Orleans Parish voters are being asked to renew a millage dedicated to the maintenance and repairs for school facilities.

In advance of the vote, NOLA Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Avis Williams and Orleans Parish School Board President Olin Parker stopped by WGNO’s Good Morning New Orleans show to discuss the millage.

“In 2014, New Orleans voters overwhelmingly approved a millage to keep our school facilities in good condition. After the storm, the federal government invested $2 billion in our schools. The voters of New Orleans stepped up and said, ‘Yes, we want to continue taking care of these schools this Saturday.’ We’re just asking voters to do the same thing, renew a tax that they’ve already been paying. It’s not a new tax and it’s something that benefits every single student and every single teacher in our parish,” said Parker.

This time, voters would be asked to renew the tax for a 20-year term.

“It’s important for long-range planning. When we think about capital planning, we know that even with our newest facilities, they’re going to need new HVAC systems and new roofs, and heaven forbid we have any natural disasters. We have to be ready to make those repairs and renovations as necessary. We just want to make sure that we have an opportunity for long-range planning and commitment for our new strategic plan of action is operational excellence. This is part of it. Our scholars deserve to learn in safe and healthy buildings that allow them to do innovative things to prepare them for their future,” said Williams.

Members of the Howard County Council and Board of Education expressed frustrations with recent changes in the county's school construction funding priorities during a joint meeting Wednesday. Funding for construction and infrastructure projects is based on the facilities condition index, which serves as a ranking of Howard County public schools by building condition and has been especially prone to change in the last several months.

The council has been presented with three versions of the school system's capital budget request since May, which council member Liz Walsh said is a problem because it gives the impression that decisions have been made without reliable information and with no accountability to impacted community members.

"This, to me, is a farce," Walsh said. "There is no reliability, there is no accountability, there is no consistency across the numbers. The only thing that is consistent is that, year-by-year, the approved budget that comes here underinvests. ... We are never going to overcome any of this deficit by whatever device we choose if we do not actually follow through with what we put on these pieces of paper."

The Board of Education voted on Sept. 28 to fund renovations and additions for Oakland Mills and Dunloggin middle schools instead of previously scheduled full replacement buildings for those schools.

Hopkins Academy—a public middle and high school serving a few hundred students in Hadley, Mass.—needs a new furnace and a new roof. But the elected school committee has struggled for years to find the right combination of funds and contractors for a project they hope will reduce the 70-year-old building’s environmental footprint.
Enter Sara Ross, co-founder of Undaunted K-12, a nonprofit supporting schools’ efforts to transition to clean energy. At a statewide conference for school committee leaders, Ross led a session about using federal funds to pay for green infrastructure.
“What I learned at that session really blew my mind,” said Humera Fasihuddin, chair of the Hadley school committee.
She’s likely not alone. The federal government is currently offering funds that Ross believes could be a lifeline for hundreds of districts nationwide that desperately need to upgrade their buildings to withstand the oncoming effects of climate change: extreme heat, unpredictable storms, rampant wildfires, and devastating flooding.
But those funds, tucked inside the sweeping climate change legislation Congress approved a year ago known as the Inflation Reduction Act, have flown under the radar. That may be because the mechanism for receiving them isn’t one school districts typically use.
 

When Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle in 2018, Calhoun County schools were ravaged. Winds of 160 miles per hour destroyed an elementary school and ripped high-school bleachers from the ground.

“It was complete devastation,” said Darryl Taylor Jr., superintendent of the district. “It was like a nuclear bomb had gone off.”

The Calhoun schools are still trying to rebuild what they lost five years ago. A new elementary school is not yet finished, and some students are still in temporary classrooms. The process of assessing the damage for insurance, along with the pandemic, has been arduous.

“It was long and slow,” Mr. Taylor said.

As climate disasters become more commonplace, school districts are learning that a strong storm can put learning in a state of disarray. In New York, a driving rain recently flooded the city, with water seeping into more than 300 schools. Cafeterias and kitchens were unusable; students’ 45-minute commutes turned into two hours; one school was temporarily evacuated.

Cincinnati is at least $400 million behind on maintaining city infrastructure like roads, parks and recreation centers. Several City Council members took a tour Monday of some facilities most in need of attention.
Council Member Jeff Cramerding arranged the tour to see the oft-cited deferred maintenance problem firsthand. He says the idea for a tour predates the proposed sale of the Cincinnati Southern Railway. Officials are proposing a sale of the city-owned railway to Norfolk Southern for $1.62 billion, with the city investing the money and only spending the earned interest, which would only go toward maintaining and improving existing infrastructure.
The city's entire capital budget averages about $60 million a year. About $25 million a year comes from leasing the railway.
Some critics, however, say it's foolish to sell an asset that has brought the city steady revenue for over a century.
"The need is so immense," Cramerding said. "The railroad would be a tremendous help, but it's not going to be enough. So as a city, we're going to have to continue to be creative and continue to address it."
Last year, City Council allocated a few million dollars from the carryover budget to deferred maintenance projects. This year's carryover budget is expected to be on the City Council agenda next week. Here are some places the tour visited.
 

The school district currently has 12 repair workers to cover 56 buildings — posing perhaps the largest roadblock to keeping schools open amid heat waves.

The Board of Alders Education Committee discussed the dearth of maintenance workers in New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) at the committee’s Sept. 27 meeting.

The meeting occurred a few weeks after numerous school air conditioning systems failed to function during record-hot temperatures, leading the school district to send all kids home for the day.

According to NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon, the district employs three electricians, three carpenters, two plumbers, two steam fitters, and one painter, with two unfunded and vacant positions among the district’s planned maintenance and repair staff.

In addition to employees specifically trained to make repairs, each school building has a building manager and an assistant building manager in charge of generally supporting school facilities, and the district also employs 186 contracted part-time custodial cleaners along with more than a dozen other custodial staff members.

Those employees cover 41 school buildings as well as other properties owned by the district — amounting to a total of 4,390,940 square feet, Harmon wrote in an email after the meeting.

At the September alder committee meeting, Supt. Madeline Negrón said that when she first started her position at the helm of NHPS this summer, she was shocked that the district did not have more staff to make building repairs

“I almost died when [NHPS Chief Operating Officer Thomas Lamb said] you only had one painter and one plumber. I said, ​‘What? For 41 schools?’” she recalled.

Across the country, schools generally pay for major building upgrades by taking on debt through bonds that they pay back over a number of years. And in most of the United States, school districts need support merely from a simple majority of voters to pass those bonds.

But 10 states buck that trend, requiring more than a simple majority. School districts in those states have a steeper path to funding large projects, whether the construction of new buildings or the replacement of an outdated HVAC system.

California requires 55 percent in favor; Missouri requires 57 percent; seven states require 60 percent; and one state—Idaho—requires support from a whopping two-thirds of voters. So even if a majority of voters in those states back school facilities bonds, it might not be enough.

Those 10 states collectively are home to 4,000 of the nation’s roughly 13,000 public school districts. They enroll 5 million students—roughly 10 percent of the nation’s total public K-12 enrollment.

The state school board on Wednesday approved requests to the state Legislature for an additional $198.2 million for the Hawaii public schools’ operating budget and an added $273 million for capital improvement projects for next fiscal year.
State Department of Education officials who authored the requests said additional funding for 2024-2025 is necessary to respond to myriad pressing issues — among them: catching up from last legislative session’s severe budget, covering inflation and collective-bargaining pay preventing and preparing for the possibility of an active implementing a new statewide strategic for the schools, and recovering from pandemic learning loss and the Maui wildfires.
Brian Hallett, assistant superintendent and chief financial officer in the DOE’s Office of Fiscal Services, said the gap between the operating budget the DOE was granted by the past Legislature and what the schools, students and teachers will need for next fiscal year is “extraordinary.”
“I don’t recall a budget so precariously positioned in terms of uncertainty following last year’s budget, with actually less funds and greater needs,” Hallett said during a presentation to the Finance and Infrastructure Committee of the state Board of Education.
 

MEMPHIS, Tenn — The first-of-its-kind "tornado safe room" in West Tennessee is now located at Belle Forest Community School.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) held a ribbon-cutting celebration for the new room on Friday morning. 

The facility is a two-in-one addition for Belle Forest. The school says it will provide students with a "world-class" gymnasium for physical education as well as sports activities. 

Reportedly, it is also a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)-approved safe house facility, built for the surrounding community in the event of a tornado or natural disaster.

PESHTIGO — Silver shovels turned the dirt as Peshtigo celebrated its groundbreaking on a $40.7 million addition to its middle and high school on Wednesday.
Among those wearing hard hats were two students, Taylor Wortner, a sophomore, and Christina Powers, a senior.
Wortner, wearing her Peshtigo blues, said she’ll be the first group to graduate with the renovations.
As a three-sport athlete, she said the new athletic accommodations “will not only be great for the students but great for the community.”
The renovations will boast a two-station gym for sports and performances and a fitness center, which are breaking ground this year in the approximately six-phase plan that will stretch until August 2026. The school will also keep the old gym.
“I’m really excited for the gym,” Wortner said. “Oh, and air conditioning.”
Powers said that although she’ll be graduating by the time the renovations are done, she has a younger sister in school who will benefit — along with the town.
“All our community uses the school, not just the students,” Powers said, mentioning that people can use the gym at certain times when the school isn’t using it.
Gary Larsen, school board president, said that in his 19 years of service, this project is 10 times the cost of anything he’s seen go through in his tenure.
“Our students will soon see the state-of-the-art school they deserve,” Larsen said.
Chad Sodini, high school principal, summed up the feelings of the day.
“I know our students and staff are excited,” Sodini said.
 

DEEP RIVER — Shoreline middle schoolers will remain at  Valley Regional High School for classes for the foreseeable future after being moved there in early September due to extensive mold discovered before the start of the academic year, an official said.
Regional School District 4 Superintendent Brian J. White said Thursday that mold was discovered in late August when teachers returned to John Winthrop Middle School in Deep River after summer break. 
The district serves students living in Chester, Deep River and Essex.
“There was very high humidity in parts of the building,” White said. That triggered an investigation to determine exactly what was occurring. A consultant report, based on lab results, confirmed the situation.
The superintendent has been communicating with the school community every week since then.
Based on the findings of a Sept. 7 preliminary report, school was immediately dismissed and everyone was told to leave the building, he added. The middle school remained closed the next day.
“We knew at that time what we were going to have to do a much deeper dive,” White explained.
 

An abundance of natural light flows through the art classrooms at Lawrence Central High School. Three floors above, students complete independent work in an open-space lounge. 

And on another end of the building, crews work on the latest addition to the Lawrence Township high school: an indoor pool. 

The renovations here are among the largest of the district’s massive facilities upgrade plan that has touched each of the district’s 17 school buildings. So far, it has pumped more than $500 million into new classrooms, new stadiums, bigger playgrounds, safety renovations, and more.  

The district’s Blue Ribbon Facilities plan, which began in 2014, sought to upgrade buildings that are up to 55 years old by creating more classroom space to accommodate the district’s growing student population. The district has so far spent over $200 million on these upgrades. But in 2019, voters approved a $220 million ballot measure that turbocharged the district’s facility plans by funding improvements at Lawrence Central, five other schools, and four early learning centers. The changes could be vital to ensuring students are engaged in school, a challenge in the post-pandemic era.

The working group on class sizes for the New York City Department of Education unveiled its preliminary proposals for smaller class sizes at the Martin Luther King Jr. Educational Campus auditorium on Monday.

During the event, working group members—comprised of parents, teachers, and school principals—and other stakeholders presented their proposals under six subcommittees: enrollment planning, capital planning, staffing and hiring, instructional implications and programming options, special education and integrated co-teaching, and budgeting and financing. Each subcommittee was dedicated to addressing different challenges with reducing class sizes.

The working group’s co-chairs, Johanna Garcia, chief of staff for State Sen. Robert Jackson, and David Marmor, a Queens high school principal, moderated the event to hear feedback from parents and other stakeholders.

The working group laid out five recommendations with regard to enrollment planning, including supporting schools that are already in compliance with the law, surveying key stakeholders such as principals, teachers, and support staff, limiting enrollment at overcrowded schools that do not have the space to comply with the new class size caps, and relocating 3-K and pre-K programs from district schools.

Members of the working group said one of the biggest issues for small class sizes is finding adequate space for classrooms. The capital planning committee, whose duties include addressing challenges related to the construction of new schools, planning existing spaces, and consolidating schools, proposed 25 preliminary recommendations. Some suggested measures included repurposing existing “unutilized or underutilized” facilities, merging co-located schools, and building new school buildings.

As soon as funding becomes available, Wyoming County schools officials are ready to begin construction on several major projects – including a new school in Mullens, a multi-purpose facility for the Career and Technical Center, in addition to safety enhancements and other improvements at schools across the county.

All the projects are shovel-ready, with the exception of the new artificial turf football fields at both Westside and Wyoming County East high schools which have already been completed and are being used by students.

Total cost for all the proposed projects is nearly $34 million.

Funding sources will include a $20.1 million facilities bond sale approved by county voters in November, the West Virginia School Building Authority, local monies, among others.

Last year, the West Virginia School Building Authority halted Needs Grant awards as a result of soaring construction material costs and inflation.

School districts, particularly those serving many students in poverty and students of color, can expect student test scores to rise significantly after they invest local dollars to fix leaky HVAC systems or patch failing roofs.
When school districts invest local dollars in new athletic facilities or expanded classroom space, however, student test scores don’t necessarily change. But local property values typically rise.
These are two takeaways from a recently published study of the far-reaching effects of school district investments in facilities. The sweeping report, published in working-paper form this summer, analyzes data from more than 15,000 school bond ballot referenda in 28 states between 1990 and 2017. The report was written by Barbara Biasi, an assistant professor of economics at the Yale School of Management; Julien Lafortune, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California; and David Schönholzer, assistant professor of economics at Stockholm University’s Institute for International Economic Studies.
The conclusions build on a growing body of evidence asserting that higher-quality school buildings translate to better academic outcomes for vulnerable children—and higher property values for the communities that surround the improved facilities.
The paper’s findings suggest that students benefit most when extremely low-quality facilities get better, rather than when districts improve buildings that were already in good shape, said Mary Filardo, executive director of the nonprofit 21st Century School Fund and a leading national advocate for school infrastructure improvements.
“All the more argument for intervention by states and the feds for schools in poor condition in low-wealth communities—a targeted program, from poor to good,” Filardo said.

Guam Department of Education officials met with officials from the Safe Drinking Water Program at the Guam Environmental Protection Agency this week regarding the recent analysis that showed two water samples, one from Juan M. Guerrero Elementary School and one from Machananao Elementary School, exceeding U.S. EPA's safety threshold for lead in the water supply. 

According to a report from the Water Environmental Research Institute of the Western Pacific, water from a cafeteria sink at Juan M. Guerrero Elementary returned a positive lead result of 22.7 parts per billion, while the Machananao Elementary cafeteria sink tested 20.6 ppb. The U.S. EPA action level for lead contamination in water in a public water system is 15 ppb. 

Guam EPA provided GDOE with a guidance manual containing recommendations on how to address lead found in drinking water in schools and childcare facilities, according to a release from GEPA. The local regulatory agency "directed GDOE's attention to recommend" immediate, short-term and permanent response actions, the release added.

BALTIMORE — Ten years ago, the Montebello Elementary/Middle School in Northeast Baltimore was a drab, dingy, and virtually windowless campus, typical of the aging school buildings across the city.
But in January, after a two-year renovation, the school reopened with bright, wide hallways. A modern cafeteria building replaced the dim basement where students used to eat. In the spring, pre-K children learning in a new outdoor amphitheater marveled as butterflies fluttered in their tiny hands. The once bricked-over windows of the school now offer panoramic views of Lake Montebello, a reservoir where families picnic, walk, and bike.
Montebello’s transformation demonstrates what can be done when state lawmakers are goaded into action. Appalled by the decrepit conditions of the city’s school buildings, the ACLU, other community activists, and Baltimore officials successfully lobbied the Legislature in 2013 to create a school construction program specifically for Baltimore, so that the city would no longer have to compete with better-funded districts for sought-after funds. The program has allowed one of the nation’s poorest cities to extensively renovate or replace 29 school buildings — a fifth of its inventory — in less than a decade.
But it also involved a tough tradeoff — a commitment to close 26 schools with declining enrollment or particularly poor conditions, a painful process that led to regret and broken relationships between the district and some of its families and teachers.
 

With little fanfare, First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice added an agenda item to the Oct. 2 Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting about the status of an ongoing needs assessment being conducted for Wilton’s school buildings.
She then delivered some truly stunning news, from the draft report which outlined the repairs, improvements and upgrades needed in Wilton schools over the next 10 years.
“The cost is in excess of $100,000,000,” she said. 
“It’s still a draft and I wouldn’t normally speak about a draft, [but] with the upcoming election and my term ending shortly, I think it’s important, now that I have seen the 10-year projected costs, that I share it in advance of the report,” Vanderslice said. 
“It’s a lot of money,” she added, especially considering that cost escalation factors were only included through 2026, making the actual cost of the 10-year plan even higher.
Vanderslice discussed the school buildings assessment in the context of other infrastructure investment and as part of a longterm financial planning process.
“Over the last eight years, we have focused on investment in infrastructure with almost $42 million in the renovation and reconfiguration of Miller-Driscoll [School], assisted by $6 million in state grants; the restoration of roads…; the study by the state of all our bridges, and we have a plan to get that work done; we have done trail building; and of course the construction of the police headquarters. The last three were all assisted with about $30 million in grants.”
 

CORDOVA, Ala. (WBMA) — Parents have expressed frustrations regarding plans from Walker County Board of Education to consolidate Cordova Elementary School with Bankhead Middle School.
We reached out for more information about the proposed plan. Superintendent Dr. Dennis Willingham said this is still in the preliminary planning phases so there is nothing to publicly comment about at this time.
Cordova Mayor Jeremy Pate provided ABC 33/40 with a copy of the plan from the Board of Education.
The plans show that there would be new classrooms built on to Bankhead Middle. There would also be a two story classroom building, additional parking and a new gymnasium. It appears the lunch room would be shared.
"You’re talking about a school of 350-400 now with a lunch room and you’re going to import another 400 students, so before they even open the doors, you have 800 kids there," said Pate. "If we grow any in the next two to three years, before they even get the school open, they are going to be overcrowded. Of course the lunch room is going to be overcrowded before they even open the doors and then the classroom sizes are a question for some people and the sheer ability to be on the same campus and share that many kids in the same area."
 

The Amidon-Bowen Elementary School community is reeling, frustrated after DC Public Schools (DCPS) suggested a swing space for the 2027 fiscal year that is 3.5 miles away from their home campus at 401 I St. SW.

Amidon-Bowen is slated to be modernized in 2027 and reopened in 2029. The Amidon-Bowen population is set to move into a temporary space from 2027 to 2029 during the planning, design and construction phases. The fully modernized school is scheduled to reopen for the 2029-2030 school year. The project will cost an estmiated $84.2 million and the new building will be able to serve 373 students.

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
Through the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) Planning Actively for Comprehensive Education Facilities (PACE) Annual Supplement for Fiscal Year 2024-2029, Amidon-Bowen community members learned the former Meyer Elementary School (2501 11th St. NW) would be the temporary campus for their PreK to Fifth grade students.

“It was frustrating to hear about the swing space plan for the first time because a parent happened to see the reference to Meyer in the Mayor’s CIP plan,” said Sarah Buckley,a member of the Amidon-Bowen PTA Advocacy Group (ABPTAAG).  “We feel like we can’t count on DCPS to keep us informed, let alone take the community’s views into account.”