News items come from the U.S. Department of Educations's National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities (NCEF).

State (MD) OKs School Improvements
-- Shawn J. Soper, MD Coast Dispatch

Maryland: February 3, 2012 -- The state’s Board of Public Works last week approved roughly $250 million in public school improvement projects across Maryland, including several significant upgrades in Worcester and Wicomico counties. The Board of Public Works, which includes Gov. Martin O’Malley, Comptroller Peter Franchot and Treasurer Nancy Kopp, last week approved a laundry list of recommendations from the Interagency Committee on School Construction (IAC) for the fiscal year 2013 budget totaling roughly $250 million statewide. Among the projects approved last week for Worcester County included new heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems for Berlin Intermediate School, Pocomoke Middle School and Snow Hill Middle School totaling $47,000 each. The three county schools are all at least 40 years old and each has HVAC units at least 30 years old. For years, the Worcester Board of Education has tried a piece-meal approach to replacing the school’s failing heating and air conditioning systems but the process has been a slow one. For example, the current proposed budget identifies a total of 21 HVAC units that need replacing, but the spending plan only includes funding for two or three replacements.

Oklahoma Gets First LEED Gold K-12 Building
-- Susan DeFreitas, Earth Techling

Oklahoma: February 2, 2012 -- Green schools have been cropping up all over the country in recent years, some of them far from noted green building centers. Such is the case with the the Jenks Math and Science Center in Jenks, Okla., (a suburb of Tulsa) which recently became the state’s first LEED-certified K-12 building. The project was built by Tulsa-based Manhattan Construction and designed by Tulsa-based GH2 Architects, and Michigan-based TMP Architecture, and has garnered LEED Gold certification. Encompassing 91,580 square feet, the Jenks Public Schools Math and Science Center includes ten math classrooms, fourteen flexible science teaching studios, a student health center, a 200-seat multi-purpose meeting room and a 105-seat planetarium. Located in the center of the main Jenks high school campus — creating a visual and physical link between the Freshman Academy and senior high classroom buildings — the building was designed to encourage collaboration between math and science and also between the different grade levels.

Classroom farm at Bronx public high school, Green Bronx Machine, shut down despite fresh successes
-- Daniel Beekman, NY Daily News

New York: February 2, 2012 -- A celebrated classroom farm that yielded fresh produce and great jobs for students at a South Bronx public high school has been quietly shut down. For two years, Discovery High School special education teacher Stephen Ritz used vertical garden plots known as "green walls" to teach science and technology. He grew crops such as tomatoes and celery with his students, who sold some of the produce at school and donated the rest to a local food pantry. Lesson plans developed there are now used by the State University of New York. "I’m disappointed....the kids loved it," said Ritz, a veteran teacher, speaking out this week about the school’s termination of the Green Bronx Machine program last August. "It really took root because it cultivated minds and harvested hope." The city Department of Education referred questions to Discovery Principal Rolando Rivera, who failed to return repeated requests for an interview about why the program was shut down.

Flawed study mis-rates potential DC school closings
-- Steven Glazerman, Greater Washington

District of Columbia: February 1, 2012 -- DC would likely close some successful schools while expanding failing schools if it relies upon a study released last week. The much-anticipated study, which the Deputy Mayor for Education commissioned to help plan school closures and charter school policies, is highly flawed. The goal of the study was to help DCPS balance out near-­empty buildings in some locations with over­crowded ones in others, taking into account the quality of the schools. For all its colorful charts and maps, the report uses a faulty measure of school quality and does not make any serious attempt to predict how families and schools might react to the changes it proposes. With such important decisions at stake, the Deputy Mayor should insist upon more rigorous analysis. The report authors crunched a lot of numbers in an admirably short period of time and produced some very interesting descriptive statistics, like the percentage of students below 185 percent of the poverty line in charters (75) versus DCPS (67). The study counts, within each of 39 neighborhood clusters in the city, the number of "performance," or high quality, seats in schools and compares that to the number of school-age students living in that cluster. The difference is called a service gap. It recommends schools for closure, or in some cases investment, to reduce these service gaps. But it doesn't justify the type of investment. Is it facilities? More teachers? Better teachers? The authors define a "performance seat" as a seat in a school in the top tier of a 4-tier rating system they devised. Each school's tier comes from estimated percentages of its students who were judged "proficient" on the state assessment test in recent years, projected 4 years into the future assuming a straight line trend. This study raises a lot of questions for most researchers and even lay readers. Two big flaws stand out, which are so basic and could do significant damage if city leaders overlook the problems. It uses a flawed measure of school performance. At the heart of this paper is a 4-tier rating of school quality that relies on the percent of students who are proficient on the state test (called the DC-CAS). Never mind the fact that a proficiency rate throws away information by focusing only on whether a score was above or below a fixed cut point instead of how high or low it was. Student proficiency rates have long been discredited as a school performance measure because proficiency rates capture student achievement at a point in time, but say little about how much the school or its teachers contributed to its current students' performance.

John Horgan: The Peninsula's school building boom roars on
-- John Horgan, Mercury News

California: February 1, 2012 -- Looking for an economic stimulus package that will have an immediate impact? Check out San Mateo County's public schools. Along the Peninsula, a massive building boom -- easily the most impressive since the go-go post-World War II era _ has been going great guns since 2000. And there is little let-up in sight. More bonds to finance more projects in 2012 are being discussed. All told, according to statistics provided by the San Mateo County Office of Education in Redwood Shores, 20 of the 23 area public elementary and high school districts have been spending a total of just over $2 billion created by 28 taxpayer-approved construction bond measures since the turn of the century. Most of the successful bonds, primarily geared for modernization and renovation, along with additional new facilities, have been OK'd by voters in elections requiring at least a 55 percent approval threshold. Two secondary school districts, Sequoia Union and San Mateo Union, with seven bond packages between them, are responsible for about half that huge dollar figure. In fact, the $2 billion price tag -- a welcome windfall for contractors, subcontractors and laborers alike -- doesn't tell the whole story by any means. Add in interest and it approaches twice that number. Further, some districts have taken advantage of other sources of investment income (for solar energy projects, for example) to augment their local funds. And there's more.

IFF study of D.C. schools: The pushback begins
-- Bill Turque, Washington Post

District of Columbia: January 31, 2012 -- Deputy Mayor for Education De’Shawn Wright has encountered some sharply negative responses to the IFF study of school capacity in the nation’s capital. The study commissioned by D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), made public Jan. 26, divided traditional public and public charter schools into four tiers, based primarily on test scores. It took a deep dive into 10 seriously underserved neighborhoods to assess their education needs. Wright stresses that IFF delivered recommendations only, and he promises that the report is the beginning of a long conversation with communities about the future of their schools. But his statement Monday that the report “does not call for the closure” of DCPS schools and “does not recommend transforming those schools into charter schools” contradicts what is in the document. On page six, the report says (with my addition of bold type for relevant passages): “IFF recommends: 1. Invest in facilities and programs to accelerate performance in Tier 2 schools. 2. Close or turnaround Tier 4 DCPS schools. Close Tier 4 charter schools. In a letter to Gray, Cathy Reilly of SHAPPE (Senior High Alliance of Parents, Principals and Educators) said the report leaves an impression that decisions have been made before people have had a chance to be heard. “The choice to release this report with these recommendations as the out-of-boundary and enrollment process prepares to kick off has already hurt and destabilized the very neighborhoods we should be working to strengthen,” Reilly said. “Even if unintentionally, it sent the message to the communities where trust is very thin, that decisions have all ready been made. This severely threatens the potential of a process that will truly engage our citizens in a conversation about the quality education we all want.” Mark Simon of Teachers and Parents for Real Education Reform, questioned IFF’s heavy reliance on test score data, especially in light of evidence that raises the possibility scores were inflated at some schools by cheating in 2008-09. Simon added:

Class sizes swell as state aid declines, enrollment rises
-- KIM ARCHER, Tulsa World

Oklahoma: January 31, 2012 -- Class size remains a critical issue in some Tulsa-area school districts as they struggle to recover from successive state budget cuts over the past few years. Oklahoma has had class-size restrictions in place since 1990 when House Bill 1017 became law and mandated class sizes of 20 for kindergarten to sixth grade. But as state budget shortfalls grew, the state Legislature in 2010 placed a two-year moratorium on imposing penalties on districts that fail to comply with class-size restrictions. "We really try to protect class size, but this particular year we've seen some of our classes at some of our elementary sites on the high side of 25," said Claremore Superintendent Mike McClaren. "We really try to keep those down below 25." Claremore lost more than $5 million to budget cuts the past three years and is operating with 25 fewer teachers, McClaren said. "We're hoping we can turn that tide, but it depends on what this legislative cycle looks like," he said. In past years, Union Assistant Superintendent Kathy Dodd said she could hire a teacher based on pre-enrollment figures to ensure appropriate class sizes before school started. But budget cuts in recent years have left no room for additional hires and have forced Union and other school districts to wait until the school year begins to adjust class sizes. That often means teachers are shuffled from one class to another, even one grade to another, to balance class sizes after school has begun, she said. "It's been detrimental to students, and it's not been appreciated by parents. It's usually disruptive to the learning process," Dodd said.

More public schools implementing 'safe rooms'
-- DEANNA CORONADO, Daily Dunklin Democrat

Missouri: January 31, 2012 -- In the last seven years, approximately 32 facilities classified as "safe rooms" by the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been built statewide in public school districts or community colleges throughout Missouri. FEMA notes that an additional nine projects are in progress, according to the most recent information available to the agency. However, in the immediate Bootheel coverage area of the Daily Dunklin Democrat, only one school offers this kind of facility, although others insist that their building's remain structurally sound and meet standard safety guidelines. Schools talked to in the local area include Senath-Hornersville, Southland, Kennett, Holcomb and Delta C-7. Of these districts, Southland Public Schools, located at Cardwell, is the only one to have a building on its campus that meets FEMA "safe room" guidelines. The building was an extension to its existing classrooms and was constructed around 2006. It houses multi-purpose rooms, additional learning labs and a few classrooms for the elementary students. Former superintendent Raymond Lasley, a long-term administrator for the district, was in on the deal when it was inked and confirmed that the hallway of the new addition is engineered to meet all FEMA standards. "The floor, walls and ceiling are made of reinforced concrete," Lasley detailed. "The doors, hinges, and locking mechanisms all meet FEMA standards to withstand 100-mile per hour winds for a period of up to 30 minutes, and the glass in the doors is made of an approved shatterproof material." According to Lasley, the hallway is approximately 150-foot in length and 12-foot wide in most places. He said it is large enough to accommodate all of Southland's students in an emergency and procedures are in place, which the students are well versed in, in the event a storm hits on campus. "The cost difference between a regular hallway and a safe hallway was negligible," Lasley added, in terms of the costs associated with including these extra specifications. Southland footed the bill for the building project on its own, fully funded through reserve money and what administrator's called a "sizable surplus budget due to good management of the school's funds."

U.S. Schools Compete to Slash Energy Use in 2012
-- Veronique Pittman, Huffington Post

National: January 30, 2012 -- Students in more than 116 schools across the U.S. are competing to reduce their electricity consumption by participating in the 2012 national Green Cup Challenge (GCC) during peak winter energy usage, Jan. 18 to Feb. 15. (New York City and Chicago will launch separate Challenges on March 2). The national Challenge, now in its fifth year, is a project of the non-profit Green Schools Alliance (GSA), and is designed to raise awareness about energy conservation and provide concrete action towards reduction. "Experts agree that the best way to save energy is to use less," says Peg Watson, GSA's founder and president. "You can't manage what you don't measure. The GCC teaches students that they have the power to save energy in their schools and homes, and that their actions can translate into positive change in the world," she says. According to Energystar.gov, America's K-12 schools spend more than $7.5 billion annually on energy, but as much as 30 percent of that energy ($2.25 billion) is used inefficiently or unnecessarily. The GCC has shown that, through awareness and small behavior changes, those wasteful patterns can be reversed.

Site not fit for a new Chicago school, neighbors say
-- Joel Hood, Chicago Tribune

Illinois: January 29, 2012 -- Chicago Public Schools' plan to build an elementary school on polluted property in the shadow of the Chicago Skyway and an expiring coal-fired power plant near the Indiana border is raising the ire of parents in the working-class East Side neighborhood. CPS already has paid more than $3 million for about 2 acres near 104th Street and South Indianapolis Avenue, a triangular parcel near a heavily congested traffic corridor, train tracks and towering industrial plants. Preliminary testing at the site, which had been home to a gas station and more recently a carwash, uncovered eight underground gasoline storage tanks, one known to be leaking, and unsafe levels of the chemical benzene in the soil. But an official with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency cautioned that the true extent of the contamination won't be known until more testing is completed. No matter the level of pollution, records show CPS bought the property "as is," which means the district will cover all the cleanup costs before it breaks ground on school construction. "It's a horrible site, and it would be terrible for students," said Jose Garza, chairman of the local school council at nearby Gallistel Elementary Language Academy. Soil concerns aside, the neighborhood suffers from some of the poorest air quality in the state, thanks to a coal-fired power plant in nearby Hammond that is slated to close this year and thousands of trucks, cars and freight trains that roll through the area each day.

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