HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Gov. David Ige signed five education bills Thursday that will fund ambitions of higher quality learning environments for both traditional and non-traditional students.
“Collectively, these measures empower our public schools’ focus on workforce development and ensure that schools have the resources to provide a healthy and safe learning environment,” Ige said.
House Bill 2000 will direct $200 million to the School Facilities Authority for the construction of preschool facilities in fiscal year 2022 to 2023.
This is the largest investment into public preschools in the state’s history, Ige said.
The bill will seek to build and improve on facility conditions for eligible children of public preschools.
Senate Bill 2182 will establish a school garden coordinator position within the Department of Education.
The state hopes that building on Hawaii’s farm-to-school programs will influence improvements on student health, the agricultural workforce and farm-based education.
Senate Bill 2818 will establish a summer learning coordinator position within the DOE.
 

Jul. 7—This story has been updated from its original version to correct the name of the Moscow elementary school that could be replaced.

The Moscow School District envisions one day building two new school facilities and it is hoping to receive financial assistance from the Idaho government to achieve that goal.

Moscow School District Superintendent Greg Bailey discussed this Wednesday during a monthly meeting with local county, city and education officials.

Bailey said the school board is working on submitting a resolution to the state asking the governor to spend some of Idaho's $1.3 billion in surplus money to fund K-12 facilities.

Bailey said he is hoping the school can use state money to eventually build two new school buildings to replace Russell Elementary and Moscow High School.

Russell Elementary, built in 1926, is the oldest school in Moscow. Bailey said remodeling the existing building would be too expensive. Moscow High School is not big enough to meet the education or parking needs of its students, he said.

Having additional funding from the state may help the school district avoid having to ask voters to pass a bond to fund the new facilities.

"It's such a hard scenario in the state of Idaho to pass a bond because you have not only a super majority, but the state doesn't help support the funding," he said.

If two new school facilities are built, they would likely be located on the edge of town where there is enough land to accommodate them. Bailey said that by his estimate, the district would need 60 acres to accommodate the schools.

"We really feel good about our community's support," he said. "This community's been great to us, but we're also saying that we've got to find some different ways to get some of this funding done."

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) – The Illinois State Board of Education has distributed the fiscal year 2022 School Maintenance Grants, totaling $30 million in state funding, to over 600 eligible applicants.

According to the ISBE, grantees will be able to use the money to improve and maintain education infrastructure throughout the state of Illinois.  

The School Maintenance Grant Program is a dollar-for-dollar state matching grant open to school districts, cooperative high schools, vocational centers, and special education cooperatives.

Eligible applicants are able to receive up to $50,000 to put toward completing proposed maintenance projects. 

The Maryland Energy Administration (MEA) granted awards to seven Maryland public school districts through its Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22) Decarbonizing Public Schools program, totaling more than $700,000.

The grants will help finance projects “reducing greenhouse gas emissions and overall lifecycle costs while planning the development of high-performance schools.” Two categories of projects were awarded: energy data management and net zero energy school planning.

BUCKHANNON, W.Va. (WBOY) — The Upshur County School District Thursday announced the approval of a Major Improvement Project for $882,625 in grant funding for additions and renovations for Tennerton Elementary School.

The money was given to Tennerton Elementary by the School Building Authority, as part of a Comprehensive Educational Facilities Plan to address the school’s critical needs.

The main renovations will go toward student safety with a new fire sprinkler system and a brand new Safe Schools entry, which school officials say will prevent unauthorized access to the school building.

“Having that Safe Schools entry where we can allow people to come into the school in a safe manner, not just be open to the classrooms when you come in the entrance that’s really important to us,” said Upshur County Schools Superintendent Sara Lewis-Stankus.

Five Colorado cities, including Denver, filed a lawsuit against the state Thursday over a new law that exempts building materials used for public schools from sales taxes, arguing it would decrease their revenue base by millions of dollars. 

Denver, Boulder, Commerce City, Pueblo and Westminster sued in Denver District Court, challenging House Bill 1024, which Gov. Jared Polis signed into law in April. The bill, set to take effect on Aug. 10, extends an existing sales tax exemption for building materials used in public works projects to also apply to public school construction projects within home rule municipalities.

Home rule municipalities are self-governing localities with the power to make their own laws and avoid state interference in local issues. The lawsuit claims the bill violates the state constitution by imposing state control over the taxing authority of home rule municipalities.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Fifteen Alaska local governments are set to share around $300 million to pay for old school construction costs as part of the budget passed by the Alaska Legislature last month that was signed into law by Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Tuesday.
Before 2015, communities with a tax base would bond for the costs of building new schools, often over many years, and the state of Alaska would then pay for around 60-70% of that incurred debt. The state’s reimbursement was subject to appropriation as noted on the bonding proposals put out to voters.
The state’s fiscal crisis saw the state’s payments come under the chopping block. The Legislature implemented a moratorium on incurring new school construction costs until 2020, which was then extended until 2025.
In 2016, then Gov. Bill Walker vetoed 25% of the state’s annual contribution for school bond debt. Gov. Mike Dunleavy controversially vetoed 50% of the state’s payments each year between 2019 and 2021 as legislators grappled with a $1.6 billion deficit.
Nils Andreassen, executive director of the Alaska Municipal League, said those vetoes had a “drastic” effect on some small communities’ bottom lines that expected the state to pay its share.
“It meant that they had to pick this up on their own,” Andreassen said. “They drew down from savings, from their maintenance accounts. It meant that they weren’t able to fund their other priorities. It meant tax increases for some communities.”
An ongoing windfall from high oil prices has changed the state’s fiscal picture, turning a billion-dollar deficit into a multibillion-dollar surplus. The Legislature appropriated roughly $300 million during the last legislative session to reimburse municipalities for school bond debt for this year, and each of the three years of Dunleavy’s vetoes.
“I don’t think we can underestimate how big a difference this is going to make for many of those communities,” Andreassen said.
 

Sometimes, in the middle of class, teachers at the To’Hajiilee Community School suddenly run out the door.
They run to their cars. This K-12 school in TóHajiilee, New Mexico, was built in a flood plain, and when the walls of water inevitably come rushing down from the nearby canyon, teachers’ cars can get washed away if they don’t move them to higher ground quickly enough. At least one teacher has already lost a car, and school officials are used to hurrying children onto a bus to shuttle them to safety.
The floods have been a problem for decades, well before the high school was abruptly vacated in March. Its foundation was crumbling apart as the building sank into mud. Walls had visible cracks. Water poured through the roof when it rained. The U.S. government deemed the building unsafe and shut it down for major repairs. The high school students are all remote now, with teachers, somehow, teaching classes virtually that previously involved hands-on work in chemistry labs, in culinary arts classes and in woodworking.
Virtual teaching only works if you can get online, though. Many of the kids in this community about 35 miles west of Albuquerque don’t have internet access. For that matter, they don’t have clean drinking water at home, either. To accommodate this, the school created a “learning hub” on site, which is just a room where students can come take virtual classes. A school counselor sits with them while they work on computers.
 

Relief is finally arriving for Clinton City Schools in the form of much needed roofing repairs as part of another of their planned construction projects for this summer.
For the past few year CCS have been in dire need of these repairs, which totaled in the millions for full completion. According to school officials, this was a monumental task as the system is allotted no more than roughly $400,000 yearly for infrastructure repair to use on the schools. That changed this year due to needs-based capital funding becoming available for CCS to access.
John Lowe, CCS executive director of technology and auxiliary services, detailed how this funding came to be that helped jump-start their roof repair project.
“There are multiple avenues for school capital needs, predominantly funded in the state of North Carolina through the education lottery proceeds,” he said. “One of them is the Needs Based Public Schools Capital Fund. Up until this year, that particular fund was only for new school construction.”
“The General Assembly, however, voted and agreed in the current biennium budget to allow applications for repairs in that.” Lowe added.
Lowe went on to describe the rough shape their roofs are in.
 

The federal government must create a new “clearinghouse” of school safety practices backed by research as part of the gun reform legislation President Joe Biden signed Saturday. But some experts say the existing online collection of studies, practices and grant opportunities  hasn’t served educators well.

“The distance between the federal government and your local school principal is huge,” said Ken Trump, a school safety expert who consults with districts across the country. “The federal government is the last place they look for resources.”

Launched in 2020, Schoolsafety.gov was an outgrowth of the Federal Commission on School Safety created after the 2018 mass shooting that left 17 dead at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Max Schachter, the father of one of the students killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, pushed for the updated clearinghouse in the new law. 

The legislation gives the Department of Homeland Security responsibility for the Federal Clearinghouse on School Safety Evidence-based Practices. That could suggest the resources included would lean more toward what is often referred to as “hardening” schools with armed officers and tighter security, Trump said. 

“Are we really saying that our education departments are inept and incapable of handling school safety?” he asked. 

A years-long pandemic. A youth mental health crisis. School shootings. Kids and schools have a lot to deal with these days. Worsening extreme heat is yet another challenge to add to the list.

Last week, the board of the L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD) approved a $13 billion-dollar operating budget that includes funding to help.

Some $58 million of those funds are slated to go towards outdoor education initiatives, as well as adding more green space to L.A.’s famously asphalt-heavy schoolyards — something advocates say is a long time coming.

“When we think about the places that we have created for students, which are schoolyards that are completely covered in asphalt…that's not conducive to creating an environment that is healthy for kids to learn and thrive,” said Robin Mark, the L.A. director for the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, which for years has worked with a coalition of community organizations to get more green space at L.A. schools.

She said more trees and greenery at schools is essential for building resilience in the face of the climate crisis: Southern California is increasingly experiencing more extreme heat. For example, Santa Clarita is projected to have 124 days above 90°F by as soon as 2035 if emissions aren’t curbed significantly to slow global heating this decade.

SLEEPY EYE — After tabling the topic for clarification, the Sleepy Eye School Board approved a Solar for Schools solar array purchase, facility lease and power purchase agreements Wednesday.
Superintendent John Cselovszki said contracts with Ideal Energies Inc. of Minneapolis that are part of the Minnesota Department of Commerce’s Solar for Schools Program included separate agreements for the high school and elementary school.
“Everything is as it should be now,” Cselovszki said. “Agreements were reviewed by city of Sleepy Eye staff and Tim Harbo, our maintenance consultant.”
Earlier this year, Cselovszki told the board that the district was awarded two Solar of Schools grants for a solar power project that could save district taxpayers about 20%, or $7,579 a year, for 20 years until the project is paid for and is owned by the school district.
The Solar for Schools program includes Ideal Energies helping the school monitor electrical usage, production and dispatching field service if needed.
 

Six schools in Morris County, New Jersey, are installing solar modules that are expected to generate 1.84 megawatts of energy each year and significantly reduce carbon emissions.

The Montville Township Public Schools project is funded by a 15-year solar power purchase agreement (PPA) supplied by Solar Landscape, and SolarEdge is installing the system. The installations are part of an estimated 600 solar projects that have been added to New Jersey schools as part of a program to decarbonize the state’s educational facilities.

The PPA allows the school district to install the solar arrays with no upfront investment and will let it purchase the electricity the solar project generates at a lower cost than for energy that would come straight from the grid.

The project is expected to save the Montville Township Public Schools nearly $1 million in energy costs annually over the next 15 years. It will also reduce carbon emissions by the equivalent of 1,500 tons of coal burned each year.

SolarEdge is installing the system and was chosen for the project because of its track record of similar projects at schools, which the companies say aren’t always straightforward. The roofs on older buildings can have obstructions like skylights that can restrict module placement and reduce energy production.

Only a few years ago, it was considered a fluke for temperatures in New England, the mid-Atlantic states and the Pacific northwest to reach 85 degrees Fahrenheit (85 °F) before the official start of summer. But as the 2021-2022 academic year drew to a close, thousands of students and their teachers found themselves scrambling to stay comfortable in sweltering classrooms.
Some public school districts felt the extreme heat was a danger and closed early on several steamy May and June days. The situation reflected the gross neglect of public infrastructure for the 55 million mostly Black, Asian and Latinx kids who attend the country’s approximately 130,000 K-12 programs.
“Even before [COVID-19], we knew that we had an indoor air quality crisis in schools that were built 50 or 100 years ago,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) told Truthout. “You can’t teach or learn in freezing cold or scorching hot buildings. This is a public health issue, an equity issue.”
 

WESTERLY — A high-ranking state education official is encouraging town officials and residents to move forward with plans to address deficiencies in the town's school buildings while the state remains able to offer special reimbursement funds.

Joseph da Silva, who serves as school construction coordinator and architectural design reviewer for the state Department of Education's School Building Authority, which administers financial reimbursements to districts that participate in the department's "necessity of construction" program, and William Trimble, the authority's finance officer, walked through the town's three elementary schools on Wednesday before reviewing the program with the School Building Subcommittee.

The presentation by da Silva and Trimble focused on the 35% base reimbursement that the town qualifies for, as well as an additional 17.5% that could be attained if the building project meets incentive thresholds. They both stressed the need to have a project that is ready to commence construction by December 2023 or else the town will risk missing out on the incentives, which are expected to expire.

CHEYENNE — For years, Wyoming’s school capital construction account was primarily funded by federal coal lease bonus revenues. 
“Those have essentially gone away,” Senior School Finance Analyst Matthew Willmarth with the Legislative Service Office told the Select Committee on School Facilities at an interim meeting in Casper this week. “There is no revenue forecast to be collected from that revenue source.” 
To help make up a portion of Wyoming’s deficit in school funding due to disappearing federal coal lease bonuses, lawmakers in 2018 eliminated an $8 million cap on state mineral royalties that could be appropriated for schools. 
Looking ahead, Laramie County School District No.1 is poised to get some money for its own construction projects. 
The state Constitution allows for one-third of all state mineral royalties to be appropriated for Wyoming schools, but lawmakers enacted an $8 million cap on that allocation in the 1990s. 
The 2021-22 biennium was the first in which a full one-third of state mineral royalties could be deposited into the school capital construction account without that cap, Willmarth said. 
“That allowance of the full one-third to be distributed for school capital construction purposes means there will be about $45 million more this year,” Willmarth said. 
 

As part of a district-wide push for increased sustainability, Northside Elementary/Coulee Montessori is the next school in La Crosse making the shift to solar energy.
With installation scheduled to begin later this summer, the school's roof will include a network of 292 solar panels capable of generating 20 percent of the school's energy needs. District administrators, elected officials and leaders of the project gathered Monday to celebrate meeting their funding goal and announce future projects.
Leadership and staff from Solar on La Crosse Schools (SOLS) also attended the celebration event. The organization partners with the school district to coordinate fundraising efforts and to help strategize for solar installation.
"Schools use about 43 percent as much power as all of the office buildings in the United States, said Ben Golden, a member of the SOLS leadership team. "It's a great place to start when we're thinking about clean energy."
The projected reduction in carbon emissions created by the solar panels is equal to planting around 160,000 trees and will save around 7 million pounds of coal, Golden said.
Northside Elementary relies on a geothermal heating and cooling system, meaning it requires twice as much electric energy as other similar buildings. This made it a prime candidate for solar energy use, according to Mike Freybler, the energy and transportation manager with the La Crosse School District.
 

EAST SIDE — Southeast Side community members are urging Chicago Public Schools to take action after pieces of a high school’s ceiling collapsed following fierce winds and heavy rain swept through the Chicago area last week.

George Washington High School teachers, parents and former students and members of the Southeast Environmental Task Force said Tuesday a metal beam from the building’s ceiling fell in a hallway on the school’s second floor the morning after the storm. Teachers and students were in the building, 3535 E. 114th St., when the collapse occurred and said a school security guard struck by the debris was hospitalized.

Social science teacher Donald Davis created an online petition asking CPS to a build new green, carbon-neutral high school and elementary school on the Southeast Side. It has nearly 1,700 signatures. 

QUINCY, Fla. (WCTV) - The Gadsden County School district is working on a $60 million project to build a new school because several buildings have been poorly maintained during the past 50 years, according to district officials.

“It will really make a difference,” said Gadsden County Schools Superintendent Elijah Key. “We’re talking about buildings now where the A/C may go out, so kids are dealing with heat.”

The new K-8 school would combine students from Stewart Street Elementary, George W. Munroe Elementary, and James A. Shanks Middle School. The new school would be built on the current grounds of Shanks Middle School, which would be torn down.

Key said, right now, the buildings are not conducive to student learning.

One parent said building a new school for students is a good start, but there needs to be an investment in the classroom as well.

APPLE CREEK – Members of the community and Southeast Local School District gathered outside of Waynedale High School Monday night to watch and participate in the first groundbreaking ceremony the district has had in almost 60 years.  
Construction of the roughly 170,000-square-foot school will not start this summer — the rest of the construction bids for the project have not yet been awarded Treasurer Mark Dickerhoof said — but foundation work such as ground leveling begins this week.  
Although the construction is not expected to be completed until the summer of 2024, school officials and community members are excited for the new building and the possibilities it opens for the district.  
Building in the works for some time  
The process of requesting building proposals began back in November 2019, Dickerhoof said, and further progress was delayed when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the following spring. The district was able to pick things up last spring, choosing the architecture firm BSHM Architects and a construction manager from CT Taylor Construction.