improving school facilities essay

• The Importance of School Facilities in Improving Student Outcomes

Introduction

 A growing body of research has found that school facilities can have a profound impact on both teacher and student outcomes. With respect to teachers, school facilities affect teacher recruitment, retention, commitment, and effort. With respect to students, school facilities affect health, behavior, engagement, learning, and growth in achievement. Thus, researchers generally conclude that without adequate facilities and resources, it is extremely difficult to serve large numbers of children with complex needs.

According to the US General Accounting Office (GAO) almost three-fourths of existing US schools in 1996 was constructed before 1970. Of these schools, about one-third of schools had need of extensive repair or replacement and almost two-thirds had at least one inadequate building feature such as substandard plumbing, roofing, or electrical systems. Moreover, 58-percent had at least one unsatisfactory environmental condition such as inadequate ventilation, acoustics, or physical security.

Besides general maintenance and construction issues, researchers have found most schools lack 21st century facilities in the form of infrastructure, laboratories, and instructional space. More than half do not have sufficiently flexible instructional space for effective teaching to take place.

Thus, facility quality is an important predictor of teacher retention and student learning. The physical and emotional health of students and teachers depend on the quality of the physical location, which makes establishing safe, healthy buildings essential.

The Impact of Facilities

Improving the quality of school facilities is an expensive undertaking. However, when the positive impacts of facility improvement on teachers and students are translated into dollar figures, the rewards of such investments far outstrip the cost of the investments. There are five primary facets of school facilities: acoustics/noise, air quality, lighting, temperature, and space. These are addressed below.

Acoustics and Noise

Noise levels greatly affect teacher and student performance. In fact, excessive noise causes dis-satisfaction and stress in both teachers and students. Research has found that schools that have classrooms with less external noise are positively associated with greater student engagement and achievement compared to schools with classrooms that have noisier environments. Thus, building schools that buffer external noise from classrooms can improve student outcomes.

Air Quality

Indoor air quality is also a concern because poor air quality is a major contributor to absenteeism for students with asthma. Research also indicates that many schools suffer from “sick building syndrome” which affects the absenteeism and performance of all students. Moreover, bacteria, viruses, and allergens that contribute to childhood disease are commonly found in schools with poor ventilation systems.

Indoor pollutants are also emitted from office equipment, flooring materials, paints, adhesives, cleaning products, pesticides, and insects. All of these environmental hazards can negatively affect children, particularly in schools with poor ventilation systems.

Before the advent of cheap electricity, schools often relied on natural lighting. As electric power costs declined, the amount of artificial light used in schools increased. Research has shown that artificial lighting has negative impacts on those in schools while natural lighting has positive impacts. In fact, research has shown that not only does classroom lighting boost the morale of teachers and students, appropriate amounts of natural lighting also reduces off-task behavior and improves test scores. One study found that students with the most exposure to natural daylight progressed 20% faster in in math and 26% faster in reading than students who were taught in environments with the least amount of natural light.

Proper Temperature and Control of Temperature

One consistent research finding across individuals of all ages is that the temperature in which a person works affects engagement levels and overall productivity—including student achievement. Anyone that has worked in a classroom or office that is too hot or too cold knows how difficult it can be when trying to work when the temperature is uncomfortable. According to the best analyses, the ideal temperature range for effective learning in reading and mathematics is between 68º and 74º.

To maintain such a temperature in every classroom within a school, teachers typically need to be able to control the temperature in their own classroom. At the very least, teachers should be able to control the temperature of small blocks of classrooms that receive the same amount of sunlight and have similar exposures to outside temperatures.

Classroom Size and Space

Overcrowded classrooms—and schools—have consistently been linked to increased levels of aggression in students. Overcrowded classrooms are also associated with decreased levels of student engagement and, therefore, decreased levels of learning.

Alternatively, classrooms with ample space are more conducive to providing appropriate learning environments for students and associated with increased student engagement and learning. Classroom space is particularly relevant with the current emphasis on 21 st century learning such as ensuring students can work in teams, problem solve, and communicate effectively. Classrooms with adequate space to reconfigure seating arrangements facilitate the use of different teaching methods that are aligned to 21 st century skills. Creating private study areas as well as smaller learning centers reduces visual and auditory interruptions, and is positively related to student development and achievement.

Twenty-First Century Learning

Policymakers, educators, and business people are now focused on the need to ensure that students learn 21 st century skills such as teamwork, collaboration, effective communication, and other skills. As noted above, older buildings simply are not conducive to the teaching of 21 st century skills. This is particularly true with the respect to reconfiguring seating arrangements to facilitate various modes of teaching and learning and the use of technology in the classroom as a mode of teaching and learning.

Conclusions

A large body of research over the past century has consistently found that school facilities impact teaching and learning in profound ways. Yet state and local policymakers often overlook the impact facilities can play in improving outcomes for both teachers and students. While improving facilities comes at a financial cost, the benefits of such investments often surpass the initial fiscal costs. Policymakers, thus, should focus greater attention on the impacts of facilities and adopt a long-term cost-benefit perspective on efforts to improve school facilities.

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How crumbling school facilities perpetuate inequality 

By Mary Filardo, Jeffrey M. Vincent, Kevin J. Sullivan | Apr 29, 2019 | Feature Article

Student learning is undermined in poorly designed and maintained buildings, and students from low-income families are more likely to attend school in such buildings.  

With Congress and the president pledging to address America’s long-term infrastructure needs, the challenges of maintaining school facilities are gaining more visibility. It is about time, too, because our public school facility infrastructure needs significant upgrading. The average public school building was built around 1968 — more than 50 years ago — and the National Center for Education Statistics reports that half of all public schools in the United States need at least one major facility repair (Alexander & Lewis, 2014). The American Society of Civil Engineers (2017) gave our public K-12 infrastructure a quality grade of D+ on their 2017 Infrastructure Report Card.  

However, despite tremendous needs, many of our schools lack the funds to renovate or modernize their obsolete and crumbling facilities. The  State of Our Schools 2016  report documents a $38-billion-per-year shortfall on capital investments for public school construction and an additional $8-billion gap in maintenance and operations spending (Filardo, 2016). This spending gap has worsened in recent years. States and localities cut capital spending for elementary and secondary schools nationally by nearly $21 billion, or 26%, between fiscal years 2008 and 2016, after adjusting for inflation (Leachman, 2018).   

How the condition of school buildings affects education  

The Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education stated in a 2014  Dear Colleague  letter that:   

Structurally sound and well-maintained schools can help students feel supported and valued. Students are generally better able to learn and remain engaged in instruction, and teachers are better able to do their jobs, in well-maintained classrooms that are well-lit, clean, spacious, and heated and air-conditioned as needed. In contrast, when classrooms are too hot, too cold, overcrowded, dust-filled, or poorly ventilated, students and teachers suffer.  

Decades of research confirm that the conditions and qualities of school facilities affect students, teachers, and overall academic achievement. In their review of the peer-reviewed literature, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health conclude that “the evidence is unambiguous — the school building influences student health, thinking, and performance” (Eitland et al., 2017).  

Student achievement 

A growing body of peer-reviewed research finds a relationship between school facility quality and student achievement. A 2002 review of the literature, compiled by Mark Schneider, the  current director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education, found that, on average, researchers observed a difference in student achievement between above-standard buildings and substandard buildings to be 5 to 17 percentile points. The studies cited in this review, and most studies done since, find significant correlations between poor structural, conditional, and aesthetic attributes of school buildings (including lighting, temperature and thermal comfort, acoustics, and indoor air quality) and low student learning and achievement (Earthman, 2002; Uline & Tschannen-Moran, 2008; U.S. Department of Education, Office For Civil Rights, 2014). For example, a 2004 study of 226 schools in Houston, Texas, found that poor facility quality significantly reduced daily attendance and increased dropout rates (Branham, 2004).  

Improving school facilities can have a positive effect on student performance, as found in a 2004 analysis of student achievement and indoor environmental compliance ratings in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), led by Jack Buckley, a former director of the National Center for Education Statistics. In the study, improvements that raised a school facility’s overall environmental compliance rating from “worst” to “best” correlated to a 36-point average increase in a school’s Academic Performance Index, a nearly 6% increase over the districtwide 2003 base (Buckley, Schneider, & Shang, 2004b). Similarly, a 2014 study by economists at the University of Chicago and Princeton University on the effect of school construction in New Haven, Connecticut, found that students moving into a rebuilt or renovated school saw strong gains (0.15 standard deviations) in reading scores (Neilson & Zimmerman, 2014). And a 2017 study of the LAUSD found that moving students out of overcrowded and degraded school facilities and into new facilities brought about gains in both standardized test scores and non-cognitive measures of educational quality (Lafortune & Schönholzer, 2017).  

Teacher performance and satisfaction 

Researchers have also found that school facility quality affects teachers. For example, a 2002 survey of teachers in the Chicago Public Schools and the District of Columbia found that when teachers consider their school to be in poor physical condition, they are far more likely to report that they plan to leave their school or to leave teaching altogether than are teachers in facilities they consider to be in good or excellent condition (Buckley, Schneider, & Shang, 2004a). A 2017 study led by a University of Michigan environmental health researcher found that improved ventilation and indoor air quality at schools improved teachers’ self-reported job satisfaction (Batterman et al., 2017).  

In short, it appears that good facility conditions can improve the teaching experience and reduce teacher turnover, while poor school conditions can hinder teachers’ work (U.S. Department of Education, 2014). In particular, teachers delivering 21st-century education and preparing students for 21st-century jobs need such physical instructional elements as science labs, technology, and special education spaces. Aging school buildings that have not been modernized often lack these important features.  

How school buildings affect health and community well-being  

Substandard school buildings and grounds can negatively affect the health of children and adults in schools (Uline & Tschannen-Moran, 2008). Researchers have found that exposures to mold, poor ventilation, uncomfortable temperatures, inadequate lighting, overcrowding, and  excessive noise all have potential to harm student and teacher health, contribute to absenteeism, and reduce cognitive abilities — all of which affect academic achievement (Fisk et al., 2016). Dampness and mold in school buildings exacerbate children’s and teachers’ asthma symptoms (Dangman, Bracker, & Storey, 2005), and both children and teachers perform better with increased fresh air ventilation (Myhrvold, Olsen, & Lauridsen, 1996).  

Researchers and education practitioners now see school climate and positive social relations as necessary ingredients for academic achievement (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Thapa et al., 2013), and facilities play a strong role in these areas. Properly planned, designed, and maintained school facilities promote the health, well-being, and performance of children and adults in schools and even encourage children to want to come to school (Maxwell & Schechtman, 2012). In her study of 236 New York City middle schools, Cornell University environmental psychologist Lorraine Maxwell (2016) found that school building condition is linked to school climate and attendance, and higher ratings of school social climate predicted lower student absenteeism, which in turn predicted higher standardized test scores.  

Inadequate facilities disproportionately affect the poor  

Capital funding for facility infrastructure remains the most regressive element of public education finance. On average, local districts are responsible for 82% of their  capital  budget, which covers building new schools and renovating existing facilities (Filardo, 2016; National Center for Education Statistics, n.d.). In contrast, on average, local school districts are responsible for only about 45% of their annual  operating  budget, which pays for teachers, staff, administration, materials, and facility maintenance and operations. The federal government historically contributes 10% on average for local education operating costs (mainly under Title I), but it provides less than 1% of total capital expenditures by U.S. public school districts, mainly through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for after-the-fact disaster recovery.   

Because local school districts shoulder the vast majority of their capital facilities costs, poor and low-wealth districts are frequently unable to adequately maintain their buildings and grounds, much less modernize their schools. Therefore, districts and zip codes with higher enrollments of students from low-income families are more likely to have buildings in poor condition (Alexander & Lewis, 2014; Filardo et al., 2006).  

Poor communities whose school facilities need the most attention have typically received the least facility funding, as seen in a national study of more than 146,000 school facility improvement projects from 1995 to 2004, which found that the projects located in high-wealth zip codes had more than three times the capital investment than the schools in the lowest-wealth zip codes (Filardo et al., 2006). Recent studies of Texas (Rivera & Lopez, 2019) and California (Brunner & Vincent, 2018) both found that school districts with lower property values raised significantly less facility funding from local and state sources, compared to districts in areas with higher property values. These differences in funding mean that students from affluent districts are more likely to attend school in bright, comfortable, and healthy facilities, while students in poorer districts are likely to attend school in dilapidated, obsolete, and unhealthy facilities that pose substantial obstacles to learning and overall student well-being.  

Further, because they lack access to capital dollars, poorer districts end up making expensive emergency and short-term repairs out of their operating budgets — thus using the money that otherwise goes to pay teachers, purchase instructional equipment, and other day-to-day educational necessities. A 2015 study by University of California, Berkeley, researchers found that this is a pervasive problem across California — districts serving low-income families spend a higher proportion of their total education budget per student on the daily upkeep, operation, and repair of their facilities than do high-wealth districts (Vincent & Jain, 2015).  

Older, less well-maintained buildings are also more vulnerable when natural disasters strike, leading their students to experience more adverse effects, such as dislocation and prolonged school closures. In 2005, a total of 372,000 students were dislocated in Louisiana as a result of Hurricane Katrina, with an estimated 160,000 dislocated for months and sometimes years. According to a 2017 report by FEMA, “older school facilities are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters and in most cases school administrators do not have the financial resources to address these vulnerabilities” even though they have “a moral, and in many cases, legal responsibility to make these schools more resilient to disaster.”  

What can be done?  

Since 1973, equity advocates have challenged the constitutionality of the education finance systems in 45 states. In many of these states, funding for school facilities has been a major component of the challenge (Center for Educational Equity, n.d.). As a result, there has been some facilities relief for low-wealth districts in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Kentucky, Ohio, New Jersey, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Wyoming. However, even with increased state funding in some states, the facility-related inequities plaguing many low-wealth students persist.   

The average public school building was built around 1968 — more than 50 years ago — and the National Center for Education Statistics reports that half of all public schools in the United States need at least one major facility repair.  

The federal government can help. It can build the capacity of states to help local districts better plan and manage their facilities. It can also provide direct funding and other financing credits that address the annual capital budget shortfalls. Bills were introduced in the 116th Congress in January 2019 that would build state capacity and provide $100 billion in federal funds over the next decade for states to use to fund the lowest-wealth districts and highest-need school facilities. Similar bills attracted widespread support in 2018 in the 115th Congress. Additionally, congressional Democratic leaders have pledged that school facilities funding will be included in any broad infrastructure bill.  

During his 2016 campaign, President Donald Trump said infrastructure was a priority, and he included schools in his  vision for new investments. Meanwhile, a broad-based [Re] Build America’s School Infrastructure Coalition (BASIC) has been created to advocate increased federal support. And, according to a January 2019 poll conducted by  Politico  and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 66% of Americans — the majority of Democrats and Republicans alike — identify federal spending on public school buildings as “extremely important.” Indeed, infrastructure is one of the few issues on which the parties seem to agree. The challenges to expanding the infrastructure table to fully include preK-12 public schools  and  seeing a comprehensive infrastructure package adequately funded are still considerable.    

But public understanding of the scale, importance, and benefits of investing in public school infrastructure is increasing. That’s not surprising, given that public school facilities represent the second largest sector of public infrastructure spending (after roads) and about 1 of every 6  American children and adults spend every weekday in these often-crumbling buildings. At the local level, bipartisan support for school construction and modernization is commonplace, and local communities and most states are working hard to provide healthy, safe, and educationally inspiring school buildings and grounds. In fact, at the end of fiscal year 2016, local school districts carried $434 billion in long-term debt, nearly all from borrowing to pay for facilities improvements. But local communities cannot alleviate facilities inequities without federal support. Like the rest of our nation’s critical public infrastructure, public schools need targeted, stable, and sufficient funding to provide the buildings and grounds we need for our future.     

References  

Alexander, D. & Lewis, L. (2014).  Condition of America’s public school facilities: 2012-13  (NCES 2014-022). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.  

American Society of Civil Engineers. (2017).  Infrastructure report card.  Reston, VA: Author. www.infrastructurereportcard.org/schools  

Batterman, S., Su, F.C., Waid, A., Watkins, F., Goodwin, C., & Thun, G. (2017). Ventilation rates in recently constructed U.S. school classrooms.  Indoor Air, 27  (5), 880-890.  

Branham, D. (2004). The wise man builds his house upon the rock: The effects of inadequate school building infrastructure on student attendance.  Social Science Quarterly, 85  (5), 1112-1128.  

Brunner, E.J. & Vincent, J.M. (2018).  Financing school facilities in California: A ten-year perspective. Getting down to facts II research report.  Palo Alto, CA: Policy Analysis for California Education & Stanford University.   

Bryk, A.S. & Schneider, B. (2002).  Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement.  New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.  

Buckley, J., Schneider, M., & Shang, Y. (2004a).  The effects of school facility quality on teacher retention in urban school districts.  Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities.  

Buckley, J., Schneider, M., & Shang, Y. (2004b).  Los Angeles Unified School District school facilities and academic performance.  Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities.  

Center for Educational Equity at Teachers College. (n.d.).  School funding court decisions.  New York, NY: Author. http://schoolfunding.info/school-funding-court-decisions  

Dangman, K.H., Bracker, A.L., & Storey, E. (2005). Work-related asthma in teachers in Connecticut: Association with chronic water damage and fungal growth in schools.  Connecticut Medicine, 69  (1), 9-17.  

Earthman, G.I. (2002).  School facility conditions and student academic achievement.  Los Angeles, CA: UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, & Access.   

Eitland, E., Klingensmith, L., MacNaughton, P., Laurent, J.C., Spengler, J., Bernstein, A., & Allen, J.G. (2017).  Schools for health: Foundations for student success: How school buildings influence student health, thinking and performance.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.  

Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2017).  Safer, stronger, smarter: A guide to improving school natural hazard safety.  Washington, DC: Author.  

Filardo, M. (2016).  State of our schools: America’s K–12 facilities 2016.  Washington, DC: 21st Century School Fund and Center for Green Schools.  

Filardo, M.W., Vincent, J.M., Sung, P., & Stein, T. (2006).  Growth and disparity: A decade of U.S. public school construction.  Washington, DC: Building Educational Success Together.   

Fisk, W.J., Paulson, J.A., Kolbe, L.J., & Barnett, C.L. (2016). Significance of the school physical environment: A commentary.  Journal of School Health, 86  (7), 483-487.  

Lafortune, J. & Schönholzer, D. (2017).  Does new school construction impact student test scores and attendance?  Berkeley, CA: California Policy Lab, University of California.  

Leachman, M. (2018, June 25). K-12 funding cuts include capital spending to build and renovate schools [Blog post].  Off the charts: Policy insight beyond the numbers.  Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. www.cbpp.org/blog/k-12-funding-cuts-include-capital-spending-to-build-and-renovate-schools  

Maxwell, L.E. (2016). School building condition, social climate, student attendance.  Journal of Environmental Psychology, 46,  206-216.  

Maxwell, L.E. & Schechtman, S. (2012). The role of objective and perceived school building quality in student academic outcomes and self-perception.  Children, Youth and Environments, 22  (1), 23-51.  

Myhrvold, A.N., Olsen, E., & Lauridsen, O. (1996). Indoor environment in schools: Pupils health and performance in regard to CO2 concentrations. In  Proceedings, Indoor Air ’96. The 7th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate  (Vol. 4, pp.369-371). Nagoya, Japan: International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate.  

National Center for Education Statistics. (n.d.).  Fast facts: Back to school statistics.  Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372  

Neilson, C.A. & Zimmerman, S.D. (2014). The effect of school construction on test scores, school enrollment, and home prices.  Journal of Public Economics, 120,  18-31.  

Politico & the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. (2019, January).  Americans’ health and education priorities for the new Congress in 2019.  Cambridge, MA: Authors.  

Rivera, M.D. & Lopez, S.R. (2019). Some pennies are more equal than others: Inequitable school facilities investment in San Antonio, Texas.  Education Policy Analysis Archives, 27  (16).   

Schneider, M. (2002).  Do school facilities affect academic outcomes?  Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities.  

Thapa, A., Cohen, J., Guffey, S., & Higgins-D’Allessandro, A. (2013). A review of school climate research.  Review of Educational Research, 83  (3), 357–385.  

Uline, C. & Tschannen-Moran, M. (2008). The walls speak: The interplay of quality facilities, school climate, and student achievement.  Journal of Educational Administration, 46  (1), 55-73  

U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. (2014).  Dear colleague letter: Resource comparability.  Washington, DC: Author.   

Vincent, J.M. & Jain, L.S. (2015). G oing it alone: Can California’s K-12 school districts adequately and equitably fund school facilities?  Berkeley, CA: Center for Cities & Schools, University of California.  

Citation: Filardo, M., Vincent, J.M., & Sullivan, K. (2019).  How crumbling school facilities perpetuate inequality .  Phi Delta Kappan, 100  (8), 27-31.  

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Mary Filardo

MARY FILARDO is the founder and executive director of the 21st Century School Fund, which manages the [Re]Build America’s School Infrastructure Coalition , among other priorities.

Jeffrey M. Vincent

JEFFREY M. VINCENT is the director of public infrastructure initiatives at the Center for Cities + Schools, University of California, Berkeley.

Kevin J. Sullivan

KEVIN J. SULLIVAN is a senior adviser at the 21st Century School Fund.

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School Facilities essay

The primary goal of any school is to provide an environment conducive for learning. This would cover the external and internal structure of the school where the atmosphere should be comfortable, secure, safe, accessible, well illuminated, well ventilated, and aesthetically pleasing for both students and school personnel alike. “The school facility consists of not just the physical structure such as plumbing, mechanical, electrical, telecommunications, security, fire prevention and suppression systems, and the various building systems, but it also includes furnishing, materials and supplies, equipment and information technology.

” It should also cover different aspects of the building grounds such as playgrounds, vehicular access and parking, athletic fields, and other areas for outdoor learning. It is said that “the layout and design of a facility contributes to the place experience of students, educators, and community members. ” There are varied feelings and reactions one would feel depending on the quality of design a school has; is it spacious or crowded; the facility also contributes to ones sense of ownership, safety and security, privacy as well as sociality.

When proper planning, designing, and managing school facilities, “these factors of the so called place experience should, when possible, be taken into consideration. ” Given the situation where existing spaces be converted to an office, first let us look into the set-up. The current condition is that there is an occupation work study class with an office at the back; this is the proposed area for the future office of the Assistant Principal. It should be noted that before changing or renovating school facilities several environmental issues are needed to be addressed.

These are classroom acoustics, indoor air quality, water quality, energy conservation, and abatement or asbestos, radon, and similar hazardous elements. These should also adhere to the government mandates such as energy deregulation and other regulations and guidelines of the state or federal levels. To expand the office but make both areas functional, the walls should be knocked down and be replaced with a sliding plastic divider. That will allow some private moments for small meetings but enable to accommodate even bigger groups.

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There should be the right amount and sizes of windows for daytime lighting capabilities, proper ventilation, and exit for extreme urgent situation cases. An air-conditioning unit should also be installed to use during very hot season and this unit should particularly be mounted on the area where there is less ventilation. Although it seemed that there will be expenditures in the demolition of the wall and the purchase of the air-condition unit, however, not at all times will this unit be used. Instead, opening the walls will give the other part an access of the air from the classroom.

Oftentimes, if the air can already pass through the windows then there will be little use of electric generated equipments this will save on some of the operational cost but with a fully functional space. The demolition of the wall must be thoroughly reviewed by an engineer because it can be part of the structure and it can cause a collapse of the entire floor. Unless it is guaranteed to be safe, then it can be torn down. An alternative solution is to open the upper part of the wall to create a 1 foot opening to let air come in.

Making an opening on the upper part of a wall permits hot air to go out thus cooling the place. Brightly colored paint such as pastels can also allow and enhance the light inside the room. This can also contribute to cutting down lighting costs without sacrificing the condition of the personnel inside the room. As much as possible, the choice of furniture should be done in such a way that it would occupy some portions of the office yet not overcrowd it. The provision of the office equipments will rely on need of the school employees occupying the room.

Normally, this would involve computer, fax machine, telephone, printer, and all others that would facilitate the office tasks. This renovation is a typical example of maximizing the school’s available resources to make every room useful but with less cost. The main objective of all school administrators is to make use of every possible space and turn into a fully functional unit. In fact, some very big classrooms are already divided to contain small groups of students for study shows that the smaller the class size the better it is for learning.

Concurrently, this will cut down on some of the school’s operational expenses since bigger rooms would need more electricity for lighting and longer use of any cooling system. It is also more expensive if a separate wing will be constructed just to provide more rooms for office work or for educational purposes. The best way is to identify unused facilities and spaces in the existing structure and develop them to make it efficient and serviceable. Usually, an architect or a builder would know the right materials to use to save on cost and also to avoid hazardous incidents.

For whatever purposes these facilities are utilized, still it should adhere to providing better service to the students, school employees, faculty, and administrators. There must also be a long-range of planning activities that covers demographics, financial options, site acquisitions, adherence to legal matters and regulations, and sometimes community partnership prospects. The outcome of which will always result to the growth of a comprehensive capital improvement program to deal with unattained facility needs.

1. Pickus, L School Facilities – OVERVIEW, MAINTENANCE AND MODERNIZATION OF. Retrieved June 16, 2009, from State University. Com Web site: a href=”http://education. stateuniversity. com/pages/2394/School-Facilities. html”>School Facilities – OVERVIEW, MAINTENANCE AND MODERNIZATION OF> 2. Castaldi, B. 1994. Educational Facilities: Planning, Modernization and Management. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 3. Brubaker, C. 1998. Planning and Designing Schools. New York: McGraw Hill.

5 Ways Your School Facilities Impact Student Achievement

A great school facility is more than just a building kept in the best possible shape through routine maintenance, regular inspections, and other preventative work. Done well, it can create an ideal environment for academic achievement with research showing a direct impact on student learning.

“If we want to continue to increase student scores across the board, we have to first be honest and recognize that we need to reduce disparities across schools from the standpoint of the quality of the learning environment,” said Jeff Clemmons, director of Facility Services at TASB.

Finding ways to focus on the needs of students is always top of mind for high-performing boards and school districts. Investing in facilities can add up to better student health, attendance, behavior, and achievement. For teachers, the benefits include improved morale and instruction.

For Karen Shwind, president of the Texas School Nurse Organization and Health Services coordinator at New Braunfels ISD, there’s no doubt that facilities can have an impact on student learning, especially when trying to minimize chronic absences related to conditions like asthma.

“We always say that a healthy child is going to be your best learner,” she said. “Environmental factors can lead to — and think of those with respiratory issues, particularly our asthma population and then those with anaphylaxis — increased absences. If they’re not in school, they’re not learning.”

Creating a healthy learning environment not only helps minimize absenteeism, but it also impacts a school district’s budget.

“Looking at this from a performance standpoint for the school district, if you have high-functioning facilities, kids are in their seats in class, they’re there, and they’re learning,” said Gary Hutton, General Manager of Operations at Spring ISD. “That also means the district is getting attendance funding. So, there's student attendance, learning, and increased performance — they achieve more and get better scores — plus the schools are properly funded and that creates a sort of offset to the costs of any necessary upgrades. It’s a win-win.”

How the Condition of School Buildings Affects Education

Across Texas, there are more than 9,000 campuses, with an average age of more than 40 years old. As the state adds roughly 80,000 students each year (about the seating capacity of the Darrell K Royal — Texas Memorial Stadium at the University of Texas at Austin) and new facilities come online, that average age is dropping, but repairs, renovations, and modernizations are still needed for many buildings to meet the needs of a 21 st -century education.

The idea that school building conditions can affect student achievement isn’t new. A 2007 study, The Relationship Between School Building Conditions and Student Achievement at the Middle School Level in the Commonwealth of Virginia , is one of many that has found that student achievement is connected to a building’s condition. Students perform better in newer or recently renovated buildings than they do in older buildings.

“What’s fascinating about this study is that when you divide the facilities up between standard and substandard, you're looking at a 6.1 percent difference in students passing English alone,” said Clemmons, “that’s noteworthy because English affects all other academic areas.”

The U.S. Department of Education acknowledged the impact of well-maintained facilities on learning and teaching in a 2014 letter. "When classrooms are too hot, too cold, overcrowded, dust-filled or poorly ventilated, students and teachers suffer," it wrote.

How School Facilities Affect Learning Outcomes

The environmental conditions that play a role in student success can be roughly broken down into five broad categories:

• Acoustics and noise
• Air quality
• Temperature control
• Classroom size and space

Acoustics and Noise

Loud noises are distracting and even stressful. Noise impairs the ability of teachers to teach and students to learn. Common sources for these distractions are heating and ventilation units, neighboring classrooms, nearby facilities, airplane flight paths, and road traffic. Research shows that classrooms that reduce external noise have more engaged and higher achieving students compared to those in noisier school environments.

“There’s one study out there that looked at reading test scores from two schools with matching demographic factors,” said Clemmons. “The difference was that one school was in the flight path of an airport, while the other was in a quiet neighborhood. Students from the school in the flight path had significantly lower reading scores than those at the quieter school.”

Classroom noise is of particular concern for students with hearing loss or attention deficits. School buildings that can buffer classrooms from external noise sources can improve student outcomes.

Air Quality

Indoor air quality (IAQ) is another key factor. Poor air quality contributes to absenteeism, particularly for students with asthma. Increased absences and difficulty concentrating while in school may mean student achievement measures are less about ascertaining learning and more a gauge of a student’s health and their ability to focus.

Research also indicates that some schools suffer from what has been dubbed “sick building syndrome,” a collection of symptoms that includes lethargy, dry skin, and headaches. It affects the absenteeism and performance of both students and teachers.

Additionally, poor IAQ means these buildings have more bacteria, viruses, allergens, and indoor pollutants from office equipment, cleaning products and pesticides, flooring materials, paints, and adhesives — all of which can contribute to childhood illness and more missed days of school.

“The problems with air quality can be very unique. You could have a student with a reaction to an air freshener in a classroom — a plug-in — we remove that plug-in and the problem goes away,” said Schwind. “But if you're talking about a major moisture issue underneath the entire building creating mold issues, well that's a totally different circumstance that involves a lot of mechanics in eliminating.”

One area Hutton sees as an underappreciated IAQ vector is carpeting. “Whether it’s flu or COVID, or just allergens, kids are bringing these things in from outside, and they’re settling in the carpet and then getting stirred up throughout the day,” said Hutton. “So, I think school districts can do a better job of effectively cleaning carpets regularly and replacing them regularly, too.”

Research shows that natural lighting boosts the morale of teachers and students. It also reduces off-task behavior and improves test scores. Environments with little natural light have been shown to produce less than desirable results.

Many schools, particularly those built in the 1980s and 1990s, were built like bunkers according to Hutton, with little natural light getting in. “At the time, that’s what you built. You wanted to avoid heat build-up and see energy savings, so windows were limited. It was a reaction to the environmental challenges of the time,” Hutton said. “But then kids were boxed-in under fluorescent lights and didn’t really see natural light all day and people wondered why attendance was dropping.”

“We see students who have migraines triggered by fluorescents or by a bulb that flickers or depending on the athletic season with, we might see students with concussions, and sometimes the lighting can be an issue for them as well,” said Schwind. “All of these things can increase absences and decrease student performance even if they’re still in the classroom.”

Now technology exists to bring natural light to the learning environment, even in older facilities that may not have had many options for external light. It’s possible to replicate natural light using LEDs. With lighting accounting for about 23 percent of a district’s energy cost, according to Clemmons, switching to LEDs that replicate natural light when external light isn’t practical not only improves student outcomes, but it also saves money.

“There’s a study out there that shows that students with the most exposure to natural daylight progressed 20 percent faster in math and 26 percent faster in reading,” said Clemmons. “That is a huge differential. It's not one or a 1.2 percent faster, it is a huge growth in the results.”

Temperature Control

Anyone who has worked in an office that is too hot or too cold knows how difficult it can be to concentrate when you’re uncomfortable. The temperature affects your engagement levels and overall productivity no matter what age you are. Teacher performance and student achievement are both affected.

“When you go into a classroom — my daughter, for instance, takes a coat to school every day because she knows she's going to be cold when she gets to class — and it’s not comfortable, that takes the mind off learning,” said Clemmons, “It's a distraction. That’s a function of the facility.” According to the best analyses, the ideal temperature range for effective learning in reading and math is between 68 and 74 degrees.

Classroom teachers know how to keep their room comfortable and primed for learning. For them to have the fine-tuned control necessary, they need to be able to adjust the temperature in their own classroom. If room-level control isn’t possible, schools should try to allow for temperature control of small blocks of classrooms that receive similar amounts of sunlight and exposure to outside temperatures.

Classroom Size and Space

Classrooms with adequate space to spread out allow teachers to reconfigure seating arrangements and enable varied teaching methods. They also make it possible to create private study areas and smaller learning centers that reduce visual and auditory interruptions.

Overcrowding has consistently been linked to increased aggression in students, decreased engagement, and lower levels of learning. Classrooms that offer flexibility and reconfiguration are associated with increased student engagement and learning.

The classic layout of an 800 square foot room with rows of desks isn’t always the correct set up. As pedagogy changes, so have classroom layouts. Flexible space is important to ensuring that students can work together, collaborating and communicating effectively to solve problems.

“As teaching methods change, so must our approach to improving our school facilities,” said Clemmons. “Flexibility is key.”

Making Sure Your School Facilities Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century

School districts must make careful assessments to determine when aging facilities need major renovation or replacement. But if the goal is to stretch limited budgets or postpone the need for a costly bond program, regular and proactive maintenance is essential. An older facility that’s been updated and maintained well can still meet the needs of today’s students, Clemmons said.

“A dirty building or a building that has not been properly maintained could negatively impact student performance — regardless of the age of the facility,” he said. As long as [the building] is maintained, it’s clean, and it has been renovated to create a comfortable 21 st -century learning environment, that's going to provide us with the environment most conducive to educational advancement.”

Again, the data shows a clear connection between maintenance and student attendance and achievement. Schools without major maintenance backlogs have a higher average daily attendance (ADA) of 4 to 5 students per 1,000 on average, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. They also have an annual dropout rate that’s lower by 10 to 13 students per 1,000. And test scores improve, too, as building conditions improve, says the EPA. Studies show test scores can go up by 3 to 17 percent.

“From a district standpoint, the goal is always to create an environment where teachers can teach to the best of their ability and students can learn to the best of their ability. Your buildings shouldn’t hinder those things,” said Hutton.

This article was originally published Nov. 30, 2022. It was updated Feb. 14, 2024.

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When it comes to student learning, school facilities matter, according to the authors of an ambitious working paper from the California Policy Lab at UCLA and UC Berkley, recently presented at the Association for Education Finance and Policy conference.

Researchers Julien Lafortune and David Scönholzer tracked the individual test scores, classroom grades, and attendance rates of more than 5 million individual Los Angeles Unified School District students between 2002 and 2012, before and after those same students moved from overcrowded, dilapidated schools to new facilities. They concluded that a more-than $10 billion, multiyear school construction effort had a positive academic impact on students.

“School facility investments lead to modest, gradual improvements in student test scores, large immediate improvements in student attendance, and significant improvements in student effort,” says a summary of the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.

The researchers found that four years after having moved to a newly constructed school, students showed a modest improvement in English/language arts test scores and a slightly more modest improvement in students’ average math test scores . In addition, students’ average daily attendance rose by four days, and their teacher-reported grades rose.

“This matters,” Lafortune said. “There are still large gaps in the funding and quality of school buildings, and they tend to matter a lot when it comes to student achievement.”

Between 1975 and 1996, the Los Angeles district hadn’t built any new schools, and as of 2000 its schools were on average 60 years old and severely overcrowded. Students were on staggered, year-round schedules and many were packed into portable units. The district’s schools, many of which didn’t have air conditioning, were crumbling. A state commission described the schools as “overcrowded, uninspiring and unhealthy.”

Between 1997 and 2008, voters approved a series of bond issues that added up to more than $10 billion in new school construction for the city. Between 2002 and 2017, 131 schools were built, 65 campuses were expanded, and 170,000 new seats were added to the district. More than 1,800 parcels of land was acquired by the district and almost 4,000 houses and businesses were moved.

Lafortune said he hasn’t pinpointed what about the new schools led to the academic gains the researchers found. He also noted that, counterintuitively, students at newly constructed schools sat in slightly larger class sizes with less-experienced teachers and more disadvantaged students than at their old schools.

He said further studies could explore what could be the underlying mechanisms driving the improvements flagged by the researchers, the impact the newly constructed schools have on teacher productivity and recruitment, and the impact they have on real estate prices and demographic compostion.

The early findings also could feed into a growing body of research that buttresses the argument that more money leads to better academic outcomes, a theory disputed by many conservative politicians.

A much smaller 2014 study by Christopher A.Neilson and Seth D. Zimmerman on the impact of a school construction boom in New Haven, Conn., found that students’ reading scores improved, but not math scores.

America spends more than $49 billion per year on new schools and major capital projects, and $46 billion a year for maintenance and operations, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But, according to the NCES study, it will cost more than $925 billion over the next 20 years to get every school into “overall good condition.”

Because more than 80 percent of school construction is funded by local tax dollars, the age and condition of school facilities is closely tied to a school district’s poverty level. States such as Rhode Island and West Virginia have attempted to spread school construction bond money more evenly.

Lafortune said his findings are an indication that local and state officials should consider the conditions of a school building heavily when looking for ways to boost students’ academic outcomes.

Above Picture: The former Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles, once the scene of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination, has since reopened as the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex.

--Nick Ut/AP

A version of this news article first appeared in the State EdWatch blog.

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School Facilities

Overview, maintenance and modernization of.

OVERVIEW Jeffery A. Lackney

MAINTENANCE AND MODERNIZATION OF Lawrence O. Picus

An effective school facility is responsive to the changing programs of educational delivery, and at a minimum should provide a physical environment that is comfortable, safe, secure, accessible, well illuminated, well ventilated, and aesthetically pleasing. The school facility consists of not only the physical structure and the variety of building systems, such as mechanical, plumbing, electrical and power, telecommunications, security, and fire suppression systems. The facility also includes furnishings, materials and supplies, equipment and information technology, as well as various aspects of the building grounds, namely, athletic fields, playgrounds, areas for outdoor learning, and vehicular access and parking.

The school facility is much more than a passive container of the educational process: it is, rather, an integral component of the conditions of learning. The layout and design of a facility contributes to the place experience of students, educators, and community members. Depending on the quality of its design and management, the facility can contribute to a sense of ownership, safety and security, personalization and control, privacy as well as sociality, and spaciousness or crowdedness. When planning, designing, or managing the school facility, these facets of place experience should, when possible, be taken into consideration.

Constructing New Facilities

During strategic long-range educational planning, unmet facility space needs often emerge. The goal of educational planning is to develop, clarify, or review the educational mission, vision, philosophy, curriculum, and instructional delivery. Educational planning may involve a variety of school and community workshops and surveys to identify and clarify needs and sharpen the vision of the district. Long-range planning activities, such as demographic studies, financing options, site acquisitions, and community partnering opportunities are often initiated by the district administration as a response to the results of educational planning. An outcome of long-range planning is the development of a comprehensive capital improvement program to address unmet facility needs.

The district superintendent appoints a steering committee to oversee the details of the capital improvement program. The responsibility of the steering committee includes the selection of various consultants, the review of planning and design options, and the reporting of recommendations to the school board for a final decision. Depending on the needs of the district, one of the first tasks of the steering committee is to retain a variety of consultants. Educational and design consultants, financial consultants, bond counsels, investment bankers, and public relations consultants are retained to perform pre-referendum planning activities during which project scope, budget, financing, legal issues, and schedule are defined. Once project feasibility is established, a public referendum package is developed and presented to the taxpaying public through public hearings. Upon passage of the public referendum, more detailed facility planning of the school can begin.

An architect is often selected to assist in facility planning in cooperation with the educational planning consultant and in-house facility staff. The school board, as the owner, enters into a contract for services with the chosen architect. The architect, in turn, negotiates contracts with a variety of consultants, including interior designers, landscape architects, mechanical, electrical, and civil engineers, and land surveyors.

The facility planning process at its best involves an assessment of functional needs in light of the educational program developed during educational planning. There are several names for this process: Educators refer to the development of educational specifications, while architects refer to it as facility programming. Facility planning includes any or all of the following activities: feasibility studies, district master planning, site selection, needs assessment, and project cost analysis. Spatial requirements and relationships between various program elements are established. The outcome of the facility planning process is a public facility program, or educational specifications document, that outlines physical space requirements and adjacencies and special design criteria the school facility must meet.

The design phase of the process, which includes schematic design, design development, and construction documents and specifications, can last from six months to one year. Each step in the design process involves more detailed and specific information about the technical aspects of the building systems, components, and assemblies. The design process requires school board decisions and approval, with each phase offering more detailed descriptions of the scope, budget, and schedule. The products of this phase include sketches, drawings, models, and technical reports, which are shared with the school and community through public hearings, workshops, and other forms of public relations and community involvement. Community participation during the earliest stages of the design phase can be as critical for stakeholder support as it was in the educational planning process.

There are several construction delivery methods available to the school district: competitive bidding, design/build, and construction management. Each state has evolved its own laws regulating the acceptable forms of construction project delivery. Competitive bidding is still the most common form of construction delivery. It allows contractors in each trade, such as general, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing, to compete for individual prime contracts and form separate contracts with the school district. In principle, it provides the most open and fair competition appropriate for a public sector project; however, project communication and coordination may ultimately affect schedule and budget. Design/build is most popular with private sector owners but is occasionally used in the public sector. Under a design/build contract, the owner contracts with one firm that completes both design and construction of the project under one contract. Cost and time savings are possible but often with a loss in quality of the product. Construction management is a service that often is established simultaneously with the hiring of the architect. A construction manager's responsibility is to act as project manager throughout the design and construction process, coordinating the project budget and schedule along the way. A fourth form of construction delivery is actually a comprehensive project management delivery service, which includes construction management but also extends from pre-referendum through occupancy and even facility management, offering one-stop shopping for facility development. Large school districts that have multiple projects often contract with project management services. Project management firms offer a wide array of financial, legal, and construction services promising economies of scale.

Following the competitive bidding process, the next phase of the school building process is that of bidding and negotiation. An Invitation for Bids is publicized to obtain bids from prime construction contractors. Most states require the school district to accept the lowest responsible and responsive bidder. However, the school district reserves the right to reject all bids. Once low bids are accepted, the school district, as owner, negotiates a contract with each prime contractor. The architect represents the owner in the construction phase, but the contract and legal relationship is between the school district, as owner, and each prime contractor. The construction of the school can last from twelve to eighteen months, depending on the project scope, material selections, lead times for shipment to the site, weather, unforeseen subsurface site conditions, and a variety of other factors. With the use of school buildings being tied to the school year schedule, project phasing is always an issue that needs to be addressed. Other factors that can escalate cost and slow the project are change orders to rectify unforeseen conditions or errors and omissions in the original construction documents. Once the architect is satisfied that the project is complete, a Certificate of Substantial Completion is issued and the owner can legally occupy the facility.

Facility Management

While the planning, design, and construction of the school facility may take two to three years, the management of it will last the entire life cycle of the facility. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the mean age of a school building in the United States as forty-two years, with 28 percent of school buildings built before 1950. Many of the building materials, furnishings, and equipment will not last half that long and will require constant upkeep, maintenance, and inevitable replacement to defer building obsolescence.

The costs of managing school facilities have historically received much less attention than facility planning. The percentage of the operating budget for the maintenance and management of school facilities has steadily decreased, creating a capital renewal crisis as a result of years of deferred maintenance at all levels of education.

Best practice requires that a comprehensive facility maintenance program be established and monitored by the school district. The maintenance program often includes several distinct programs, including deferred, preventive, repair/upkeep, and emergency maintenance. Responsibility for facility management is divided between the district office and the school site, with the principal being the primary administrator responsible for the day-to-day operation of the school, including custodial, food, and transportation services. Custodians are typically hired by the school district but managed by the principal. Custodial staff is generally responsible for cleaning the building; monitoring the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems; and providing general maintenance of both building and grounds. District staff is responsible for long-term maintenance programs and the procurement of outsourced services for specialized maintenance projects.

Several environmental quality issues have emerged over the past few decades, such as classroom acoustics, indoor air quality, water quality, energy conservation, and abatement of asbestos, radon, and other hazardous materials. Many of these issues require the services of facility consultants hired through the district. Other issues for the building-level administrator include safety and security, vandalism and threats, and acts of violence and terrorism. All of these functions must be conducted within a constantly changing set of government mandates, such as energy deregulation, accessibility guidelines, codes, and other regulations and guidelines at the state and federal levels.

Trends and Issues

Many communities recognize that in addition to school facilities being cost effective, they should be more learner-centered, developmentally and age appropriate, safe, comfortable, accessible, flexible, diverse, and equitable. By location of new facilities in residential neighborhoods and partnering with other community-based organizations, schools are becoming true community centers. In addition, schools are taking advantage of educational resources in the community, as well as partnering with museums, zoos, libraries, and other public institutions and local businesses.

Based on mounting evidence that smaller schools lead to improved social climate as well as better achievement, school leaders have begun to create smaller schools or have created schools within schools.

The design of safe schools increasingly recognizes the desirability of providing natural, unobtrusive surveillance mechanisms, rather than installing checkpoints and security guards. Smaller scaled school buildings allow for both natural surveillance and territorial ownership, where students and teachers are on familiar terms, thereby decreasing the possibility that any one student is overlooked.

The self-contained classroom can no longer provide the variety of learning settings necessary to successfully support project-based, real-world authentic learning. Research indicates that smaller class size is a factor contributing to improved achievement. Learning settings are being designed to support individualized, self-directed learning and small informal group learning, in addition to traditional large-group instruction. Rather than lining up classrooms along a long corridor, instructional areas are being organized around central cores of shared instructional support.

A trend in the provision of professional space for teachers has emerged as well. Teacher office space, including desk and storage, phone/fax, and information technologies, is seen as essential to the development of teachers as professionals.

Information technology is precipitating a variety of changes in the organizational and physical form of schools. With respect to instructional processes, technology is facilitating the movement toward project-based, self-directed learning and individualized instruction. As learning becomes increasingly virtual, web-based, and wireless, it still must physically take place somewhere. As information technology is becoming ubiquitous, more schools are decentralizing technology throughout the school building and across the community.

The trend toward smart buildings, or buildings that are designed and constructed to integrate the technologies of instruction, telecommunications, and building systems, will have increased responsiveness to occupant needs as well as the educational process.

Finally, because of the recognition that spending too much time in buildings can be detrimental not only to health but also to learning, school buildings will begin to connect more to the natural environment visually, aurally, and kinesthetically by including transitional indoor and outdoor learning spaces.

Cost Considerations

Estimates of cost to repair and modernize school facilities nationwide continue to grow from the $112 billion estimated by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) in their landmark 1995 report, to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) estimate of $127 billion in 1999, to $268.2 billion estimated by the National Education Association in 2000.

The construction and operation of a school building involves a substantial expenditure of public funds. The investment for construction, however, represents only a fraction of the cost of operating a school over the life of the building. When life-cycle costs of operating a school are considered (including staff salaries and overhead costs, in addition to maintenance and operation of the facility), the initial cost of the school facility may be less than 10 to 15 percent of the life-cycle costs over a thirty-year period. Properly designing and constructing school buildings for the realities of management can often provide cost savings over time that could in turn provide additional funds for education. Operational costs for power and fuel, water and sewer, garbage disposal, leases and insurance, building maintenance, and custodial staff are important items in the annual budget, competing yearly for funds identified for educational delivery. Building life-cycle cost analysis is admittedly difficult for taxpayers and school boards to comprehend when available building funds are tight, but the rewards in effective facility management are potentially great.

See also: C LASS S IZE AND S TUDENT L EARNING ; F INANCIAL S UPPORT OF S CHOOLS ; L IABILITY OF S CHOOL D ISTRICTS AND S CHOOL P ERSONNEL FOR N EGLIGENCE ; R URAL E DUCATION ; S CHOOL B OARDS ; S CHOOL C LIMATE ; Y EAR -R OUND E DUCATION .

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B ITTLE , E DGAR H., ed. 1996. Planning and Financing School Improvement and Construction Projects. Topeka, KS: National Organization on Legal Problems in Education.

B RUBAKER , C. W ILLIAM. 1998. Planning and Designing Schools. New York: McGraw Hill.

C ASTALDI , B ASIL. 1994. Educational Facilities: Planning, Modernization and Management. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

C ROWE , T IMOTHY. 2000. Crime Prevention through Environmental Design: Applications of Architectural Design and Space Management Concepts. National Crime Prevention Institute. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann.

E ARTHMAN , G LEN I. 2000. Planning Educational Facilities for the Next Century. Blacksburg: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

G RAVES , B EN E. 1993. School Ways: The Planning and Design of America's Schools. New York: McGraw Hill.

H OLCOMB , J OHN H. 1995. A Guide to the Planning of Educational Facilities. New York: University Press of America.

K OWALSKI , T HEODORE J. 1989. Planning and Managing School Facilities. New York: Praeger.

L ACKNEY , J EFFREY A. 2000. Thirty-Three Educational Design Principles for Schools and Community Learning Centers. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities.

M ACIHA , J OHN C. 2000. Preventive Maintenance Guidelines for School Facilities. Kingston, MA: RS Means.

M AGEE , G REGORY H. 1988. Facilities Maintenance Management. Kingston, MA: RS Means.

N ATIONAL C ENTER FOR E DUCATIONAL S TATISTICS. 2000. Condition of America's Public School Facilities: 1999. Washington, DC: National Center for Educational Statistics.

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U.S. G ENERAL A CCOUNTING O FFICE. 1995. School Facilities: Condition of America's Schools. Washington, DC: U.S. General Accounting Office.

U.S. G ENERAL A CCOUNTING O FFICE. 2000. School Facilities: Construction Expenditures Have Grown Significantly in Recent Years. Washington, DC:U.S. General Accounting Office.

J EFFERY A. L ACKNEY

As public education in the United States entered the twenty-first century, educational leaders and policy-makers were faced with increasing costs for the maintenance and modernization of educational facilities. Driven by two factors–a considerable backlog of deferred maintenance expenditures and needs, and the need to ensure that classrooms have adequate facilities to accommodate the growing use of technology–estimates of the costs for maintenance and modernization of school facilities have soared.

In a 2002 article, Philip E. Geiger stated that as of January 2002 it would cost between $112 and 150 billion to "bring the nation's schools up to good condition" (p. 43). The U.S. Department of Education (DoE) estimated that the cost would be $127 billion. Moreover, the DoE estimated that 30 percent of the country's schools needed extensive repairs and another 40 percent needed replacement of some major component. This suggests that at the beginning of the twenty-first century some 70 percent of schools across the United States were in need of major repairs.

In 2000 the National Education Association estimated that total school infrastructure needs–including technology–amounted to some $322 billion. This estimate included costs of new school construction, additions to existing buildings, renovation and retrofitting, deferred maintenance, and major improvements to school grounds, as well as the costs of technology.

Estimating the age of a school building is difficult because many schools have had additions or major remodeling at some point in their history, either to accommodate more students or to update and upgrade the facility. The DoE found that in 1999 the average age of public schools across the United States was forty years. Moreover, on average it had been eleven years since these schools had been renovated. The DoE estimated the functional age of each building and found that the average functional age of school buildings was sixteen years.

Schools in central cities tend to be older than those in other areas. Moreover, in such urban districts, it has often been somewhat longer since a major renovation has taken place. While the differences are relatively small, high minority population schools tend to be in older buildings as well. Many of these older schools need substantial repairs as well as upgrading to meet newer building codes and fire safety standards.

In addition, it is generally these older buildings that do not have sufficient capacity to meet the wiring demands of new technology. Frequently classrooms do not have enough electrical outlets to support more than one or two computers, and many remain without connections to the Internet, even via telephone modem connections. Wiring for school-wide networks is also made difficult because older construction often has solid walls and no false ceilings where wires and networking cable can be installed. This adds yet more to the costs of modernization for technology.

Maintenance

When faced with a revenue shortfall, most school districts strive to keep major funding reductions away from the classroom. One way to save money in the short term is to defer maintenance on school facilities. While this is often a useful tool for short-term savings, the deterioration in the condition of an improperly maintained building is very obvious and can often begin within a matter of a few years. Given the high cost of building new schools, this approach may be inappropriate in the long term. California, for example, has an estimated school infrastructure need of more than $22 billion, with another $10 billion or more needed for technology.

Much of this could be prevented if proper preventative maintenance procedures are implemented and used by school districts. Geiger provided a list of seven priorities school districts need to consider in developing a high-quality school maintenance program:

• A commitment on the part of the board, the superintendent, and senior staff to facility maintenance.
• Development of a comprehensive preventative maintenance program.
• Adequate funding for both preventative maintenance and capital improvement.
• A willingness to consider new ideas for construction and maintenance of facilities.
• Continual search for new and different ways to pay for maintenance and construction needs.
• Careful review of district goals and policies to make sure facility management receives appropriate levels of funding in the annual budget cycle.
• A plan to link academic programs to facility needs.

In a 1999 article, Michael Zureich provided evidence of the success of adopting the fourth priority above, that of considering new ideas. Zureich described three schools where a coordinated design and building committee had led to better use of less expensive and easier-to-maintain construction materials, resulting in reduced construction costs and lower lifetime maintenance costs. He pointed out that it is important to consider the strength, reliability, and life of all construction materials and to plan for maintenance needs in the initial construction. Zureich suggested that schools using this process have reduced design, construction, and maintenance costs by between 18 and 25 percent.

Modernization

In addition to maintaining existing school buildings, there is a continual need for modernization. This is a far broader need than the typical concern over creating an infrastructure for technology. Many schools built in the past do not provide adequate space resources for the way schools educate children in the early twenty-first century. Efforts to reduce class size across the nation along with growth in the number of students have placed a burden on school facilities and increased the demand for more classroom space. Moreover, teacher efforts to use classrooms in different ways to maximize learning often require additional square footage in each classroom. For example, in elementary schools, the traditional room full of tables has often been replaced by a room with desks on one side and a large carpet in another part of the room where students sit on the floor for certain activities. Some rooms have special corners for computers or for quiet reading activities. All of this requires additional space and reorganization of the classroom space.

In earlier periods, schools were built to meet the requirements of educational methods that are no longer in favor. Many schools built in the 1970s relied on the "open classroom" model where there were no walls between classrooms. As teaching moved away from this model, schools had to spend substantial sums of money to reconfigure their facilities.

Other more mundane changes are also an important part of a continuous modernization process. Installation of white boards to replace traditional chalk boards or changing wall surfaces to make it easier to hang displays and teaching aids can make a tremendous difference in the appearance of a classroom. Yet even these simple things can be expensive, and planning for such upgrades is important. Furthermore, as new schools are built with such features as work areas for teachers attached to clusters of classrooms, the school budget needs to provide adequate funds for work materials and equipment for teachers (such as computers, copiers, and telephones) and for reasonable replacement programs for these important tools.

The growing use of technology–particularly computers–in instruction has placed a whole new set of demands on the construction, maintenance, and modernization of school facilities. Although technology in schools is a much broader concept than simply the use of computers, it is computers that are most frequently thought of in discussions of educational technology today. Schools face problems with acquiring adequate numbers of computers, replacing them on a regular and frequent basis, providing the electrical power to operate them in each classroom, and providing and maintaining the wiring infrastructure needed to keep them connected with the school and across the district and the community more generally.

Computers represent a new challenge to school budgeting processes as they have a life span of three to five years, somewhat longer than typical "current" expenditure plans and considerably shorter than the traditional capital funding models used by school districts. As a result, many districts have had difficulty in purchasing and keeping adequate numbers of up-to-date computers. Some have turned to lease programs; others rely on donations of computers–new and used. Other districts have simply not replaced old and obsolete computers in a timely fashion.

Even if a district has managed to develop a purchase plan to provide adequate computer systems for all its schools, there is still the problem of electrical wiring and connections between computers. Older schools simply do not have the capacity to handle the electrical and wiring needs of state-of the-art computers. Funding for installation of the infrastructure may be available through the e-rate funding, a process whereby telecommunications firms contribute to a fund whose proceeds are distributed on a competitive basis to school districts for technology needs.

Once installed, there are also substantial costs to maintaining computer networks. Updating all of the routers and servers needed to keep the computers communicating as well as repair technicians to fix computers and related peripherals when they break down are essential to successful technology implementation. Funding for all of this needs to be a regular part of a district's budget.

Sources of Funding

The maintenance and modernization needs of schools require both one-time and continuing sources of money, with maintenance and modernization requiring different approaches. Maintenance is probably best funded through budget allocations of current resources. This means that adequate funds need to be allocated each year to be sure that the investment a district has made in facilities is not lost because of premature deterioration of the buildings. Some districts in some states have had some success in getting community redevelopment agencies to provide a portion of the tax increment they receive to stimulate development for school facility needs. Often this money is used to supplement existing allocations for maintenance.

Modernization may require one-time funding options. Some of the alternatives available to school districts include:

• Bond Issues: By taking advantage of the taxexempt status of school district bond issues, education agencies can often borrow funds for capital projects at relatively low interest rates. Bonds typically require voter approval and, depending on state law, may need to be accounted for in a separate budgetary and accounting fund. Nevertheless, they remain a powerful and relatively inexpensive way to fund facility needs.
• Special Local Option Sales Taxes: Allowed in some states, these are sales tax increments added to the state and local sales taxes already collected. While such taxes can be a reliable source of funds, local sales taxes may also inhibit development of commercial and retail centers in the district.
• Voter-Approved Levies or Sinking Funds: Some states allow school districts to levy special taxes for specific purposes such as technology. Others allow districts to levy taxes for a sinking fund, which collects the revenues and accumulates interest so that construction and/or modernization needs can be funded through the cash balance in the fund.
• State and Federal Funding: Special state and federal programs are sometimes available to fund improvements and construction. Individual state programs to help meet deferred maintenance needs are common, and the federal government has provided funding for school facilities through the Qualified Zone Academy Bond program. In each case these programs provide local school districts with funds for improving or building school facilities.

Maintaining school facilities is important to providing high-quality education programs. More important, by investing in strong preventative maintenance programs, school facilities can continue to serve students for long periods of time. Modernization of school facilities has faced a number of new challenges in recent years with the advent of the personal computer. As new technologies are increasingly integrated into programs of instruction, the ability to adequately finance the acquisition of this equipment and to have the infrastructure in each school to support this technology is also important.

See also: F INANCIAL S UPPORT OF S CHOOLS ; R URAL E DUCATION ; S CHOOL B OARDS ; T ECHNOLOGY IN E DUCATION ; U RBAN E DUCATION .

G EIGER , P HILIP E. 2002. "Deferred School Maintenance Creates National Crisis." School Business Affairs 68 (1):43.

N ATIONAL C ENTER FOR E DUCATION S TATISTICS. 2000. Condition of America's Public School Facilities, 1999. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.

N ATIONAL E DUCATION A SSOCIATION. 2000. Modernizing Our Schools: What Will It Cost? Washington, DC: National Education Association.

Z UREICH , M ICHAEL. 1999. "Yes, Reductions in School Construction Costs Are Possible." CASBO Journal 64 (2):32–38.

L AWRENCE O. P ICUS

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Modern Facilities Management in Schools and the Tech Behind It

Mehedi Hasan Shoab is a freelance writer specializing in Software as a Service, marketing and real estate. Follow him on Twitter @MhShoab.

When it comes to the responsibilities of school authorities, one of the most vital is the way  facilities management  teams maintain and manage assets owned by the school. These teams, which include such varied departments as maintenance, health and safety, and technology, keep the school running.

“We’re trying to create great educational opportunities for our kids. The more we can do to make the facilities fade into the background to avoid impeding the learning, the better,” says Lou Angelo, director of operations and facilities at Pennsylvania’s  Upper St. Clair School District .

Facilities management is often overlooked in K–12 education, despite the sector’s significant dependence on technology. The average K–12 school  has many assets  that need to be maintained and managed. A school must also balance the requirements of students, district board members, parents and federal regulations.

By using modern technologies — including software, the Internet of Things and networking — facilities management in K–12 school buildings can become more cost-effective and energy-efficient. These technologies can also support the efficiency of facilities management teams, which is crucial for many departments in K–12 institutions  facing staffing shortages .

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What Are K–12 Facilities Management Technologies?

Facilities management teams use various technologies to help manage and maintain buildings and infrastructure. These technologies include building automation systems, computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) and IoT devices.

Upper St. Clair School District uses a  Siemens  building automation system, Angelo says. “That has been a longtime system we’ve been using here.”

CMMS, which is frequently  cloud-based , helps teams manage maintenance activities, whereas  IoT devices  offer real-time data and analytics to optimize building performance and safety. Because they’re connected to a school’s network, they can also be programmed to run on a schedule or according to a certain set of criteria.

Facilities management teams also use other software solutions, including:

• Space management software to helps teams optimize space usage and occupancy
• Asset management software to track physical assets like equipment and furniture
• Energy management software to identify energy-saving opportunities and monitor consumption to reduce costs

These  departments also rely on mobile devices  to complete work across many different buildings in K–12 school systems. “We have a central command where everything is loaded on a desktop, but in the field, our technicians use  tablets  to access information, and a number of them use their own phones or other mobile devices,” Angelo says.

What Are the Benefits of Upgrading School Technologies?

Technology upgrades can offer significant benefits to facilities management teams. By upgrading their technology, teams can streamline operations, reduce costs and improve safety and comfort for building occupants.

MORE ON EDTECH:   IT teams can help teachers save time and focus on instruction.

CMMS solutions help teams manage maintenance activities more efficiently, reducing downtime and boosting productivity.

Building automation systems can also reduce downtime and make teams more efficient. By monitoring and controlling various building systems — such as climate-control systems, lighting, and energy consumption — building automation systems can free up facilities management teams to spend time on more complicated tasks. This also ensures building occupants stay comfortable and on task, without having to worry about fluctuating temperatures or difficult-to-control systems.

“Keeping in mind the research on temperatures and air control that contribute to better learning is an important goal for us in facilities,” Angelo says.

Because IoT devices offer real-time data and analytics, modernizing this tech helps teams make informed decisions about maintenance activities and resource allocation. This technology lets teams detect issues more quickly, respond more efficiently and make decisions that will optimize building performance.

Lou Angelo Director of Operations and Facilities, Upper St. Clair School District

Modern space management, asset management and energy management software solutions allow facilities management teams to optimize space usage, track physical assets and identify energy-saving opportunities. As schools continue to implement upgraded technologies in classrooms and put one-to-one devices into the hands of students and teachers, these software solutions become invaluable to those in charge of keeping learning running smoothly.

Upgrading space, asset and energy management software improves efficiency, cuts costs and gives teams the information they need to make decisions about resource allocation.

Why Should You Upgrade Networks in Facilities Management?

Upgraded networks are essential to facilities management technologies because they enable seamless integration and communication between different systems and devices. In facilities management, technology plays a vital role in monitoring, analyzing and managing a wide range of building systems, all of which impact educators’ ability to teach and students’ ability to learn.

RELATED:   Here are five reasons to take advantage of Wi-Fi 6 in your district.

With an upgraded network, facilities management teams can ensure all these systems are connected and communicating effectively, allowing for real-time monitoring and analysis of building performance. This can help identify issues and inefficiencies, reduce downtime and optimize the performance of the building systems.

Six Ways to Improve Facilities Management Technologies

Schools can make these improvements to better manage their facilities and  ensure a safe and comfortable learning environment  for students:

1. Adopt Green Solutions

Implementing green solutions for facilities management in K­–12 schools can have several benefits. It can slash operating costs by improving energy efficiency and reducing water usage. This frees up budget that K–12 leaders can invest in other areas of the school.

Green solutions, such as energy-efficient climate-control systems and environmental sensors, can also improve indoor air quality, which can positively impact the health and well-being of students and staff.

Additionally, these changes promote a culture of sustainability in the school community, teaching students about the importance of environmental responsibility and encouraging them to adopt sustainable practices in their daily lives.

KEEP READING:   What do tech departments need to know about green IT?

2. Enhance Data Analysis

Improving data analysis for facilities management in K–12 schools is crucial. It helps facilities teams make informed decisions thanks to real-time insights into facility operations, including asset management, work orders and maintenance activities. This information can be used to identify areas for improvement, cut costs and improve overall facility performance.

Data analytics can help identify patterns and trends in facility performance, which can be used to inform preventative maintenance and asset replacement decisions. This can help extend the lifespan of equipment and reduce downtime, ultimately saving schools money.

“The work order system allows us to prioritize preventative maintenance tasks,” Angelo says. “When you have a reliable system  that people know how to work , they’re going to know what needs to be done from a preventive maintenance standpoint, no matter what. It doesn’t matter who’s sitting at the helm.”

3. Implement a Mobile Maintenance Management System

A mobile maintenance management system can enable maintenance staff to manage work orders, inventory and equipment maintenance schedules on the go. This can boost efficiency and reduce response time to maintenance issues, which is crucial for smaller or understaffed teams.

4. Monitor Ownership Expenses

The total cost of ownership is one of the most useful standards for understanding the efficiency of facilities management. A comprehensive understanding of financial management makes it much easier to create a budget and  plan for future infrastructure upgrades . These financial estimations can help determine the effects of an asset’s lifetime respective to estimated repair costs.

5. Carry Out Regular Facility Audits

Regular facility audits involve a comprehensive evaluation of the physical condition of the school’s facilities, including its buildings, equipment and grounds.

Regular facility audits allow facilities managers to identify maintenance issues, safety hazards and other potential problems before they become major problems. This can help minimize downtime, reduce costs and ensure that the learning environment is safe and secure for students and staff.

Facility audits also can help school leaders identify areas for improvement in terms of energy efficiency, sustainability and overall performance. By identifying areas where improvements can be made, facilities teams can implement strategies to reduce energy usage, water consumption and waste while improving the school’s overall performance.

6. Promote Collaboration Between Departments

Interdepartmental communication is essential  for effective facility management in any organization, including K–12 schools. This involves creating an environment where different departments within the school, such as maintenance, technology and administrative staff, can collaborate and share information.

“Our facilities and technology departments rely on each other. It’s hard for us to do anything without involving tech to some degree,” Angelo says. “We have a very good working relationship and good communication between departments, and that’s key for our success.”

By promoting communication across departments, facilities management teams can ensure all staff members work toward common goals and objectives. It can also help identify potential issues and areas for improvement, because different departments may have unique perspectives and insights.

LEARN MORE:   How can K–12 admins improve business continuity planning?

One way to promote communication across departments is to establish regular meetings or communication channels, where staff members from different departments can share updates, discuss issues and collaborate on projects. This can help ensure that everyone is on the same page and working toward common objectives.

Modern Facilities Management Technology Offers Immense Benefits

As a result of the upgrade process, facilities management teams can streamline operations, reduce costs and improve safety and comfort for building occupants. Software solutions can also help teams optimize space usage, track physical assets and identify energy-saving opportunities.

By embracing modern technologies, K–12 schools can create a safe and comfortable learning environment while optimizing resources and promoting environmental sustainability.

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• Internet of Things
• Asset Management

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• School Education /

How to Improve School Facilities for Students

• Updated on  
• May 28, 2024

Improving schools and boosting student engagement and growth is challenging due to the many factors in a school district’s decision-making process. Furthermore, implementing changes requires time, data collection, and research to assess their effectiveness. 

Table of Contents

• 1 1. Perform Routine Facility Inspections
• 2 2. Foster a Welcoming Atmosphere
• 3 3. Improve Air Quality and Lighting
• 4 4. Prioritize Safety and Accessibility

Despite progress, pursuing additional improvements is an ongoing and never-ending process. However, over a five-year period, 62% of teachers and 81% of principals believe that school improvement initiatives positively impact schools. To aid in enhancing the educational experience, here are key areas worth considering for taking education to the next level:

1. Perform Routine Facility Inspections

Facility audits are essential for managing school sites of all sizes. Overlooking a thorough assessment of a building’s condition may result in safety hazards or deteriorating systems. Facility issues can negatively impact students’ educational experiences and raise public concerns about the school’s capability to meet necessary standards.

A recommended best practice is to use digital checklists during facility walkthroughs and establish regular preventive maintenance schedules for all critical equipment systems. In the event of a major issue, conducting a thorough review and implementing specific countermeasures is also advised to prevent future occurrences.

2. Foster a Welcoming Atmosphere

The ambiance of a school can dramatically influence students’ attitudes towards learning. Creating a welcoming atmosphere begins with simple acts like painting walls in cheerful colors and decorating hallways with student artwork. 

Comfortable School Lockers can also make a big difference. Classrooms should be arranged to facilitate both individual and group work, allowing for flexibility in teaching styles and learning activities.

3. Improve Air Quality and Lighting

Often overlooked, air quality and lighting can significantly impact student performance. Schools should ensure proper ventilation and consider installing air purifiers to provide a clean and healthy environment. 

Natural light is preferable, but in its absence, schools should use high-quality artificial lighting that mimics natural light. Good lighting reduces eye strain and improves focus, creating a better learning environment.

In a world increasingly driven by technology, the integration of digital tools in the classroom cannot be overstated. Modern classrooms need more than just traditional chalkboards and desks; they must be equipped with interactive whiteboards, high-speed internet, and educational software.

By incorporating technology, schools can provide a more engaging and dynamic learning environment. For instance, interactive whiteboards allow teachers to present lessons visually appealingly, fostering better understanding and retention. Furthermore, access to the internet opens up a treasure trove of resources for both teachers and students, enabling them to explore topics beyond the textbook.

4. Prioritize Safety and Accessibility

Last but certainly not least, ensuring the safety and accessibility of school facilities is paramount. Students should feel safe within their school premises, from secure entry points and surveillance systems to well-marked emergency exits. Regular safety drills and updated first-aid supplies are crucial elements that must not be neglected.

Accessibility is another critical factor. Schools must have ramps, elevators, and accessible restrooms to accommodate students with disabilities. Inclusive facilities ensure that every student has equal access to educational opportunities, regardless of their physical abilities.

Improving school facilities is not just about bricks and mortar; it’s about creating environments where students can thrive academically, physically, and emotionally. As we invest in these improvements, we invest in our children’s and society’s future. Let’s make our schools places where every student can flourish.

Nidhi Mishra

Nidhi Mishra is a seasoned senior content writer with more than eight years of diverse experience in the field of education. Her varied career encompasses work in teaching, training, counselling, developing curriculum, and content creation. Nidhi has a solid background in education and has developed her abilities to meet the diverse needs of students, especially students who want to study abroad. Throughout her career, Nidhi has been an invaluable resource to students with their test-taking efforts, offering thorough career assistance and insightful advice on how to navigate the complexity of the system of education. Her speciality is creating interesting and educational content that is specifically designed to fulfil the needs of students who want to pursue higher education abroad. Together with her wonderful writing skills, Nidhi's love of education has allowed her to produce content that has a lasting impression on readers, educators, and students alike. She is committed to providing high-quality, timely, and insightful content because she believes that education can empower people.

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• How K-12 Facilities Impact Student Learning and Health
• Long Breadcrumb for Flexible Content Page

School administrators spend countless hours trying to keep their facilities in the best possible shape through routine maintenance and regular inspections, and other preventative tasks. While these efforts detract from the role they were hired to do, the upkeep is vitally important . Students and the educational community-at-large benefit from positive surroundings, particularly student health and learning. Schools have a responsibility to do everything they can to promote a healthy learning environment, and proactive facilities management is an integral component.

The well-being of students and staff is a top priority. When facilities undermine this, performance suffers. Many parts of the educational process rely on comfortable, safe settings. If the temperature is too hot or cold, for example, or the lighting is too dark or too bright, students may become frustrated and struggle to focus. Teachers may have a difficult time conducting lessons and get frustrated.

Optimizing school facilities should be the cornerstone of every district’s mission to ensure students, teachers, and staff perform at their best and generate positive attitudes about your district overall.

Impact of School Facilities on Student Health

Researchers have found that the  quality of school facilities impacts student academic performance and learning . Students focus better when they’re comfortable, are more likely to attend classes, and may be less likely to become ill. These qualities all come from classrooms that have proper ventilation, are well-lit, and maintain efficient cleaning schedules. Students who aren’t distracted or uncomfortable due to environmental factors are students who can remain attentive and better retain information.

This same idea applies to teachers. A teacher who doesn’t have environmental distractions can concentrate on students. If the work environment is safe, healthy, and comfortable, it stands to reason that teachers will enjoy their workday much more, passing the benefits on to their students. Favorable school facility conditions are likely to improve educational outcomes since veteran teachers may be less likely to leave, and qualified teachers may be more easily recruited.

A better learning environment isn’t the only benefit of adequate facilities. The improvement in the physical health of the students and teachers is also substantial.

A student with asthma may struggle to pay attention in a room with low air quality. Students who are more susceptible to certain illnesses and bacteria may be more likely to get sick in a classroom that doesn’t routinely sanitize surfaces. These factors can prevent a student from showing up to class, lowering a district’s attendance and performance ratings. Likewise, an unhealthy environment can lead to more sick days for teachers.

So how can these scenarios be prevented? Improving maintenance procedures and reviewing the performance of your ventilation, lighting, and custodial services are a few strategies. Whatever you do, it is crucial to remember the link between your school facilities and student health.

Four Ways That School Facilities Impact Student Health and Achievement

Now that we’ve established the importance of the physical environment in education, let’s consider how they influence each other and how facility quality impacts students’ academic performance and health.

1. Temperature

Many people consider air conditioning to be a necessity, but for many schools around the country, this isn’t the case. As average temperatures climb , students in the U.S. go to class expecting to sweat in high heat, rather than wonder what they will be learning in class. Even schools that spend most of the year with cold weather can face excessively high temperatures in late spring and summer. When it comes to education, air conditioning can be vital to the continued learning and performance of students .

Anecdotally, many teachers and students are familiar with the struggle of when it gets too hot to learn. Teachers say that children may fight to pay attention, become less compliant, and don’t want to do anything in the sweltering heat. A study conducted by researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School tells us that for each increase in one degree over 90 F, students lose nearly 1% of the year’s learning. Temperatures over 100 F have an effect that is up to 50% larger.

While a district’s wealth influences its likelihood of having air conditioning, all around the country, in both wealthy and non-wealthy areas, you can find schools lacking in air conditioning . For example:

• In Detroit, just one in three schools has air conditioning.
• In New York City, a quarter of classrooms lack air conditioning.
• Hawaii, where temperatures year-round are often in the upper 80s, only has air conditioning in 40% of classrooms.

A well-functioning air conditioning system can keep almost all of these heat-related problems at bay. Unfortunately, many schools that do have air conditioning don’t have efficient systems and may still deal with inconsistent or nonfunctioning heating and cooling. About 30% of public schools consider their air conditioning and heating system to be fair or poor.

Installing a quality air conditioning system and keeping it maintained can help mitigate comfort issues. Students can focus better, improve their academic performances, and end the school day with (quite literally) cooler heads.

2. Lighting

Lighting has changed quite a bit since the construction of many 20th-century schools. Until the ’50s, natural light was the dominant approach to keeping classrooms bright. Large windows were used to illuminate the space, but as electricity became cheaper and easier to obtain, natural daylight was pushed aside.

Natural light has a variety of positive influences on learning and productivity due to its psychological and physiological effects . It results in higher levels of vitamin D and energy while improving sleep and reducing the effects of seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Designing for natural daylight is an excellent way to promote alertness and productivity in the classroom.

But daylight isn’t without its disadvantages. It can’t be the only light source, of course, as inclement weather, early winter darkness, and nighttime events all require a secondary source of lighting. Daylight can also be frustrating in some classrooms, especially those using substantial amounts of technology, due to the glare large windows create. Using low-glare designs and adjustable lights and adapting to the amount of daylight present can all combat the adverse aspects of natural lighting.

Energy-saving lighting is an area where many schools can save money. Replacing old, headache-inducing lights with LED bulbs can reduce energy costs, decrease maintenance needs, and even improve safety due to their reduced heat output. These eco-friendly lights can also pair with advanced lighting controls.

Connecting your lights to the Internet of Things (IoT) can automate the task of keeping your building bright. You can reduce consumption by turning off lights in spaces that are not in use or install lights that respond to the amount of natural daylight present, reducing or increasing the brightness as necessary. Many of these lighting solutions can also help make your facility more sustainable .

3. Surface Hygiene

Basic cleanliness is a fundamental aspect of any environment, but especially one where the health and safety of children is a priority. The recent pandemic has spotlighted attention to the importance of cleanliness and pathogen mitigation in school facilities. Schools can be full of germs, and many children don’t know how to protect themselves against viruses and bacteria. Millions of children miss school due to illnesses that could have been lessened with proper sanitation.

For example, one study of athletic training rooms in schools found staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE) on 24% of surfaces and influenza on 25% of surfaces. After new hygiene protocols were put in place, these pathogens were eliminated entirely.

Encouraging basic cleaning and hygienic practices can go a long way in cultivating a clean building. Make sure teachers do their part to stay safe and show their students how to, as well. Coughing into the elbow, using tissues, and following other hygienic practices can be especially helpful during flu season to reduce absences and improve student achievement. Teachers can disinfect commonly touched fixtures like doorknobs, computer mice, and light switches frequently.

Custodial staff are also crucial in this area. Appropriate planning can ensure that surfaces are regularly cleaned and sanitized. Integrating a work order system with facility management software may help to stay on top of cleaning tasks. In addition to routine cleaning tasks, you can employ both short-term and long-term pathogen mitigation solutions to make your school a safer, healthier space for students and staff.

The benefits of a clean school go beyond hygiene. An orderly, clean school conveys a message of sincerity and dedication. Students see that their school holds high standards, and teachers know that they work in a place that takes education seriously. These positive connotations can help improve the learning environment, and they give visitors an excellent impression of your commitment to the educational atmosphere.

4. Indoor Air Quality

Indoor air quality (IAQ) is another factor to consider. IAQ has a pronounced effect on children compared to adults, making IAQ in schools a matter of special importance. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) highlights this importance, specifically pointing to the following factors, which all influence a school’s IAQ:

• Airborne pollutants
• Circulation of outdoor air
• Temperature and relative humidity (RH)

Poor IAQ can have an immediate impact on students and teachers, causing allergic reactions or asthma attacks in severe cases. IAQ impacts comfort levels as well, either promoting or detracting from positive attitudes and concentration. No one wants to feel trapped in a stuffy room.

In addition to these immediately felt consequences, exposure to pollutants like dust, mold, and mildew can be detrimental to health long-term. One study even found that teachers with prolonged exposure to relative humidity levels that were either too high or too low were more likely to experience respiratory problems. Bacteria, viruses, allergens, and irritants may continue to thrive in a room despite efforts to sanitize surfaces because the RH is contributing to the problem.

Every school should have their IAQ assessed to determine effective improvement measures. This includes auditing the HVAC system and identifying any potential pollutants that need to be filtered. A humidifier or dehumidifier may help maintain comfortable and healthy RH levels. Since IAQ can have a marked effect on both teacher and student performance and health, schools can’t afford to overlook this aspect of their facilities.

Updated Facilities and the Learning Environment

One transformational component in education is the addition of technology. Though technologies like SMART Boards have been around since the ’90s, policies of one-to-one device usage and developments in instructional techniques have changed the landscape of the traditional classroom. The classic layout with rows of desks facing a teacher and a whiteboard is less common. As pedagogy has changed, so have desk layouts and innovative seating options.

As teaching methods have changed, so must our approach to improving school facilities . Right now, that means flexibility, access to technology, and interactive learning.

Some of the challenges of 21st-century learning involve providing sufficient and accessible locations for charging educational devices, such as laptops, across an entire classroom and creating optimal lighting conditions so students can easily see the screen. The modern learning landscape also offers unique opportunities. Smart lighting and thermostats can help you automate your utilities to be more energy-efficient and comfortable for teachers and students.

The benefits of improving school facilities are widespread. From adding glare-free lighting in a classroom to free-flowing air conditioning in the gymnasium, you can help your students learn better at all points throughout the day. Changes in a student’s environment influence several different spheres of the educational world.

Facility management systems impact the quality of the environment, which affects the performance of students, teachers, and staff. Performance shapes attitudes. Attitudes, in turn, affect their teaching and learning behaviors, which impact student achievement and educational results. In the end, all of this determines future outcomes of individuals and society as a whole.

The system is intertwined, and the resulting academic performance can even influence a school’s future access to resources and benefits. Even something that seems to be relatively simple, like the choice of lighting in a classroom, can have wide-reaching effects. This demonstrates the importance of school facilities in modern education.

Changes to your school’s facilities can deliver improvements across various areas of education. Students can focus better, teachers enjoy their work more, and everyone develops a better attitude toward the facility they spend time in every weekday.

With limited budgets, many districts are hesitant to spend money on infrastructure like lights and HVAC systems, but the improvements speak for themselves. A general sense of well-being does wonders for the atmosphere in a school. Unfortunately, more than half of U.S. public schools in 2012 had inadequate structural facilities. Schools that serve students of lower-income families and large populations of people of color are particularly at a disadvantage.

An investment in facilities is an investment in student education. Better-performing students may net you more resources, and you could save money through energy-saving upgrades, making your district eco-friendly, as well.

A school’s facilities should be representative of its staff, values, and philosophies. If school leaders believe student learning is a top priority, they cannot underestimate the value of the overall physical environment. Often, educators interpret this concept as desk layout or classroom decorations, but aspects they may take for granted, like air quality and temperature, are just as essential. This atmosphere is a significant player in determining student success — and SitelogIQ can help you cultivate it.

A Custom Approach to Facilities Management

At SitelogIQ, we understand that your district is unique. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for facilities management, which is why we take the time to comprehensively assess the needs of your facilities, district, and community. With this information, we will develop a plan for how to improve your school’s facilities and the learning space for your students.

We can address a variety of building management needs, including lighting, HVAC, and design. Our team of professionals can tear down deteriorating architecture, renovate within an existing footprint, or upgrade systems and fixtures as part of a turnkey solution to help your students enjoy a safe and comfortable learning environment.

If you need help developing an effective solution to boost the health and learning of your staff and students, SitelogIQ is an industry leader in K-12 facility management solutions. Contact us today to learn more about our energy consultation services and how we can elevate your students’ education to the next level.

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Deferred maintenance refers to the postponement of necessary repairs, updates, and general upkeep of a facility, typically due to budget constraints or other organizational challenges. For healthcare systems, deferred maintenance can cause disruptions to hospital operations, negatively impacting patient safety and their ability to deliver care. A survey conducted by Healthcare Facilities Management found that […]

In May 2022, the Department of Energy issued a ruling requiring lighting products to meet new standards. This largely eliminates most fluorescent, incandescent, and halogen products as they are seen as toxic and inefficient and unable to meet these new standards. Since the ruling, 14 states and the District of Columbia have approved or proposed […]

Climate change has contributed to increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including heatwaves, hurricanes, droughts, and heavy rainfall. In 2023, there were 28 extreme weather events in the U.S., more than double the number seen a decade earlier. Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate […]

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• July 14, 2021
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• Categories: Education, IJRISS, Social Science

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue VI, June 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

School Facilities and Infrastructure Management in Improving Education Quality

Felia Santika, Sowiyah, Umigiarini Pangestu and Mutiara Nurahlaini Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Lampung, Indonesia

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to know the Management of School Facilities and Infrastructure in Improving the Quality of Education. This study uses a comparison journal related to Facilities and Infrastructure in the field of education. Based on the results of a review of libraries from various countries in the world, the authors found that school facilities and infrastructure can improve the quality of education. Therefore, the school is expected to manage the facilities and pre-retirement in meeting the needs. Facilities and infrastructure greatly affect the ability of students in the learning process. It can be said that quality school facilities and infrastructure help attract and retain teachers, support improved student outcomes, and have a positive economic impact on the community. And it can be known that complete school facilities and infrastructure can determine the number of students. Therefore, the role of facilities and infrastructure is very important to attract the attention of the community so that the school has fans. The importance of school facilities and pre-retirement management in improving the quality of education attracts researchers to review, and this article to test how the management of facilities and infrastructure in improving the quality of education.

Keywords: education quality, education management, facilities and infrastructure management, literature review.

I. INTRODUCTION

Education is one of the basic needs for humans. Education can be one way for people to achieve their goals (Akareem & Hossain, 2012). School as educational institution is basically established as a means for the teaching and learning process (Akhihiero, 2011). As the new demands on the education system, the education system is required to focus more on emphasizing the quality of education, especially on facilities and infrastructure. These shifts and changes occur not only in developed countries, but also in developing countries in the world. Educational facilities and infrastructure are supporting matters that facilitate the teaching and learning process in school. Facilities and infrastructure include school buildings, equipment including teaching aids, books, typewriters, computers and laboratory equipment (Akhihiero, 2011; Herwan, Aswandi, & Chiar, 2018). Facilities and infrastructure become one of the indicators of the quality of education because Facilities and Infrastructure in education is one of the determining factors in the success of education. The completeness of educational facilities and infrastructure in school greatly influences the effectiveness of learning, both in and out of the classroom (Darmastuti, 2014).

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School feeding programmes improved attendance in northern Burkina Faso

Pouirkèta Rita Nikiema

Assistant Professor, Department of Economics and Management, Université Norbert Zongo

A school feeding programme in northern Burkina Faso increased school attendance and girls’ enrolment.

School feeding programmes are one of the widest and most popular social safety nets in the world. Globally, 418 million children are benefitting now from school meals (WFP 2022). These programmes play a huge role in improving educational outcomes for children. As developing countries have embarked on the path of universal education, many joined the Education for All initiative. Since then, policymakers have undertaken measures such as the Food for Education programme, to overcome the opportunity costs of sending children to school among poor and vulnerable households and increase enrolment and attendance among school-age children. Indeed, school-meal programmes act as an incentive for families to enrol their children in school and keep them there (WFP 2022). Previous research ( Chakraborty and Jayaraman 2022 ) also found that midday meals improve children’s learning outcomes. 

My research ( Nikiema 2019 ) considers how school feeding programmes may improve school enrolment and attendance in the context of Burkina Faso and the Catholic Relief Services school feeding “Beoog Biiga programme”. There are many challenges in access to education, including prohibitive school distances, financial costs, cultural barriers and the opportunity costs of sending girls to school who are expected to perform household chores and look after other children. These factors contribute to a high number of dropouts at an early age. The Northern Region suffers a particularly high rate - the grade five drop-out rate is 15-17% - often due to early marriage, puberty (and lack of proper sanitation facilities in schools) and work duties at home. 

School feeding programmes in Burkina Faso

School feeding programmes have been implemented since the period of severe famine in the Sahel region of West Africa. In Burkina Faso, school canteens were first introduced in the 1960s by the Catholic Relief Services (Cathwell). My research covers the region served by the Catholic Relief Services, and all schools that were listed in the academic year 2011–12, focusing on the central part of the northern region of Burkina Faso. Northern Burkina Faso is an appropriate context to evaluate the impact of Food for Education programmes for two main reasons. First, the region has low primary school participation. On average, only 53.5% of school-age children (6–11 years old) attend school (MENA 2012). Second, income levels are very low and severe food shortages are frequent. Hence, the value of the food offered should be a sufficient incentive to attract children to school. Households are largely dependent upon subsistence agriculture, and malnutrition is extremely high in the target area, with stunting occurring in 40% of children under the age of five.

Generally, a school feeding programme is implemented in two forms: an on-site meal called the ‘daily meal’ and a ‘take-home ration’. Under the daily meal programme, breakfast and/or lunch is served at the school every school day and is available to both boys and girls. Under the take-home ration, a pupil receives a certain amount of food staples each period conditional on maintaining a specified attendance rate during that period. 

Beoog-Biiga programme effect on girls’ enrolment and attendance  

The data used in this study comes from two sources: the Catholic Relief Services (Burkina Faso) and the ministry of primary education. The latter provides administrative data on school characteristics drawn from its annual school surveys. The Catholic Relief Services provides data collected in 2011 on educational outcomes such as school enrolment and attendance. The “Beoog Biiga” is a multisectoral programme that was funded from 30 September 2011 to 31 December 2014 and implemented in partnership with the Government of Burkina Faso and local development organisations. The project targeted two provinces in the northern area, covering 684 schools and 134,128 pupils in its first year, including 62,442 girls. 

The ‘Beoog Biiga’ programme is considered a joint feeding programme with two schemes: the first scheme is “daily meal only” (for all students) and the second scheme is the “daily meal + take-home ration” (daily meal for all students and take-home ration only for girls with 90% of attendance). To evaluate the impact of the take-home ration programme on girls’ enrolment and attendance I compare the “daily meal schools” versus the “daily meal + take-home ration schools”.

Take-home rations improve both boys’ and girls’ attendance rate 

As reported by the Catholic Relief Services, attendance is measured by the average number of half-days of classes not missed by pupils in each school. The empirical results from my research suggest that on average the take-home ration programme improves pupils’ attendance rate - rising by 8.4 percentage points. However, boys observe a larger rise in attendance rate relative to girls suggesting the presence of spillover effects. The girls’ attendance rate increased by 6 percentage points against 8.4 percentage points for boys. This result can be explained by the fact that all schools within the programme provided a daily meal for all students, boys and girls. 

Take-home rations increase girls’ enrolment rate within schools

Enrolment rate is defined as the number of boys or girls enrolled as a percentage of all pupils within schools. The empirical results reveal that girls’ enrolment rate increased significantly—by 3.2 percentage points—with the take-home ration scheme. It shows that while girls’ enrolment rate increased with take-home rations, the number of enrolled girls increased more than boys (six girls versus five boys). In addition, results show that the presence of female teachers in schools increases the impact of take-home rations on girls’ enrolment rate, as parents have more confidence sending their daughters to school where there are female teachers. Girls and their parents may regard a female teacher as proof of success, demonstrating that girls are not confined only to domestic tasks but can become more literate and practice a good job in the future.

School feeding programmes can improve girls’ educational attainment in poor and food insecure contexts

The study shows that school feeding through the  take-home ration programme in a specific context of food insecurity can increase school attendance and girls’ enrolment. However, the impact of this programme on nutrition and health remains to be investigated. Also, the study results suggest that school characteristics influenced the extent to which take-home rations improved school attendance and girls’ enrolment in the northern Burkina Faso.  

The findings of this research have policy relevance: take-home rations improve school attendance for both boys and girls, and increase girls’ enrolment within schools. This carries long-term implications for gender equality in schools and girls’ educational attainment. Partners must continue to support governments and pursue the goal for every child to have access to a daily, healthy meal in school.

Editors' note: This column is published in collaboration with the International Economic Associations’  Women in Leadership in Economics  initiative which aims to enhance the role of women in economics through research, building partnerships, and amplifying voices. 

WFP. (2022). State of School Feeding Worldwide 2022 . Rome, World Food Programme.

Chakraborty, T and R, Jayaraman. (2022). Midday meals in India improve children’s learning outcomes.  https://voxdev.org/topic/education/midday-meals-india-improve-childrens-learning-outcomes

Nikiema, P. R. (2019). The Impact of School Feeding Programmes on Educational Outcomes: Evidence from Burkina Faso. Journal of African Economies , 2019, Vol. 28, number 3, 323–341.

MENA (2012). Annuaires Statistiques de l’Education Nationale 2011/2012.

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A Bilbao on Siberia’s Edge?

By Finn-Olaf Jones

• July 22, 2011

I WAS wandering though a dozen curtained-off video galleries on the second floor of one of Russia’s newest cultural hot spots, the Perm Museum of Modern Art (Permm), watching provocative art videos by a Siberian performance group named Blue Noses, when I came across a plain cardboard box. Peering inside, I was startled to see a film loop projected from the ceiling of one of the Blue Noses dressed as Lenin manically twitching in his coffin.

Perhaps Lenin, who famously disdained abstract art, really would be turning in his grave if he saw the sort of creations that this city, where his parents met, is attracting in its quest to become Russia’s center for contemporary art.

The gateway to Siberia and some 900 miles from Moscow, Perm used to be the last stop to nowhere, the transient point where criminals, political prisoners and other people deemed undesirable by the czars and the Soviet regime passed through on their way to forced exile and later the gulags, often never to be heard from again. During the cold war, Perm itself disappeared from Soviet maps when it became a “closed city,” off limits to outsiders thanks to its military production facilities.

But now, driving from the smokestack-ringed suburbs into the city center where candy-colored czarist buildings huddle with Siberian log cabins and Soviet concrete monstrosities, distinct flavors are emerging. Giant figurines of red Lego-like men lounge in the plaza of the former Soviet administrative headquarters and lurk from a nearby rooftop, the work of an art collective called the Professors.

Other eye-catching street art, like a bronze sculpture of a photographer shooting a giant set of ears, a 10-foot half-eaten apple, a tubular St. Stephen, appear, often incongruously, along the sidewalks.

For the past three years, this town of barely a million inhabitants has been aiming to establish itself as a key stop on Russia’s cultural map, opening gallery and performance spaces the way it once produced nuclear ballistic missiles. Perm has a dozen (and counting) theaters featuring productions that are attracting audiences from faraway St. Petersburg and Moscow. The broad esplanade running from the city’s main square has become the site of almost continuous international art, theater and music fairs during the summer. Even the grim-walled former prison camp outside town, Perm-36 , billed as Russia’s only gulag museum, was converted into a theater last July for a well-reviewed production of “Fidelio,” Beethoven’s opera about political repression.

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“ Cultural Planning will help to ensure the Perm region will remain distinctive and unique” , Mr. Protasevich said. “It will mean planning ways to support and preserve our heritage, developing appealing opportunities for artists and musicians regardless of age, and generating education and employment. It will mean building a creative community with a buzz.”

“Some of the identified objectives of “Perm krai international:young journalists@school” project include facilitating greater communication and cooperation among young community and official organizations in Perm krai”, said the Vice-Minister of Perm krai.

“Perm Krai International: young journalistes@school”

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The international children festival of theatre arts “Long Break”

What is the international child festival of theatre arts “Long Break”? It is a real holiday for young spectators and their parents. The international child festival of theatre arts “Long Break” will be hold from the 30th of April to the 5th of May. It will be in Perm and Lysva. It will be hold under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Culture, Youth Politics and Mass Communications of Perm Krai. The program of the festival is prepared by Russian and foreign experts of child theatre. There are the most interesting for children events of the world arts. The “Long Break” familiarizes children with actual artists. It is the platform where people communicate with people using the language of modern arts which is understandable for a new generation.

The festival “The White Nights in Perm”

• The participants of the festival of land art “Ural Myths” will create art objects using natural materials. The objects will have the same mythological idea.
• During the festival of bears “MedveDay” the masters Teddy-makers will tell gripping stories about a symbol of the city. They will organize some exhibitions of teddy bears and they will give master classes.

• The exhibition “Mammoth’s track” will gather mammoths from different corners of Russia on Perm’s territory. There will be even a famous mammoth Dima.
• And at last the international festival of street arts «Open sky» will represent the various program: carnival processions, a 5-day master class «Mask Art», street shows and performances, performances of Russian and foreign street theatres.

The IX International festival “Heavenly Fair of Ural”

From the 26th to the 3rd of July the IX International festival “Heavenly Fair of Ural” takes place in Kungur. There will be a fight for the I Privolzhski Federal Disctrict Cup for aerostatics and the VII Perm Krai Open Cup for aerostatics.This year Kungur won’t hold rating competitions which results are taking into general account of the pilots. They counted on creating entertainment activities “Air battles over Kungur”. There will be the representatives of sub-units of ultralight aviation, detachment of parachute troops and water means. All the battles will take place straight over the city. And natives will take part in the festival too.According to initial data 15 aeronauts and about 50 ultralight aviation pilots expressed willingness to take part at the festival. And a dirigible pilot confirmed his participation.Ultralight aviation pilots will take part in the “Air games” within the festival. As last year a campsite of ultralight aviation will base in an area near a village Milniki.

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• DOI: 10.17072/2218-1067-2022-1-49-57
• Corpus ID: 249915637

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Managing an “unfinished project”: analyzing the elites of perm krai through the lens of expert opinion, related papers.

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