The Mountain Home Public School Board held a special meeting and training session on Thursday to tackle the district’s facilities master plan for 2024.

The school district is currently racing against the clock to add a transitional facility plan to next year’s master plan before Feb. 1 of next year after being notified by the Arkansas Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation that failure to meet the deadline would result in the district being placed in “facilities distress”.

The meeting, which included an hour-long public discussion, was attended by Arkansas Association of School Facilities Planner Aliza Jones, who attempted to set the record straight on the situation surrounding the district and its high school.

Jones also cleared up questions surrounding her employment by stating that while she worked for the division in the past, she was no longer a state employee. Jones is a member of the Arkansas Association of School Facilities Planners and was hired by the district to assist with its master plan.   

Melissa Pacheco remembers multiple days when her daughter and nephews came home from school with headaches from overheating. One day, her nephew vomited as a result, she said.
She blamed the lack of central air at Academia de Lenguaje y Bellas Artes, a South Side Milwaukee public school that teaches bilingually from preschool to eighth grade.
Pacheco tried to organize other parents to push for investments in air conditioning, but school leaders prioritized recreational equipment instead, she said. She elevated her heat concerns to the Milwaukee Public Schools board as it planned for students to return to in-person learning earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic.
After that didn’t work, Pacheco during the 2021-2022 school year pulled her seventh-grade daughter from the school she attended since kindergarten.
“I was like, ‘I’m so done with them. Nothing gets done,’” the 41-year-old mother said.
Academia de Lenguaje y Bellas Artes is among about half of public schools in Milwaukee — and thousands nationally — that lack full or partial indoor air conditioning, according to district officials. That shortcoming has caused school closures and left students struggling to concentrate when temperatures rise.
Milwaukee Public Schools has long acknowledged difficulties in keeping classrooms cool, and the pandemic highlighted another indoor air quality challenge: how to limit the spread of COVID-19 and other diseases. But it also provided an opportunity. The federal government created a program — the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Education Relief Fund — to address pandemic-related needs, including upgrading ventilation and air filtration.
 

Peter Drucker famously said, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” Data on facilities helps public schools to make equitable decisions, prevent environmental health risks, ensure regular maintenance, and conduct long-term planning. Publicly available data increases transparency and accountability, resulting in more informed decision making and quality analysis. Across the U.S., public schools lack the resources to track their facilities and operations, resulting in missed opportunities to ensure equitable access to high quality learning environments. As public schools face increasing challenges to infrastructure, such as climate change, this data gap becomes more pronounced.

Why Do We Need Data On School Facilities?
School facilities affect student health and learning. The conditions of a school building directly impact the health and learning outcomes of students. The COVID-19 pandemic brought the importance of indoor air quality into the public consciousness. Many other chronic diseases are exacerbated by inadequate facilities, causing absenteeism and learning loss. From asthma to obesity to lead poisoning, the condition of the places where children spend their time impacts their health, wellbeing, and ability to learn. Better data on the physical environment helps us understand the conditions that hinder student learning. 

Voters in five New Jersey school districts are being asked to approve more funding for school security when they vote this Election Day.

The fiver security-related referendums are among more than 30 school district ballot questions that will be decided by local voters Tuesday. They include questions about approving school construction projects, hiring additional teachers, reducing the number of seats on school boards, and more.

The five school construction projects on the ballots total $57.15 million for school renovations and other upgrades in Millburn, Woodbury, Princeton, South River and Lakehurst, according to the New Jersey Schools Boards Association. If the projects are approved by voters, the total cost of the construction projects will be partially offset by $20.6 million in state aid.

Separately, the five security-related referendums add up to just over $4 million and appear to reflect a trend. Voters are being asked to approve the funding as school districts in New Jersey and elsewhere continue to wrestle with safety considerations after high-profile school violence incidents — including the mass shooting that killed 21 people last year at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has allocated $53 million in funding to build a temporary school in West Maui, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz said today.

The temporary school in Pulelehua will replace King Kamehameha III Elementary School, which was located at 611 Front St. and destroyed by the Aug. 8 wildfires. It is expected to provide students and staff from the school with additional facilities to continue instruction as a permanent structure is designed and rebuilt, officials said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers separately announced today that it has awarded a $53.7 million base contract to Pono Aina Management, LLC, a Waianae-based Native Hawaiian company, to build the temporary school.

“The children of Lahaina have gone through a heartbreaking trauma, and the Corps of Engineers, the Department of Defense and our partners can now help the state bring back a bit of normalcy to these young lives,” Col. Jess Curry, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Recovery Field Office commander, said in a news release. “This school may be temporary but will stand as a reminder that despite the grief and loss, Lahaina’s children will have a space to continue to learn, to dream and to thrive. We are proud to be here for them in this moment.”

Clark-Pleasant School District officially broke ground Monday morning on Whiteland Community High School’s $235 million complex that will unify the students under one roof.

The multi-phase project will bring new additions to the school and renovate the current building in preparation to better accommodate the school district’s growing population. The endeavor marks the most expensive capital project in Clark-Pleasant schools’ history, school officials said back in February.

Superintendent Tim Edsell said that this undertaking will strengthen the three primary facets that attract families to the district: academics, fine arts and athletics.

“A three-legged stool has to have all three legs in order to be operational,” Edsell said. “In the school system, what attracts families is those three elements: great academics, great fine arts and great athletics. We are so excited to be able to see what the next five years are going to produce. There are going to be some headaches and some challenges. It is not going to be a bowl full of roses.”

GREENSBORO — A parent whose children attended Lindley Elementary is mounting an effort to save a portion of the aged school from being demolished.
“If you believe that the Guilford County school board should preserve and renovate the 1928 historic building for continued use ... please sign this,” parent Samuel Cook wrote in a petition he posted this week on change.org.
He also called for preservation of the wooded trails, open landscape and community garden on campus.
The petition had 166 signatures as of early Friday evening.
Superintendent Whitney Oakley said Thursday that a previously planned school board vote on a contract for a design to replace the school is still on pause.
“It’s the recommendation of the designer, but we are in conversation with the community and will continue to be,” she said.
The school administration, she added, will continue to hold more community meetings.
Oakley said there’s a possibility she might bring the issue to the board in December.
“We haven’t put it back on the board agenda because we are still working with the Lindley community — we’ll keep doing that,” she said.
Julius Monk, the district’s deputy superintendent for business and operations, explained last week that three or four additions have been made to the original 1928 structure. He said the conversations the district is having now are about whether work could be done to save just that 1928 section and incorporate it with a new building.
He clarified that district plans call for Lindley to remain an elementary school. In negotiating for the contract design, Monk said the potential designer reported that the site wasn’t conducive for a kindergarten through eighth-grade school as leaders had hoped.
 

WALLACE, Va. — Wallace Middle School is now celebrating a century since the core of the iconic school building was constructed on the outskirts of Bristol, Virginia.

The school remains the center of the Wallace community — once served by its own post office, railroad depot and mill along the banks of Clear Creek.

Today, the name of early community leader John Houston Wallace remains on the school, the nearby Wallace Meadows housing subdivision and an automobile repair shop — among other landmarks.

A portion of the school — the auditorium and four classrooms — was constructed in 1923. Over time, the school has expanded. A new wing was built about a dozen years ago.

Wallace has served as a high school and elementary school and has now been a middle school for more than 30 years.

QUICKSBURG, Va. (WHSV) - A major student-led project is coming to life at North Fork Middle School in Quicksburg. Carpentry students from Triplett Tech are building an outdoor classroom on the side of the school.

“A couple years ago I received an award that had some money attached to it and the goal was to use that money for an educational advancement at our school. Immediately the outdoor classroom came to mind so it can enrich students’ educational opportunities and experiences,” said Dara Booher, an Agriscience Teacher at North Fork.

The goal is to provide an outdoor learning experience for students and to get them out in the fresh air.

Over the summer Booher asked some North Fork students if they would help with the project and five students in the FFA became spokespersons for the project. Over the past few months, the students worked to make the project a reality.

Lockport Township High School District 205 has some immediate and long-term solutions to make for its Central Campus following a collapse of a classroom ceiling on Thursday.
The immediate needs are where to educate the students – freshmen and some special education students – who currently attend the 114-year-old building.
Lockport Township High School District 205 has some immediate and long-term solutions to make for its Central Campus following a collapse of a classroom ceiling on Thursday.
The immediate needs are where to educate the students – freshmen and some special education students – who currently attend the 114-year-old building.
 

SHELLEY — In rural East Idaho, a tiny school district is making a big bet: that voters will approve a $67.8 million bond measure for a new high school. 

Statewide, it’s the biggest education ask on the November ballot. 

The odds of any bond passing in Idaho are less than a coin toss, thanks in part to the required 66.67% supermajority approval — one of the highest thresholds in the nation. And in smaller communities, passing bonds of this size can be especially unlikely since fewer residents can mean larger tax burdens. 

But in Shelley, a small community surrounded by farmland — where russets are the mascot and its one high school is dubbed ‘the spud cellar’ —  Superintendent Chad Williams seemed hopeful as he ran through the numbers. 

The backhoes and bulldozers and earth movers are ready to go, but first, a groundbreaking ceremony must be held to mark the occasion. The new James S. Rickards Middle School campus is officially under construction.

“On behalf of the Rickards family, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts,” said principal Erick Gurreonero.

It’s an $82 million project, and it’s state-of-the-art in every way.

“It’s important that every child gets to walk through the doors of a beautiful school and this is going to be a beautiful, beautiful place,” said Dr. Peter Licata, superintendent of Broward County Public Schools.

The old building was demolished after a section of the roof collapsed in 2021. Students have been learning in portable classrooms since then, actually, a small city of temporary structures. The community had been asking for a new school even before the roof collapsed, so for some, this is a better-late-than-never situation.

New York voters have two constitutional amendments to consider this election, found on the back of the ballot.

One aims to allow the state’s 57 small city school districts — those at least partly located in cities with fewer than 125,000 people — to take on more debt for things like big capital projects.

Most school districts in New York state can incur debt that’s up to 10% of the value of the taxable real estate in their districts. For small city school districts, the state constitution says that number is 5%.

"We have seen situations pop up where that debt limit has served as a barrier and forced the district to, you know, extend out a project," said Brian Fessler, director of government relations at the New York State School Boards Association.

Fessler says breaking down big projects into smaller ones can help small city districts stay under their debt limits, but can ultimately cost taxpayers more money over time.

Ballot proposal one asks voters if they want to remove the 5% debt limit from the state constitution. The legislature has already passed the resolution twice, so now the final step is voter approval.

KYLE, Texas — Hays CISD said mold was detected at one of its elementary schools this week, and remediation efforts will keep the campus closed for a week.
The district said that on Wednesday, an odor prompted an air quality test at Hemphill Elementary School in Kyle. 
Remediation crews worked to remove mold from a classroom, but it was discovered the problem is more widespread. At least 13 classrooms are affected in areas behind the walls and up to about 3 feet above the floors.
It’s now believed that students won’t be able to return to the campus until Thursday, Nov. 9.
The district said students will continue to have access to meal service while the school is closed. It’s a grab-and-go service similar to what was done during the COVID-19 pandemic.
 

Parents gathered at Farallone View Elementary School on Thursday morning to hear administration plans after the Montara Water and Sanitary District shut off water service to the school today due to its public health concerns caused by construction at the site.

For many children at the school, it was also time to face their first Porta-Potty. Cabrillo Unified School District officials scrambled to get portable sanitation stations in place for the school day and to assure some potable water was in place.

At issue was new construction at the school, work MWSD says is being done without proper notice and without a backflow device that protects other users.

New York City plans to spend $800 million over the next five years to boost school building accessibility for people with physical disabilities, officials revealed Wednesday. That figure is far short of what advocates had demanded. 

Fewer than 1 in 3 of the city’s public schools are fully accessible to students and staff with mobility impairments, according to a recent report from the group Advocates for Children. The organization previously called on the city to dramatically ramp up spending to $1.25 billion to ensure that at least half of buildings would become fully accessible over the term of the new capital plan, which runs from 2025 through 2029. 

With many budget concerns on the horizon — including the expiration of billions of dollars in federal relief money and additional cuts to city agencies ordered by Mayor Eric Adams — accessibility funding hewed closely to current levels.

The capital plan will increase funding for accessibility from $750 million under the current five-year plan, which runs from 2020 through 2024, to $800 million in the new one, according to documents released Wednesday. Advocates contend that is not enough to keep the current pace because of inflation and rising construction costs. 

“Given the decades of inadequate attention that preceded this investment, nearly two-thirds of City schools will still not be fully accessible by the time the construction funded by the current Capital Plan is complete,” Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, said in a statement. “It is not acceptable to postpone compliance with [the federal Americans with Disabilities Act] for yet another generation.”

ROWAN COUNTY, N.C. (WBTV) - The poor condition of Henderson Independent High School led the Rowan-Salisbury School Board to approve a plan that would move Henderson students to a vacant building on the North Rowan High campus if necessary.

The RSS Board of Education made a motion at the September 25 business meeting to create an emergency plan to be presented to the Board. That emergency plan was presented and approved last week.

“What an emergency is can be defined lots of ways,” said Board member Kevin Jones. “Obviously, everyone in the room would agree if there’s an emergency we can’t leave our students there. The same thing would be true for any school that we have, we could wake up tomorrow and there would be a problem at any of our schools. Now, some are in better condition so it’s less likely, but we don’t have emergency plans for all those other schools but we would find a way as administration, at some point along the way the Board would get involved and say ‘alright what are we going to do to make sure that these students are safe and still learning.’ Figuring out what that looks like and then what kind of money it takes to fix the problem is something that I think is going to have to be the difficult thing, but something that we’re going to have to...I’d love the Board to stay a part of those conversations is ‘how much money is it going to take to fix it where it’s not an emergency anymore leaving them at the current location versus going somewhere else, because there’s costs going both ways.”

Some BOE members mentioned emergencies such as: roof collapses or water, heat, etc. breaks and cannot be repaired quickly; however, neither the BOE or RSS officially defined “emergency situation.”

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state School Building Authority took a vote Monday that SBA Chairman Brian Abraham believes will hit the “sweet spot” when it comes to school construction projects.
The SBA approved a 46% increase in the square footage cost allowance, the first increase in the allowance since 2019.
Abraham, Gov. Jim Justice’s chief of staff, who also chairs the SBA. said the current allowance cost of just more than $300 a square foot is way below what construction costs actually are in the current inflationary times.
“We’re hoping with this change that projects should be pretty well priced. So hopefully they’ll come in on estimate and we won’t have to fall back on the counties either,” Abraham said.
 

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Duval County Public Schools (DCPS) recently announced transformative developments and changes in their schools, all made possible by the half-penny sales tax.
The ongoing projects are set to reportedly enhance educational opportunities and improve the overall infrastructure, demonstrating the district’s commitment to providing the best learning environment for its students.
These projects encompass a wide range of improvements, from constructing new classroom buildings to addressing vital repairs and ensuring safety and security upgrades across multiple campuses.
 

BALTIMORE —
The Maryland Supreme Court declined to hear an almost 30-year-old lawsuit about funding for Baltimore City Public School.
But the court case is far from over.
The lawsuit, first filed in 1994, involved a case named after parents of Baltimore students, who, at the time, argued that the district wasn't receiving the amount of funding necessary to provide a "thorough and efficient" education for public school students as Article 8 in the state constitution requires.
For years, Maryland judges agreed with the parents, forcing the state to increase the amount of funding for City Schools.
But after the recession in 2008, the increased funding tailed off, and the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People took the Maryland State Board of Education back to court in 2019 with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding on the line.
More recently, courts have ruled in favor of the state and against any additional funding for City Schools.
The case reached the Maryland Supreme Court, which, on Tuesday, declined to take up the lawsuit. The case will now go to the appellate court.
Arielle Humphries, assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, spoke with 11 News Investigates on Thursday, calling the decision to decline the petition a disappointment.