The North Carolina General Assembly routinely enacts legislation—sometimes referred to as the “UNC Omnibus” bill—that amends statutes affecting the UNC System and authorizes financing for capital improvement projects within the UNC System. This year, the UNC Omnibus bill was introduced as House Bill 1123 and became law as Session Law 2026-9 (S.L. 2026-9) when Governor Stein signed it on June 19, 2026.

The law primarily addresses the UNC system, but also includes several changes to statutes governing public building construction that apply to local governments immediately. This blog post summarizes the key changes that local governments need to know.

Texas public school enrollment dropped by nearly 76,000 students this year. Falling birth rates, regional demographic shifts, and the expansion of alternative education options are all contributing to the decline, with the new Education Savings Account (ESA) program poised to add further pressure. Districts are consolidating campuses, cutting programs, and reducing staff. These cost-saving measures will have lasting consequences for students, families, and communities.

The Texas House Committee on Public Education is now examining the issue through an interim charge on the state of public education with a focus on enrollment trends pertaining to the stability of the school finance system. The testimony heard during the committee's first interim hearing confirmed what many Texans already sense: We are at a crossroads.

Denver Public Schools is looking at what to do with some vacant school buildings. Due to declining enrollment and subsequent budget issues, the district closed or restructured 10 of its schools last year. Six buildings are now vacant, and there could be more in the near future.  

Rather than sell or let the buildings sit, they're coming up with different ways to keep and repurpose them. 

K-12 school districts are gaining access to a suite of tools for monitoring air quality and energy and water use at their schools in a program launched by technology company Attune.  
The company enlisted the help of the International WELL Building Institute, Center for Green Schools, Green Schools National Network and the 21st Century School Fund to select 14 school districts to receive its technology in a program it calls the Future-Ready Facilities Grant. 
The recipients get access to the company’s smart monitoring technology, data dashboards and implementation support, the company says.

More than a dozen Delaware public schools, mostly in New Castle County, are operating at less than 60% capacity, according to data from the Delaware Department of Education. 

Five of those are more than half empty.

The phenomenon of half-empty school buildings has prompted Delaware’s House Speaker Mimi Minor Brown (D-New Castle) to question whether they — or other underutilized government facilities — could be repurposed into different types of community facilities. 

Over the past five years, several Virginia localities have generated just $119 million total from a targeted sales tax to fund school construction and maintenance, fueling calls to expand the tax statewide.

When lawmakers first established the tax in 2021, a state survey showed over half of Virginia’s schools were more than 50 years old, with replacement costs in the billions.

House Education Committee Chair Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, said the totals further emphasize the need for the commonwealth to do more to address aging buildings.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state School Building Authority has for the first time ever awarded state funds for public charter school construction projects.

The SBA met Tuesday in Charleston.

The legislature created the path for funding a few years ago and $5 million was set aside for the projects. SBA Executive Director Andy Neptune said there were a few delays but ultimately a legal opinion from the office of state Attorney General J.B. McCuskey opened the door to fund the projects.

Key Takeaways: 

Montgomery Middle School demonstrates how addressing deferred maintenance can become an opportunity to create a high-performance, sustainable facility that reduces energy use, lowers operating costs and supports long-term educational goals.  
The project's success was driven by an integrated design approach that prioritized building orientation, daylighting, natural ventilation, a high-performance envelope and efficient mechanical systems to exceed energy standards and achieve LEED Platinum certification.  
Facility managers can apply lessons from the project by prioritizing long-term sustainability goals, fostering collaboration across project teams and improving existing building operations to capture energy savings without necessarily undertaking major capital projects. 

Over the past five years, several Virginia localities have generated just $119 million total from a targeted sales tax to fund school construction and maintenance, fueling calls to expand the tax statewide.

Key Takeaways: 

Successful summer renovation projects begin with clearly identifying the underlying needs of a school, allowing districts to prioritize the most impactful improvements and develop phased solutions that maximize limited budgets and timelines.  
Flexibility and adaptability should guide renovation decisions, with strategies such as reconfigurable spaces, mobile furniture and better space utilization helping schools accommodate future enrollment, program and instructional changes without costly renovations. 
Early planning, thoughtful construction phasing and strategic procurement can reduce costs, minimize disruptions and help districts deliver long-term facility improvements rather than short-term fixes during the compressed summer construction season. 

HAMILTON, N.J., June 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Critical Response Group, Inc. (CRG), the nation's leader in critical incident mapping data, today announced that it has been selected by the New Hampshire Department of Education (NHED) to deliver field-validated, GIS-enabled, and universally accessible mapping data for every public school across the Granite State.

Awarded through a competitive statewide procurement (RFP 2026-BSF 01), the multi-year engagement represents one of the most significant investments in school safety preparedness in New Hampshire's history. Through the initiative, CRG will produce standardized critical incident mapping data for every participating public school and place it directly in the hands of school administrators, dispatchers, law enforcement, fire, and EMS agencies statewide — ensuring every responder operates from the same trusted information when seconds matter most.

An insurance lawsuit over a school construction project in eastern North Carolina is heading to federal court.

Liberty Mutual Insurance is suing Group III Management for roughly $1.5 million following a contract dispute with Pitt County Schools. The legal battle stems from renovations at A.G. Cox Middle School in Winterville.

After pledging millions to ensure Philly's public schools don't need to cut about 340 jobs, Philadelphia officials are heading to Harrisburg on Monday to encourage state legislators to help the city afford that pledge.

Earlier this month, officials, including Mayor Cherelle Parker, pledged $216 million to the district over the course of five years.

Hundreds of Michigan school boards this month are mulling over the last details of their districts’ budgets for the next academic year ahead of a statutory deadline to pass them by July 1.

But as budget talks drag on once again at the state level, particularly in K-12 education, there are a lot of unknowns for school administrators without a final picture of what state and federal dollars will trickle down for 2026-27.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Critics say the Cleveland Metropolitan Schools District is breaking a law requiring that vacated school buildings be offered to charter schools.

Cleveland schools say they have two years to decide what to do and are exploring options first.

The year’s landmark education reform proposal is now law.

Gov. Phil Scott on Thursday signed into law H.955, the legislative session’s signature bill that launches a new but familiar round of voluntary school district mergers.

The bill’s signing brings some closure to what has been a long year for educators, administrators and legislators. Or looked at another way, it marks yet another beginning to Vermont’s seemingly perpetual effort to reform its education system.

Cohort of K-12 districts selected to modernize school buildings with smart monitoring technology for indoor air quality, energy, and water systems

Civil engineers often think of school design as an exercise in balancing competing priorities. Safety, traffic flow, site constraints, pedestrian patterns, drainage, sports fields, and a litany of regulatory requirements are all part of the mix. Nowhere is this more true than in the exercise of designing K–12 campuses that can handle surges of activity during short, windows of time. 

Unlike commercial or residential developments, a K–12 school experiences its highest traffic volume during two peak periods: the morning drop-off and the afternoon pick-up. During those periods, nearly every group tends to arrive at once. Coordinating and separating these flows while preventing congestion on public streets becomes the basis of the entire site layout. 

Many too often assume that staggering bell schedules would solve the problem. The suggestion will often be, “Why not start first grade at 7:00, second grade at 7:15, third grade at 7:30?” But anyone who has worked within the operational reality of a school district knows this is impractical. Bus routing, staffing schedules, after-school programs, and family logistics make staggered starts not feasible. The result is that engineering solutions must develop the solution. 

Time outside in school has been treated as a pause button: recess, a break from instruction, a chance for students to move their bodies before heading back indoors to “real learning.” That mindset no longer fits what we understand about how attention works, how children develop or what our students are carrying into classrooms every day. Outdoor learning is an underused part of learning that schools can no longer afford to treat as optional.

The urgency for this shift has reached the national stage with the introduction of the Revitalizing America’s Schoolyards Act of 2026, a bipartisan bill that proposes federal grants to help schools transform asphalt-heavy grounds into nature-rich, instructional spaces.

(The Center Square) – Gov. Mike DeWine signed legislation lawmakers say will districts to building new schools across the state. House 479 allows the local share of building projects to be calculated on the government’s existing financial conditions rather than older property valuation and income data..