On days of extreme heat, schoolyards often turn from joyful sites of play to hazardous environments where asphalt particles fill the air and playgrounds overheat, giving children thermal burns.

With an understanding that extreme heat often disproportionately impacts California's children at school, Cal Fire is providing grants to convert pavement into green spaces, plant trees and other vegetation and create drought-tolerant natural areas on school campuses. It will also fund activities that help children connect with nature.

The first round of funding, which includes $47 million in grants, will provide an implementation grant to a project in the San Francisco Unified School District and includes planning grants for schools in Contra Costa, Sonoma, Monterey, Santa Clara, and Alameda counties.

Work has begun on a $19 million expansion/renovation project at Annville-Cleona’s secondary school.

District superintendent Krista M. Antonis said the project was launched earlier in July and is projected to finish by December 2024.

Construction, which will add approximately 26,324 square feet to the school, should not interfere with classes this coming school year, Antonis added.

“We’re looking to do most of the work during the summer months,” she said. “It will have minimal impact on classes.”

Components of the project include renovations to the cafeteria, expanding it out the back to add more space for students; the addition of an LGI, or large-group instruction room, which can be converted into three individual classrooms if needed; renovations and expansions to the main gymnasium, wrestling room and locker rooms; renovations to the stadium, adding two team rooms under the home bleachers, updating the concession stand, providing additional restroom facilities and making the bleachers and sidewalks ADA compliant; renovations to the metal and wood shop; additions to the office and conference room space; and additions to the auxiliary gym, fitness center, and PE classroom.

MILLCREEK, Utah — The confusing sign outside Oakridge Elementary School in Millcreek currently reads "No dogs allowed, goats at work."
This summer, the Granite School District has employed an unlikely crew to rid outdoor spaces at several schools of pesky weeds and invasive plants.
Utah schoolyards
By: Shanti LernerPosted at 2:22 PM, Jul 18, 2023 and last updated 4:43 PM, Jul 18, 2023
MILLCREEK, Utah — The confusing sign outside Oakridge Elementary School in Millcreek currently reads "No dogs allowed, goats at work."
This summer, the Granite School District has employed an unlikely crew to rid outdoor spaces at several schools of pesky weeds and invasive plants.
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“It takes a lot of man hours or chemicals or other things to control the weeds, and so this is a very cost-effective way to naturally clear those weeds," said Ben Horsely, spokesperson for the district. “These goats, these employees of ours, work really hard and they eat a lot.
"They're very hungry and they do an amazing job.”
The school district has been using this type of vegetation clearing for the last five or six years, and it has become a smart solution to maintaining school grounds across the district.
 

LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) — After Lynchburg City Schools released the four scenarios for the Facilities Master Plan, school leaders held an open house at Paul Munro Elementary School to start getting feedback from parents.
Each plan calls for the closure or conversion of one or more elementary schools.
According to Lynchburg City Schools, these are the following schools that could be affected:
Fort Hill Community School
Dearington Elementary School
T.C. Miller Elementary School
Paul Munro Elementary School
Sandusky Elementary School
During Monday night's open house, ABC13 spoke to numerous parents about the plans. Many told us that the thought of a neighborhood school possibly closing leaves them uneasy.
Ali Rosenberger has three children at Paul Munro, which is one of the schools that could close. The young mother said she still has a number of questions that haven't been answered.
"Most of my questions were really unanswered or led to more questions," Rosenberger said. "I think we have a ways to go to figure these things out."
The mother said she also fears how school closures will impact the district.
 

Working in K-12 schools used to be highly desirable. Summers off, snack time and themed days can sound appealing to even the biggest cynics. But when the school year ends and the buildings empty out, one group of people continue working to ensure that the facility remains operating – facilities managers, supervisors and front-line technicians.  
What used to be coveted jobs have become much more challenging for K-12 maintenance and engineering managers. From ongoing labor shortages and security measures to ongoing worries about indoor air quality (IAQ), managers are having to respond to a multitude of challenges related to keeping school buildings safe, reliable and efficient. 
 

The vast majority of Santa Monica schools are in need of repair according to recent data provided to state regulators, but the reality on the ground may not be as dire as the paperwork suggests. 

The Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) Board heard an update to several state-mandated reports last week including a facilities update that said 71 percent of the district’s facilities are not in “good repair.”

School Districts are required to self assess their physical facilities as part of a wide ranging evaluation that also covers topics like teacher assignments, student achievement and professional development. 

For facilities, the system ranks physical assets into four categories, exemplary, good, fair and poor. To be considered “good repair” a building must rank in the exemplary or good category and most local schools scored in the bottom half of the rankings.

“So, yes, the results of our, what is called our FITs inspection or facility inspections, this year is shocking,” said Carey Upton. “And that is not completely our fault.”

Imagine Hawaii’s keiki sitting in hot classrooms.  That has been an issue for our public schools for many years, with then-Governor Ige signing several bills, such as Act 47 of 2016 that appropriated $100 million toward heat abatement upgrades, and Act 260 of 2022 that appropriated another $10 million.

At the time, people in the communities involved were ready and willing to donate air conditioners for the classrooms.  Some did, and to their dismay, found out that the existing circuits in the school simply didn’t have the capacity to handle the unit.  The Department of Education (DOE) found “circuits are blown for a couple of classrooms or even whole wings of campuses.  With that comes a potential fire hazard.”

Following that revelation, facilities geniuses at our DOE came up with the idea of using solar powered air conditioners.  They managed to install them in 880 classrooms and spent $122 million in the process, according to reporting from Hawaii News Now.  This translated into a cost of more than $138,000 per classroom.  Regular air conditioners could be bought for $2,000 per classroom, according to former HSTA president and Campbell High School teacher Corey Rosenlee.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Efficient and Healthy Schools Campaign recently recognized Springfield Public Schools, citing the district’s “exemplary projects to improve the energy and environmental performance of their school’s facilities.”

Superintendent of Schools Daniel Warwick said the district is one of 17 school districts nationwide to receive such recognition. The district was honored for upgrading facilities with technologies and practices that create healthy and more sustainable learning environments for students and staff and lower their facilities’ energy needs, carbon emissions, and utility bills. 

BRAINERD — As enrollment declines, Brainerd Public Schools will face a deficit of $444,000 in the 2028 long-term facility maintenance budget.
The school board approved the 10-year Long-Term Facility Maintenance expense and revenue plan at the July 10 meeting after a presentation from Marci Lord, business director.
The figures are based on student count, Lord said. If student count goes down, revenue goes down.
Brainerd Public Schools lost about 253 average daily membership during the 2021-22 school year, or the amount of students enrolled per day, which determines funding for the district.
School Board member Kevin Boyles requested to see the exact number of students for further discussion at a future meeting.
“We’ll have to reprioritize, and look at projects, and reassess, and work with what we have,” Lord said.
 

When classes resume in August, White Pine County students will have to continue to make do with century-old elementary and middle school facilities that the district superintendent says will cost more to fix than replace. 

At over 100 years old, David E. Norman Elementary School and White Pine Middle School in Ely are part of state history. But White Pine County School District Superintendent Adam Young said their age also makes them “inadequate and concerning.” 

The elementary school, built in 1909, has poor indoor air quality and lacks a reliable heating and cooling system that can make it tough for students during extreme weather conditions. The middle school, built in 1913, has similar issues. 

Both buildings have limited or noncompliant Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility. One of the biggest challenges the district faces with both facilities is the asbestos within the walls, floors, plumbing and ceiling. That means any upgrades to the facilities will require asbestos abatement, which can make any renovation project more expensive. 

If the state budget breaks right, Winthrop could be looking at being eligible for new roofs for its two elementary schools.

Monday night, the School Committee agreed to sign a letter of intent to move forward with a solar panel program at the two schools. Ultimately, the project could put the town in line for the state’s Green Grant program which would pay for new roofs at the schools.

“We have been talking to Solect Energy, they are the ones who put the solar panels on the middle school-high school building, and they own that system and we get credits on our bill every month for the power that we generate there,” said Town Manager Tony Marino.

Marino said Solect Energy is interested in doing other projects and entering into similar agreements at other sites in the town, including the ice rink.

“But for this committee, they were really interested in putting solar panels on the two elementary schools,” said Marino.”One of the issues we have is that the roofs are 20 years old … so you don’t want to go starting to put 15-year solar panels on a roof that’s 20 years old.”

However, Marino said the problem Winthrop faces with its school roofs is not a unique one throughout the state.

Between the Oak Grove and Ridgedale neighborhoods just off East Main Street, the playground at Chattanooga's East Side Elementary School seems like an unlikely place for a public park at first glance.
While the playground's green, grassy field is large — about four acres — there's little to no shade cover from trees and no benches or walking paths common in other public parks. And though the land is public, owned and operated by Hamilton County Schools, it would seem uncertain to residents if the general public is allowed. There's a "no trespassing" sign at the playground's entrance gate.
"Not very inviting," said Noel Durant, the Tennessee state director of the Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit that works to connect people to the outdoors.
Durant gave a tour of South Chattanooga to the Chattanooga Times Free Press Friday, highlighting the work Trust for Public Land is doing to bring public park access to the area.
Currently, 32% of Chattanooga's residents have a public park or trail near their home, according to the city's Department of Parks and Outdoors. The city wants that figure to rise to 55% over the next 10 years. That would require filling the shortage in public park space that the city has identified at 443 acres.
And while East Side Elementary's playground isn't closing that gap right now, the Trust for Public Land, through its community schoolyards project, is working with the city and the school district to transform it into a public park by the end of 2024.
 

BATON ROUGE – As students and teachers across the state begin to prepare for back to school, the Louisiana Department of Education is launching a new resource to help school systems prepare for the peak of hurricane season. State Superintendent of Education Dr. Cade Brumley released the LDOE’s first Hurricane Preparedness Playbook during an event today at Lakewood Elementary in Luling.  “Louisiana’s students, families, and educators have shown unwavering resilience in the face of extraordinary adversity,” said Dr. Brumley. “These recommendations will help modernize Louisiana’s education infrastructure and equip school systems with the necessary tools to protect their facilities pre- and post-hurricane.”  The playbook includes best practices and expert guidance to support school system leaders before, during, and after a hurricane. It was developed by the LDOE’s Protect Louisiana Schools Hurricane Preparedness Commission (PLSHPC) and made possible through a partnership with AT&T.

Weeks after a roof collapsed at a building in the Tolleson Elementary School District, Gov. Katie Hobbs issued an executive order for the state to start doing more inspections of school buildings. State law requires the Arizona Department of Administration’s School Facilities Division to inspect all public school buildings once every five years. But for many, including Porfirio H. Gonzales Elementary School in Tolleson, those inspections hadn’t been happening. And then all in-person inspections stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic. “These schools need to be evaluated,” Arizona Education Association president Marisol Garcia said. “And they have not been for many years.”

Before the cafeteria roof collapsed at Porfirio H. Gonzales Elementary in Tolleson on June 2, the school hadn’t been inspected in more than nine years. That’s why Garcia says Gov. Hobbs’ executive order is a much-needed step in the right direction. “I’m hopeful that we can turn a page,” Garcia said. “And just focus on what’s next.”

CLAFLIN — Barton County residents will decide whether to break up with their school district and “start fresh” following heartbreak and anger over the closure of a rural community’s high school.

The change could result in hundreds of students displaced and three more schools shut down.

The Aug. 1 disorganization vote is a test case for rural communities that increasingly have to make decisions to shut down or consolidate as populations dwindle and schools face financial strain.

“This is brand new territory for the Department of Education, for the State Board of Education and basically every district in the state of Kansas,” said KSDE general counsel Scott Gordon during a June 27 meeting in Claflin.

Dissolving the district is likely to have widespread consequences for all district schools and likely will increase residents’ taxes, according to opponents of disorganization.

Wilson parent Kayla Cullens said the split needs to happen because the Claflin-based Unified School District 112 school board voted to shut down Wilson High School.

The district covers portions of five counties, including the Holyrood, Bushton, Claflin, Dorrance, Lorraine, Wilson, Beaver and Odin communities, along with other rural areas. Claflin and Wilson are a little less than a half hour apart, and the other communities mostly fall within a 10-30 minute range of each other.

FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — Fulton County Schools will move away from adding new school buildings over the next five years as part of a capital plan aimed at “protecting the investment” in its existing 108 education facilities.

In June, the School Board approved a $2.1 billion budget for the 2023-2024 school year, with $612 million targeted for capital projects. Typically, the capital fund goes towards major construction projects — including the cost to build new schools.

In the upcoming year, though, Fulton Schools Chief Operations Officer Noel Maloof said the district is headed away from adding schools due to declining enrollment across the county. Instead, the capital plan focuses on renovations, replacements and “behind-the-scenes” construction.

About 30 aging Clark County schools will be replaced with new facilities over the next decade.
Projects are through the Clark County School District’s 2015 Capital Improvement Program that allows for issuing bonds to pay for facility needs.
Typically, a replacement school is built on an existing campus and the old building is demolished once the new one is complete.
School employees and students are often temporarily displaced — such as to a “swing” campus like the old Fyfe Elementary School in central Las Vegas — while construction is underway.
To decide which schools to replace, the district considers factors like the building’s physical condition, its ability to support the curriculum and the costs of renovating versus building a new facility.
 

Leaders in the Pulaski County Special and Jacksonville/North Pulaski school districts sent notice to a federal judge that there are hitches in their effort to complete campus construction projects.

The Pulaski County Special district told U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., the anticipated $19 million cost of expanding Mills University Studies High School is now nearly double that. And there are other potentially complicating, costly factors, as well, that have put the district behind on its completion timeline.

In a similar report, the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district told Marshall -- who is the presiding judge in a four-decades-old school desegregation lawsuit -- that the state of Arkansas has failed to date to commit to an $8 million share needed for construction of a replacement Murrell Taylor Elementary.

The two school districts are the remaining defendants in what started as a 1982 school desegregation lawsuit brought by the Little Rock School District against state officials and neighboring school districts.

In May 2021, Marshall directed the Pulaski County Special district to propose to him a plan to "square up" construction inequities between the Mills campus, which is in a more heavily Black residential section of the district, and Robinson Middle School, which is in a more affluent, predominantly white residential area.

The two schools were built at the same time and opened to students in August 2019, at a time when the district was obligated in the federal desegregation lawsuit to equalize the condition of its school buildings. Marshall said at the time that both schools were excellent facilities but if Mills was an A school, then Robinson was an A++.

CLEVELAND — Some Cleveland homeowners shared their last-minute concerns about the construction of a new Marion C. Seltzer school building on a significant portion of green space at Cudell Park and Recreation Center.
The planning and meetings on the project to replace the school building have been ongoing for several years, but some homeowners living across the street from the school, like Marlene Medley and Jamie Brazier, told News 5 they only learned about the project a few months ago.
“I was actually never notified until somebody in the neighborhood mentioned to me that the school was going to be torn down. This happened probably two months ago," Medley said. “In the City of Cleveland, if you go east, west, north or south of here, you will not see another park, I think this space is very, very important.”
Brazier showed News 5 a copy of the will submitted by prominent Cleveland Architect Frank Cudell, giving the park property to the City of Cleveland upon his death in 1916. Brazier read from a section of the will she believes instructs the city to keep the property as a park indefinitely.
 

In October 2022, the Hazelwood School District announced that Jana Elementary in Florissant, Mo., would close indefinitely, after an independent contractor reported elevated levels of radioactive lead dust on school grounds. Educating about 400 students—80 percent of whom are Black—Jana Elementary served North St. Louis County’s economically disadvantaged students, who suffered disproportionately during the pandemic.
The sudden closure of the school left the families of Jana scrambling. At a packed school board meeting, parents learned that most of Jana would transition to “all-virtual instruction” for the next month.
The school board explained that it planned to redistrict most students, fragmenting the once tight-knit elementary school community. On December 1, former Jana students began attending five different schools in the Florissant area. Months later, in a letter to Hazelwood school district parents, the school board explained that it had “no expectation that Jana Elementary will reopen.”
The purported discovery of radioactive contamination at Jana Elementary School is only the latest blow to an area long-saddled with a slow-moving and notoriously complex environmental disaster.