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Tag: Best Practices

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21st Century School Fund, 2009. A new national commitment to address the deferred maintenance and renewal of our nations PK-12 public school buildings will improve our education system, the economy and the environment. A $27 billion investment, just 10% of the minimum estimated total need, would take us a major step closer to ensuring that the nearly 55 million staff and students who attend school daily are in healthy, safe and educationally appropriate environments. This investment will also quickly create between 160,000 and 235,000 jobs1 that will protect our environment and sustain the public infrastructure investments made by earlier generations.

Through a detailed analysis of what school districts have spent on maintenance, repair, and capital renewals, the 21st Century School Fund found that since 1995 the nation has not reduced its level of deferred maintenance. In fact nationally, using a conservative estimate and extremely modest standards, deferred maintenance in our PK-12 public school buildings has grown from $216 to $271 billion. This is an average of about $41 per square foot of space and about $5,400 per student. A more aggressive estimate pegs the total national deferred maintenance, repair and renewal needs of our public school buildings at $650 billion.

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Mary Filardo, Jared Bernstein, and Ross Eisenbrey, 2011. The average U.S. public school building is 40 years old, and many are much older. The cost of maintaining nearly 100,000 public schools and facilities in good repair is enormous. According to the Government Accountability Office and the American Society of Civil Engineers, school districts have been under-spending on maintenance and repair for many years. Chronic deferred maintenance and repair can lead to energy inefficiencies, unsafe drinking water, water damage and moldy environments, poor air quality, inadequate fire alarms and fire safety, compromised building security, and structural dangers.

A national project to address this backlog could create hundreds of thousands of jobs, including jobs for construction workers, building technicians, boiler repairmen, electrical workers, roofers, plumbers, glaziers, painters, plasterers, laborers, and tile setters. It could also lead to the direct hire of building maintenance workers to help slow or prevent the deterioration of buildings and building systems, while generating new savings through energy conservation.

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Council of the Great City Schools, 2014. The report describes how school districts, financially squeezed over long periods of time, made economic decisions that reduced the most cost-effective types of maintenance work: preventive and predictive maintenance. The result of those decisions “to save money” will, in the long term actually increase the amount and frequency of much more expensive breakdown repair and replacement work.

As funds continued to be inadequate, the higher costs of breakdown repair work are forcing districts to make fewer repairs, which accelerates the deterioration of buildings and component systems. Ultimately, districts experienced and will continue to experience premature failure of buildings and systems, and are forced to borrow large sums of capital funds (with their accompanying debt service costs) to upgrade and/or replace facilities. Sadly, new buildings are likely to receive the same lack of preventive and predictive maintenance, thereby repeating the cycle of deterioration.

The report contains contemporary references that link the conditions of school buildings to student achievement and a variety of other issues. It also provides information and references to a variety of strategies that have proven successful in reversing the cycle of deterioration.

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Department of Homeland Security (DHS)/Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), Department of Justice (DOJ)/Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI), United States Department of Education (USDOE), & Department Health and Human Services (DHHS), 2013. Lessons learned from school emergencies highlight the importance of preparing school officials and first responders to implement emergency operations plans. By having plans in place to keep students and staff safe, schools play a key role in taking preventative and protective measures to stop an emergency from occurring or reduce the impact of an incident. Although schools are not traditional response organizations, when a school-based emergency occurs, school personnel respond immediately. They provide first aid, notify response partners, and provide instructions before first responders arrive. They also work with their community partners, i.e., governmental organizations that have a responsibility in the school emergency operations plan to provide a cohesive, coordinated response. Community partners include first responders (law enforcement officers, fire officials, and emergency medical services personnel) as well as public and mental health entities.

We recommend that planning teams responsible for developing and revising school EOPs use this document to guide their efforts. It is recommended that districts and individual schools compare existing plans and processes against the content and processes outlined in this guide. To gain the most from it, users should read through the entire document prior to initiating their planning efforts and then refer back to it throughout the planning process.

The guide is organized in four sections:

  1. The principles of school emergency management planning.
  2. A process for developing, implementing, and continually refining a school EOP with community partners (e.g., first responders and emergency management personnel) at the school building level.
  3. A discussion of the form, function, and content of school EOPs.
  4. “A Closer Look,” which considers key topics that support school emergency planning, including addressing an active shooter, school climate, psychological first aid, and information-sharing.

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Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), 2013. The Emergency Management Institute developed the Introduction to ICS for Schools (IS-100.SCa for Schools) course in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Education.  The course is designed primarily for kindergarten through high school personnel.

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U.S. Department of Education, Office of Safe and Healthy Students, 2008.

  • To ensure the highest level of safety for our students, faculty, and staff
  • To evaluate the preparedness of our crisis management plan
  • To assist in the improvement of our plan
  • To facilitate planned life saving responses in the event of a crisis.

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U.S. Department of Education, Office of Safe and Healthy Students.

  • Examine how physical design affects school safety.
  • Review elements of strong safety-related school design.
  • Discuss school vulnerability assessments.
  • Highlight solutions that address physical design weaknesses.
  • Outline the four elements of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED).

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Blum.  This monograph on Best Practices in Enhancing School Environment has been developed under contract with the Department of Defense. While its focus is to help military connected schools to better address the needs of their military students, what we present has relevance for all of our children in all of our schools.

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