‘Millions of Our Children and Youth are in Unhealthy, Unsafe, Educationally Deficient Public School Buildings’
Leading expert on school infrastructure, Mary Filardo, testifies before Congress on the critical need to invest in our nation’s schools
The Biden administration has made strides in targeting investment in America’s K-12 public school infrastructure, allocating $130 billion in the American Rescue Plan and aiming to invest an additional $100 billion through the American Jobs Plan. However, while these represent steps in the right direction, more needs to be done to address the nation’s crumbling school conditions left by decades of underinvestment and deferred maintenance. Groups like the 21st Century School Fund and ([Re]Build America’s School Infrastructure Coalition (BASIC Coalition), of which IWBI is a member, are calling upon the administration to step up investments in the safety and efficiency of public school facilities, which serve as essential infrastructure for not just students’ education but can also support broader community health, equity, and well-being.
On April 28, Mary Filardo, Founder and Executive Director of the 21st Century School Fund and Founder of the BASIC Coalition, testified before the House Committee on Education and Labor in the hearing, Building Back Better: Investing and Improving Schools, Creating Jobs, and Strengthening Families and our Economy. Filardo spoke to the urgent need for a federal program such as the Reopen and Rebuild America’s Schools Act (RRASA) that targets investments to make K-12 public schools healthier, safer, more efficient, climate resilient and affordable for all. Below, find five key takeaways from Filardo’s written testimony:
- The state of school facilities presents a mounting crisis
According to Filardo, “Millions of our children and youth are in unhealthy, unsafe, educationally deficient public school buildings and grounds. Educators are teaching where lighting, ventilation, temperature controls, furniture, fixtures and equipment have gone decades without adequate improvements, making the classroom an unpleasant, uncomfortable, and often unhealthy place to work for eight to 12 hours per day. The importance of facilities on student achievement, teacher performance, or health and community well-being is now becoming soundly established in research.”1
- Chronic underinvestment in schools is adding up
“Over the last five years, districts and states spent about $52.7 billion per year (2020 $) on school construction replacement, new construction, system renewals, alterations and reductions in deferred maintenance. However, this is about half of what is needed, leaving an annual gap of $47.1 billion for our existing facilities, and nearly $12.7 billion for new school construction for projected growth.2 The gap is not evenly shared. Low wealth and high need districts, without the credit or cash to pay for essential facilities improvements must squeeze their instructional budgets to cover emergency repairs, higher utility costs, and lost federal and state revenue due to enrollment declines caused by poor conditions.”
- Schools aren’t just infrastructure, they’re essential infrastructure
“In normal times, our public school facilities house nearly 56 million children, youth and adults during the work week in 100,000 schools encompassing billions of square feet of space. To put it in perspective, one-sixth of the American population enters a school facility every workday." … "Our public schools are a core civic institution and often the anchor at the heart of community. If you have ever been to a rural community or urban neighborhood that is about to lose its school to consolidation, you know the devastating outcome to these communities if it happens. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the critical role of public schools in our communities–– they are public institutions meant to serve the entire community, and so they do. They are food security centers for millions of children and families, as we have seen in the last year. They provide emergency shelters when communities are hit by hurricanes, floods or wildfires.”
- Federal intervention is about equity and fairness and addressing significant disparities
“The federal government has neglected its duty to support our public school facilities for too long. This inaction makes the federal government complicit in growing the gaping disparities and inequities we have between the low wealth and high need districts and our nation’s new and more affluent communities. Given the critical role our nation’s public school buildings and grounds play in educating our children and youth and anchoring and supporting communities and neighborhoods, it is beyond time for the U.S. Department of Education to take an interest in and provide leadership on reducing the facilities inequities for the nation’s children, youth, and the staff who works with them daily.”
- How federal legislation can serve as a down payment to get schools back on track
“We need to build a new generation of resilient 21st century schools that support best educational practices, public health guidelines, advance climate goals and provide for the vitality of the entire community. Some communities are able to accomplish this, but school construction public works projects in low-income communities and neighborhoods have fallen way short. Poor families want the same thing that middle class families want: first-class public school facilities that keep their children safe, healthy and learning. [The Reopen and Rebuild America’s Schools Act] will help get that done.”
As demonstrated by Filardo’s written testimony, providing healthy school environments for students and educators nationwide cannot be achieved through a “return to normal,” or even by the limited resources allocated to schools thus far by the federal government as part of COVID relief. To truly address the systemic inequities in our school systems and build schools back better will require enhanced investments in school upgrades and fair distribution of those investments toward the underserved communities that need them the most. RRASA offers a research-backed roadmap for ensuring our 21st century schools enable students, educators, and communities to thrive.
Resources
[1] Mary Filardo, Jeffrey M. Vincent, Kevin J. Sullivan, “How Crumbling School Facilities Perpetuate Inequality”; Phi Delta Kappan, April 29, 2019
[2] Preliminary analysis of U.S. Census of Government Fiscal Data, data collected from state facilities offices, and application of industry standards forthcoming in State of our Schools 2021, from the 21st Century School Fund, National Council on School Facilities, International WELL Building Institute and the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley, June 2021.
