Washington (July 30, 2026) - Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and the Environment and Public Works Committee, alongside Congresswoman Jayapal (WA-07) today reintroduced the Green New Deal for Public Schools Act, legislation that would infuse $1.6 trillion over the next decade to transform our public school system – investing in students, educators, and infrastructure – and respond to the climate crisis.

DENVER — In the next few weeks, children around Colorado will head back to class and that means new faces coming in and out of school buildings.

Construction over the summer at some Denver Public Schools aims to make sure the only people getting into those school hallways are people who belong there.

Even with kids home for the summer, buildings are bustling with construction around Denver.

For years, Delaware’s school districts have struggled with securing dollars from the state to pay for major renovations and expansions.

Now, school leaders are hoping that a massive influx of new construction dollars, paired with potential reforms to the way the state evaluates school capital spending, can push forward long-delayed projects. 

FUQUAY-VARINA, N.C. — Hilltop Needmore Road Elementary School is opening in Fuquay-Varina today, as a Track 4 calendar school. This push by Wake County Public School to change year-round, multi-track schools to just a one track school could help reallocate resources in underutilized schools.

Back in the early 2000s, Wake County Public Schools, the state’s largest school district, began adopting year-round calendars as an option for families. These schools consist of four rotating schedules called tracks, with students attending for nine weeks at a time before one track, tracks out. Meaning students and staff get breaks periodically at different times throughout the school year instead of a long summer like traditional school.

Vermont gubernatorial candidate Aly Richards joined Vermont State Senate candidate Ben Brickner and a team of Mountain Views Supervisory District (MVSD) senior administrators last Wednesday, July 22, for a tour of the district’s 70-year-old Woodstock Union High School and Middle School (WUHSMS) building. The structure is considered to be among the worst cases of school-building deterioration in Vermont, according to a MVSD news release Monday, July 27.

MVSU serves students from Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Pittsfield, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading, Woodstock, and other neighboring school-choice communities. 

Summer construction projects at area schools may necessitate changes in fall routines, such as pick up or drop off procedures, said Princeton Public Schools (PPS) Superintendent Michael LaSusa at the July 21 Board of Education (BOE) meeting. Parents will be informed later this summer, he said, before the first day of school, which is August 31 for students.

The expansion and renovations at various schools is mostly funded by an $89 million bond referendum approved by voters. Some projects are being completed from an earlier referendum. Key projects include expansion at Princeton Middle School (PMS); new space and a new gymnasium at Community Park Elementary School; classrooms at Littlebrook Elementary School, and an HVAC upgrade and new spaces at Princeton High School.

Two days before the sweltering July Fourth weekend, Martina Meijer, a New York City elementary teacher who occasionally substitutes over the summer, covered a class. The city’s summer school program had just begun and that day temperatures reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit. 

“Even though the AC was on, it wasn’t working very well,” said Meijer. “There was no programming, no schedule, no plans shared.”  

DES MOINES — The Iowa Department of Education awarded more than $2.35 million in grants to 10 school districts to create therapeutic classrooms for students whose emotional or behavioral needs affect their learning.

The classrooms provide safe learning environments designed to support students' individual cognitive and behavioral needs. "We commend this year's awardees and their partners for their leadership and commitment to modeling best practices in skill building, coping, treatment, and crisis prevention and intervention in the communities they serve," said Iowa Department of Education Director McKenzie Snow.

As public charter schools look to grow in Tennessee, two founders say that financing and access to facilities remain among their biggest obstacles.

Tennessee Nature Academy Founder and Director Jay Renfro told the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission last week that his school often faces uneven lending standards when financing school facilities. This makes it harder for growing schools like his to secure a permanent home.

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Richmond voters will decide this November whether to approve a 1% school sales tax increase dedicated to renovating and rebuilding the city’s aging public schools after the Richmond City Council unanimously voted Monday to place the measure on the ballot.

If approved, the tax would generate an estimated $47 million annually for school construction and renovation projects, starting in fiscal year 2028. The referendum became possible after legislation from the Virginia General Assembly authorized localities to impose the school sales tax if voters in the locality approve the increase.

U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) introduced two bills this week in the House to modernize the Bureau of Indian Education’s Equalization Formula and potentially bring higher teacher salaries, and more federal funding for tribal schools.

The Indigenous Students Excel through Parity Act and its supporting Act II bill would create a study under the Department of Interior to recommend reforms that could increase teacher pay, and provide more educational opportunities.

As temperatures in Phoenix soared to 117 degrees Fahrenheit, or 47 degrees Celsius, in July 2026, children living there headed outside to walk to and from school, play during recess and suit up for baseball practice.

These routines have long been part of the school day, but with a rising number of school districts in Arizona, as well as across the country, starting their academic year in mid-July or August, kids are spending more time at school during some of the hottest days of the year.

Over $140 million worth of repairs and renovations are happening across the state Department of Education’s campuses ahead of the new school year.

The maintenance projects include flooring, roofing, air conditioning and pavement repairs, as well as electrical, plumbing and painting improvements. HIDOE officials said summer break has provided a window of opportunity to make repairs that would be difficult to complete during the school year.

Jesse Souki, the department’s deputy superintendent of operations, said that the work is focused on extending the lifespan of school facilities, while also creating environments where students can focus on their academics.

As school districts across the region reconfigure or close aging buildings, a new state law will take inventory of school building conditions in an effort for officials to better prepare and plan for the future.

Lawmakers tout the inventory, approved as part of the 2026-27 state budget, as a way to address the issue of outdated or unsafe school buildings. Data collected by the state Department of Education can allow leaders to make recommendations for repairs or funding.

While a $720,000 settlement between the Boise School District and a teacher who claimed that she and her students experienced a mouse infestation in her classroom might typically be enough to grab attention, the settlement is generating headlines for more than the payout itself.

The agreement also calls for a third-party inspection of the school building, raising broader concerns about whether students and educators are sometimes being asked to learn and work in unhealthy spaces.

While students and teachers have been on summer break, facilities crews have been working on more than 150 campus maintenance projects at HawaiÊ»i’s public schools statewide. From flooring, roofing, air conditioning and pavement repairs to electrical, plumbing and painting improvements, the work is focused on extending the lifespan of school facilities while creating environments where students can focus on learning and achieve their academic goals.

“Our buildings are about 62 years old on average so there’s a lot of repairs to be done and the summer provides a great opportunity to get work done that would impact students and allows us to get into spaces where they might be teaching during the regular school year,” Deputy Superintendent of Operations Jesse Souki said. “Summer provides a great opportunity and hopefully when students come back they’ll create accessible facilities that can help them excel.”

In 2020, California gave schools an enticing opportunity: A ratepayer-funded grant program would let them assess the condition of their heating and cooling systems, then pay for upgrades based on that review. 

But in 2024, the California Energy Commission, which administers the California Schools Healthy Air, Plumbing, and Efficiency, or CalSHAPE program, decided to cut it short two years earlier than planned. As a result, only 172 of more than 4,500 schools whose assessments turned up heating and cooling systems in disrepair actually got money to upgrade them. 

Teachers, students, and union leaders spoke up at an aldermanic meeting held at Wilbur Cross High School on Wednesday to condemn the state of school facilities in the city — and to question whether the district is really in need of another “master plan” to improve them.

That discussion of what it might take to improve facilities, as well as what an improved and more transparent system might look like for addressing work orders, arose at Wednesday’s Board of Alders Education Committee meeting.

HARRISBURG — In the flurry of last-minute dealmaking to approve this year’s state budget, legislators tucked in eleventh-hour language that relaxes Pennsylvania's rules for publicly reporting the results of lead tests on school drinking water.

State law does not require schools to test for lead, as long as the topic is discussed at a public meeting annually. But if schools do test, they were previously required to report any finding above zero to the state so the results could be posted publicly.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University found that neighborhoods surrounding long-vacant schools saw a 10 percent increase in gun violence compared to similar neighborhoods where schools didn’t close.