Support Investing in Healthy and Safe Buildings

Policy research on the need to ensure students and educators work in safe buildings

The 2021 State of Our Schools report from the 21st Century School Fund, the International WELL Building Institute and the National Council on School Facilities finds that no matter how good the curriculum, teachers or administrators, we can’t achieve world-class education with crumbling school facilities. The report estimates that our nation is now underinvesting in school buildings and grounds by $85 billion each year, up by $25 billion since 2016. With chronic underfunding of capital needs, building and site deficiencies accumulate. Facility deficiencies have negative effects on human health and safety, the quality of the educational experience, working conditions for teachers and other school staff, as well as a depressive effect on community vitality. Our school facility infrastructure is facing a national emergency. Such severe and routine underinvestment is eroding the country’s ability to provide quality student education in a safe, healthy, and sustainable setting. Examining spending data from 13,483 public school districts across the country tells the same unacceptable story: districts with the highest-need students continue to see the lowest funding levels when it comes to spending on maintenance and operations and school construction.

Washington Post staff writer Valerie Strauss noted in an article, "What Education Secretary Cardona Didn't Mention in His Vision for Education," the sorry state of many of America’s school buildings. More than half of U.S. public schools need to update or replace multiple systems or features in more than half their buildings. The failure to address them could pose health and safety problems for children and adults, according to a 2020 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Mary Filardi, a school facilities expert and executive director of the 21st Century School Fund, said Secretary Cardona's Vision for Education in America said nothing about how critical for America’s future it is to have safe, healthy, and modern learning and teaching environments. In 2020, the Government Accountability Office issued a major report that found nearly 50 percent of the nation’s public-school districts required upgraded heating-and-ventilation and air-conditioning systems in more than half of their school buildings. Crumbling facilities are a barrier to teaching and learning, and to the socio-emotional and instructional benefits that come with modern public-school buildings and grounds.

The Massachusetts Public Education Infrastructure Profile 2021 examined elementary and secondary public school facilities in Massachusetts, with a focus on understanding the gap between current levels of funding for facilities and the level of investment necessary to provide healthy, safe, sustainable and equitable spaces for all students to learn and thrive. School buildings require continuous maintenance to be healthy, safe, and operationally efficient. The COVID-19 pandemic caused the necessary closure of schools statewide. This heightened public awareness of just how poor school HVAC systems were and prompted efforts to repair or update them. However, revenue was needed, and is still needed, to ensure all our school buildings have proper ventilation. School district responsibilities for school buildings and grounds fall into two categories:

1. Maintenance and operations: regular and routine facilities maintenance and operations, including cleaning, groundskeeping, preventive maintenance, minor repairs, utilities and building security, which are funded from the annual operating budget.
2. School construction capital outlay: periodic major facilities projects that involve planning, design, construction, renovation, retrofitting, and replacing of buildings, and building systems, components, and features, as well as site acquisition, site improvements, and new construction, which are funded from a multiyear capital budget, and usually financed with bonds.

Massachusetts public school districts spent an annual average of $1.3 billion, about 8.1 percent of their total education spending, on maintenance and operations of facilities for fiscal years 2017 through 2019. Compared to the 3 percent current replacement value, maintenance and operations budget benchmark, public-school districts in the state are under-funded for annual maintenance and operations by $1.3 billion every year.

M&O Annual Average Standard for Good Stewardship, Actual Expenditures, and Projected Gap

Meeting the 3% M&O standard means increasing district operating budgets for facilities by $1.3 billion a year, or $1,406 per student.

In Massachusetts, school district maintenance and operations and school construction capital investments vary by student family income, race/ethnicity, and by geography. Students who are economically disadvantaged, of minority race or ethnicity, and who live in rural communities disproportionately attend schools that have not had the funding needed for school facility modernization.

Where students live is a factor that affects the level of investment in public school facilities. School districts in rural and small communities have had, on average, lower spending per school on maintenance and operations and school construction than any other geographic area. The Massachusetts School Building Authority data indicates that students of color and/or whose families have low socioeconomic status disproportionately attend older, poor quality school buildings.

If we are to address widening educational disparities, our buildings must be part of the solution.

FY18 Average M&O Expenditures per School, by School District Locales (actual $) iii

The American Society of Civil Engineers gave America’s public K-12 infrastructure a D+ grade in its 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, the same terrible grade as in its prior 2017 report. Fifty-three percent of schools, the report found, need improvements just to rise to a ranking of “good” condition. Twenty-four percent were rated “fair” or “poor.” Thirty-one percent had temporary buildings — which spikes the “fair” or “poor” rate to 45 percent. And 40 percent of schools lack a long-term educational facility plan to address these challenges. Iv

Carolyn Goldthwaite of the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships finds fifty-three percent of public-school districts report the need to update or replace multiple building systems, including HVAC systems. Schools in the NEEP region, on average, are more than 50 years old. And generally, they are not being properly maintained, updated, or replaced. This is not due to lack of effort. More often, maintenance budgets get cut due to budget shortfalls, and this creates inefficient systems at the budgeting and planning level. We have a systemic problem across the country of not maintaining our school buildings. Schools are the center of our communities; they should be the center of the infrastructure plan. The air quality issues, the lack of proper building maintenance, and the challenges within our schools are not new. States and communities should focus on upgrading their infrastructure – especially HVAC systems. For too long, our students, teachers, and staff have had to contend with high rates of asthma and absenteeism due to poor indoor air quality. We need to provide safe and healthy environments that are conducive to learning for children of all ages and backgrounds. School buildings need to be in good condition and provide working heating and air conditioning, clean water, and modern technology to fulfill a host of other functions. We should take “returning to normal” off the table and instead put schools at the center of the infrastructure plan.v

In a news report, Maria Godoy, the senior science and health editor at NPR, noted that Tracy Enger, who works at the Environmental Protection Agency's Indoor Environments Division, has been fighting to improve the air quality inside America’s schools. Getting school districts to prioritize indoor air quality hasn’t been easy even when asthma rates were escalating. When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, its spread by virus particles could easily build up in indoor air and linger, sometimes for hours. The key to clearing out those infectious particles was good ventilation and filtration. Anisa Heming, director of the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council noted that in the past, it's been hard to make a health case for improving air quality in schools because the health impacts tend to be longer term. But research shows the health and academic benefits are substantial – and go beyond Covid. When a room is better ventilated, influenza rates, asthma attacks and absenteeism go down, and reading and math test scores go up. Less carbon dioxide accumulating in a room helps students think more clearly.vi

Mindy Domb, Patricia A. Duffy and David Allen Robertson wrote a petition (accompanied by a bill, H. 2268, An Act for Healthy and Green Public Schools), which asked the state Department of Public Health and the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to implement a healthy and green public schools' initiative. Massachusetts is an education leader in the U.S. The quality of our schools is a great indoor environmental justice issue – but it is also an education crisis. Research from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health shows that both indoor and outdoor environmental quality are fundamentally linked to human health, thinking and performance, particularly in our schools.vii

Erika Eitland and her colleagues on The Nine Foundations of a Healthy Building synthesized more than 40 years of scientific research. The research led to insights into how the indoor environment influences student health, well-being, and productivity. School building conditions such as ventilation, indoor air quality, thermal comfort, acoustics, noise and lighting and views play an important role in a student’s ability to focus, process new information and feel engaged at school. These environmental factors can have both detrimental and positive impacts on student health and performance. The report examines when and how these various building conditions affect a student and pays special attention to articulating the nuanced effects these parameters have on how our students feel, think, and perform.viii

Claudia L. Persico, an assistant professor at American University, in an article for the Brookings Institution, wrote that COVID-19 has changed the way we understand school building ventilation and its importance in keeping us safe from viruses and bacteria in the air. The pandemic has motivated many school leaders to invest in improvements to ventilation systems, but the benefits of investing in a safe learning environment extend far beyond protecting children from the coronavirus. The evidence suggests that pollution exposure is not only a factor in student academic outcomes but also a major driver of inequality in outcomes between wealthier and lower-income children, and between white and non-white children.ix

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency outline ways that schools and IHEs can improve ventilation, including:

• Bringing in as much outdoor air as possible.
• Using heating, ventilation, and air conditioning settings to maximize ventilation.
• Ensuring exhaust fans in restrooms and kitchens.
• Filtering and/or cleaning the air. CDC guidance on ventilation in the home may be relevant for residential dormitories.
• Considering the use of portable carbon dioxide monitors.
• Communicating clearly to school communities, parents, students, faculty, and staff on college, or university webpages. Walking through school or higher education buildings with custodial engineers. xxxi

In addition, the CDC guidance for institutions of higher education recommends:

• Checking for hazards such as mold, Legionella, and lead and copper contamination from plumbing that has corroded. The temporary shutdown or reduced operation of college institutions and reductions in normal water use can create hazards for returning students, faculty, and staff.
• Institutions improve ventilation in indoor settings for sporting events, training, practices, locker rooms, and other facilities by bringing as much fresh air into buildings as possible. xxxii

Writer Jon Marcus, in the Hechinger Report, wrote that long-neglected maintenance threatens to further escalate the cost of college, and that after years of budget cuts and continuing austerity, universities and colleges collectively face a shortfall of a record $30 billion for what they variously call deferred maintenance or “deferred renewal” to deteriorating buildings and other infrastructure.

All of this complicates even the most innovative attempts to reduce the price of college. Along with pension liabilities and the bill for healthcare they provide for their retired employees, it means colleges and universities face even higher, not lower, costs to do business. “It’s an endless game of chasing your tail,” said Brian Swanson, assistant vice president for university services at the University of Minnesota, told Marcus. “Every year we lose ground and costs increase. And if we don’t get the money from the Legislature, the only place we have to get it is tuition.” Students help pay for the maintenance backlog. xxxiii

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