Essential maintenance and capital improvements are chronically underfunded in our school buildings across the United States, leaving school leaders to make difficult decisions on what to prioritize in terms of school building updates. In this article, we will heavily draw on information provided in a recently released report by The 21st Century Fund, The International Well Building Institute and The National Council on School Facilities. This report dives into the importance of comfortable environments for our students, teachers, administrators and staff, along with information on how much we currently spend on our school facilities and what we should be spending.
The report calls out three aspects of public education and school facilities that are important:
- Education is a social enterprise that depends on buildings and grounds where staff, students and community come together
- The economy depends on universal elementary and secondary public education for workforce participation and productivity
- Longstanding deficiencies in public school facilities pose health risks for students, staff, and families, particularly in low wealth communities.
As such, we should be prioritizing funding to education and to our buildings, but we have fallen short of that in the last 10+ years. In 2016 it was found that there was a $46 billion annual gap in the level of funding for maintenance, operation, and periodic capital improvements needed for good stewardship of schools in the US. Since then, that gap has increased. Now, in 2021, while we spend $110 billion in educational facilities, we are still short $85 billion every year, meaning that deficiencies are growing in our educational spaces.
The following graph depicts the percentage of buildings that are in need of updates or replacements. Each bar represents the estimated percentage of public school districts in which at least half of the schools need updates or replacements of selected school building systems and features.
In the last 10 years of working in Missouri schools, we can corroborate this finding. We often find buildings that have heating and air conditioning systems that are 20 years old or older. Most of these types of systems have an expected life of 15 years. So, in most school districts, facility staff have at least one building that equipment is past it’s useful life and is likely struggling to maintain a comfortable learning environment with old and ineffective equipment.
In spite of these somewhat ominous findings, we observe in our visits throughout the state that business officials, school boards, facility directors, and facility staff do everything possible with the funding available. Our purpose of this article is to share a potential strategy to overcome funding shortages chronic shortage of school business officials have at their disposal.
One strategy school business officials have at their disposal is the Performance Contracting mechanism. Enabled by RSMO 8.231, this allows school districts to fund building projects out of energy savings, and often provides flexibility to address building needs outside of a bond issue. Alternatively, we have seen schools combine bond issues with an energy project through a Performance Contract to effectively extend the amount of work that can be accomplished through the bond issue.
We typically see school districts save between 20%-30% on their utility bills when implementing these types of energy projects. Whether your utility bill is $100,000 per year or over $1,000,000 per year, reductions in energy consumption could fund building improvement projects that would begin to answer the call to action posed by the National Council on School Facilities.
For additional resources on this subject, please visit the NAESCO (National Association of Energy Services Companies) www.naesco.org. Additionally, for access to the State of our Schools report, visit https://www.wellcertified.com/state-of-our-schools.
About the author – Ryan Terry is a business development manager with Navitas. His
background as a professional engineer and 15 years of experience in the energy industry
help him bring a practical approach to developing strategies for public sector clients who
want guidance in how to initiate an energy conservation program in their facilities. He
can be reached at rterry@navitas.us.com.