ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST PARISH, La. (WVUE) - The Environmental Protection Agency is encouraging the state of Louisiana to shut down an elementary school in Reserve over toxic exposure it calls environmental discrimination.

The EPA said it has evidence that Black residents living near the Denka plant in LaPlace face an increased risk of cancer from a nearby chemical plant and that state officials have allowed air pollution to remain high and downplayed its threat.

Denka is the nation’s only emitter of chloroprene, a toxic volatile liquid byproduct from the creation of the synthetic rubber neoprene, and has been designated by the EPA as a likely carcinogenic.

The agency’s 56-page letter to Louisiana officials describes early findings of racial discrimination by two Louisiana departments involving the entire corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, a plant that EPA said emits large amounts of a cancer-causing chemical and a proposed plastics complex.

Ribbon-cutting ceremonies at Clyde W. Needham Elementary School on Thursday afternoon brought to conclusion a years-long reconstruction project.

A crowd of approximately 100 people, including school board members, Lodi City Council members, school officials, District Superintendent Dr. Cathy Nichols-Washer, teachers, and members of the public looked on as the renovations were officially dedicated.

The Needham School band also played for the occasion.

About half the old buildings at the school were demolished in April of 2020 to make way for a new classroom building, a pre-school room, a new multi-purpose room, kitchen and fitness room, and a new drop-off area on Church Street with new concrete walkways.

In addition to all the new buildings, the project included new electrical mains and upgrades, a new fire alarm system, emergency lighting, a new public address and emergency communication system, plus other upgrades.

The improvement project was approved by the school board in 2018, which included the removal of some of the school’s portable classrooms. However, the board later decided to remove all 13 of them and replace them with 12 permanent classrooms.

PATERSON — About 545 classes in the city's public schools exceed state limits on student size, a problem local education officials attribute to fiscal constraints, rising enrollment, inadequate buildings and a shortage of teachers.

Eastside High School has the greatest number of overcrowded classes, with 200, according to a district report on class sizes as of Oct. 18. That includes 41 social studies classes at Eastside that exceed state limits, 39 science classes, 25 world language classes and 24 in math, the report shows.

Six of the district’s 10 high schools and 30 of 37 elementary schools have overcrowded classes, according to the report. The total number of overcrowded high school classes is 324, and there are 220 in city elementary schools. Paterson is New Jersey’s third-largest school district.

Ophelia Carter missed her first year of school because of covid-19 closures and her parents’ concerns for her health with no vaccination available for children under five. But in February, the 5-year-old received her first dose and was excited about starting kindergarten at her Eastern Kentucky school this fall.

Then came July. Devastating floods swept through Letcher County, where Ophelia lives, and other counties in the region, killing 40 people and damaging or destroying more than 10,000 homes. The floods also disrupted infrastructure, including power grids, water systems, and roads and bridges, for thousands more. The 25 affected school districts reopened weeks past their normal schedule, and damage to schools in the region may top $100 million, Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said in the days after the flooding.

“Everyone has a direct link to how awful this is,” Ophelia’s mother, Carrie Carter, said at a restaurant near their home. The restaurant, Heritage Kitchen, and the Carters’ home were barely spared from the rising water.

Hyde County Schools has been awarded $8.3 million to repair some of its Mattamuskeet facilities.

The award was announced at a special meeting Wednesday morning of the Hyde County commissioners and comes from the $300 million Needs Based Public School Capital Fund (NBPSCF) from the NC Department of Public Instruction, according to a press release from Hyde County Schools.

Hyde was one of nine schools statewide to receive money from this fund, which was established to assist counties with their critical public school building capital needs.

Grants from the NBPSCF are funded with revenue from the N.C. Education Lottery. Grants are available to eligible counties for construction of new school buildings and additions, repairs and renovations of existing school facilities.

Superintendent of Hyde County Schools Dr. Melanie Shaver explained the award to the commissioners, saying that the vision for these funds is to expand the Career and Technical Education Program capabilities in the Mattamuskeet School by creating the Hyde County Industrial Arts Center that will house a diesel shop, a welding shop, agricultural shop and carpentry and maintenance areas.

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — Asheville City Schools is working to address high-priority maintenance needs in several schools. Buncombe County’s School Capital Fund Commission has approved funding requests for several projects that will now go before the Buncombe County Commission for final approval.

“We’re fortunate to have a lot of really nice buildings in our district, and we’ve tried to prioritize the ones that needed the most repair,” Asheville City Schools Executive Director of Operations April Dockery said.

The School Capital Fund Commission approved $5,341,805 for an extensive renovation of the Asheville High School and SILSA auditorium. Missing tiles in the ceiling and water damage marks are some of the most noticeable signs of need in the auditorium.

“It’s been in dire need of repair for many years now, and it’s kind of the heartbeat of our school system, and our community accesses that quite frequently,” Dockery said.

Elizabeth Piercy’s second grade students have to dress in layers when they come to school. Stony Mill Elementary School in Pittsylvania County doesn’t have central air conditioning, meaning classroom temperatures can be wildly inconsistent. 
“A group sitting near the air conditioner might be colder, and everybody else might be just fine, but that group is freezing,” Piercy said. “But there’s nothing we can do about it because we can’t move the air conditioner, and we have to have it on.”
Piercy said she has to raise her voice to be heard over the rumbling of the window unit. And on windy days, students can watch the blinds move because so much air comes in through the windows, she said. 
“You can’t caulk the same windows but so many times over the years,” she said. 
Stony Mill was built in 1964, making it one of the oldest schools in Pittsylvania County. There aren’t enough classrooms for its students, so Stony Mill has five mobile units outside the main building, where some classes are taught, said principal Kim Haymore. 
This is a security concern, as students who need to use the restroom have to walk unsupervised back into the main school building, she said. 
This isn’t the only school in the county with these problems. And these are all issues that could be remedied by a 1% sales tax increase, a referendum that will appear on the ballot this year for the second time in Pittsylvania County. 
 

Ward 4 Council member Janeese Lewis George and several other members of the D.C. Council are taking action to make sure maintenance issues are resolved before a repair order is closed.

A new bill, called The School Work Order Integrity Amendment Act, requires the D.C. Department of General Services to get approval from a school principal, foreman or other school employee before a work order ticket can be closed.

The legislation is the result of repairs not getting finished because of miscommunication, or because city agencies aren’t clear on who’s responsible for certain jobs, prompting work orders to be closed prematurely, Lewis George said.

Lewis George said she hopes the new procedure is in place before the start of the 2023-24 school year.

DENVER — Denver Public Schools is set to close several elementary and middle schools to make up for a budget shortfall caused by declining enrollment. 
The specific schools will be announced in the coming days, a district spokesperson said. 
The school board approved criteria to close schools with fewer than 215 students, as well as schools with fewer than 275 students and a projected decline in enrollment. 
In the next three years, the district expects to enroll 3,000 fewer elementary and middle school students, it said. 
"Three thousand students may not seem like that many students, but to a budget where you’re receiving per-pupil funding, that’s about $36 million," district spokesperson Scott Pribble said.
"We know that there are impacts and it’s heartbreaking and difficult work, but in order for the district to remain solvent, it’s work that needs to happen," he said. 
The district said the budget shortfall means it cannot provide the same mental health supports, social and emotional services or specialized programming to schools with lower enrollment. 
"We need to make sure that we can provide the same quality services to all our schools," he said.
The district said it will identify schools that are "failing to remain financially solvent" and move to close them.
 

Del Norte Unified trustees committed nearly $4 million in COVID relief dollars to upgrade electrical systems at Joe Hamilton Elementary School and Crescent Elk Middle School a local contractor stated posed a hazard to students and staff.

Del Norte Unified School District will also use its Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER III) allocation to replace a generator at Crescent Elk Middle School.

DNUSD will be reimbursed for about 60 percent of the cost of the two electrical projects from the state Office of Public Services and Construction (OPSC), Director of Facilities and Maintenance Steve Morgan told trustees on Thursday.

“That reimbursement can go into other projects,” he said.

These projects, which are expected to be finished over the summer, come after the results of a 2020 survey revealed that the electrical systems at nine out of 11 district schools were in need repair and replacement, according to Morgan.

Schools in southwest Florida preemptively shut down ahead of Hurricane Ian in preparation for the destruction they knew would ensue. More than two weeks after the category 4 storm slammed into the coast, those schools are still closed as families and school districts recover from one of the state’s worst natural disasters.
It’s the most recent example of a growing trend over which education experts are increasingly sounding an alarm: More frequent and intense extreme weather events are disrupting school systems nationwide for weeks, months and, in some cases, years.
Ft. Myers Beach Elementary in Lee County is one of those schools. Just one block from the ocean, the school was ravaged by Hurricane Ian’s powerful winds, which tore down walls. The storm surge rose to the top of the school doors, destroying nearly everything inside.
When Melissa Wright saw her fourth-grade son’s school for the first time after the storm, she could only manage three words: “My goodness gracious.”
Her concern soon shifted from the physical damage to her 10-year-old son’s educational future as she waits for schools in the county to reopen next week. And she worries he will fall behind amid back-to-back disasters.
“I just feel bad for him and all the students who had to go through Covid a couple of years ago – and that completely disrupted everything,” Wright said. “And now in fourth grade, which is another pretty impactful year, everything is up in the air again.”
 

Since the arrival of coronavirus more than two years ago, state and municipal officials have been jousting over who should pay to upgrade aging air quality control systems in Connecticut’s public schools.
Gov. Ned Lamont and the legislature took a step to help towns this year. But half of the $150 million they dedicated to the problem — which may not be enough — is temporary money that expires after 2025.
And as municipalities complete their applications for state aid this fall, leaders say one question still looms large. Will this cost fall primarily on a regressive local property tax system upon which Connecticut already relies heavily, or will state government — which saw its coffers swell amidst the pandemic but remains swamped with massive, long-term debt — pick up the tab?
“It’s this perpetual decision that’s always made,” said Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. “If we have to pick our poison, we’re always going to push [new costs] onto the property tax.”
Towns that use ARPA funds get limited state aid
No one knows exactly how much it will cost to upgrade heating, ventilation, and other air quality control systems statewide in public schools that often skimped on maintenance.
Local education budgets are hampered by state aid that failed to keep pace with inflation. State government spent much of the past two decades — prior to 2018 — dealing with its own budget deficits, prompting officials to curtail one of the most generous school construction cost-sharing programs in the country.
 

As fall temperatures cool across the U.S., many schools will struggle to ventilate classrooms while also keeping students and teachers comfortable and healthy. Children and teachers spend more than six hours a day in classrooms during the school year, often in buildings that are decades old and have inadequate heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning, or HVAC, systems.

Fall 2022 marks the start of the fourth school year affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has spotlighted the importance of indoor air quality in schools. Ideally, all school buildings would have adequate ventilation, filtered air in each classroom, and windows that open. Sadly, this is not the case—and indoor air quality in many schools is poor as a result. This is especially problematic in the wake of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s August 2022 COVID-19 guidance for schools, which scales back other measures for limiting transmission, such as masking, testing, and quarantining.

The Chula Vista Elementary School District in California has installed an 8.1 MW solar microgrid that is expected to save the district $70 million over the next 25 years.
Located in metropolitan San Diego, Chula Vista is one of California’s largest elementary school districts. More than 28,000 students pass through the doors of 50 schools each year. Forty-six of those schools are now home to solar panels powering the districts’ new microgrid.
School microgrids educate and save money
The solar microgrid project is just one of the efforts the district has made to reduce its carbon footprint and its energy costs. Chula Vista deputy superintendent Oscar Esquivel said, “Our team has done an outstanding job of continually finding ways to increase energy efficiency and savings while doing our part to improve the environment.”
He adds that one of the district’s goals is to model the importance of energy awareness, conservation, and sustainability for its students.
The $32 million solar microgrid project was funded by a general obligation (GO) bond, a type of municipal bond, and was completed by ENGIE North America.
The system includes battery storage and 18,050 solar panels, which are shading school buildings, the Transportation Yard, and the Education Service and Support Center.
 

Alexandria leaders agree that the city either needs to expand its aging middle schools or completely build a new one.

There are now 15,700 students within Alexandria City Public Schools, and roughy 2,000 more students are expected by 2024. That puts the city in a tricky position, as 10 ACPS schools are more than 70 years old and need continual maintenance, and a surge in elementary school kids means that Alexandria needs more middle school space.

The need for a new school was outlined in a joint facilities update between City Council and the School Board on Wednesday, October 12.

“We’ve got to be creative here with how we do things,” Mayor Justin Wilson said. “We can meet the needs of enrollment in our schools with properties we own today.”

A new middle school isn’t budgeted in the city’s 10-year fiscal year 2023-2032 Capital Improvement Program Budget. Three school replacements are currently funded: the Alexandria City High School (ACHS) Minnie Howard campus, George Mason Elementary School and Cora Kelly School.

The CIP also includes more than $12 million for the renovation of an office building at 1703 N. Beauregard Street for development by 2030. The space could be used as swing space for another school under construction or as a new 600-student-capacity school.

ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — Athens High School looks pretty worn and dated compared to other high schools in southeast Ohio, a fact not lost on parents.
A recent post in a Facebook forum for parents in the Athens school district mentioned visiting Logan High School for a soccer game and noted how beautiful the facility is.
Other parents chimed in with similar comments about how much nicer other schools in the area are and wondered when the new high school in Athens is getting built.
The answer: Soon (maybe).
It’s complicated. The district is waiting on state funding to build the new school, and right now Athens is second on the state’s funding list.
Athens Superintendent Tom Gibbs said he expects the district that’s first on the list will get funded in the next year. And then it will be Athens’ turn — unless another district cuts ahead in line.
To make sense of all this, it helps to understand how school construction in Ohio is funded.
School districts are ranked based on their perceived ability to pay for construction costs out of their own pocket. Districts that have less ability to pay are ranked higher and get a higher percentage of the construction costs covered by the state.
The ranking is done using a formula that considers the average property values in a district. Because the tax levies districts use to raise funds for school construction are tied to property values, the purpose of this formula is to make sure poorer districts get higher contributions from the state.
“The underlying objective is to create equitable facilities” among districts, said Dave Hayden, president of the Athens school board.
Property values are only part of the calculation. The state’s formula also considers the number of students in a district. So districts with lower property values and higher student enrollment are going to rank higher, and get a bigger funding match from the state, than districts with higher values and lower enrollment.
 

The San Francisco Unified School District says it needs $1.7 billion in the next five years to repair and renovate its buildings.

The estimation comes from an assessment of SFUSD’s 148 sites detailed at a Board of Education meeting on Tuesday. The report from consultants lays the groundwork for a new facilities master plan and, eventually, a bond measure to fund that plan. 

To meet that need, the district may ask San Francisco voters to approve a $1 billion bond—roughly the district’s operating budget—in 2023 or 2024. 

The last bond for SFUSD facilities in 2016 authorized $744 million.

“We’ve been bond rich and maintenance poor,” Dawn Kamalanathan, SFUSD’s head facilities officer, said. “Without maintenance dollars to keep this up, you will see this deterioration. Underinvestment in capital structure is a statewide, if not national issue.”

Bond funds cannot be used on operating costs, including maintenance. Voters nationwide routinely approve measures allowing governments to sell bonds to raise money over time for a specific purpose, such as a school. 

Electrical systems made up nearly $500 million of the estimated cost and HVAC systems made up a little under $400 million, according to the district’s presentation Tuesday. Of the total estimated cost, $340,000 was flagged as needed to address life safety risks. 

Francis Santos, acting superintendent for the Guam Department of Education, announced weeks ago that Oceanview Middle School was expected to move classes to Southern High School for the rest of the school year to allow for repairs to be made to the Hågat campus.
The announcement from GDOE leadership was given prior to the Department of Public Health and Social Services Division of Environmental Health releasing a host of negative findings from recent site inspections that ended with OMS getting a “D” grade on following health regulations and statutes.
Two site inspections were conducted at OMS in September. The first, on Sept. 14, involved an assessment of classrooms in its D-wing and the school’s restroom facilities. According to Public Health's report, the school’s structure in areas inspected was "compromised."
“Compromised structure of walls and ceilings in all rooms in the D-Wing due to visible water,” the report stated.
 

The Columbia Board of Education will use a new system for some upcoming construction projects.

The vote was unanimous to adopt what is termed a "construction manager at risk" system for a new elementary school on the property of John Warner Middle School, addition and renovation of Columbia Area Career Center, and an addition at Battle Elementary School.

"We believe this is our best way to move forward with our bond dollars," said CPS Chief Operating Officer Randy Gooch.

The district currently uses what is termed as a "design-bid-build" system, where the contractor is hired after the design and bidding process.

In the "construction manager at risk" system, the construction manager acts as the contractor and is involved early in the design process for a team approach from the start, Gooch said after the meeting.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — State commissioners approved a $1.7 billion bond for Guilford County Schools to fund facility repairs, upgrades and reconstruction. 
Back in 2019, Guilford County Schools reported more than 50% of its facilities ranked poor or unsatisfactory, leaving the district with more than $2 billion in repairs and $800 million in deferred maintenance. In 2020, the district received a $300 million bond to start addressing some of those repairs, but it needed more. In the May primary, residents voted to pass a $1.7 billion bond to continue repairs, renovations and reconstruction. 
Mark Miller has seen the need of these schools first-hand. He’s the director of maintenance and operations for Guilford County Schools. Crews are currently repairing a leak in the roof of Swann Middle School, where students are learning in a 100-year-old building. 
“Our customers’ needs are currently not being met fully, and this bond gives us the opportunity for our aging facilities to be able to fix them,” he said.