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.

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. 

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.”

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.

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.
 

MILWAUKEE — Three Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) schools remain closed for a fifth week, as crews work to clean up lead hazards inside of them.
Starms Early Childhood Center, Fernwood Montessori and LaFollete school have not been open to students and staff since Friday, March 14.
A group of parents are growing a grassroots advocacy group called Lead Safe Schools MKE. The group is circulating an online petition demanding more answers from MPS and the Milwaukee Health Department (MHD).
It's also encouraging Milwaukee residents to call the Milwaukee Mayor’s Office, Common Council members and state representatives to demand quicker action in lead remediation.
In an Instagram post Monday, Lead Safe Schools MKE called out Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson for not doing more when the city owns MPS buildings.
“At the end of the day, we believe that the city has a lot of responsibility in this situation, because they own those buildings,” said Ron Jansen, MPS parent and organizer of Lead Safe Schools MKE. “The mayor’s input is really important. He should be seeking financial assistance for the district, whether that be loans, grants, so we can lift the district out of this crisis. My message would be, that we have seen you drag your feet on the lead crisis in Milwaukee long enough.”
 

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."

Legislation aimed at making schools and other buildings safer during emergency events, like active shooters, passed through the Senate on Monday.

House Bill 651, sponsored by Rep. Amy Regier, R-Kalispell, creates an exemption in state fire code for temporary door locks in public buildings.

Temporary door locks can help save lives, according to a study published in the Journal of Mass Violence Research. In fact, the Sandy Hook Commission, a report by the federal government, found in 2015 that there has never been an active shooter event where the shooter breached a locked door.

“Currently, our fire code is fairly direct and provides no exceptions,” Regier said during the bill’s hearing on March 21 before the Senate State Administration Committee. “It states it is unlawful to obstruct a fire exit or any hallway corridor or entrance way leading to a fire exit. Yet in an active shooter emergency, one of the first steps that is recommended to protect potential victims is to secure the door.”

A code official, or whomever has jurisdiction of a building, would have to approve of the use of temporary locks, and they could only be used in a “shelter-in-place or emergency lockdown situation.”

The Orleans Parish School board is preparing to sell seven properties at a live auction later this month, as the cash-strapped agency seeks to offload dozens of vacant school buildings and empty lots across the city that it has been holding onto for years.
Among the properties on offer is an 88-year-old art deco building at 727 Carondelet St. that recently appraised for $6.5 million. Commercial real estate broker Paul Richard of NAI/Latter & Blum, who is handling the auction, said it would be a prime candidate for redevelopment into a hotel or apartments.  
The other big-ticket property in the portfolio is a red-brick structure at 401 Nashville Avenue. The Uptown building dates to the early 1900s and was recently appraised at $3.7 million.
Along with three other former schools in Algiers and Gentilly and two vacant lots, the properties, which will be auctioned individually, could fetch as much as $14 million.
The school board is dealing with a $50 million budget hole, and while School Board President Katie Baudouin said some of the money generated from the auction, scheduled for April 30, could go towards plugging that revenue shortfall, it more likely will go to a building and facilities fund and used to pay off capital expenses.
 

New York City’s Education Department is severely out of compliance with a federal law mandating regular inspections of school buildings containing asbestos, an audit released Wednesday by comptroller Brad Lander found.

Out of the city’s roughly 1,600 schools, a whopping 80% have been identified to have asbestos and are required by federal law to be inspected by an accredited professional once every three years. Yet, only 18% of the more-than 1,400 schools containing asbestos had such inspections between 2021 and 2024, the audit found.

School buildings with asbestos are also required to have routine inspections by a trained employee, such as a custodian, every six months. But the city only began systematically tracking those inspections in 2023 and completed them at just 22% of schools between 2023 and 2024, the audit revealed.

“[The Education Department] has stunningly failed to follow the minimum national standard for asbestos management for years,” Lander said in a statement. “I am urging the Adams Administration to take swift action to come into compliance because no parent, teacher, or school staffer should feel unsafe walking into a school.”

The audit advises the Education Department to create new policies, tracking systems, and accountability plans to quickly improve its compliance.

The $600-million effort to rebuild the three L.A. Unified schools burned in the Palisades fire has hit an important milestone ahead of schedule — all debris has been cleared from the properties, Supt. Alberto Carvalho said Friday.
Calling the debris removal a “pivotal moment for all of us,” he detailed rebuilding plans that aim to get students back to campuses quickly.
“Today we recognize that people of goodwill can carve out common ground to achieve great things together in unity,” Carvalho said alongside Mayor Karen Bass at Palisades Charter Elementary School, one of the campuses that burned.
About 70% of the school was destroyed by the fire that began Jan. 7. Now, nearly three months later, tidy expanses of soil are all that is left in spaces where structures once stood.
Bass touted the speed of debris removal across the area scorched by the Palisades fire, which destroyed nearly 7,000 structures and burned more than 23,000 acres, saying, “We are absolutely committed to making sure that Palisades is rebuilt as fast as possible.”
 

The Burlington County Institute of Technology, or BCIT, in Medford recently unveiled its renovated welding and heating, ventilation and cooling system shops, and a new video game design lab.
About 17 miles down the road, the Camden County Technical School’s, or CCTS, Pennsauken Campus expanded its culinary arts program.
These are just two of the many projects across the state that have benefitted from a 2018 bond measure that appropriated $350 million to expand county vocational schools and their programs.
Jackie Burke, executive director of the New Jersey Council of County Vocational-Technical Schools, which represents vocational-technical school districts in the state, said officials across the state gathered input on how to spend the money.
“They talked to employers, they talked to students and parents, they talked to everyone to see what the landscape is,” she said.
Major expansions take place at BCIT and CCTS
BCIT’s two campuses had their first major improvements in two decades.
In February, officials cut the ribbon on the $8 million major expansion of its welding and HVAC shops. The welding shops include a renovated classroom, storage area and four additional welding booths. The HVAC area was expanded to include a classroom, shop area, supply and tool storage and dedicated brazing area.
 

Following the brutal tornado of March 14 and the subsequent damage that resulted, the Poplar Bluff School District officials say they have renewed a commitment to be available to the public in times of emergency. The district received an opportunity to test that Sunday.

A severe storm front was forecast to hit the area Sunday. Poplar Bluff found itself categorized at level three by the National Weather Service, making it a prime spot for tornado activity.

According to Assistant Superintendent Charles Kinsey, the decision was made to open the FEMA Shelter at the O’Neal School, as well as the Poplar Bluff Junior High, to the public by 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

“After going through what we just went through, I think the school wants to be a part of helping the community,” Kinsey explained.

Kinsey said he understands some people may be dealing with high levels of stress and anxiety as a result of the recent tornado, but he is glad the school was able to provide shelter.

“At the O’Neal location, we had about 400 people show up,” Kinsey noted. “We only had about 40 people show up at the junior high, but fewer people were probably aware that location was available as a shelter.”

Three schools in Milwaukee remain temporarily closed two weeks after “significant lead hazards” were found inside the buildings.
Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Health Department is still revising a “Lead Action Plan” from Milwaukee Public Schools. The plan will outline how the district will inspect other school properties for lead and clean those found to have hazards.
Three schools — Starms Early Childhood Center, Fernwood Montessori and LaFollette School — all temporarily closed March 17 after staff with the city health department noticed lead hazards like chipping paint when inspecting the properties. Students have been transferred to different schools while remediation is underway.
During a Friday press conference, Tyler Weber, the Milwaukee Health Department’s deputy commissioner for environmental health, did not give a timeline on when the schools might reopen.
“We want to get these kids back into a safe environment for the wellness of the children and parents,” Weber said.
“Renovation work is happening and they’re (schools) not ready to be opened,” he added. MPS, not MHD, manages the remediation work.
The closures come as four other Milwaukee Public Schools have been recently investigated for high levels of lead. One of those schools, Trowbridge School of Great Lakes Studies, was shut down by the Milwaukee Health Department in late February due to “unsafe lead dust levels.” It reopened two weeks ago.
Children younger than age 6 are particularly vulnerable to lead poisoning, according to Mayo Clinic. Lead poisoning can affect children’s mental and physical development.
 

Indiana lawmakers have revived a proposal that could lead to Indianapolis Public Schools sharing its school buildings and transportation systems with local charter schools.

The plan creates a nine-member Indianapolis Local Education Alliance (ILEA) made up of district, charter, and city leaders who would be charged with creating a school facility and transportation plan for the city.

The recommendations made by the body would not be binding. But they could be far-reaching, as members would be tasked with developing strategies related to facility use and transportation, including any “structural changes necessary … for a collaborative system of schools that can serve all students within the geographic boundaries of the school city fairly,” the amendment says.

Only IPS would be required to participate in such a group. Other districts could opt into pilot programs that would create independent boards to oversee school facilities and transportation systems, including by authorizing property tax referendums.

The proposal has been significantly pared down since the original version, House Bill 1501, did not move through the chamber before a mandatory deadline.

Author Rep. Bob Behning said last week he would add the language to another bill, and did so with an amendment on Wednesday to Senate Bill 373, a broad education matters bill.

The ILEA would begin meeting in July 2025 and submit its recommendations to lawmakers and the state education secretary by December 2025 under the bill.

The plan is the latest version of a push by Indiana lawmakers this year to exert control over Indianapolis schools and direct more resources to the city’s charter schools. In addition to HB 1501, lawmakers are also moving to require the district to share more local revenue with charter schools. On the extreme end, House Bill 1136 would have dissolved the district completely and replaced it with charter schools, but it didn’t advance this session.

Knowledge of structural problems at Jenkins Middle School in Colorado Springs School District 11 began around a decade after the school was built. Now, it sits empty, waiting for repairs to its foundation that could have a high price tag.
The district has released a final report on the structural and fire protection concerns that resulted in the January closure of Jenkins Middle School. The report confirmed the preliminary findings, released last month, which said the decline was a result of soil settlement related to an increase in moisture content from the time the building was built until the recent inspection.
According to the Colorado Springs Fire Department, the agency and the district have been "closely monitoring the building structure and fire protection systems … for the past few years."
The statement from CSFD at the time the school shut down comes after years of citations during routine annual inspections, according to CSFD Fire Marshall Brett Lacey. 
“Back in 2013, my inspectors began to notice degradation of those fire protection features and they would write them up,” Lacey said, “and [the district] would come back in and correct them with fire rated materials or caulking or trying to shore up those passive features.”
When Jenkins Middle School was built in 1999, building codes didn’t require the installation of active fire suppression systems, such as a sprinkler system. And though there are some sprinklers in the cafeteria, the rest of the school uses passive fire protections, specifically fire barriers. 
The recently released final report covering a geotechnical inspection found parts of the foundation of the building had shifted up to 5.5 inches in some cases, causing fire barriers to no longer stay flush with their frames, rendering them ineffective.
“If you picture a door and a door fits within a door frame, as the structure begins to move, that can begin to warp the frame. Which then, the door may not fit appropriately,” said Colorado Springs Fire Marshal Brett Lacey.