INDIANAPOLIS — Indianapolis Public Schools is asking the Board of School Commissioners to consider $95 million in improvements to the district’s high schools and other facilities.
During Tuesday’s agenda review session meeting of the IPS Board, the commissioners are expected to host a public hearing and discuss the 2023 deferred maintenance improvement projects. According to a draft of the project resolution, which accompanied the agenda for Tuesday evening’s meeting, this includes athletics improvements, high school repairs and improvements, and fire safety upgrades.
IPS is proposing to issue bonds to pay for this project, with a payoff schedule of 19 years. The district said the estimated maximum tax rate impact would be $0.0873 per $100 of assessed value. The district stressed it would not increase the current 2023 non-exempt debt tax rate if it is approved.
This comes after voters approved a $410 million capital referendum in May. According to the district’s website, this referendum gave the district the chance to move forward with building improvements to more than 20 elementary and middle schools in the district.
Parents we talked to said these projects are necessary.
“I feel like this is better for her environment,” said parent Carlos Ortiz. “Especially with this heat and temperatures, if we take care of getting air conditioning units, it should help.”
 

The three West Maui public schools still standing after the Lahaina wildfires will not re-open to students until at least after fall break in mid-October, as officials continue to assess the safety of the campuses and the stability of their electricity and internet services, the state Department of Education announced today.

Lahainaluna High School, Lahaina Intermediate and Princess Nahienaena Elementary school have been closed since the Aug. 8 wildfires. They are continuing “environmental assessments for air, water and soil quality, as well as ensuring stable power and sufficient broadband connectivity,” a DOE news release said.

Fall break for Hawaii’s public schools runs from Oct. 9 to 13. The decision to set a “tentative goal” of reopening after fall break was reached after a meeting today of school-level staff, a DOE news release said. Exact dates for students to return will depend on each school’s phased reopening schedule.

LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) — The Lynchburg City School Board Finance and Facilities Committee voted to recommend that the school board look into closing two local elementary schools as part of the Facilities Master Plan.
During the Finance and Facilities Committee meeting Tuesday night, the committee voted to recommend that the school board close Dearington Elementary School and T.C. Miller Elementary School.
According to the Lynchburg City Schools' website, Dearington Elementary has been a part of the Lynchburg community since 1927, and they serve over 175 to 200 students every year.
The website also said that T.C. Miller has been in the community since 1932 and has served about 225 students every year.
For the last year, LCS leaders have been working on the future of the division and this Facilities Master Plan. School board Vice Chairman Dr. Martin Day, who also serves on the Finance and Facilities Committee said closing Dearington and T.C. Miller makes the most sense.
"Those two are the two most expensive to operate per student according to my estimates," Dr. Day said. "They would bring our overall capacity into the range that's been recommended to us by the consultants."
 

FINDLAY, Ohio (WTVG) - A new superintendent, a new elementary and new middle school, and a newly renovated high school, it’s all being celebrated ahead of the new school year at Liberty-Benton in Findlay.
Staff members inside the new Liberty-Benton Elementary and Middle School building were busy mopping floors and washing windows, getting ready for the first day of class Sept. 5.
“At the time that we passed our bond in 2019, we had ten portable classrooms,” new superintendent Bruce Otley said.
Otley, a Bowling Green native, has been with the school district for the last 18 years. For the last four years, he served as director of operations.
Otley said the new building, which houses the elementary on the first floor, and middle school on the second, has 141,000 square feet for learning.
“The old school just wasn’t conducive to modern learning; the classroom sizes, in particular, were greatly undersized,” Otley said.
Second-grade teacher Holly Myers explains some of the new technology that’s at her fingertips.
“To be able to have wireless technology and something great like this BenQ board, it’s all touch screen, our kids have been very fortunate to have one-to-one technology for several years now, but the fact teachers now have touch screen technology, we can mirror an iPad what we’re doing on a board, it just makes instruction so much more effective I think, and much more time efficient for teachers,” Myers said while scrolling through her smart board located at the front of her classroom.
 

As residents of Hempfield recently learned, the cost associated with school building projects can easily climb above $100 million.

For decades, school administrators could turn to what was known as PlanCon to pursue state funding to help ease the local burden.

PlanCon — short for the Planning and Construction Workbook — was a set of forms and procedures school districts could use to apply for state reimbursement of large building projects.

That ground to a halt in 2012.

PlanCon has fallen by the wayside as a potential funding source for new projects, but a recent state court decision has led to an upcoming series of fall hearings across the state, where school infrastructure once again will be a big part of the discussion.

When PlanCon was active, school districts underwent a lengthy process to enroll renovation and construction projects in the program in order to secure a percentage of reimbursement, but a backlog of projects waiting on those payments — estimated at more than $1 billion in the mid-2010s — ultimately led to a 2012 moratorium on new applications.

While partial state reimbursement for school construction projects has been happening in some form since the 1950s, PlanCon’s current form took shape in the 1970s, and the state has contributed more than $8 billion to the program since the late 1970s.

On a sunny afternoon in a cluttered music room at East High in Denver, two sophomores practiced violin while their music teacher, Keith Oxman, labored over a desk in an adjoining office.

The ceiling fans were off to prevent the sheet music from scattering. The windows were sealed shut. East High is Denver’s largest high school and among the oldest, and there is no modern ventilation system.

As the pandemic broke out, Mr. Oxman, 65 and a cancer survivor, feared getting sick or carrying the virus to his 101-year-old father. So he left the school when it first closed, in March 2020, and did not return for more than a year, staying home during later virus surges.

“We were supposed to have the windows open,” he said. “But the windows don’t open.”

Poorly ventilated spaces offer ideal transmission conditions for the coronavirus, and at the height of the pandemic, schools like East High were a searing point of controversy. An outbreak that began in November 2021 sickened more than 500 students — about one in five — and 65 staff members, one of whom died.

The pandemic led to repeated closures at tens of thousands of schools across the nation. The shutdowns sent educational achievement tumbling, disrupted the lives of millions of American families, and set off a wave of anger, particularly among conservatives, that has not subsided.

HDG Architects has been designing school buildings for three decades – from elementary schools to buildings for college campuses – and safety is always top of mind.

The Pittsburgh-based architecture firm completed its work on the new Peters Township High School last year, and is currently working on renovations to Independence Middle School in the Bethel Park School District.

“The need for school security has been prevalent going back to Columbine (Colo.). Unfortunately, because of the continued mass shootings in the United States, it continues to increase in people’s consciousness as a potential danger,” said Kevin Hayes, founder of HDG. “We continue to advise and work with our clients in helping them maintain the best security for their staff.”

Hayes explained that the firm’s philosophy in designing a school building is to “harden” the perimeter, but to ensure the interior of the building is not intimidating.

“The issue is always attention between security, but not presenting a building where students and particularly the staff feel like they’re learning in a prison,” Hayes said.

Mostly, that means adding features such as bollards in front of entrances, and generally having as few entrances to the building as possible.

According to Hayes, this can be accomplished by making most doorways exit-only and having fewer windows. However, it remains a balancing act to make sure the overall design remains conducive to learning.

Thousands of students will head back to class Monday and in D.C., some will be going to a brand new school. WTOP got a sneak peek of the new MacArthur High School in Northwest D.C. during a tour Saturday.
Dozens of nervous yet excited students and their parents toured the halls of the high school in D.C.’s Palisades neighborhood.
“The building looks great. Obviously, still a work in progress. But they’ve done a lot and it looks ready to go,” said Gayle Kramer, whose sophomore daughter will attend the school.
“They have a lot of nice facilities, like theater and stuff. And you know, I’m pretty excited to come here,” student Eli Pasternak told WTOP.
Pasternak will be one of 200 incoming freshman Mammoths — that’s the school’s mascot. About 50 sophomores will round out the new student body.
“We are really thrilled to welcome students here,” D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee said.
MacArthur is the first new high school for D.C. Public Schools since 1972 when H.D. Woodson opened its doors.
“It’s a long time coming,” Principal Harold McCray said. “But I’m definitely excited to lay this groundwork, to be able to open up a new school has been a phenomenal experience.”
The school will only offer pre-AP, honors and AP courses, McCray told WTOP.
 

Energy savings projects are moving forward at Valparaiso Community Schools. The school board Thursday approved various agreements for a $5.8 million guaranteed savings contract.

That means the work will have to pay for itself over the next 20 years, or the contractor, Veregy, will have to pay the difference. The project should pay for itself and then some, according to Bob McKinney with construction manager Stratelign.

"Over the 20 years is a net-positive [roughly] $12 million savings, when you pay off the loan and the interest, apply the rebates, incentives and grant from the [Inflation Reduction Act] and then monetize the savings over the 20 years," McKinney explained.

The project includes solar panels at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School and Thomas Jefferson Middle School, new boilers at Thomas Jefferson Middle School and LED lighting in nine school buildings.

It will be financed through a lease/purchase agreement. Superintendent Dr. Jim McCall said that allows the school corporation to pay for the work without issuing additional bonds.

The body in charge of K-12 planning and construction in New York City was recently profiled by the AIA New York as it prepares for a surge in student enrollment that’s expected over the next decade.

The New York School Construction Authority (or SCA) is a specialty city agency that employs 1,100 people and is tasked with the delivery and maintenance of school buildings in the New York City Public Schools arsenal, a charge which makes it directly responsible for the well-being, safety, and learning environments of more than 1.1 million students. 

With a staff that currently includes 170 architects, Stephen Zacks for the AIANY writes the SCA has a unique talent when it comes to the delivery of high-quality structures within challenging construction schedules and have become national examples of the implementation of efficient project management at a time when the cost of labor and construction materials are hampering projects of all different building types across the country.

Just weeks into the new school year, districts in multiple states are canceling in-person classes for several weeks due to respiratory viruses, including COVID-19, among students and staff.
Two school districts in Kentucky -- Lee County School District and Magoffin County Schools -- said they were closing due to "widespread illness."
LCD canceled classes on Tuesday and Wednesday and switched to virtual classes on Thursday and Friday.
"We're seeing a lot of illness being reported consistent with COVID and influenza," Scott Lockard, public health director for the Kentucky River District -- which includes Lee County -- told ABC News. "Lee County had a surge of cases and attendance dropped below the threshold needed to stay open, so they closed."
He said there's been an uptick in positive COVID-19 cases but the true number of infections may be higher due to at-home test results not being reported to the health department.
Lockard said there is a concern that cases could increase heading into the fall and winter and encouraged people to get vaccinated with the flu and new COVID booster to prevent others from getting sick.
 

A coalition of trade unions representing maintenance workers at Portland Public Schools (PPS) says the district is failing to adequately maintain its buildings and grounds and should invest more in staffing and preventative maintenance. And a recent study by a maintenance and facilities consulting company supports those claims.

More than half of PPS’s buildings are in poor or critical condition, according to a report published Oct. 2022 by Sazan Environmental Services. The report found that district maintenance crews are significantly understaffed, and that the district is not investing enough money to keep up with preventative maintenance. While that saves money in the short term, it will cost the taxpayer-funded school district more money down the line.

PPS paid Sazan $250,000 to review its buildings and maintenance work during the 2021-2022 school year. Sazan recommended multiple ways to improve the maintenance plan, but so far the maintenance and facilities department has not followed any of those recommendations, said union representatives with the District Council of Unions (DCU). DCU includes 13 building trades unions representing the workers who do skilled maintenance and groundskeeping at PPS. The unions affiliated with DCU are United Association of Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 290, Bricklayers Local 1, Carpenters Local 503, Cement Masons Local 555, IBEW Local 48, Glaziers Local 740, Laborers Local 737, Floor Coverers Local 1236, Machinists District Lodge W24, Painters Local 10, Plasterers Local 82, Sheet Metal Workers Local 16, and Teamsters Local 206.

“We had a labor leader budget overview meeting with the school district in January of this year. I brought up the SAZAN report and Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero was unaware,” said DCU President and UA Local 290 Business Agent Nichet Newsome. “I brought it to a few school board members at a school board forum the PPS coalition put together. They were also unaware. So we’ve made it a point to educate everyone we can.”

Employees of the four fire-affected schools in the Lahainaluna complex will meet at an offsite location Monday and Tuesday to begin their transition back to work.
There is however no clear timetable for when the four schools in Lahaina will be reopened.
Lahainaluna High School teacher Ashley Olson testified during Thursday’s Board of Education General Business Meeting that information was being dribbled out two to three days at a time. She recalled the Hawaii DOE sent out their first email to people who had “no internet, no computer, no home.”
“Sending HTML emails to people who had no way to access them was a prime example of cluelessness,” Olson said.
The DOE said all 327 staff from the four West Maui schools have been on paid administrative leave since Aug. 8, but teachers remain frustrated and lost, testimony reveals.
Lahainaluna High teacher Victoria Zupancic testified to the board that she doesn’t know what the DOE is doing to help the teachers. “You’re not helping us, you’re adding to our stress,” she said.
“No one from state offices have asked these educators who lost their homes if they’re ready, no one has asked them if they’re okay,” Zupancic said. “No one has asked if we’re prepared to drive through Lahaina daily watching the number of crosses grow on the road. No one has asked if they need bereavement time because their families have died.”
Superintendent Keith Hayashi said that the situation remains very dynamic and they are trying to make the best decisions they can with the information they have. 
 

San Francisco school officials may soon face up to a question that has long been taboo: Will the district close schools to keep the lights on? 

The San Francisco Unified School District is poised to take the first step in that direction. Next Tuesday, administrators will ask the school board to approve a plan to develop criteria around potential school closures and mergers within a year, among other measures. The goal is to stabilize the cash-strapped district’s finances as it grapples with the end of pandemic-era aid. 

The district said it has lost 4,000 students since the 2012-13 school year—with total enrollment now below 49,000—and anticipates losing another 4,600 by 2032 due to declining birth rates and other factors. As funding is based on total enrollment and attendance, this is a grim prospect, as San Francisco Unified already expects to post a $37.6 million shortfall in the current school year.

“We are wrestling with many external factors that are beyond our control, such as declining enrollment, aging facilities, and staffing shortages,” Superintendent Matt Wayne said in a statement. “We have to change the way that we do business, which includes looking at our resources and aligning them with our student outcome goals.”

The Indianapolis Public Schools Board is suing state Education Secretary Katie Jenner and other top officials in an attempt to legally establish the district is exempt from a law that allows charter school organizations to buy shuttered school buildings for a dollar.
IPS is asking the Marion Superior Court to declare the district meets a new exception for the so-called “$1 law” and proclaim a provision does not apply to the district that allows the Indiana Department of Education to force the closure of underutilized schools.
The district is also asking for a preliminary injunction to prevent the IDOE from enforcing the law so it can proceed with the potential sale of a recently closed school building.
The $1 law was passed by lawmakers in 2011 and revamped this year. The aim of the law is to give charter schools, which do not receive property taxes for facilities, access to vacant buildings. But it remains controversial because traditional public school districts do not want to give facilities to charter schools that will compete for students.
The civil suit comes after years of IPS lobbying the General Assembly to carve the district out of the law as it prepared to shutter multiple schools to address dwindling enrollment. But GOP leaders and school choice advocates have been weary of giving up potentially free schools and letting the district control how it disposes of empty buildings.
 

Fewer than one in three New York City public schools are fully accessible to students with physical disabilities, according to a report released Wednesday by Advocates for Children that calls on the city to ramp up funding for building upgrades.

With the city expected to release its initial five-year capital plan for schools in November, the group is pushing for $1.25 billion to more quickly address major gaps in building accessibility.

That funding, which would run from 2025 through 2029, would allow roughly half of the city’s schools to be fully accessible according to the report, addressing a longstanding problem that has drawn criticism from parents and federal prosecutors officials alike. The City Council is slated to approve the capital plan in June, though it is typically amended twice a year thereafter. 

Officials have made some strides in recent years, in part due to pressure from advocates who successfully lobbied the city to devote $750 million to the effort in the current capital plan, which runs from 2020 through 2024. 

The city is on track to boost the share of fully accessible programs from about one in five schools to one in three under the current capital program, according to the Advocates for Children analysis. (The figures do not include certain alternative schools, prekindergarten programs, or charter schools. Nor do they include satellite campuses, as schools may have more than one location.)

LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. — Lee's Summit High School went from the oldest school in the district to one of the most up-to-date.
Since 2021, the school has undergone a massive renovation staff members say touched every corner. It was funded by a voter-approved bond of $80 million.
"I think this has been the lighthouse of the district," said Kari Harrison, LSHS principal. "This facility was originally built in 1952 and has served students here since that point in time, but in recent history, we went through a period where we were adding a new elementary school every year with significant growth in the community.
"We've also added two new high schools in about 25 years. So some of those needs were much more pressing than renovating a building — we needed to get space to hold students along the way."
Some features include updated learning spaces, increased natural lighting and connected campus buildings. What can't be seen is the upgraded power grid and Wi-Fi network to accommodate an increase in digital learning.
 

Alamance-Burlington schools will delay the start of the new year until Sept. 5 as officials work to clean up mold problems at five schools.
Schools in Alamance County had been scheduled to start Aug. 28. The only exception is Alamance-Burlington Early College, where classes have already started at Alamance Community College.
"It has come to our attention that there are recurring mold problems in parts of these school facilities. Upon closer inspection, it appears that some of these issues have been neglected over the years and allowed to worsen. With the recent construction work and fluctuations in weather, the mold growth has accelerated,” Superintendent Dain Butler said in a news release. 
School officials were already trying to clean up mold found over the summer at Andrews Elementary and Newlin Elementary. Last weekend they found more mold problems at Cummings High School, Broadview Middle School and Williams High School.
The district said it has already spent more than $1.2 million on mold remediation and repairing the HVAC systems at Newlin and Andrews.
"This news comes at the worst possible time, just days ahead of students returning to classrooms across ABSS," Butler said. "However, the safety of our students and staff is our top priority.  We must address these issues, understanding that some can be quick fixes while others will require more substantial time and resources to fully remediate."  
The school system said it has run tests for air quality in the schools as it works to clean up the mold. 
 

The government has been accused of “staggering incompetence” after new school buildings it commissioned had to be closed due to safety fears, while others under construction were demolished before they even opened.

Main buildings at two secondary schools and a primary school in England, which were all completed relatively recently using a modular, off-site construction method, were told to close with immediate effect, disrupting the start of the new term for many pupils.

A government minister admitted there were issues with the structural integrity of some buildings, prompting fears they would not be able to withstand extreme events, including severe weather or being hit by a vehicle.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats called for an investigation to find out whether other schools could be at risk after it was reported that the contractor responsible for the affected schools was involved in the construction of at least 15 state schools in England.

The company, Caledonian Modular, has since gone into administration and the government is reviewing all Department for Education (DfE) contracts to identify other projects where the company may have been involved. Other departments have also been alerted.

“The Conservatives have bungled management of the schools estate from top to bottom,” said the shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson. “How can parents expect their children to receive a first-class education in second-rate buildings?”