D.C. is again planning to redraw school boundaries. And as in adjustments past, the process that overhauls attendance zones has also drawn ire from families in the city’s most in-demand feeder system: the Jackson-Reed High School cluster.
The process is still in its early stages — the advisory committee running it will deliver a report to D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) sometime this winter, and its suggested changes will not take effect until the 2025-2026 school year at the earliest. But families who settled near, or lotteried into, popular schools worry their children will be redistricted.
The city, meanwhile, has its own priorities: to foster diversity, reduce overcrowding in some schools, fill seats at others and provide equitable access to high-quality public schools.
Several attendees at a virtual town hall about the redistricting process Wednesday shared concerns about the Jackson-Reed cluster. One of the middle schools that feeds it, Alice Deal, was at least 95 percent full during the 2021-2022 school year, according to the city’s most recent master facilities plan. While officials have yet to offer up any plans, families fret that an elementary school may be removed from the boundary to free up space at Deal — a suggestion that came up after the last boundary study in 2014 — which some say already feels too crowded.
 

The Prince George’s County Board of Education has approved the second phase of a school construction project funded through a mix of public-private funds.
The vote Thursday night to move ahead comes a week after a similar vote failed. School board members conveyed a sense of urgency Thursday to approve the work.
“We need to stop wasting time,” Madeline LaSalle Frazier (appointed, District 8) said during the meeting. “Let’s get these buildings done.”
The second phase of the project includes eight new buildings: Fairwood Area Elementary School in Bowie, Margaret Brent Elementary School in New Carrollton, Springhill Lake Elementary School in Greenbelt, Templeton Elementary School in Riverdale Park, James Duckworth Elementary School in Beltsville, Hyattsville Elementary School, Robert Frost Area PK-8 Academy in New Carrollton, and Brandywine Area PK-8 Academy.
 

The former Franklin Primary Center in Munhall stood quiet this week, an almost empty shell of what was once a bustling Steel Valley elementary school. 

Hallways that formerly swarmed with excited students were still, the classrooms blank of posters and lessons. Sparse conference rooms gave few signs they were still in use, the only sounds echoing from the front of the building where a handful of administrators are still housed.  

While plans are delayed, Franklin Primary Center will soon be demolished to make way for a new elementary school that will combine students in kindergarten through fourth grade who are currently split between Barrett Elementary in Homestead, built in 1934, and Park Elementary in Munhall, constructed in the early 1900s. The project, which is expected to be completed by 2027, could cost around $56 million. 

“We have gotten to the point where the buildings we currently have are no longer adequate to our needs,” Michael Sullivan, Steel Valley’s director of facilities, said Monday. “At some point we had to make a move. The longer we wait the more we risk having something happen at the schools where we have a failure in a major system or something and then we’re out of school and we’re scrambling to get kids in place. It’s long overdue.”

MIDDLETOWN — The Board of Education hopes to receive funding as part of their five-year capital improvement plan to start installing air conditioning systems in the older public schools.
Middletown was among districts statewide that dismissed students early during the heat wave earlier this month, when temperatures across the state swelled into the 90s.
Ninety percent of four of the city's 10 schools are air-conditioned, Director of Facilities Kevin Dion said, according to the Sept. 12 Board of Education meeting video. Older buildings, however, lack the duct work and capability necessary to install units quickly — or support a cooling system.
 

Chicago Public Schools facilities need $3.1 billion in “critical” repairs that must be addressed in the next five years, according to a district plan released Thursday.

The cost is part of a total of $14.4 billion in updates that the district identified in its Facilities Master Plan, which CPS is required by state law to produce every five years. 

“In a district as large as ours, and with a building portfolio as old as ours, this is the investment it would take to repair and modernize each and every one of our current facilities and give our students the learning environment we know they deserve,” CEO Pedro Martinez wrote in the plan’s introduction. 

The $3.1 billion in costs identified as the most urgent work includes repairs to windows, roofs, masonry, and heating and cooling systems. Another $5.5 billion would go toward repairs in the next six to 10 years, according to the facilities plan. Beyond that, the district wants money to build labs “to support STEM education,” accommodations for students with disabilities, new auditoriums, new fields for sports, and classrooms “outfitted” for career and technical education — programming that Martinez wants to expand, according to the plan. 

Kansas City Public School’s Board of Directors voted unanimously Wednesday night to maintain the district’s current tax levy.

That’s despite skyrocketing property assessments across Jackson County, and a Missouri law that requires other districts to lower their levies if property values rise faster than inflation.

Since 2021, assessed property values rose by an average of 40% in Jackson County. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index increased about 13% over the last two years.

Kansas City Public Schools expects to see a $32.9 million increase in revenue because of the bump in property values. And the district is exempt from what’s known as the Hancock Amendment because its levy was set by a federal judge in 1995, as part of desegregation litigation.

“We're recommending the maximum amount, because we haven't changed this tax rate for 25 years,” said KCPS Chief Financial Officer Erin Thompson.

Part of the reason for making that ask, she said, is because the district’s buildings have more than $400 million in deferred maintenance.

“Of course we're going to ask for all we could get for our children in the classroom to have safe schools,” she said.

In the first week of school this year, indoor classroom temperatures reached nearly 100 degrees in parts of New York.

Kids were sluggish, irritated and dripping in sweat. They reported headaches, nausea and some students required trips to nurses’ offices. Teachers and school staff desperately tried fans, opening windows and closing curtains all while battling their own heat exhaustion after spending hours in the same sauna-like conditions.

Since the beginning of September, more than 600 educators have shared stories of extreme heat, describing classrooms that lacked effective climate control systems as “heartbreaking,” “inhumane,” and “a living hell” during what should have been the energizing start to a new school year.

As parents, teachers and elected representatives in our communities, we have seen how budget battles have forced difficult choices when it comes to facility upgrades. For years, many of our schools have not had the resources to create the learning environments that all of our children deserve.

ROCKFORD, MI – Construction is well underway on a new Rockford elementary school building that was intentionally designed to strengthen student identity and belonging.
The new, $28 million Edgerton Trails Elementary School is expected to be completed by summer 2024 after over two years of construction. The building, located at 9605 Edgerton Ave. NE, is the ninth elementary school being added to the Rockford Public School District that serves around 7,700 students.
The 85,000-square-foot building will be able to house up to 750 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. It features two main academic wings, collaborative learning areas, a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) room, an outdoor learning patio, and more.
Rockford school administrators visited schools across the state, including some schools in Washington D.C., to come up with the designs for Edgerton Trails.
 

Stockton Unified School District leaders are looking to create a new facilities master plan. It will be the first time a plan of its kind has been implemented at the district in 15 years.

A facilities master plan details the district's 10-year plan for school facilities in order to address changes in student enrollment and in the district's educational program needs.

It should be conducted or updated by district staff about every five to 10 years, or prior to any significant building project, according to California School Boards Association. Stockton Unified was scolded in the state's 2022 Financial Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) report for neglecting to do so for more than a decade.

Now, leaders are turning to parents and staff for suggestions on what renovations the 55 schools across the district need. They are gathering information for the plan through inspections of school sites and town hall meetings.

San Diego Unified leaders marked the opening of their newest joint campus in City Heights on Wednesday, an investment they hope will support the diverse and largely immigrant neighborhood.

The George Walker Smith Educational Campus on Orange Avenue near Interstate 15 is one of the district’s most expensive facilities projects yet, costing $250 million of bond dollars that have been approved by voters for facilities projects. That amount tops the $180 million it took to build Logan Memorial Educational Campus, a similar joint campus that opened three years ago in Logan Heights.

San Diego Unified has by far the most extensive K-12 school facilities bond program in the county, having succeeded in securing voter approval for $11.5 billion with four bond measures on ballots since 2008.

The City Heights campus combines Central Elementary with Wilson Middle. Central moved from its old Polk Avenue location this fall to share Wilson’s campus. Both schools feed into Hoover High School, which also got a full-scale makeover in recent years.

HARFORD COUNTY - A recent report from the Interagency Commission on School Construction (IAC) points to a significant drop in maintenance standards for Harford County schools. According to the IAC's 2023 report, Harford County's score dropped by 8.99% compared to the previous year.

Harford County's Maintenance-Effectiveness Assessment (MEA) performance earned it a "Not Adequate" rating for fiscal year 2023. The county's score of 67.42% positioned it as the fifth lowest among Maryland counties, only outdone by Carroll, Prince George's, St. Mary's, and Somerset counties.

Harford County is responsible for 52 active school facilities, with an average age of 31.9 years. With over 6 million square feet of educational space under its purview, the county ranks 8th in terms of square footage among Maryland's Local Education Agencies (LEAs).

CAMP MCTUREOUS, Okinawa — A Tokyo construction firm won a $125 million contract last month to update a Defense Department school on Okinawa based on a state-of-the-art design.

Nishimatsu Construction Co. Ltd. will start renovations and new construction for Bechtel Elementary on Marine Corps base Camp McTureous sometime this fall, Miranda Ferguson, spokeswoman for Department of Defense Education Activity-Pacific, said by email Tuesday.

The project, expected to take three years, will make Bechtel the island’s fifth “21st Century school,” after Bob Hope and Kadena elementary schools on Kadena Air Base and Killin and Zukeran schools on Camp Foster, she said.

As part of a decade-old building campaign, DODEA has built and renovated schools according to the same concept at several other bases in the Pacific and Europe.

When the bell rings at Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD’s L.D. Bell High School, the volleyball team heads to the locker room, changes into their athletic clothes and walks past the gymnasium to the double doors leading outside the school.

Without a court available for their practice, the team instead sets, spikes and serves on the school’s tennis court.

To address this and many other issues, including outdated school buildings, HEB ISD is seeking approval of a nearly $1 billion bond package in the upcoming Nov. 7 election.

“It’s a size issue, it’s an infrastructure issue,” Deanne Hullender, chief public relations and marketing officer for the district, said of two of the district’s high schools.

The bond aims to replace the aging L.D. Bell and Trinity High School campuses with new facilities, as well as revamp an elementary school designated to accommodate the alternative KEYS High School.

Early voting begins Oct. 23 and ends Nov. 3. The last day to register to vote is Oct. 10.

As anyone who is planning to move to a new city or neighborhood with a school-aged child knows, not all public schools are created equal. Some have shinier athletic facilities or bigger classrooms or newer equipment in the science and computer labs, all indications to anxious parents that their children will receive a superior education, which will better equip them to prosper and succeed in life.

New athletic fields and computers and improvements to school buildings all cost money, of course, which school districts raise through capital bonds, financed by property taxes. The community as a whole, even voters who don’t have kids or any connection to the school, votes on the bond issues during municipal elections. For many parents, and even many members of the community who don’t have children in local public schools, higher taxes are a price they are willing to pay for better schools.

But does every capital project lead to a better education, at least as measured by test scores? Economists have been studying this question for a few decades and have come up with widely divergent answers. Some say any educational investment is worthwhile. Others say the positive effects are greatly exaggerated. Barbara Biasi, a labor economist at Yale SOM, and her colleagues Julien Lafortune of the Public Policy Institute of California and David Schönholzer of Stockholm University suspected that the answers varied so widely because they were based on studies that looked at very different contexts.

ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY - Anne Arundel County Schools were recognized for their exemplary maintenance standards in the Interagency Commission on School Construction's (IAC) 2023 Fiscal Year report.

The commission awarded Anne Arundel County an "Adequate" rating across all 21 active facilities, amounting to an average overall score of 75.51%—the highest among Maryland school districts.

Per the report, the county boasts 121 active school facilities with an average age of 30.1 years. Combined, these facilities span an impressive 13,902,130 square feet, averaging 170 square feet per student.

The report praised Anne Arundel County for its proactive maintenance measures, emphasizing its annual inspections of roofing components to enhance structure longevity. The county also performed well in terms of safety, with all assessed schools having functional exterior doors and consistently checked emergency exits. Additionally, four schools achieved a "Superior" rating in conveyance for their impeccable chairlifts and elevators.

The Los Angeles Unified School District school board is considering a resolution that would exclude 346 schools serving its most vulnerable student populations from co-location arrangements with charter schools. Doing so could potentially undermine the integrity of Proposition 39, a statewide initiative that mandates public schools to share spaces with charter schools.
The resolution, authored by President Jackie Goldberg and member Rocio Rivas and discussed at a meeting Tuesday, would require the district to avoid co-location offers on LAUSD’s 100 Priority Schools, Black Student Achievement Plan campuses and community schools.
According to the proposal, LAUSD would also avoid charter co-location offers that “compromise district schools’ capacity to serve neighborhood children” or “grade span arrangements that negatively impact student safety and build charter school pipelines that actively deter students from attending district schools, so that the district can focus on supporting its most fragile students and schools, key programs, and student safety.”
 

DECATUR – Teachers herd children into cars and buses at the Garfield Learning Academy in southern Decatur. 
All the students hail, though, from Dennis Lab School on the western side of the city. Their two home school buildings were shuttered this summer when Decatur Public Schools District 61 realized they had major structural problems. 
“It was shocking that all of a sudden the two buildings were condemned and that they couldn’t hold classes in them anymore,” said grandfather John Shores, Jr. 
Even with a long family history at Dennis, he did not expect the disrepair to be so bad. 
“As a board member and parent, I did not know the Dennis buildings were as bad as they were,” said DPS Board of Education member Kevin Collins-Brown. 
“It seemed to come out of nowhere.”
State-required inspections missed the danger
Decatur Public Schools had completed the inspections required by the state, but the reports did not turn up any signs of danger. 
Illinois requires school districts to bring outside an architecture firm or another expert into each school every 10 years to check smoke detectors, tripping hazards and other code violations. 
Dennis was inspected in 2013. The only clues were tiles popping and doors unable to close, according to University of Illinois structural engineering professor James LaFave. 
“It does not seem that this 10-Year Health/Life Safety inspection is by itself likely to tease out structural engineering shortcomings,” LaFave said. 
According to an emailed statement from the Illinois State Board of Education, the 10-Year Health/Life Safety survey will not catch structural issues – unless they are manifesting in a visible way. 

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Since 2018, six local school districts have reported unacceptable levels of lead in their water, and one expert says some of the remediation methods they used are less than perfect.
Allentown, Easton Area, Parkland and Southern Lehigh school districts, and Bethlehem Vocational-Technical School and Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit 21 have received at least one lead violation in their water since 2018, according to the state Education Department.

A recent report from EnvironmentAmerica and the Public Interest Research Group gave Pennsylvania a failing grade in regard to its regulation and treatment of lead in schools’ water.

“Pennsylvania law provides that schools must test at least some taps for lead annually, but a loophole allows school districts to avoid this requirement simply by discussing the issue at a public meeting," the report from EnvironmentAmerica and the Public Interest Research Group states.

After one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history, Philip Raya, his wife and two young children drove through the wreckage of Lahaina – looking at bodies and the ashes of the town they once called home – enroute to a new start on the other side of Maui.
There were many devastating sights. Their longtime neighborhood school, King Kamehameha III Elementary, had burned down. The green-painted oceanfront campus lived next to the community's treasured Banyan Tree.
For the family kids, Isabella, 8, and Niko, 6, the destruction is incomprehensible.
"We get questions from our kids: When are we going go back to our old school? And when are we going to go back to our own house? We don’t really have the answers," Raya said. "These are uncharted waters for us."
An increase of natural disasters from wildfires to floods to hurricanes to tornadoes – exacerbated by climate change – have ravaged America’s schools since students returned to in-person learning after the COVID-19 pandemic. And manmade disasters from lead in drinking water to asbestos in school buildings are playing a role.
This school year alone, devastating wildfires exacerbated by winds from Hurricane Dora ravaged one school and damaged three others in Maui. And winds from category three Hurricane Idalia destroyed the roof of an elementary school in Hoboken, Georgia. Kids attending schools without air conditioning were sent home at the beginning of the school year in Puerto Rico, Philadelphia and in other areas of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast because of extreme heat.
 

One of the hardest hit schools in the Eastern Kentucky floods is slated to reopen by August 2024, Perry County school administrators told parents at a local school board meeting Thursday. When widespread deadly flooding devastated multiple Eastern Kentucky counties in July 2022, Squabble Creek crested its banks and destroyed the interior of the rural K-12 Buckhorn School.
Since the flood, Buckhorn students have been attending classes at the old A.B. Combs Elementary School — resulting in more than an hour-long, one-way bus ride for kids living in the furthest reaches of the county. Before the flood, Buckhorn had over 300 students, data from the Kentucky Department of Education showed. A collection of parents and other supporters of the Buckhorn School packed a local school board meeting Thursday to request an update on the construction of the school.