Travis Hairgrove, The Herald Banner, Greenville, Texas
Thu, November 10, 2022 at 11:51 AM·3 min read
Nov. 10—After Greenville ISD's proposed $136.5 million facility bond narrowly failed Tuesday night, the district announced its plans the following morning on how it will work to accommodate new families as Greenville's population continues to grow.

The proposed bond lost by 135 votes out of a total of 8,925, a margin of 1.52%. Had the bond passed, GISD was to have built a new middle school for an estimated $105.1 million and a new early childhood center for about $31.4 million. Both existing campuses are 72 years old, deteriorating, and out of compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, Texas Education Agency standards and updated building codes, the district has said.

Now that the referendum has failed, GISD officials intend to continue developing alternate plans that were in place for such an eventuality.

"Though disappointing, it does not minimize the fact that we all believe our students and staff deserve the very best learning environments, and in spite of the vote, we will continue to serve our students well," GISD Supt. Sharon Boothe said. "Respecting the voters' wishes, we will move forward with the resources and facilities that we have."

The Guam Education Board officially approved the master facilities plan for the Guam Department of Education but in one board member’s view, there’s no money for it.
“We are introducing and we are going to vote on and approve a master facilities plan, but, we don’t have any money for it,” GEB member Robert Crisostomo said during a recent board meeting.
While GDOE has $80 million left in federal relief funding, it can’t be applied for this purpose, according to Crisostomo.
“But we can’t use the $80 million for facilities or earmark it,” he said as he moved to have the board adopt an amendment to the master facilities plan.
“If you’d like to entertain along with that an amendment with that to include earmarking $80 million for facilities, I think it would go a long way in solidifying our commitment to the community that we want our facilities built up," he continued.
And although board chairman Mark Mendiola was in agreement about committing the funds, he also said, unfortunately, it isn’t in the board's authority to do so.
“Mr. Crisostomo, that’s a great motion and I would love to support it, but, unfortunately, these are federal dollars, so we cannot,” the chairman said.
 

Voters approved bonds and levies for schools in seven of 10 races across the state.

That includes a $250 million bond for Bend-La Pine schools and a $450 million bond for Portland Community College.

In a statement shared Tuesday night, PCC president Adrien Bennings thanked voters for their support and acknowledged the bond goals of modernizing the college’s Rock Creek and Sylvania campuses and expanding career technical education in Washington County.

“Portland continues to grow and evolve, and PCC is adapting to meet Portland’s needs,” Bennings said. “As Oregon’s largest post-secondary institution, our bond program is committed to being a responsible steward of community resources, and returning to voters and taxpayers a value that far exceeds the investment they have made in us this November.”

Bend-La Pine superintendent Steven Cook said Wednesday he will work to make the district’s schools a source of pride for residents.

“We are grateful to our community for showing their commitment to students and public education by supporting this measure, which will upgrade safety and security, modernize classrooms and provide for critical maintenance and preservation projects across our district,” Cook said in a statement emailed to OPB.

Other bonds approved by voters will support the Forest Grove School District in Washington County and David Douglas schools in Multnomah County.

Lead exposure during childhood may lead to reduced cognitive abilities in later life, meaning people experience symptoms of dementia sooner, data suggest.
The study, one of the first to investigate the decades-long consequences of lead poisoning, suggests countries could face an explosion of people seeking support for dementia as individuals who were exposed to high lead levels during early life progress into old age.
“In the US, and I would imagine the UK, the prime years when children were exposed to the most lead was in the 1960s and 70s. That’s when the most leaded gasoline was getting used, lead paint was still common, and municipal water systems hadn’t done much to clean up their lead,” said Prof John Robert Warren at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who was involved in the research.
“Those children who are now in their 40s, 50s and early 60s, will soon be entering the time of life when cognitive impairment and dementia are really common. So there’s this coming wave, potentially, of problems for the people who were most exposed.”
Although scientists have long known that children and adults who are exposed to lead have poorer cognitive and educational outcomes, few studies have investigated the longer-term consequences.
 

ST. PETERSBURG — In its past life almost a century ago, the historic Tomlinson building off downtown St. Petersburg’s Mirror Lake was known as St. Petersburg Junior High.

The building became a vocational high school in the 1930s and, until its closure in December due to low enrollment, an adult education center that taught thousands of Pinellas County’s grownups.

Now, school district officials hope the three-story building on 1.7 acres will be the district’s first project to provide affordable apartments to teachers and school staff. Pinellas County Schools this week issued a request for proposals to redevelop the building into a mixed-use, public-private partnership project and manage affordable housing apartments for educators as housing costs continue to rise.

The state Department of Education will share its ranked list of school districts who will be prioritized for building aid in 2024 and 2025 on Thursday, a decision that will impact the future of Concord’s Rundlett Middle School building project.

The state’s school building aid program reimburses a portion of a district’s construction costs. The Department of Education creates a ranked list of school districts that will get priority for funding if it is approved in the state budget. The list will be presented to the State Board of Education at its Thursday meeting in Nashua, the Department of Education said Friday. Districts will be able to log in and see the results on the website.

The Concord School Board is responsible for deciding how to move forward after learning the results of the building aid decision, according to Superintendent Kathleen Murphy.

After Hurricane Ian slammed against the Southwest coast of Florida, several school districts suspected that damage, flooding, power outages and other difficulties might mean students may never get back into their classrooms.

That was about five weeks ago. Now, school districts in Lee, Sarasota, DeSoto and Charlotte have slowly begun recovering from the impact of a Category 4 storm. Some schools have recovered faster, sending kids back to classes as early as Oct. 10.

But schools in other hard-hit areas struggled, going weeks without any instruction, constructing new teaching facilities, learning at home with virtual instruction and attending different schools while repairs continued.

Lee County
Some school buildings are not operational yet, but students are largely back in an in-person learning environment, according to Irma Lancaster, director of strategic communication for Lee County public schools.

“Students returned to a learning environment in phases during the week of October 17. The first group started on Monday, and by the end of the week on that Friday the 21st, all students were in a learning environment,” she said in an email to the Phoenix.

Texas schools would need silent panic buttons in classrooms and to ensure two-way emergency radios used by law enforcement and first responders work on campus under a new proposed state rule.
The proposed school safety standards rule would also require that all doors and windows that lead into school buildings be locked and monitored.
The Texas Education Agency released the specifics of the proposed rule Thursday. The proposal is the latest effort to beef up school safety in the wake of Texas’ deadliest school shooting that killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in May.
In the days following the shooting, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the agency and Education Commissioner Mike Morath to develop safety rules for school buildings, including the enforcement of weekly door inspections to ensure they close and lock.
In the coming weeks, school districts can apply for grants from the agency for spending on various security-related costs over the next two years and toward the installment of silent panic alert technology this year, according to the agency’s guidance.
Grant funds will be awarded using a per-pupil count, but districts will receive at least $200,000 to ensure small rural districts can also tackle infrastructure costs.
The panic alert technology generally would allow campus staff to manually press a button or use a software application to signal a life-threatening emergency, such as an active shooter or intruder.
The system, which can already be found in some banks and hospitals, should also notify administrators and emergency responders of the threat.
 

The Long Beach Unified School District’s projected timeline for Measure E facility upgrades has been updated to prioritize Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) projects, according to information presented at the Wednesday, Nov. 2 board meeting. 

Measure E is a $1.5 billion bond measure the district passed back in 2016 to fund repairs, technology, air conditioning and safety across school sites. 

A shift in funding due to the governor’s budget that allocated one-time state funds to school facilities projects as well as unused contingencies from past projects are some of the main factors that prompted rebaselining. 

The new timeline proposes advancing HVAC-type projects at Charles A Buffum Elementary, Patrick Henry Elementary School, Herbert Hoover Middle School, Beach K-12 Independent Study, James Monroe High School and Benjamin Tucker Elementary by two years. 

Other school sites such as Stanford Middle School, Minnie Gant Elementary School, George Washington Carver Elementary School, Tincher Preparatory School and John Marshall Middle School can only be advanced up to a year, as Executive Director of Facilities Development and Planning, David Miranda, stated it would not be feasible to start and finish construction in the span of two years.

The committee tasked with coming up with budget recommendations for the Lawrence school district received some preliminary information about building conditions that will inform recommendations about potential school closures.
The Futures Planning Committee met for the fourth time Wednesday evening at district offices and received some aggregated cost estimates — totaling about $30 million — for improvements to the district’s elementary and middle schools. Larry Englebrick, the district’s chief operations officer for facilities and operations, said the district has been taking an in-depth look at the condition of its buildings, and while they are generally in good condition, facility needs and funding must be planned.
“We look at available funding, the facility needs, and then we have to balance what available funding do we have each year based with the projection of when we’re going to hit specific building improvement needs and maintenance needs,” Englebrick said.
Englebrick said the district’s target is to have all schools at 80% overall condition — he said a brand-new building would be at 100% — and he provided an aggregated breakdown of what it would cost to attain that goal for the district’s 13 elementary schools and four middle schools. The cost to get schools to 80% condition was $16.92 million for the elementary schools and $12.32 million for the middle schools. A lesser number, the cost to return only the schools’ “priority systems” to 80% condition, was also given, and was $12.78 million for the elementary schools and $10.38 million for the middle schools.
 

The Kentucky General Assembly’s Budget Review Subcommittee on Education heard from school superintendents about the struggle with rapidly increasing construction costs during their Nov. 2 meeting.

Chay Ritter, the Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE’s) director of the Division of District Support, said school districts typically issue bonds or pay cash to finance projects. The bonding capacity, or a district’s borrowing power, is impacted by interest rates, credit ratings and existing debit service. Due to its bonding potential, a district can have a gap in funding that results in a project being built in phases over a longer time period, or a reduction in the project scope.

When construction is delayed, the costs may go up, Ritter said.

House Bill (HB) 678, passed by the legislature in 2022, accelerated construction projects by allowing a district to start new construction or renovation without the prior approval of KDE, Ritter said. The bill, a two-year measure that will expire unless the General Assembly takes further action in 2024, also allows a district to spend restricted funds on extracurricular facilities.

Currently, 150 of the Commonwealth’s 171 school districts are operating under HB 678.

“It saves considerable time and time is money in the construction business,” he said.

Ritter said several districts are either delaying or altering their construction projects due to the continued price increases, including:

The last time Kuna residents passed a bond to build a new school was in 2017. Since then, the city’s school district has grown by over 500 students.

It’s a common story in the Treasure Valley where districts are struggling to keep pace with the space needed to accommodate an influx of residents and their school-age children. Today, the Kuna School District is in the process of developing a bond that, if passed, would fund additional construction at Swan Falls High School, construction of a new elementary school, and other projects.

But some familiar with the issue think it is time to add another tool to the toolbox of education funding: charging impact fees to new developments.

In Kuna, Superintendent Wendy Johnson estimates it would cost $26 million to build a new, 600-student elementary school. Even being able to collect $3 million in impact fees would help offset that cost, she said.

Students entering a Lompoc Unified School District classroom see words of wisdom displayed near large rusty spots on the walls, mismatched tile, yellowed blinds and other signs of the facility’s dated condition.
Once inside, they get to sit at old desks with sea foam green chairs revealing the age of the 57-year-old Cabrillo High School campus.
“If you go through all the campuses, you will see that the needs are consistent but not identical,” said Doug Sorum, assistant superintendent of business services.
For the fourth time since 2016, Lompoc’s school district has asked voters to approve a $125 million bond measure, this one called Measure A, to undertake what district officials say is a much-needed modernization program across all of the 16 campuses. To pass, the measure must be approved by 55% of voters in the Nov. 8 election.
District officials say a local bond measure also would make LUSD eligible for approximately $46 million in state matching funds, boosting the projects that could be completed.
 

New York City will commit billions of dollars to convert 100 fuel-burning public school buildings to cleaner energy by 2030 as part of an effort to comply with emissions reductions mandated by city law, Mayor Eric Adams announced Friday.

The city will spend roughly $4 billion over the next seven years on a plan that includes retrofitting 100 school buildings so they no longer burn fossil fuels for heating. That shift will help bring the city closer to compliance with Local Law 97, which sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions that buildings must adhere to starting in 2024.

Adams also announced that every new school building, including those already under construction, will be fully electric, putting the city slightly ahead of schedule on a separate 2021 city law that effectively bans gas in new construction starting in 2024. Newly constructed public school buildings must be fossil fuel-free beginning in 2025 under that law.

“Every New York City school we build going forward will be fully electric,” Adams said Friday at a press conference in P.S. 5 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which will be the first to get retrofitted under the new plan. “No more boilers, no more burning dirty fuel, no more contributing to asthma.”

PCBs were domestically manufactured for construction materials in the United States beginning in about 1930 until 1979, a time period that coincides with a boom in school construction to meet the demands of postwar birthrate growth. This increases the vulnerability of any school built or renovated before 1979.

Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned the manufacturing of PCBs over 40 years ago, PCBs are still of concern for school building because:

The durability of applications means that schools that were built or renovated before 1979 may still have PCBs used in a variety of applications like caulking, sealants, coatings, and electric components.
PCBs migrate, vaporize, and absorb into other materials and can be stored in our bodies for a long time, so prolonged and sustained exposure has a cumulative affect.
Studies show high-dose exposures can diminish learning, growth, immunity, and present other health hazards.

Today, Vice President Harris will provide a six-month progress report on the Biden-⁠Harris Action Plan for Building Better School Infrastructure, outlining a series of actions from across the Administration to upgrade our public schools with healthy, safe, sustainable facilities and transportation. In Seattle, Washington today, Vice President Harris and EPA Administrator Michael Regan will join schoolchildren, parents, district leaders, and community members to announce nearly $1 billion in rebate awards from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to replace existing aging school bus fleets with clean buses.

Since the Action Plan was first announced in April 2022, the Administration has secured new historic legislative accomplishments that build on progress that’s been made to deliver safer, healthier, and more environmentally sustainable learning environments for America’s children, while saving school districts money, creating good jobs, and combatting climate change. In addition to the clean school bus rebate awards, other actions announced today include upgrading school infrastructure, supporting clean energy in rural schools, and improving indoor air quality.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— The Biden-Harris Administration, through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), today released a Notice of Intent (NOI) announcing $80 million from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to make K-12 schools more energy efficient and lower their energy costs, including some of the nation’s highest-need schools. The funding is the first tranche of the Renew America’s Schools grant program created by the infrastructure law to provide schools critical energy infrastructure upgrades.  

Through the grant program, DOE will fund energy and health improvements in public K-12 schools across the country. Additionally, a new DOE prize program will help resource 25 high-need school districts with the training and tools needed to improve how their schools consume energy. Through President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, these investments will address the historic inequities of school facilities, reduce school energy costs, and improve health and learning outcomes for children and staff, while also supporting the promise of bringing good-paying jobs to the community.  

MARINE CORPS BASE HAWAII - The Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation (OLDCC), using funding from the Department of Defense (DOD) Public Schools on Military Installations (PSMI) Program, is set to award a $96 million grant to the Hawaii State Department of Education (HIDOE). The HIDOE will use this grant to replace Mokapu Elementary School, located aboard Marine Corps Base Hawaii (MCBH), in order to address the capacity and facility condition deficiencies that placed the school on the Deputy Secretary of Defense “Public Schools on Military Installations Priority List” at #33. This new facility will serve 975 military connected students in grades kindergarten through sixth.

The PSMI program, sanctioned by congressional authorization, provides funding to construct, renovate, repair or expand public schools located on military installations to address capacity and/or facility condition deficiencies as priorities by a Secretary of Defense-approved prioritized listing. This program of assistance is available by invitation only, based upon a school’s placement on the prioritized listing and the availability of appropriations.

STAMFORD — The plan to fix Stamford's school buildings will take 20 years and cost the city roughly $742 million.
Those were the figures presented by architectural firm SLAM Collaborative during a meeting of the school department's Long Term Facilities  Committee last week.
The numbers represent an increase from the total price tag of $540 million presented in February for a plan that previously called for a 12-year timeline.
But since then, there have been plenty of developments.
One of the biggest changes came in May when the state General Assembly passed a budgetary bill that included provisions to increase the reimbursement share Stamford receives for school construction projects. 
One provision granted an 80 percent state refund rate for a new Westhill High School. Another increased the state's contribution for school contributions to 60 percent for the next 25 years, much higher than the 20 percent rate the city received previously.
In all, the state is expected to fund about $766 million of the school department's 20-year plan.

While the future of school funding in Ohio beyond 2023 is dependent on the next state budget, State Reps. Jay Edwards (R-Nelsonville) and Shane Wilkin (R-Hillsboro) have crafted new legislation to increase equity in education in other ways.

The lawmakers' proposal, introduced earlier this month, would set aside $600 million to improve conditions for more than 58,000 students across 38 school districts in 18 Appalachian counties.

Known as the Accelerated Appalachian School Building Assistance Program, it would create a program under the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission, the agency that oversees infrastructure projects for institutions supported by the state, which includes public K-12 schools.

“For too long, Ohio has prioritized investment in students from cities over students in rural areas,” Edwards wrote in a statement. “The introduction of this legislation sends a message to leaders in Columbus that it is time we deliver equitable school facility investment to Appalachian Ohio."