him in August.
Cole estimated he’s gained 60 pounds — he later revised that to about 30 pounds — from the stress of this first year, especially the work on this plan. And it’s not over. Cole pointed to a five-page action plan for his team to make these changes happen.
 

SANTA ROSA — A new structure that would house all the students in Santa Rosa public schools from pre-kindergarten to high school senior is the recommendation of the Facilities Master Plan committee.
The committee’s five-year plan received unanimous approval on April 16 from the Santa Rosa Consolidated Schools District board and now awaits approval from the state Public School Facilities Authority.
The estimated cost of new construction, including the pre-K to 12th grade building in Santa Rosa, $87.1 million, and replacing the error-plagued Anton Chico school building, estimated cost $26 million, along with $500,000 in technology investments, is estimated at $113.7 million.
The district would shut down Santa Rosa Elementary School, which has been in operation since 1953, and Santa Rosa High School, which was built in 1965.
Josh Chism, president of Capital AE, one of the consulting firms that helped assemble the plan, told the school board on April 16 that the district had done a remarkable job of keeping the buildings operating.
He compared their longevity to “a car that has 400,000 miles on it,” and commended the district’s persistence.
 

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Decades of deferred maintenance at more than 200 Memphis-Shelby County Schools total more than a billion dollars of major overhauls and replacements, reports from MSCS say.
This comes after a top-to-bottom assessment by an outside consulting agency. The reports, thousands of pages of them, were just received by WREG on Tuesday.
One of the buildings even listed to have major problems is MSCS district headquarters.
Former Superintendent Dr. Marie Feagins first talked about this assessment back in October of 2024, saying the findings could lead to school closures and consolidations.
The study was conducted by Bureau Veritas, an inspecting and consulting company.
One of the schools is Oakshire Elementary School in Whitehaven, which was built in 1966. Roofing, sidewalks, suspended ceilings, flooring and ancillary buildings are all listed in poor condition, with recommendations to have items isted in poor condition replaced by this year.
 

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.