charleston — West Virginia’s financially-struggling public schools can’t afford to implement millions of dollars in safety upgrades, including secure front entries and weapon detection systems.

Schools need $258 million in state funding for school safety upgrades for the current school year, according to a report from the state education department. Counties’ financial contributions to schools — levies, taxes and more — don’t cover the bulk of the needs.

The report showed 272 schools still don’t have safe school entries — also known as mantraps — that include two interlocking doors and a control system.

Jonah Adkins, director of the office of safety tiered support systems for the West Virginia Department of Education, told lawmakers on Sunday that cost is keeping schools from implementing safety upgrades.

“We have no money to give,” he said.

There has been an uptick this year in school threats in West Virginia, prompting Gov. Jim Justice to launch a school safety task force in September to address concerns.

“We have people who are targeting children and targeting schools to do bad things,” Adkins said.

Justice last month proposed $1 million for school safety funding but noted that the money wouldn’t “go far enough.” Lawmakers have given schools hundreds of millions of dollars for school safety in the state budget.

Several Republicans said they didn’t understand why safety improvements like mantraps still weren’t completed.

With 2024 beginning to wind down, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education caught up on progress reports from district maintenance staff and the Santa Monica Education Foundation.

As the board’s November 21 meeting, Maintenance and Operations staff gave the board its progress report from the 2023-24 school year, which kept the division busy, closing 4,065 maintenance work orders and 969 operations work orders across the district. Both Santa Monica High School and Malibu High/Middle School took priority from the crews, including over 1,000 maintenance work orders closed on the Samohi campus.

As part of the presentation, school sites’ 2024 Facility Improvement Tool (FIT) scores were shared, an integral metric in the Local Controls Funding Plan that ranks the overall condition of a school site via evaluation of 15 components.

Staff said that they were “proud” of their work at Samohi, which scored a “Fair” rating in the 2023-24 FIT scoring and was upgraded to “Good” for 2024-25. Projects on the campus included replacing AC Split Units in the Music Room, replacing 68 broken windows in the Business Building and pumping water from the elevator pit in the Language Building.

NEW YORK – Today, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) Commissioner Louis A. Molina and New York City Public Schools (NYC Public Schools) Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Chancellor for Operations and Finance Emma Vadehra, joined representatives from Generate Capital, students from NYC Public School’s Green Team, and the principal and students from PS 58 in Brooklyn to cut the ribbon and celebrate the completion of the city’s largest collection of solar arrays to date, either public or private, representing a 20-year, $85 million long-term commitment toward clean power for the city.
Situated atop 72 public schools across the city – with 58 completed and 14 more expected to be complete by the end of the year – the new solar panels along with other recently completed projects will nearly triple the City's solar capacity since the pandemic, adding nearly 17 Megawatts (MW) worth of energy generation to the City's portfolio, and $85 million in clean, renewable energy to power municipal operations for decades. With these new installations – which brings the total number of schools with solar panels up to 104, and a total of 22.5 megawatts of solar energy capacity – the City continues to lead the charge on incorporating renewable energy into the city’s power portfolio, creating a cleaner and more sustainable environment for New Yorkers.
 

A group of lawmakers and a Vermont Agency of Education executive tasked with designing a potential school construction aid program have hashed out the details but stopped short of identifying a funding stream.

The group is hoping Gov. Phil Scott will recommend appropriating state money in his budget proposal to help pay for school construction projects. But that looks unlikely.

“The Agency has not submitted a specific budget request for the creation of a (school construction aid) special fund at this time,” Lindsey Hedges, an Agency of Education spokesperson, said in an email on Tuesday. “The proposed legislation represents a thoughtful and collaborative effort, and we believe that the question of funding should be approached with the same level of diligence and consideration.”

Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Tuesday announced that he is asking the legislature for an additional $290 million to support school construction and modernization efforts across Virginia. This latest investment would bring the total funding for the current biennium to $700 million and raise the state’s overall contribution under Youngkin’s administration to nearly $2 billion.

Youngkin’s funding request is included in his proposed budget amendments, which he plans to present next week at a joint meeting of the General Assembly’s money committees.

According to the governor’s office, the state’s financial commitments have spurred an estimated $3.4 billion in total funding for school construction. The additional support would be made possible through a combination of local government contributions and federal matching funds.

“Over the last three years, we have invested historic amounts in our education system, including our public school facilities,” Youngkin said in a statement. “Our record economic growth and the resulting surplus allows us to make this critical investment to ensure every Virginia student has access to high-quality school facilities that support academic success.” 

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.