The path is set for covering the cost of fixing Stamford school buildings, and taxpayers should prepare to dig ever deeper into their pockets for the next several years.

During that time, taxpayers should not expect major improvements to parks or other non-school city property.

That was the message that came with the final vote of the budget season, when members of the Board of Representatives Wednesday night approved a Board of Finance recommendation to increase taxes enough to raise $15 million for a school construction fund. 

Last year both boards approved a tax increase that raised $20 million, creating the original contribution to the fund.

Taxpayers can expect the same next year, Board of Finance Chair Richard Freedman said during a special Board of Representatives meeting to vote on the higher tax rate. 

An analysis by the state Office of School Construction found that if the city bonds $35 million for school projects for each of the next few years, “we will need a minimum of $15 million a year” in cash, Freedman told representatives. 

Beyond raising taxes to fund the school construction reserve, taxpayers will have to cover the cost of a significant increase in the amount of money the city borrows by issuing bonds.

In each of the last two fiscal years the city bonded $40 million, Freedman said, but in 2023-24 the amount will be $70 million, which comes with interest payments of several million dollars a year.

The borrowed $70 million will be split evenly between city and school projects, Freedman said.

“The city has its own significant capital needs – repave streets and sidewalks; the parks need a lot of work, city buildings need work. There are a lot of demands,” Freedman said. “We didn’t want to cut that, but we knew we had to fund the (schools) plan, so we had to go up to bonding $70 million, and we will for the coming years.”

NEW LONDON — Harbor Elementary has reopened after a two-day closure after test results revealed that the new cracks in the building’s walls and ceilings are not causing exposure to lead or asbestos. But school board Chair Elaine Maynard-Adams says the incident highlights that the district needed “a better plan” going forward. 

“The last thing we want to do is shutter a school in the middle of a school year,” Maynard-Adams told CT Examiner. 

The school was closed May 16 and 17 after cracks were discovered in the walls and ceilings on the second and third floors of the building. It serves about 240 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. 

“We are told there is a good chance that the full week of rain (and wind) that C[onnecticut] experienced a few weeks ago could be the cause of the new interior breakage of plaster, as the very old bricks of the building continue to age,” Superintendent Cynthia Ritchie wrote to parents on Tuesday. 

In her message, Ritchie noted that the Harbor Elementary building was built in 1920 and needs “extra special attention.” She said the building is tested every six months for asbestos. Maynard-Adams said the building’s air quality is also regularly tested, and that the most recent test found no issues. 

Maynard-Adams said the city had tried to retire the Harbor Elementary building over a decade ago, when the district first transitioned to an all-magnet program. 

George Smith Jr. looked over his shoulder every day on the walk home across the street from his Englewood school, scared of the tense environment, scared of neighborhood gangs, scared of getting jumped.
But he loved his elementary school. His band class gave him peace, his after-school programs something to do. And despite the anxiety he carried into adulthood, he was devastated when the school was one of 50 closed in 2013 by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
“I got a lot of pride in that school, a lot of memories,” Smith says of his school, later renamed Woods Elementary. “To see it just be nothing now and to know what the kids had to go through to go to these different schools, it’s sad. It’s heartbreaking.
Now 40, Smith moved back to the street he grew up on, two doors from his parents George Sr. and Gladys. Sitting on their porch overlooking the former school, the family has watched the block — home to Smiths since 1883 and the school since 1964 — lose its vibrancy.
Many neighbors moved or died without others replacing them. Once-beautiful yards were overtaken by weeds. Enrollment at Woods dropped nearly 60% between 2003 and 2013, leaving the building less than half full.
The school closing marked a breaking point, the Smiths say, with the midcentury building now a shell, stripped of pipes and anything valuable left inside.
A decade has passed since Emanuel called for the closings of more American schools at one time than ever before. Chicago’s Board of Education cast its historic votes 10 years ago next week.
 

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - U.S. Senators Tim Kaine (D) and Mark Warner (D) reintroduced the School Infrastructure Modernization Act. This bipartisan legislation aims to make it easier for schools to use federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credits to renovate.

Sen. Kaine says investing in schools will help students and the economy. He says fixing old buildings is a lot more affordable than building new ones.

“Old, dilapidated structures, kids absorb a message when they walk into it like, ‘Wow, this must not be that important, or the community would care to make sure that the facility was in OK shape.’ And a lot of kids walk in these buildings every day with a message they get is, ‘They must not care about this very much,’” the senator said.

Sen. Kaine says it’s like a recycle-and-reuse mentality: “When you take an old building that has kind of a particular beauty to it and you renovate it and make it fit for current use, that’s a cool place to go to school.”

  The National Wildlife Federation (NWF), America’s largest wildlife conservation and education organization, recognized that Mason Elementary School has successfully created a Certified Schoolyard Habitat® through its Garden for Wildlife program. Mason Elementary School has joined more than 5,000 schools nationwide that have transformed their schoolyards into thriving wildlife habitats that provide essential elements needed by all wildlife – natural food sources, clean water, cover, and places to raise young. The habitat also serves as an outdoor education site where students can engage in cross-curricular learning in a hands-on way.

     Certification also makes Mason Elementary School’s Certified Wildlife Habitat® part of the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge, a national effort to restore critical habitat for pollinators.

     “Our students recognized a solvable problem in our local community regarding endangered animals in the Piedmont habitat,” says Ms. Rachel Seibert, the 3rd STEM leader.

     Principal David Jones makes it a priority for students to use STEM in impactful ways. “At Mason Elementary, we have the opportunity to teach students the curriculum and show them how to use STEM every day to solve real world issues,” he says.

     “We are excited to have another school join our growing list of more than 5,000 certified Schoolyard Habitats. Kids can now personally experience nature through hands-on learning in an outdoor environment,” says Liz Soper, director of K-12 Programs for National Wildlife Federation.

On an 81 degree day last September, environmental city planner Sharon Danks went onto the playground at a California elementary school with an infrared camera. Grassy areas in full sun measured 83 degrees, but unshaded asphalt was 107 and rubber surfaces under an exposed play structure came in at 135. Asphalt shaded by tree canopy was more than 30 degrees cooler.

Danks, the author of Asphalt to Ecosystems, a book published more than a decade ago to guide the transformation of schoolyards, wasn't surprised at what she found. She and her colleagues had made similar measurements many times over.

But shade itself had gained heat that September with the announcement that $150 million had been set aside in the California state budget for a two-year program to fund school forests and green schoolyards at K-12 schools. The decision was driven by the need to protect the health of students as average temperatures in the state continue to rise.

The September 2022 heat wave in the West was the worst on record; temperatures soared above 110 degrees in multiple cities in California. In announcing the funding for schoolyards, Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, noted that average temperatures across the state were projected to rise 6 degrees by mid-century.

As bad as things might look for Californians, warming trends are projected to be even more dramatic in other parts of the country. According to a peer-reviewed model published last year, by 2053 more than 100 million Americans will live in an "extreme heat belt" extending from Northern Texas and Louisiana borders to Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, with temperatures exceeding 125 degrees.

Most of the daylight hours that children spend outside are on school grounds. The simple act of planting trees on campuses is a powerful way to shield them from heat-related health problems.

Colorado passed a new law this spring intended to fix the facility school shortage by bolstering funding and encouraging more schools to open. 
The measure signed by Gov. Jared Polis last month will increase funding for facility schools by nearly $19 million next year, then by $23 million in 2024 and $28 million in 2025. Lawmakers and legislative staff are predicting that four new schools will open in each of the next three years, which would mean a 40% increase in schools statewide. 
“Facility schools” are specialized schools for kids who aren’t functioning well in traditional classrooms, often because of high levels of anxiety, depression and other behavioral health issues that are disruptive to learning.
The crux of the bill is a change in the schools’ funding model. The state currently funds facility schools based on a daily per-student rate of $55, which hasn’t been enough money for schools, especially small ones, to keep the doors open. Facility schools also get tuition from school districts for students in special education. The tuition ranges this year from $75 to $348 per day. 

RICHMOND, Va. (WDBJ) - The Virginia Board of Education has awarded $365 million for school construction across the state.
28 school divisions will receive funding for 40 projects, and many of them are located in central, southside and western Virginia.
Kathleen Jackson is the Chief Financial Officer of Roanoke City Public Schools.
“We’re super excited to hear that we were included in the list of awarded projects,” Jackson said in an interview Thursday afternoon.
At a time when construction costs are rising, she said it was a relief to learn that three of the five projects Roanoke City Public Schools applied for were successful.
“Just to give you an example, one of the projects we did receive funding for is the replacement school, a new building, for Preston Park Elementary School,” she said. “We were looking at, potentially we would have to pause that project, because we wouldn’t yet have the money available to complete the next phases. We don’t have that issue any more, thanks to that grant.”
The General Assembly established the criteria, and the Department of Education ranked school divisions on their poor building conditions, commitment and need.
A community’s ability to pay and fiscal stress determined whether the award funded 10, 20 or 30% of a project’s cost.

Aside from the occasional rustle of paper and tap of keyboards, silence permeated Louise Hanania’s Paterson classroom. Her fifth graders hunched over their laptops, absorbed in a writing assignment.
Then the rattling of a tambourine shattered the silence. The jarring disruption came from behind a line of cabinets, bookshelves and corkboard.
The jangling was quickly joined by a piercing voice. “Red chair!” a woman trilled. “Orange basket! Green plant!”
On the other side of the cabinets, in the same room Hanania and her students were using, sat another class, listening to another teacher. These students, Spanish-speaking second graders, were learning English to the beat of the tambourine.
Hanania’s pupils didn’t flinch. Not at first. None of the children craned their necks. 
But as the other teacher continued to strike the tambourine to the words she chirped — a technique to help non-English speakers learn — concentration among Hanania’s students frayed. A boy tapped his foot in time. A girl hummed along. Students giggled and twisted in their seats.
 

TROY- The Troy City Schools Board of Education has received word the district is being offered state funding towards the potential construction of multiple new buildings.

“It is exciting news,” District Superintendent Chris Piper said. “We are being offered funding by the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC).”

The OFCC funding would cover approximately 42% of the state-recommended cost for mulitple buildings. Additional funding could also be raised through passage of a levy.

“The state will support 42% of what they recommend,” Troy City Schools Board of Education President Sue Borchers said. “Once we get formal word that we are getting the funding, we have 13 months to pass a levy, which is a very short time.”

“That means we have to get on the November ballot and/or the March Ballot,” she said, “so our window is as tiny as it can get.”

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – As Rhode Island celebrates Teacher Appreciation Week and observes Mental Health Month, Governor Dan McKee, Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green and the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) today announced the launch of the $3 million W.E.L.L. Initiative (Wellness in Education Leads to Learning), which will support the development of wellness spaces in schools statewide and provide funds for accompanying professional development and programming. The design of these spaces allows students and staff to experience a quiet atmosphere and have a chance to decompress. The initiative comes as education systems nationwide reimagine education and school facilities to meet the holistic needs of students in the wake of the pandemic.   

“Every child deserves to attend a 21st century learning environment that not only supports a comprehensive educational experience but also supports the social, emotional, mental, and behavioral health needs of students,” said Governor Dan McKee. “We encourage schools to browse offerings and look forward to the positive impact the W.E.L.L. Initiative will have for students and teachers across Rhode Island.” 

“Any educator can tell you that even in the best of times, students and teachers alike can become overwhelmed at school. RIDE’s W.E.L.L. Initiative ensures that if they do, they have a space available to them that can help meet their needs,” said Lieutenant Governor Sabina Matos. “These funds are going to provide oases of calm in our schools, as well as the training and resources necessary for faculty to use them to their full effect.”

Three Arkansas school districts in which voters recently passed property tax increases for campus building projects -- only to see construction costs soar -- are getting some extra help from the state.

The state Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation Commission on Monday agreed to distribute to the Southside School District in Independence County, the Watson Chapel School District in Jefferson County and White County Central School District about $17 million to aid the districts in their construction of a new school and various school additions.

The vote of the three-member commission comes after Arkansas lawmakers earlier this year authorized the transfer of as much as $24 million from the state's Academic Facilities Partnership program to its Academic Facilities Extraordinary Circumstances account to supplement the funding for seven projects in the three districts that had seen property tax increases.

William Penn Senior High School has two pools — one for swimming competitions and one dive tank — that have been shuttered since 2009.
At various points, district officials have attempted to reopen the pools, which have become storage areas for classroom furniture. In 2017, the district and state lawmakers announced a plan to raise $1.2 million to make necessary renovations with an eye toward reopening them in 2019.
That date came and went, and the pools continued to deteriorate.
Now, the school board is revisiting the issue.
“There was some interest in reopening the pool,” Superintendent Andrea Berry said.
 

On May 6, Ford Bend County voters passed a $1.26 billion bond proposed by Fort Bend ISD. It is the largest bond ever passed by the district, which has grown to be the 6th largest school district in the state of Texas, with more than 80,000 students.

Each of the bond's three propositions passed. The first two, which provided for campus construction projects like the rebuilding of three schools as well as technology improvements across the district, passed by nearly 66%.

The district will also construct a new natatorium.

“It says to us that our community does support our schools, and that’s really important right now. I think our teachers needed to feel that," said Christie Whitbeck, superintendent of Fort Bend Independent School District. "All the things we do in the interior that are really for the kids are also about our staff.”

GREEN BAY (NBC 26) — Twelve.

That's the number of Green Bay school buildings a facilities task force is recommending be closed or repurposed to the school board.

The facilities master plan is being done to address the Green Bay Area Public School District's aging buildings, declining enrollment, and projected budget deficit.

The District is currently facing a projected $20 million budget deficit for the 2024-25 school year.

The task force said right now, school buildings are not used to capacity, and it could get worse.

Owyhee Combined School Vice Principal Lynn Manning-John stood on the Nevada Capitol lawn Thursday in front of her students — her “babies” — from the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in northeastern Nevada, a community she grew up in and returned to after attending an East Coast college.
Teresa Melendez, a lobbyist and Indigenous organizer, guides a student from the Owyhee Combined School, located on the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in northeastern Nevada, before a press conference outside the Legislature on Thursday, April 27, 2023 in Carson City. (David Calvert/The Nevada Independent)
The students, many wearing ribbon skirts and shirts, carried signs with a common theme: “don’t leave us behind.” Among them was her daughter, a senior at the school who was recently admitted to Tufts University, an elite research institution in Boston.
“We have produced some phenomenal kids out of Owyhee,” she said. “But I have to tell you, we do it in some really hard-to-describe conditions.”
 

If Akron Public Schools is going to pull off a multipoint facilities plan over the next five to 10 years, it's going to need some financial help from the public.

The board is reviewing options for a long-term facilities plan that would close a handful of older buildings and build two new ones. Nothing has received the green light yet, except for a small rezoning in the East cluster. But if the board moves forward with the plan in full, it will almost definitely require passing a levy.

The administration has presented the board with a way to fund a new building in the Kenmore neighborhood to hold both Pfeiffer Elementary and Miller South School for the Visual and Performing Arts students. The total cost of the project, including demolition of the former Kenmore high school building, is estimated at $61 million, and would utilize money from a handful of existing revenue streams, including $33 million of federal stimulus dollars.

In early April, students in Planada, Calif., finally returned to their classrooms.
It had been three months since the early January flood that sent putrid brown water — filled with floating rodents and sewage — crashing into Planada Elementary School, destroying 27 classrooms, ruining thousands of books, and causing more than $12 million in damage.
Hundreds of elementary school students and staff — many displaced after losing their homes in the deluge — crammed onto the middle school campus across town.
Classrooms were shared. Space was cramped.
Families craved normalcy in the impoverished Merced County farm town of 4,000, which was inundated after Miles Creek burst its bank and busted through levees.
Construction crews worked at Planada Elementary seven days a week, sunup to sundown, said Supt. José González. And when youngsters returned to newly built classrooms last month, the town counted it as a win.
But even as they celebrated, they wondered: What if — when the state’s massive snowpack melts this summer — the school floods again?
“That’s the million-dollar question I can’t answer,” González said with a sigh.
“We’re putting together contingency plans,” he said. “I wish I had preventative plans. But I don’t.”
California’s epic winter — with dozens of atmospheric-river-fueled storms, record-breaking snow in the Sierra Nevada, and prolonged flooding in the Central Valley — has wreaked havoc on small rural schools.
 

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Biden-Harris Administration, through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announces the Phase 1 Winners to share in the $4.5 million Energy Champions Leading the Advancement of Sustainable Schools Prize (Energy CLASS Prize), a competitive award promoting energy management in school districts across America. Twenty-five Local Education Agencies (LEAs) will each receive a $100,000 cash prize to establish, train, and support energy managers in their schools. These Energy Champions will develop projects and skills to lower energy costs, improve indoor air quality, and enhance learning environments in their communities. At the end of Phase 2, based on their performance, Phase 1 winners will be eligible for an extra $50,000 in funding. Energy CLASS Prize funds have the potential to impact over 700,000 students, in 1,300 schools, across 19 states. As part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, this funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law advances the Department’s mission to streamline investments in clean energy workforce development, which is critical to the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050 while creating jobs, building a pipeline for young people, and supporting workers and communities across this nation. 

Behind Parkway South High School on Wednesday, students were playing kickball on what looked like a normal, grassy field. But hundreds of feet below ground, a geothermal plant was using the Earth’s temperature to heat and cool the school.

That system is not something you would find at most schools in the U.S. Its uniqueness brought Maria Vargas, the Department of Energy's director of its Better Buildings Initiative, this week to recognize the Parkway School District.

The geothermal plant is one of many sustainability efforts in Parkway, including solar panels, LED lights and even district-wide composting. The district has also replaced roofs and upgraded insulation to make sure Parkway South is as efficient as possible.

“I'm here to see firsthand what they're doing at the school district that allowed them to be so aggressive and successful in reducing energy waste,” Vargas said.

The Parkway School District has been working to improve energy efficiency for years. It became part of the federal Better Buildings Challenge and met its goal of 25% energy use reduction in 2020. Now the district has set a goal of an additional 35% reduction by 2035.