by Brianna Crandall — March 25, 2016—The State of Our Schools: America’s K-12 Facilities report, just released by the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the 21st Century School Fund and the National Council on School Facilities, shows that the nation faces a projected annual shortfall of $46 billion in school funding, despite significant effort on the part of local communities.
Rick Fedrizzi, CEO and founding chair, USGBC, pointed out:
One out of every six people in the U.S. spends each day in a K-12 public school classroom, yet there is very little oversight over America’s public school buildings. It is totally unacceptable that there are millions of students across the country who are learning in dilapidated, obsolete and unhealthy facilities that pose obstacles to their learning and overall wellbeing. U.S. public school infrastructure is funded through a system that is inequitably affecting our nation’s students, and this has to change.
The State of our Schools report features an in-depth state-by-state analysis of investment in school infrastructure and focuses on 20 years of school facility investment nationwide, as well as funding needed moving forward to make up for annual investment shortfalls for essential repairs and upgrades. The report also proposes recommendations for investments, innovations and reforms to improve learning environments for children in all U.S. public schools.
The report compares historic spending levels to the investment that will be needed moving forward to maintain today’s school building inventory. Estimated facilities investment requirements are based on building industry best practice standards that are adapted to public school infrastructure. This comparison reveals a projected gap of $46 billion that the nation must overcome to provide healthy, safe, and adequate school facilities for its children. Only three states’ average spending levels meet or exceed the standards for investment: Texas, Florida and Georgia.
The analysis found that the federal government provides almost no capital construction funding for school facilities, and state support for school facilities varies widely. Local school districts bear the heaviest burden in making the investments needed to build and improve school facilities. When school districts cannot afford to make these significant investments, they are often forced to make more frequent building repairs from their operating funds — the same budget that pays for teacher salaries, instructional materials and general programming.
Currently, six states (Massachusetts, Wyoming, Connecticut, Ohio, Kentucky and Hawaii) pay for all or nearly all of the capital construction costs for schools in their state, while 12 states (Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wisconsin) provide no direct support to districts for capital construction responsibilities. In the remaining 32 states, the levels of state support vary greatly, and the federal government contributes almost nothing to capital construction to help alleviate disparities.
Mary Filardo, author of the report and executive director, 21st Century School Fund, pointed out;
Even though K-12 schools are the largest public building sector in the U.S. and represent the second largest category of public infrastructure investment, there is no current dataset at a national level and many states could not report on the size of their public school inventory.
The report highlights the need for better facilities information at the local, state and national levels. It has been more than 20 years since the federal government completed a comprehensive assessment of school facilities, notes the Center. At the time, more than half of U.S. schools had indoor air quality issues, and more than 15,000 schools were circulating air deemed unfit to breathe.
Overall the report found that communities have been doing their best to address the conditions of their schools but are in need of additional support and more equitable funding. The State of Our Schools report identifies four key strategies for addressing the structural deficits in the K–12 public education infrastructure:
- Understand public school facilities conditions and provide communities access to accurate data about school facilities.
- Engage in education facilities planning using best practices from across the country, and support local communities in proposing creative and practical plans to improve their public school facilities.
- Support new public funding to provide what is needed to build and maintain adequate and equitable school facilities.
- Leverage public and private resources to extend a community’s investments, utilizing a new generation of structures, funding streams, and partnerships.
To download the full State of Our Schools: America’s K-12 Facilities report, and to find out the conditions in specific local school districts, visit the Center for Green Schools Web site.
