TEXAS: In an effort to reduce energy costs and battle skyrocketing prices, Katy ISD has joined a new pilot program designed to target the district's least energy-efficient facilities and help cut overall costs. KISD is taking part in CenterPoint Energy's Texas Schools Conserving Resources (SCORE) program. "The SCORE program benefits Katy ISD and the community as it will help us identify areas in which we can reduce energy costs, ultimately saving the district and taxpayers money," said Katy ISD Superintendent Dr. Leonard Merrell. “In addition, through effective energy management, the program will help us create an optimum learning environment for our students and teachers.” According to Karen Gregory, SCORE program manager for CenterPoint, the program is an organized effort to bring needed resources and energy efficiency to Texas Schools. "We identified a real need for an energy efficiency program that specifically targets schools, especially as school budgets spread thinner," Gregory said.

Taxpayers can rejoice in the fact that SCORE offers incentives to school districts committed to conserving energy. KISD will be eligible to receive incentive checks for projects the district installs by next Dec. 1. CenterPoint will pay the district $150 per peak kilowatt of energy saved. The Public Utility Commission of Texas provides the mechanism for calculating energy savings achieved. The district is awarded an incentive check when projects are finished and the new equipment is inspected. KISD says it has already identified substantial facility upgrades and that the SCORE program will help determine what additional upgrades would be most effective. SCORE also involves administrators at all levels of the school district being active in the decision-making process of what facilities need upgrades and which do not. Michael Matej, KISD's utility conservation manager, said this aspect of the program is important because "it ensures that the financial decision makers understand the lifelong cost of the equipment and therefore can justify funding energy efficiency projects."

INDIANA: A school construction boom dominated education news in 2006, with more than $150 million in building projects approved by Hendricks County school districts. Accommodating a huge growth in enrollment has long been a struggle for Hendricks County school districts, and 2006 was no different. Even as the year began, Plainfield was building a new, $103 million high school, and Avon had two construction projects under way, including a sixth elementary school. But with Census Bureau figures showing Hendricks County as the 75th-fastest-growing county in the nation from 2000-05, local school officials soon made it clear that even more construction would be needed. Avon conducted a series of hearings during the summer and fall to demonstrate need for another elementary school, a new middle school and an expansion of the high school. The meetings culminated in November with the approval of all three projects.

Brownsburg school officials in September approved construction of the $18 million Ronald Reagan Elementary at 1250 E. Airport Road, north of East Middle School. The 89,000-square-foot structure building will house 684 students in Grades K-5 and is scheduled for completion in July 2008. Brownsburg also gave approval in November to a $15 million, 27,000-square-foot high school expansion and gave a tentative OK to building a senior or freshman academy in 2010 that would increase capacity by about 800 students. Danville approved plans in February to build a $30 million, 187,000-square-foot intermediate and middle school to be completed in 2008. The two-story school will have two wings of classrooms. One wing will be for Grades 5-6, and the other will house Grades 7-8. North West Hendricks school officials also conducted a series of meetings to assess the need for additional buildings. A task force recommended constructing a lower elementary school in Pittsboro and renovating and adding to the high school. However, the School Board sought additional information on the cost and postponed making a decision until early 2007. Plainfield's new high school is scheduled to open in fall 2008. It initially will serve 1,600 students but could be expanded to accommodate 2,200 students. The old high school will become a middle school and the middle school will be an upper elementary for Grades 4-5.

CALIFORNIA: A new law in California will make it easier for low-performing schools to pay for repairs to their facilities. What was known as the state’s Emergency Repair Program has been converted from an $800 million reimbursement program into a grant program. Schools no longer will have to pay for repairs upfront and then wait to be repaid, a process that can take three months or longer. The new program, which goes into effect Jan. 1, is part of a package of "cleanup" legislation that applies to what is known as the Williams settlement, resolving a lawsuit over school facility conditions and teaching materials. Regulations allowing schools to apply for the money are expected to be available sometime in the spring. Eligible schools—which are determined by their rankings on the state’s academic-performance index—still will be reimbursed if they pay for repairs with local funds.

The previous program, which was part of the lawsuit settlement, has been used to reimburse districts for addressing such problems as termite damage, gang graffiti, and overflowing septic systems. But some school district officials were hesitant to apply for the funds because they had to wait to get their money back from the state, and because they didn’t know if their repairs would meet the state’s standards for “emergency facilities needs.”

NEW JERSEY: Three weeks after it launched an initiative to collect millions spent to clean contaminated land purchased for school construction, the state announced a separate legal campaign to start recouping more than $20 million for structural and design defects on school projects across New Jersey. As part of its new campaign, the state filed a lawsuit in Mercer County demanding STV Architects Inc. and El Taller Colaborativo, an engineering firm, reimburse the state more than $3.5 million for repairs on the Mt. Vernon Elementary School in Irvington. The lawsuit contends design errors made by the two Newark firms resulted in the state having to reinforce steel support beams and girders that buckled after upper-level concrete floors were poured.

"The buckling of the steel originally meant to support the upper floors of this structure was so severe it could be seen with the naked eye," said Attorney General Stuart Rabner, whose office filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Schools Construction Corp., which was set up six years ago to manage an overhaul of public school buildings in New Jersey. The setbacks delayed the $22 million school project for months as outside engineers reviewed the structure and determined how to fix it, according to the lawsuit. In addition, the state notes, the agency "continues to feel the effects of the delay to the construction of the school," which is now scheduled to open in April.

CANADA: Parkland School Division, west of Edmonton, has ordered $4.7 million worth of building renovations that are expected to pay for themselves in energy savings, raise student achievement and reduce emissions. Ameresco Canada Inc. will improve lighting, boilers, furnaces, ventilation and control systems in 22 school buildings over the next three years. "We help the school to determine the condition of all components and we relate the facility to learning outcomes," says Wayne Cole, Ameresco's senior business developer for Western Canada. "There is a direct connection between the condition of facilities and teaching and learning," he says.

A review of scholarly literature, commissioned by Ameresco, identified thermal comfort, indoor air quality, visual comfort and acoustics as the facility factors most important to student achievement. Fortunately, Cole says, they can be improved by retrofits that also raise a school's energy efficiency, which Ameresco guarantees. "If the savings fall short of the guarantee, then we will write a cheque for the difference." Well-planned building renewals generate an average return on investment of 15 to 17 per cent annually over 20 years after interest costs, assuming that unit energy costs rise by two per cent annually, Cole says. Ed Paras, Parkland's school facilities manager, says he's confident the 20-year savings in operating costs will at least equal $4.7 million. "I'm monitoring it, but I know it works." The project also is expected to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions equivalent to taking 2,000 cars off the road. The research review found that "facility measures explain 10 to 15 per cent of the differences in students' standardized achievement scores across schools." It also found that schools in good condition have fewer disciplinary problems, higher parental involvement and greater teacher satisfaction. "It appears that extravagant, high-tech schools contribute little to enhanced performance, beyond that found in schools in good condition," the review noted.

ARKANSAS: How does a school district heat a new elementary school when there are no natural gas lines to the site? Dig deep into the Earth and harness the power of Mother Nature through geothermal wells. Bentonville will become one of only a handful of schools in the state to use geothermal energy when the new Bella Vista Elementary School opens along Dartmoor Road next fall. Using geothermal power to heat and cool the Bella Vista school came out of necessity. Bentonville Superintendent Gary Compton said the new school site had no natural gas lines. Compton said district representatives examined electric bills and determined using electricity to control the school temperature was too costly. "We've got a new emphasis on energy management in the district. Bella Vista will be the benchmark," Compton said. The U.S. Department of Energy found that, for most districts, utilities are second only to payroll as a percentage of overall operating expenses.

Allan Yearry, director of support services for the Benton School District, said the district began using geothermal power five or six years ago in a new junior high school. It's powered by about 100 geothermal wells. "It reduced our water bill and that affects the sewer rate too," Yearry said. "We feel that our electric bill was cut by about a good third."

James "Junior" Copeland, maintenance director for the Springdale School District, said geothermal energy has been used for one year at Hunt Elementary School and for two years at Bayyari Elementary School. "Right now, utility bills for those two schools in the summer are running about the same as other schools, but there is some savings in the winter," Copeland said. The geothermal system saves $2,000 to $3,000 at each school during each winter month, when compared with schools using traditional heating systems. aintenance and repair costs for geothermal systems are 20 percent to 40 percent of the cost of maintaining conventional heating and cooling systems, according to the federal Department of Energy.

FLORIDA: High school students want indoor athletic fields, indoor swimming pools, courtyards covered by Plexiglas domes, and cafeteria food replaced with fast-food vendors. And how about a track with sensors in the ground that accurately and automatically measure shot-put distance? Students in Marty Mayer's Speech I class at Middleburg High spent the past two months designing their own 1,000-student high school, with an unlimited budget. Ben Wortham, Clay County's deputy superintendent of schools, gave students some tips in advance and then came back to judge the final products, along with George Copeland, assistant superintendent for business affairs. Each group created a Web page and a trifold display board with their school name, mascot, colors, scale drawings, floor plans, a course selection book and list of sports and clubs. Recently, students had six to eight minutes to present their plans to their classmates and the judges.

The goal of the project, Mayer said, "was for students to be aware of the complexity of designing a school." Mission accomplished, students said. "It was a lot of work, really cool, eye opening," Stephanie Geoghagan said. "You don't realize all the tiny details that go into making a school." The county expects a lot in regard to class sizes, student-teacher ratios, health regulations, accommodations for disabled students and building facilities to match course offerings, student Saura Johnston said.

VERMONT: Several Addison Central Supervisory Union schools are considering new security measures in light of recent acts of violence at schools in Vermont and throughout the country. Middlebury Union Middle School has already installed a new front-entrance security system, while other schools in the district are considering blinds, alarm systems, reorganized offices that look upon entryways, and/or doors that lock from the inside, as upgrades to better protect teachers and children from would-be attackers. "We still want people to come to our schools, but we want to ensure their safety at the same time," said Middlebury School Resource Officer Scott Fisher.

NEW JERSEY: Preparing for a surge in new work, New Jersey's embattled Schools Construction Corporation adopted an operating budget that will expand its staff by 20 percent and increase overall administrative spending by almost 50 percent in 2007. The extra spending and 53 new employees will support added construction as the corporation expects to step up activity after almost 18 months of disarray and reorganization. The new budget anticipates almost $1.4 billion in school project expenditures next year, compared with just over $1 billion in the current year. Administrative spending would rise from $32 million this year to $47.4 million.

Two years ago, before the agency was rocked by revelations of waste and mismanagement, spending peaked at $1.375 billion, SCC records show. Scott Weiner, the corporation's chief executive officer, said the increased costs for staff and consultants in next year's administrative budget will be more than offset by savings from initiatives carried out by the new employees. For instance, he said, although spending on staff attorneys and hired lawyers is scheduled to rise from $2.8 million this year to $4.2 million in 2007, the corporation expects to save $12 million through aggressive management of contractors' payment claims.

WEST VIRGINIA: As part of his ongoing effort to help with repairs and renovations of West Virginia’s aging schools, U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, has announced that Congress has passed legislation that will mean millions for West Virginia’s schools. The bill, which passed in the last hours of the 109th Congress, will extend interest-free construction loans for two more years for West Virginia’s school systems. The bill also includes key education tax deductions for teachers who spend their own money on teaching supplies and for families who have college tuition expenses.

"Studies show that students in new, up-to-date facilities are more likely to learn," said Rockefeller. "I have long fought for federal funding to help improve existing schools and build new ones, so that our students are given the best environment possible to learn and grow." The passed by Congress extends the Qualified Zone Academy Bond (QZAB) program, which enables qualified schools, that partner with the private sector to borrow money without any costs or at nominal interest rates.

Rockefeller fought to make sure that the access to this funding for rural areas was not compromised. He pushed for the local matching requirement to be very flexible and to include in-kind contributions. In-kind contributions can include the transferal of land, educational software, or even the donation of tutorial time.

WEST VIRGINIA: As part of his ongoing effort to help with repairs and renovations of West Virginia’s aging schools, U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, has announced that Congress has passed legislation that will mean millions for West Virginia’s schools. The bill, which passed in the last hours of the 109th Congress, will extend interest-free construction loans for two more years for West Virginia’s school systems. The bill also includes key education tax deductions for teachers who spend their own money on teaching supplies and for families who have college tuition expenses.

"Studies show that students in new, up-to-date facilities are more likely to learn," said Rockefeller. "I have long fought for federal funding to help improve existing schools and build new ones, so that our students are given the best environment possible to learn and grow." The passed by Congress extends the Qualified Zone Academy Bond (QZAB) program, which enables qualified schools, that partner with the private sector to borrow money without any costs or at nominal interest rates.

Rockefeller fought to make sure that the access to this funding for rural areas was not compromised. He pushed for the local matching requirement to be very flexible and to include in-kind contributions. In-kind contributions can include the transferal of land, educational software, or even the donation of tutorial time.

MINNESOTA: The federal Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, recently honored nine Minnesota districts, including Columbia Heights and Mahtomedi, with Energy Star leader awards. That means the districts made continuous improvement on energy efficiency. The EPA recognized the Columbia Heights School District as one of the top districts in the country. In total, Minnesota school districts have avoided an estimated $5.7 million in energy costs since a program called Schools for Energy Efficiency, or SEE, was introduced four years ago.

Columbia Heights and all the other districts the EPA recognized have been working with a White Bear Lake company called Hallberg Engineering, which administers the SEE program. The program helps schools implement low-cost or no-cost methods that will save energy and energy-related expenses. The approach includes operational and behavioral changes. Don't turn on the lights until right before most teachers and students arrive. Shut down computers at night (that saves $20 per computer annually). Spend about $60 for a vending machine device that cuts down on running time, and that will save $150 per machine annually. The SEE program monitors how much energy is used and saved and attaches dollar figures to those savings. Awareness is growing thanks to the program and an emphasis in classrooms and curriculum. Anne Anderson, an energy efficiency coordinator for some districts, said students are learning habits they'll carry with them through life.

WEST VIRGINIA: A low-tech gadget can shine a light on potential troublemakers in schools. Visitors to Riverside High School in Kanawha County have to sign in first. That's nothing new. But school officials said the white sticker that visitors have to wear turns bright blue or purple if they step outside. The change in color identifies potential troublemakers to teachers and other school personnel. Parents have to wear the tags, too, but they like the added security. "If the kids steal them or try to take 'em out and try and get their friends to come in and sign them out, they're not going to get out?" asked Riverside parent Lisa McClure. The answer: That's right. Stickers exposed to daylight automatically change color, thus alerting school personnel the pass is dated. The school has a public library, bank and health clinic, so people are coming and going all the time. Riverside High School has used the stickers for several years. The school pays $250 for 2,000 stickers.

IDAHO: As their enrollment numbers continue to trickle away, many of Idaho's rural school districts are switching to a 4-day school week to save money - and are seeing some extra benefits. At Marsh Valley High School, one of the latest school districts to make the switch as an experiment this year, teachers say attendance has gone up. At Bear Lake High, where they're in their second year of a four-day week, teachers say students show up fresher and ready to learn. Public schools in Idaho are funded through state money, which is handed out on a per-pupil basis. As these schools' enrollments decline, the money they get from the state goes down with them.

The four-day week is meant to save money by cutting down on utility payments. Classroom thermostats at Marsh Valley High are dialed down from 70 degrees to 55 degrees on Fridays, and it's not uncommon to see teachers bundled up in their winter coats in their classrooms on Fridays getting in extra work. By lengthening class periods from an hour to 70 minutes, and lengthening school days by an hour, the district expects to save between $60,000 and $80,000 per year. At the Soda Springs district, they've saved between $130,000 and $200,000 per year, depending on the weather.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA : Demographic experts projected that new housing construction in the District could result in as many as 5,000 additional school-age children in the city by 2010, a potential boom in a system that has lost about 20,000 students over a decade. But whether those children attend traditional public schools, charter schools or other alternatives depends on the condition of the D.C. public schools, which need vast improvements in academic programs and facilities, the experts said at a forum. "Our ability to attract people to come and stay in the District depends on our ability to have good schools," Ellen M. McCarthy, director of the D.C. Office of Planning, told about 200 education and community advocates at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The group gathered to discuss the study "Housing in the Nation's Capital," prepared by the Fannie Mae Foundation and the Urban Institute. The study said improved schools are key to the city's goal of attracting 100,000 more residents by 2020. Thus far, new development has consisted largely of condominiums that have drawn residents without children. But the experts called for city and school officials to work together to attract and retain families.

NORTH CAROLINA: Faced with a need for more space, the Iredell-Statesville school board is considering a complex that could house an elementary school, a high school magnet program and district offices under one roof. Board members selected FirstChoice Public-Private Partners to look at building new schools for the district under a capital lease agreement, a form of financing that was approved recently by the state legislature to help speed school construction projects and possibly reduce costs. The district can provide the land, and the developer would handle the school design and construction.

PENNSYLVANIA: As Philadelphia's police and citizens grapple with street crime, the public schools are gradually becoming safer, school district chief Paul Vallas said. Primarily responsible for making schools safer, he said, are the 250 community group employees hired to help monitor school facilities, the 2,300 cameras installed in the last two years and the creation of school climate manager positions for some schools. To keep crime down, plans call for installing 1,000 more cameras and using $600,000 in new state money to hire 150 more community group employees, Vallas said.

INDIANA: A 27-member task force looking at proposals ranging in price from $234 million to $995 million to improve the city's school facilities, including a proposal to close more than 10 percent of the district's buildings. The task force is charged with reviewing the needs of the district's 53 buildings and matching that with how much the community can afford to fix. One proposal calls for closing as many as six schools. The work would be spread over six to 11 years, depending on how much is done. The project would cost the average home owner between $9.75 and $41.75 a month.Schmidt Associates, an Indianapolis-based firm hired at a cost of nearly $390,000, found that 85 percent of the district's buildings were inadequate. "There hasn't been a lot of construction in the last 30 years," said Wayne Schmidt, chief executive officer of Schmidt Associates.

NEW JERSEY: Members of the Building and Grounds Committee in the Nazareth Area School District debated just how "green" the new middle school building needs to be. Project manager Jamie Lynch spoke to the committee during the capital project review. Lynch said the new building's current design might not meet state requirements for partial loan reimbursements. The building must gain 33 points for "silver" certification, the minimum allowed for the state to pay $600 per student at the building toward debt service. That figure comes out to some $300,000. The building gains points for various features that will benefit the environment.

"We were at 42," Lynch said. "But now the way I see the project, we're at 34." Assistant Superintendent Judith Swigart disagreed with Lynch's point calculations, citing the eight points he said the building lost according to an environmental consultation firm. "These points were never lost," Swigart said. "They were never earned." Lynch said a margin of error of one point on the scale is risky if the school district counts on the reimbursement money.

Thomas Maher, a member of the school board, asked how much money it would cost to make sure that the building was silver certified. Lynch said he didn't want to guess. Judith Swigart, assistant superintendent for support services, said estimates claimed the cost of a "green" building is 3 percent higher than a regular one. In that case, the tab could come close to $1.35 million. "Our first focus was to use this building as an educational tool," school board President Donald Keller said. "What value do you put on the educational value of this? Is it cost effective?" "When it comes to tax money, everyone wants to do it the least expensive way so that it is the least burdensome on the taxpayers."

GEORGIA: Atlanta Public Schools officials are asking voters to approve more than a half-billion dollars in new taxes so they can finish renovating aging campuses. The nine-member Board of Education unanimously agreed to seek a five-year, $572.9 million extension of the 1 percent sales tax to pay for school construction. "Some of these facilities have not had any work done on them for 40 years," said Kathleen B. Pattillo, the board's chairwoman. "That's the shame of it all: For so many years, these schools were just kind of left." Atlanta is joining the city of Decatur, DeKalb County and Fulton County school systems in seeking continuation of the special purpose local option sales tax, or SPLOST, which has been a popular method of financing school construction. Superintendent Beverly L. Hall said there are still basic facility needs at about a third of the schools. "To go two-thirds of the way and leave 27 schools in a state of disrepair," she said, "would, to me, be very unfair."

NORTH CAROLINA: School designers face a dilemma, a hopeless one. The public sees Grimsley High School, High Point Central and R.J. Reynolds in Winston-Salem, all built in the 1920s before the Great Depression and World War II, and grouse: "Why can't they build schools like those anymore?" They can, designers say. But if they did, duck! The wrath of the same public would be fierce.

"Even now, people say the schools we build are too expensive," says Joe Hill, a consultant to Guilford County Schools since his retirement as director of school facilities. The cost of replicating Grimsley, Central and Reynolds — beautiful buildings with columns, ramparts, pilasters and other architectural frills set on landscaped campuses — would be out of sight. Hill says the trend toward less expensive, more bland looking schools dates to the 1950s and 1960s and reflects changing lifestyles. "We have a more transient society today," he says. "People don't have deep roots in a community."

Greensboro's population was more stable when Grimsley opened as Greensboro Senior High School in 1929. City leaders actually boasted of its high cost. It was the state's first school to cost $1 million. Could anyone imagine the school board now bragging about a school's high cost? Hill says the strategy in recent times calls for erecting schools quickly and economically to meet student populations . Also, the least costly tracts for schools are often fields. Hill says in some respects school design now is more complicated, particularly interiors. But, he concedes, modern schools don't catch the eye as do Grimsley or Reynolds. Grimsley's three main buildings look stately on a knoll with a sweeping lawn sloping to Westover Terrace. Motorists approaching from the east encounter Reynolds set high on Winston-Salem's Silver Hill. The designer was the famous Philadelphia architect Charles Barton Keen, who also designed Reynolda House in Winston-Salem. Elementary and junior high schools (now middle schools) back then were built to look classy, too. Lindley Elementary and Aycock Middle are examples.

Greensboro architect Virginia Freyaldenhoven, whose firm, TFF, has worked for the county schools, says school and public buildings once "held a more important place in the framework of a town. They were more monumental." She sometimes longs for those days of ornate exteriors and a higher priority for site selection and landscaping. Up-front costs would be higher, she says, but not long range. There's value in the pride the community takes in public buildings. She says design and landscaping remain priorities at some area private schools, such as Canterbury, where her firm has done work. It's a campus of red brick buildings with a Gothic cathedral that continues to grow in north Greensboro. Freyaldenhoven says Canterbury views campuses in the same way colleges do. They must be appealing or potential students might look elsewhere. Canterbury leaders, she says, "were willing to think of their campus as a community and were willing to put money into those buildings. They want to make an impression." Joe Hill predicts that the likes of a Grimsley, Reynolds or Central won't come again. He says when Central opened in 1927 a central vacuum system allowed custodians to clean the school from a master control in the basement.

He laughs at how the public would yell if a central vacuum system was budgeted for a school today. Nevertheless, design may be getting more attention. Hill predicts the new Northern Guilford High School will warrant articles in state and national school publications for its "green" design. It is being built to be energy efficient and with renewable materials on Spencer Dixon Road. Northern will have windows for natural light, as do Grimsley and other old schools. In the 1970s, windows went out of fashion. Southwest High School has few. Central air conditioning made windows a frill, a nd they were thought to be a distraction — s tudents would look out instead of inside at the teacher. But Hill says studies show natural light results in greater efficiency. Windows also make for more appealing design. With the all the sympathy expressed for Eastern Guilford High School, a corn field school built in 1974 and recently destroyed by fire, perhaps no one would grumble if a 21st century Grimsley replaced it. It won't happen, Hill says, but the new Eastern will be more attractive than the old one. It will have the same green design as Northern Guilford. When school officials show off county schools, Northern and Eastern will be on the van stops. But so will Grimsley and Central, architectural marvels after more than 75 years.

NORTH CAROLINA: School designers face a dilemma, a hopeless one. The public sees Grimsley High School, High Point Central and R.J. Reynolds in Winston-Salem, all built in the 1920s before the Great Depression and World War II, and grouse: "Why can't they build schools like those anymore?" They can, designers say. But if they did, duck! The wrath of the same public would be fierce.

"Even now, people say the schools we build are too expensive," says Joe Hill, a consultant to Guilford County Schools since his retirement as director of school facilities. The cost of replicating Grimsley, Central and Reynolds — beautiful buildings with columns, ramparts, pilasters and other architectural frills set on landscaped campuses — would be out of sight. Hill says the trend toward less expensive, more bland looking schools dates to the 1950s and 1960s and reflects changing lifestyles. "We have a more transient society today," he says. "People don't have deep roots in a community."

Greensboro's population was more stable when Grimsley opened as Greensboro Senior High School in 1929. City leaders actually boasted of its high cost. It was the state's first school to cost $1 million. Could anyone imagine the school board now bragging about a school's high cost? Hill says the strategy in recent times calls for erecting schools quickly and economically to meet student populations . Also, the least costly tracts for schools are often fields. Hill says in some respects school design now is more complicated, particularly interiors. But, he concedes, modern schools don't catch the eye as do Grimsley or Reynolds. Grimsley's three main buildings look stately on a knoll with a sweeping lawn sloping to Westover Terrace. Motorists approaching from the east encounter Reynolds set high on Winston-Salem's Silver Hill. The designer was the famous Philadelphia architect Charles Barton Keen, who also designed Reynolda House in Winston-Salem. Elementary and junior high schools (now middle schools) back then were built to look classy, too. Lindley Elementary and Aycock Middle are examples.

Greensboro architect Virginia Freyaldenhoven, whose firm, TFF, has worked for the county schools, says school and public buildings once "held a more important place in the framework of a town. They were more monumental." She sometimes longs for those days of ornate exteriors and a higher priority for site selection and landscaping. Up-front costs would be higher, she says, but not long range. There's value in the pride the community takes in public buildings. She says design and landscaping remain priorities at some area private schools, such as Canterbury, where her firm has done work. It's a campus of red brick buildings with a Gothic cathedral that continues to grow in north Greensboro. Freyaldenhoven says Canterbury views campuses in the same way colleges do. They must be appealing or potential students might look elsewhere. Canterbury leaders, she says, "were willing to think of their campus as a community and were willing to put money into those buildings. They want to make an impression." Joe Hill predicts that the likes of a Grimsley, Reynolds or Central won't come again. He says when Central opened in 1927 a central vacuum system allowed custodians to clean the school from a master control in the basement.

He laughs at how the public would yell if a central vacuum system was budgeted for a school today. Nevertheless, design may be getting more attention. Hill predicts the new Northern Guilford High School will warrant articles in state and national school publications for its "green" design. It is being built to be energy efficient and with renewable materials on Spencer Dixon Road. Northern will have windows for natural light, as do Grimsley and other old schools. In the 1970s, windows went out of fashion. Southwest High School has few. Central air conditioning made windows a frill, a nd they were thought to be a distraction — s tudents would look out instead of inside at the teacher. But Hill says studies show natural light results in greater efficiency. Windows also make for more appealing design. With the all the sympathy expressed for Eastern Guilford High School, a corn field school built in 1974 and recently destroyed by fire, perhaps no one would grumble if a 21st century Grimsley replaced it. It won't happen, Hill says, but the new Eastern will be more attractive than the old one. It will have the same green design as Northern Guilford. When school officials show off county schools, Northern and Eastern will be on the van stops. But so will Grimsley and Central, architectural marvels after more than 75 years.

MAINE: A program designed to help school districts cut energy costs is producing significant results three years after its inception. Seven new schools in Maine -- including Cony High School in Augusta and Hall-Dale Elementary School in Hallowell -- report cheaper utility bills after installing lighting with daylight controls and occupancy sensors, carbon dioxide sensors for ventilation, and other energy-saving technology. The installations were made possible through grants as part of the Efficiency Maine High Performance School program, using federal funds administered by the Maine Public Utilities Commission.

Cony will save $21,483 in electricity this year -- an amount equal to that used by 19 homes -- and use 6,948 fewer gallons of fuel oil, saving $6,809. The state will send a $100,000 check to Augusta schools Dec. 20 for using energy-efficient equipment. The district already received $20,000 to reimburse it for design costs. Hall-Dale's new elementary school on Winthrop Street will reap $18,194 in electricity savings this year -- equal to 17 homes -- and use 13,191 fewer gallons of fuel oil than last year. The district received $120,000 from the program for its energy improvements.

The U.S. Department of Energy said U.S. schools spend more than $6 billion a year on energy, and estimates they could save as much as $1.5 billion by building with energy-efficient in mind. Augusta schools Superintendent Connie Brown said the city and state invested substantially in the new Cony, so the building needs to be suitable for the next 40 or 50 years. "The cost-saving measures implemented today, we hope, will not only bear fruit this year but for the next 20 years," Brown said. "We are all painfully aware that the cost of utilities is significantly higher than they were two or three years ago -- as much as 30 or 40 percent. By taking these measures, it at least mitigates that a little bit." At Cony, an automatic building control system regulates air flow, air compressors and refrigerators are high-efficiency and heavily insulated, and efficient lighting, air conditioning, motors and appliances all save energy costs.

Energy management not only saves money; Brown said it also improves the learning environment. She said studies show poor air quality in schools because of inadequate ventilation harms the health, performance and attendance of students and teachers. Nicole Clegg of the Public Utilities Commission said studies also have found that students taught in classrooms with more natural light score as much as 25 percent higher on standardized tests than other students in the same school district. Natural lighting has also been linked to a 40 percent drop in absenteeism, she said. "It just goes without saying that the new building far surpasses the old one," Brown said. "If you talk with kids, they'll talk about being in a building that's properly heated and ventilated and the climate is one where you don't have to wear ... jackets and mittens. It does have a positive impact on the learning of students."

LOUISIANA: The St. Tammany Parish school system opened four bids for the proposed high school near Mandeville, and the lowest bid came in 55 percent higher than the $32 million the school system had expected to pay before Hurricane Katrina. The bids, which ranged from $49.7 million to $55.8 million, far exceeded the project's pre-Katrina budget and reflect the high construction costs that have troubled district officials since the storm.

KENTUCKY: Kansas public universities have launched a statewide campaign to urge lawmakers to spend $180 million annually for the next five years to address deferred maintenance in campus buildings. Leaders from the University of Kansas and Kansas State University said that the maintenance problem at the state’s public universities has grown dangerous and is a crisis. University officials are touring the state appealing to taxpayers and local leaders to lobby the Legislature for money to repair campus buildings. Students on each campus started a letter-writing campaign calling for Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ support. A recent review of the 567 academic and administrative buildings on the six campuses showed maintenance needs amounting to $727 million, up about 24 percent from two years ago when university officials reported $584 million in deferred maintenance. Many of the problems — including academic and research buildings with crumbling brick, rotten roofs, rusted pipes and outdated electrical wiring — stem from age and years of not getting enough money from the state to repair buildings. About 75 percent of the total deferred maintenance needs are at KU and K-State, the two largest universities.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA : The District's public school libraries are undergoing their most substantial upgrades in decades as the school system, federal government and private donors invest millions of dollars to add new books, update computer technology and redesign spaces to spruce up the aging media centers. Last month, improvements to three public school libraries in the Capitol Hill area were completed as part of a $2.4 million public-private initiative that ultimately will include eight schools. The Capitol Hill Community Foundation joined the school system and parent volunteers to raise money for the project. The Capitol Hill project coincides with a broader school system plan to spend $12 million, including some federal funds, updating its elementary school libraries this year and in 2007.

Upgrades at 48 elementary schools were completed in October with the addition of new computers, digital cameras, shelving, carpeting, painting, electrical fixtures, furniture and access to electronic databases. An additional 37 elementary school libraries are scheduled for similar improvements next year.

NEW YORK: It is the single biggest project in the biggest school construction plan in the history of New York City: a $235 million campus of four schools, with a football field and basketball courts, to be built on old railyards in the South Bronx. Local groups that pushed for the plan cheered wildly when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg endorsed it two years ago. But the project, intended as a hallmark of the mayor’s effort to improve education in neighborhoods with historically lower-performing schools, was stalled by City Council members who said they wanted to force Mr. Bloomberg to give them a greater say in school admissions rules, especially for the dozens of small high schools he has created in recent years.

FLORIDA: DeBary officials have a new tool to reject developments to help prevent school overcrowding. The City Council passed a school-planning ordinance that requires officials to examine school capacity before approving any new development. Under the new rule, officials can turn down developments in areas with overcrowded schools or in areas where no schools are planned. DeBary is the first city in Volusia County to enact such an ordinance. It echoes a recently approved county policy and a state rule that takes effect in 2008. Volusia voters approved an amendment to the county's home-rule charter that mandates the government to consider school capacity before allowing land-use changes or growth.

ARKANSAS: Arkansas governor-elect Beebe said the top education issue that must be addressed in the 2007 session is funding to fix crumbling school buildings. Beebe said he anticipates the amount needed for school facilities over the biennium will be higher than the $250 million originally estimated. Sen. Shane Broadway, who has headed legislative efforts to upgrade school buildings, has said the number could be as high as $300 million to $400 million but said the figure won’t be known until late December. Beebe and lawmakers will likely have to use money from the state’s surplus, which is predicted to grow to $843 million by the end of this fiscal year. “The good news with the facilities issue is that the bulk of that is capital and can be funded from the accumulated surplus as opposed to ongoing general revenue,” Beebe said. "Obviously there are going to be ongoing needs annually that will have to be addressed."

TENNESSEE: Every Memphis elementary school will now have a playground, thanks to a $1.1 million project for playgrounds and stadiums. The project is part of $18.9 million in spending approved by the Memphis Board of Education. The money goes to long overdue projects, like replacing the fire alarm in the administration building, which is so old that replacement parts are not available. This is the case in five schools also getting new alarm systems this year. The largest share is going to replacing windows at six schools and replacing or repairing boilers and air-conditioning vents at seven schools. Other projects include replacing ceilings, floors and outdated bleachers. But with $500 million in these projects and less than a tenth of that to spend each year, choosing which projects happen when becomes increasingly difficult, said Michael Goar, the district's chief operations officer.

FLORIDA: If you think your electric bill is high, imagine getting one for $2.7 million each month. That's the average tab for Orange County Public Schools to keep the lights on, as well as air conditioners, computers, kitchen appliances, vending machines -- and everything else with a plug stuck into an outlet. Like homeowners and businesses, Orange and other school districts across Central Florida and the state have faced steep increases in electric charges during the past year as fuel costs pushed power companies to raise rates. Progress Energy upped its fuel charges for large governmental users such as schools 19 percent to 22 percent at the beginning of the year, and other companies feeding area schools had increases, too. Electric costs for schools served by Progress Energy are expected to rise 1 percent to 3 percent in January, a company spokesman said. With the increases, the power bill for Orange County schools will top $32 million this year, up more than $3 million from last year. But watt-watching is keeping costs down, officials said, considering that nine new schools were opened in August. The higher bills are bringing new conservation measures in the schools. Officials are counting on energy-efficient light bulbs, power-saving gizmos on vending machines, stricter controls on air conditioning and other steps to save money.

IDAHO: As the principal of Hansen Elementary School, Tom Standley had worked with members of the Hansen School District, as well as the community, to pass a school bond election by more than 86 percent the highest approval of an Idaho school bond in more than a decade. But when the district began seeking bids for expansion of the elementary school, things suddenly took a turn for the worse. Less than 30 bids were submitted from qualified construction companies, and all were far higher than the district had estimated. The district's construction manager estimated the cost to be about $150 per square foot, but the lowest bid was more than $200 per square foot. Multiply the unexpected markup by more than 12,500 square feet, and the district was left with a construction bill that was more than $500,000 higher than expected. The bidding period ended without a construction contract, and the elementary school continued to put more students into already cramped classrooms.

The unexpected markup had nothing to do with price fixing or poor estimates. The problem is being shared by school districts statewide due to a boom in school facility construction and a shortage of qualified builders. Ultimately, the smaller school districts are lower on the priority list because projects for larger districts are more lucrative.

And school construction shows no signs of slowing down. School administrators say two things are driving the need for expanding school facilities: population growth and increasing demands on school facilities due to federal requirements. In the early 1980s, the federal government passed the Americans With Disabilities Act, which requires schools to provide services for student who were previously turned away. Schools then began converting general classrooms into special-education classrooms and resource rooms into changing rooms for students with severe disabilities. Then during the 1990s, federal and state governments also added more testing and academic programs, which required the use of computer labs and media centers. In 2003, the U.S. Department of Education estimated that most schools under the federal No Child Left Behind Act had converted 10 to 13 percent of instructional areas into areas for special needs or other accommodations for new federal requirements.

There are few problems in states where the majority of school facility construction is paid for through state general funds, but in Idaho the local school districts struggle to receive 66 percent voter approval for school bond issues to pay for construction. But now that small school districts are finally receiving voter approval on school bonds, they are finding that few construction companies are willing to compete in the bidding process. "We've heard of districts receiving 48-hour bids," Standley said. "It's simply because the cost of fuel and other materials rises daily and because the construction companies are already so busy that they don't need to haggle with material prices." But with more small school districts fighting to expand their facilities while large districts seek to build new facilities, it is unlikely that demand will decline anytime soon. So unless the supply of qualified construction companies increases, small school districts will struggle to find ones willing to work for them.

IDAHO: As the principal of Hansen Elementary School, Tom Standley had worked with members of the Hansen School District, as well as the community, to pass a school bond election by more than 86 percent the highest approval of an Idaho school bond in more than a decade. But when the district began seeking bids for expansion of the elementary school, things suddenly took a turn for the worse. Less than 30 bids were submitted from qualified construction companies, and all were far higher than the district had estimated. The district's construction manager estimated the cost to be about $150 per square foot, but the lowest bid was more than $200 per square foot. Multiply the unexpected markup by more than 12,500 square feet, and the district was left with a construction bill that was more than $500,000 higher than expected. The bidding period ended without a construction contract, and the elementary school continued to put more students into already cramped classrooms.

The unexpected markup had nothing to do with price fixing or poor estimates. The problem is being shared by school districts statewide due to a boom in school facility construction and a shortage of qualified builders. Ultimately, the smaller school districts are lower on the priority list because projects for larger districts are more lucrative.

And school construction shows no signs of slowing down. School administrators say two things are driving the need for expanding school facilities: population growth and increasing demands on school facilities due to federal requirements. In the early 1980s, the federal government passed the Americans With Disabilities Act, which requires schools to provide services for student who were previously turned away. Schools then began converting general classrooms into special-education classrooms and resource rooms into changing rooms for students with severe disabilities. Then during the 1990s, federal and state governments also added more testing and academic programs, which required the use of computer labs and media centers. In 2003, the U.S. Department of Education estimated that most schools under the federal No Child Left Behind Act had converted 10 to 13 percent of instructional areas into areas for special needs or other accommodations for new federal requirements.

There are few problems in states where the majority of school facility construction is paid for through state general funds, but in Idaho the local school districts struggle to receive 66 percent voter approval for school bond issues to pay for construction. But now that small school districts are finally receiving voter approval on school bonds, they are finding that few construction companies are willing to compete in the bidding process. "We've heard of districts receiving 48-hour bids," Standley said. "It's simply because the cost of fuel and other materials rises daily and because the construction companies are already so busy that they don't need to haggle with material prices." But with more small school districts fighting to expand their facilities while large districts seek to build new facilities, it is unlikely that demand will decline anytime soon. So unless the supply of qualified construction companies increases, small school districts will struggle to find ones willing to work for them.

NORTH CAROLINA: Wake school leaders say they expect to be leasing schools from developers sometime in the future, but for now they want to know more about how the costs compare to building schools themselves. A Nov. 15 article in The News & Observer that suggested the district was putting the brakes on the idea set off a firestorm of debate over the future of the proposed public-private partnerships. Board member Horace Tart, a proponent of the partnerships, said he was barraged with e-mail messages, some accusing him of using the proposal to get the bond passed. "At no time has the board not been willing to pursue public-private partnerships," said Tart, who is on the facilities committee. "We're going right now as fast as we can go to get the job done." A bill approved by the legislature earlier this year allows developers to build schools and lease them to districts for 40 years. After that time, districts would have the option of buying the schools at a discount. Proponents of the bill say private companies can build schools faster and cheaper than school districts. In Wake County, the partnerships have been championed as a way to slow the pace of schools being converted to the year-round schedule and ease the burden on taxpayers. Wake voters recently approved a $970 million bond issue that will increase property taxes.

OREGON: In the fast-growing Evergreen School District just north of the Oregon-Washington border, builders face a school impact fee of as much as $6,819 a house. Ten miles down Interstate 205, in the fast-growing North Clackamas School District, developers pay nothing for schools. North Clackamas Superintendent Ron Naso wants his district to impose a school fee. But for years, Oregon's Legislature hasn't let local governments charge for schools. Builders say the fees would slow housing construction -- a key driver of the economy -- and further increase home costs.

Eight states -- including Washington, California and Florida -- allow fees for schools. Naso and other proponents of the fees say there are signs the 2007 Oregon Legislature may follow suit, with school construction a huge issue from Bend to Beaverton. Democrats, not as closely tied to the builders lobby, are taking over. A bipartisan work group that includes a representative from the Oregon Home Builders Association is considering school fees in exchange for what would be a controversial cap on park fees allowed under state law. The issue is growing in importance along with the state's need for new and revamped schools. Oregon's enrollment is projected to grow 6 percent by 2014, with much of it concentrated in the Willamette Valley. The Portland region alone is projected to get 1 million new residents by 2030.

NEW JERSEY: In the latest upset plaguing the construction of city schools, officials from the state's Schools Construction Corporation said the land where Trenton's Daylight/Twilight high school is being erected is tainted with petroleum products and lead. The contaminants are slightly above residential levels and would not require massive remediation, according to Jerry Murphy, the SCC's chief operating officer. "This is what you would typically find in the historic fill of schools being built in urban areas," Murphy said.

School construction sites in urban areas tend to be tainted with contaminants due to the prior industrial use the ground endured, according to Dwayne Mosley, the city school's construction manager. In Trenton, that translates to at least three schools currently being built on lots that were formerly used for commercial purposes dur ing the city's industrial era from the early-to-mid 1900s.

Soil contamination is a problem that seems to keep coming up at every school construction site in the city and many urban districts statewide. A year ago it was found at the Martin Luther King Jr.-Jefferson School site. Two weeks ago state officials announced that additional metal contaminants and asbestos were found on the grounds of the Roebling school construction site. Contamination at the MLK-Jefferson School caused major delays and almost tripled the cost of the project, which was originally esti mated at $28 million. Across town, the Roebling School project is also facing delays due to various metals and asbestos found on the premises. The future K-8 school is being built on the site that was home to the Roebling steel factory, which manufactured cables for major U.S. bridges including the Brooklyn Bridge. Construction and remediation of the former industrial site are es timated at $94.3 million, up from $64.6 million.

OHIO: Caught in a steep enrollment decline, the Cleveland school district must revise its $1 billion construction program. This year’s enrollment of 54,000 students reflects a drop of 28 percent since 2001, when voters approved a bond issue that, with state matching funds, allowed the district to undertake a program to replace, repair, or renovate most of its 122 buildings. But recent state enrollment projections suggest that only 45,300 students will remain on the district’s rolls by 2010, prompting its leaders to start redrafting the facilities plan. “Needless to say, with a lot less kids, your building plan needs to change,” said Dan Burns, Cleveland’s chief operating officer. Mr. Burns hopes to have the new plan ready for the school board to review in the spring. It would need approval by the board and by the Ohio School Facilities Commission, the state agency that oversees school construction.

ARIZONA: Across Tucson, school districts are turning to cameras, former police officers and tall fences to keep campuses safer for students and teachers. School officials, parents and students agree that schools need to be safer than they were 10 years ago, after events at Columbine High School and others across the country, and that some of the tried-and-true practices are in need of an upgrade. Traditional schools are more secure than they were a decade ago, an Arizona Daily Star review found, but officials are using only minimum safety policies that remain largely inconsistent within many school districts. That could result in mixed signals and confusion if a response to a major event was needed. Some schools are sealed tight during school hours. On other campuses, visitors can walk around for a long time before being spotted by a staff member. Some schools have the highest level of security technology, while others are relatively unguarded. Local and state officials have worked together to put all schools on the same page by requiring that schools use a manual that spells out stricter minimum guidelines for lockdowns and evacuations. New schools could get improved safety specifications from state officials that don't require districts to pay from their own budgets to secure their property. But most importantly, everyone is putting a greater emphasis on the human eye as a safety factor.

Though school officials applaud the advances in technology and construction that have made schools safer, districts still had different minimum safety standards in place at their schools. This was most evident recently during the March walkouts for immigration protests, when some schools relied heavily on police to keep students in school while others almost literally came up with procedures on the spot as students made their way toward Downtown. But that is changing this year. For the first time, the Arizona Department of Education is requiring all districts to use the Arizona School Site Emergency Response Plan Template, a 79-page manual that provides districts with comprehensive guidelines to follow in case of fire, a bomb threat or act of nature. The manual was created years ago as a recommended reference, but officials saw that some schools were using bare-bones procedures.

INDIANA: The fate of the project to bring Fort Wayne Community Schools buildings up to current education standards will ultimately be determined locally. But it’s impossible to ignore state and national influences that suggest public schools are on a spending spree. A closer inspection, however, reveals the building boom is in affluent districts, not districts that, like FWCS, serve a lot of low-income and minority students. It’s important that this distinction isn’t lost and that the project is not rejected or compromised by misplaced assumptions about lavish school spending.

An October report by the 21st Century School Fund, a Washington-based advocacy group supporting improvements in urban public school facilities, reveals spending on school construction is far from equitable. “Growth and Disparity: A Decade of U.S. Public School Construction” finds that affluent districts, with more construction dollars available, are more likely to spend on computer rooms and science labs. Meanwhile, less affluent districts spend on roof repairs and asbestos removal.

Of the $600 billion spent on school construction between 1995 and 2004, the most affluent districts invested $9,361 per student while the least-affluent spent $4,800 per student. That matters because the condition, design and use of school buildings affect the quality of education. “An increasing body of research indicates that poor building conditions such as lack of temperature control, poor indoor air quality, insufficient daylight, overcrowded classrooms and a lack of specialty classrooms are obstacles to academic achievement,” the report states.

Count FWCS among the less affluent districts that have spent conservatively. While the 10-year national average on construction spending was $6,519 per student, Fort Wayne spent just $1,344 per student. Gov. Mitch Daniels has criticized school-construction expenses as a drain on classroom spending, citing Indiana’s rank among the top states for per-pupil spending on construction. But those numbers are skewed by spending in affluent districts, where the projects sometimes include athletic facilities that rival those of many colleges. Lafayette Jefferson High School, for example, built an $8 million stadium featuring a video scoreboard with instant replay.

In response to taxpayer complaints about such projects, the Daniels administration has imposed controls on construction costs. The Department of Local Government Finance credits those measures with tax savings of about $90 million. If those controls make local decision-makers think twice about investing in lavish facilities that do little to advance student achievement, they are worthwhile. But they do a disservice if taxpayers then believe all school-construction spending is baseless. The investments must be judged on local needs – and in the context of a growing divide between wealthy schools and poor schools.

WISCONSIN: The Janesville School Board faces a key decision early in the high school construction process: How will the project be managed? The school board has chosen the large, local company J.P. Cullen & Sons to oversee the construction in all the school district's recent projects. The various parts of the projects-for example, masonry, excavation, electrical, plumbing-were bid out separately, and the work was divided among contractors, including the Cullen company. That style of construction delivery is know as the "negotiated construction contract," according to a memo to the school district from the project architect, Bray Associates Architects. "Unlike other public entities, schools can utilize three distinct construction-delivery approaches-each having advantages and disadvantages-with some projects being better suited for a particular approach than another," according to the memo.

The methods are: 1) Design-bid-build-A traditional approach in which the architect completes the design and submits documents to the marketplace for competitive bidding. Typically, the lowest bona fide bid is awarded. Disadvantages of this method: The process is longer; the cost of construction is unknown until bids are received; adversarial relationships are more likely, and cost savings go to the contractor. 2) Negotiated construction contract-This is the most popular method in recent years, used in about 75 percent of educational projects, according to Bray. The district sends out a "request for proposals," or RFP. The district interviews applicants from among the proposals submitted and reviews past performance, personnel, costs and ability before selecting a general contractor. The district and contractor then negotiate a fee. Then the district, contractor and architect work together to design the project. Some think getting a contractor involved early in the planning provides more accurate cost estimates and could save money. This also is considered a "fast-track" method. The general contractor typically does its own concrete, carpentry and masonry work. Other parts of the project are open to competitive bids by qualified companies. Disadvantages: The contractor is selected with only its fees on a bid basis. Ten percent to 20 percent of the work is not competitively bid. A contractor experienced in "conceptual estimating" is required. In using this method, the Janesville district has added its own twist, requiring the general contractor to bid on any part of the work it wants to perform, and it must provide its bids one day before the actual bid date. "This was done to ensure as competitive a bid process as possible," according to the memo. 3)Construction management-This method is divided into two types, "construction manager" and "construction manager, at risk." In the construction-manager variant, a company oversees the project as an agent for the district but does not perform any of the construction work. The company has little risk because construction contracts are between the district and the various contractors. The district assumes the risk for the subcontractors' performance, financial stability and fluctuations in the cost of materials. In the construction manager, at risk method, the construction manager holds all the subcontractors responsible for their work. The construction manager might or might not perform some of the work, similar to the "negotiated construction contract" method described above. Disadvantages: Traditional roles are confused, and relationships are complex. Additional fees are charged for construction management. There is less loyalty between the contractors and the construction manager.

WYOMING: Future elementary schools built in Wyoming must follow a handful of established designs, a state commission has ruled. The Wyoming School Facilities Commission adopted a policy requiring the use of five or six prototypical school designs. Officials say using the same designs for schools built around the state should make construction simpler and cheaper. Commission Director James "Bubba" Shivler said the policy applies primarily to elementary schools. He said it's harder to apply it to middle schools and high schools because they generally have more specific needs. "What it saves you more than anything is time," Shivler said.

The state now has five or six commission-approved elementary school designs, including the new Freedom School in Cheyenne and a school in Torrington. Shivler said it's not accurate to call the approved designs a "cookie-cutter" approach when the schools will be spread out all over the state. He said school district officials can visit the existing elementary schools and pick the design they like the most.

Prototype designs will be used for the construction of two planned elementary schools in Casper. Jim Lowham, superintendent of the Natrona County School District, said the district used a model for the construction of several schools in the past and found the approach saved money on construction and maintenance. However, Lowham said the new commission policy may lead to some bickering over designs if school officials don't find a design they like. The School Facilities Commission has responsibility for funding school construction under state Supreme Court rulings that require the state to pay for new school construction. Local school boards handle contracts with architects and builders. The commission's new policy states that if the commission decides that a prototypical school design won't work in a particular situation, it can still require a school district to incorporate as many of the design features as possible.

CALIFORNIA: After years of delays and legal challenges, Los Angeles school and city officials broke ground on the school being built on the site of the famed Ambassador Hotel — a campus now expected to cost more than $300 million. The price tag, estimated at $309 million, has jumped more than 14% in recent months after the discovery of potentially explosive methane gas deposits beneath the site that will require an elaborate mitigation plan. And, unless staggering increases in construction costs that have persisted in Los Angeles abate, the final cost of the school could climb higher, district officials said.

Opened in 1921, the Ambassador was Los Angeles' playpen for the rich, famous and powerful. Every president from Herbert Hoover to Richard Nixon and other world leaders stayed there, while headliners like Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra played at the hotel's Cocoanut Grove nightclub. The hotel closed in 1989. The Los Angeles Unified School District purchased the dilapidated property on Wilshire Boulevard in 2001, after an unsuccessful attempt by developer Donald Trump to erect the world's tallest building there. In 2004, a split school board narrowly approved plans to raze most of the complex to make way for a campus, looking to ease severe school overcrowding in one of the city's most densely packed areas. The Los Angeles Conservancy and other preservation groups filed lawsuits to block the hotel's destruction. Last year, the conservancy enlisted state and national politicians in a failed, last-ditch effort at a compromise that would have turned the hotel's main building into affordable-housing apartments and situated the campus along the lot's perimeter. Soon after, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge dismissed the conservation groups' proposal. Despite the district's plans to use much of the Grove for the school's auditorium and to keep the hotel's coffee shop, conservationists' emotions continue to run strong.

Completion of the elementary school portion of the campus is scheduled for late 2008, and the middle and high school is expected to open a year later. When it is finished, with a swimming pool, soaring ceilings and modern design, the school will be the second most expensive ever built by the district. The Belmont Learning Complex, which Romer revived after years of environmental problems. To mitigate the methane deposits at the Ambassador site, workers will employ a $30-million plan similar to the one designed for Belmont. A heavy layer of sand will be laid beneath the campus' playing fields, while a ventilation system and a synthetic, impermeable membrane will be installed under the buildings. District construction officials also are wary of dramatic increases in labor and material costs that have nearly doubled since 2002. Though the $309-million figure is based on the expectation that construction bids will be set at $380 per square foot, facilities executive Jim Cowell said the district is setting aside cash to pay as much as $500 per foot.

LOUISIANA: Although 53 public schools have reopened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, another 52 buildings appear to have been largely untouched for more than 14 months, with a handful of other state-run campuses either ready for use or under renovation. What's more, inside -- amid the blight caused by water, looters, and open doors and windows -- lay a treasure-trove of untouched, and apparently undamaged, school equipment, including copiers, computers, and box upon box of new or slightly used textbooks, some still in shrink-wrap. Ten schools visited by The Times-Picayune late last month were left wide open and largely unsecured, their upper floors still filled with supplies easily worth millions of dollars -- all of which school officials plan to throw in the garbage. That's because state school officials and FEMA fear the supplies may be contaminated with mold or spores, leaving students susceptible to infection and the system open to lawsuits, officials said. Though some environmental experts say such fears are justified, others call them a severe overreaction.

While there's no reliable way to calculate the value of the abandoned equipment, it costs an estimated $5 million to outfit a high school with equipment and supplies; outfitting an elementary school can cost about $1.5 million. Those figures come from St. Bernard school officials, who oversee a district where every school flooded, and who cleaned, gutted and salvaged equipment from all of its buildings soon after Katrina. State officials put the cost of books, furniture and computers alone for one high school at $1.3 million, a figure that doesn't include big-ticket items such equipment for food service, athletics and bands. In the abandoned New Orleans campuses, signs of neglect have set in around the relatively undamaged school furnishings. At Wilson, pigeon droppings covered the floors of some classrooms, and rodents squeaked and scurried above ceiling tiles. Squatters had left stray beer bottles and obscene drawings on chalkboards. Although black mold left by 4 feet of water in first-floor classrooms has blotted out many of the posters exhorting students to learn, the school's upper floors appear untouched since Katrina. Meanwhile, all the materials needed to outfit a school remain in place: a half-dozen photocopy machines in one room. More than a dozen computers in another. Confidential student records spill from unlocked file cabinets. And in every room there are books, books and more books -- when many reopened schools were struggling without any. Left unsecured, a number of vacant schools have already fallen prey to looters, who have smashed trophy cases, ripped out copper wire and stolen an untold amount of equipment and classroom materials. In some rooms, graffitied walls and upended furniture are all that remains

LOUISIANA: Although 53 public schools have reopened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, another 52 buildings appear to have been largely untouched for more than 14 months, with a handful of other state-run campuses either ready for use or under renovation. What's more, inside -- amid the blight caused by water, looters, and open doors and windows -- lay a treasure-trove of untouched, and apparently undamaged, school equipment, including copiers, computers, and box upon box of new or slightly used textbooks, some still in shrink-wrap. Ten schools visited by The Times-Picayune late last month were left wide open and largely unsecured, their upper floors still filled with supplies easily worth millions of dollars -- all of which school officials plan to throw in the garbage. That's because state school officials and FEMA fear the supplies may be contaminated with mold or spores, leaving students susceptible to infection and the system open to lawsuits, officials said. Though some environmental experts say such fears are justified, others call them a severe overreaction.

While there's no reliable way to calculate the value of the abandoned equipment, it costs an estimated $5 million to outfit a high school with equipment and supplies; outfitting an elementary school can cost about $1.5 million. Those figures come from St. Bernard school officials, who oversee a district where every school flooded, and who cleaned, gutted and salvaged equipment from all of its buildings soon after Katrina. State officials put the cost of books, furniture and computers alone for one high school at $1.3 million, a figure that doesn't include big-ticket items such equipment for food service, athletics and bands. In the abandoned New Orleans campuses, signs of neglect have set in around the relatively undamaged school furnishings. At Wilson, pigeon droppings covered the floors of some classrooms, and rodents squeaked and scurried above ceiling tiles. Squatters had left stray beer bottles and obscene drawings on chalkboards. Although black mold left by 4 feet of water in first-floor classrooms has blotted out many of the posters exhorting students to learn, the school's upper floors appear untouched since Katrina. Meanwhile, all the materials needed to outfit a school remain in place: a half-dozen photocopy machines in one room. More than a dozen computers in another. Confidential student records spill from unlocked file cabinets. And in every room there are books, books and more books -- when many reopened schools were struggling without any. Left unsecured, a number of vacant schools have already fallen prey to looters, who have smashed trophy cases, ripped out copper wire and stolen an untold amount of equipment and classroom materials. In some rooms, graffitied walls and upended furniture are all that remains

CALIFORNIA: J. William Naish, as head of utility and energy management for the San Diego Unified School District, has built a green record that has made city schools a conservation leader. Naish's office helped the district save about $90 million over the last decade or so in utility costs through common-sense initiatives and innovative technology. Without its stewardship, the district's utility bills would be $28 million a year versus the $16 million it pays now, according to a district estimate.

The energy/utility office recently led the effort to replace nearly 1,000 old, energy-guzzling refrigerators in faculty lounges, offices and classrooms. That alone is expected to save at least $200,000 a year in electricity bills, not to mention repair costs. Much of the work that saves the district money, however, happens behind the scene. Some 72,000 landscape sprinklers districtwide are wired to rain sensors in a computerized irrigation control system. Central office operators can remotely adjust the amount of water that plants get, based not only on the weather but also the type of vegetation.

He is most proud of a public-private partnership he and his staff put together to bring solar energy to the district. Private partners installed solar roof panels on two dozen buildings, making the project one of the largest, if not the largest, of its kind for a public school system in the country. The panels generate 3.57 megawatts of electricity – enough to power more than 2,300 average-size homes – and are expected to save the district more than $21 million over two decades. Private partners provided the roof panels and will maintain them over the duration of the contract.

FLORIDA: Florida's universities are cramming a lot of students into small spaces, creating what some say is a multibillion-dollar problem. Florida's 11 public universities have 7.7 square feet of classroom space per student, compared with 12.9 square feet at public universities nationwide, according to a report commissioned by the Board of Governors, the policymaking panel for the state university system. The price tag to build more facilities to help fix the problem and to handle future growth is an estimated $3.4 billion. That would go toward building facilities needed to join the rest of the country and handle growth, according to the report, prepared by a task force of Florida university administrators. The money would come from tuition, taxes or fundraising. Florida residents pay a fee on their utility bills to fund university construction costs. There are 288,000 full- and part-time students enrolled in state schools. With 50,000 more expected in the next six years, the problem is only going to worsen, officials predict.

NEW JERSEY: No one ever said building schools in urban areas was easy. Unlike suburban school districts, where large tracts of undeveloped land are available to build schools, urban districts must make due with properties that many times are tainted with contaminated soil or groundwater due to prior industrial use. The environmental challenges of building schools in Trenton became evident this week when school officials discussed the future of the Trenton Early Childhood Center and the Roebling School. Jerry Murphy, chief operating officer of the state's Schools Construction Corp., told city school officials that soil and groundwater contamination pose a challenge to moving forward with the city's first preschool center and have delayed the Roebling project.

Murphy was accompanied by a group of environmental consultants who explained the painstaking process of remediating former industrial sites. The tainted groundwater is 12 feet underground and covers an area about 45 feet wide, according to groundwater expert Jim Mack, who works for the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the SCC. Mack said the contamination came from a dry-cleaning store that was previously located on the site and that environmental tests have proven it doesn't pose a risk to any future occupants. The amount of contaminants in the groundwater is slowly degrading and would degrade completely in 10 years.

In regards to the status of the Roebling School, board members were told additional environmental testing and remediation procedures have resulted in a two-year construction delay. The Roebling School is being built on the site of the former Roebling steel mill on South Clinton Avenue, which opened in 1848 and was sold in 1953. During its glory days the factory produced wire cables for the Brooklyn and Golden Gate bridges, but now the land is tainted with various metals. SCC officials reported that stockpiles of materials at the site must be tested to determine how to dispose of them. Aside from additional testing, Ryan said environmental factors also hike up the cost of remediation at the site, resulting in a higher price tag for the school. In 2004, the SCC estimated the cost of building the K-8 school would be $64.6 million. Current SCC data reveals the price has skyrocketed to $94.3 million.

NORTH CAROLINA: Fresh off voter approval for a $970 million school construction bond issue, Wake County school administrators put the brakes on the idea of having developers build and lease public schools. Both sides of the bond campaign had urged the school district to consider using public-private partnerships as a way to help keep up with record growth. But Wake administrators said the idea is so new in North Carolina that it needed more study. They proposed, at most, doing a pilot program with just one school for now.

Under a bill approved this year by the General Assembly, private developers can build schools and lease them to school districts for up to 40 years. Afterward, the school district would have the option to buy the school at a reduced price. These so-called "public-private partnerships" were backed by developers who said they would be able to build schools faster because they are not bound by government red tape. Wake is expected to grow by 32,000 students by 2010. The bonds approved last week will help build 17 schools.

NATIONAL : Voters in Wake County, N.C., approved one of the largest school construction bonds on local ballots, giving the green light to build schools that will house an exploding student population. The proposal there was one of several school bond issues that voters across the country weighed Nov. 7 as they cast ballots on local matters along with nationally significant midterm elections for Congress and numerous state offices. Proponents of the measures said they likely benefited from high voter turnout driven largely by interest in the congressional races.

In Wake County, which includes Raleigh, 53 percent of voters approved the $970 million bond measure, which supporters said would be the first of several bonds needed to finance more than $5 billion in school construction needs over the next 14 years. The bond’s passage will allow the district to move ahead immediately with plans to build two high schools, four middle schools, and 11 elementary schools by 2010. Even when the new campuses open, district officials said, several elementary and middle schools will have to remain on a year-round calendar to meet the enrollment demands.

In San Francisco, backers persuaded 74 percent of voters to support Measure A, a $450 million bond to help the city’s school district upgrade and repair its aging campuses and school buildings. It was the largest local school bond ever passed by San Francisco voters in support of the 56,000-student system.

PENNSYLVANIA: Microsoft has helped build a high-tech high school in a Philadelphia community that serves low-income families. Students at this state-of-the art facility incorporate the latest technologies throughout their curriculum. [Transcript and streaming video of segment aired on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Includes interviews with students, teachers, the principle, and Paul Vallas, CEO of the School District of Philadelphia.]

ARIZONA: Surging enrollment growth in numerous school districts around the state _ but especially in the Phoenix area _ could add up to an increase of nearly $150 million in how much the state spends annually to build new schools. The state School Facilities Board has notified the Legislature that costs for building new schools will total an estimated $401.8 million in the upcoming fiscal year. That's up $149 million, or nearly 60 percent, from the $250 million appropriated for the current fiscal year now in its fourth month. The $401.8 million includes $35 million for land and $366.8 million for actual construction. High schools cost an average of $2.1 million. The state pays for costs of building basic new schools under the Students First program created in 1998. The program allots funding based on a space formula keyed to enrollment.

NORTH CAROLINA: It's an urban myth here that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools wastes money building overly elaborate schools full of expensive, unneeded luxuries. I guess it depends on what you consider luxuries. Windows? Bricks? Some of those complaining about so-called luxury schools would never house their own families in buildings as cheap and dispiriting as the ones they seem to wish upon public schools. But even the best school designs can be improved if smart minds get in a room together and brainstorm. That's what CMS just finished doing.

It was one of the recommendations from the School Building Solutions Committee chaired by former N.C. Gov. Jim Martin. So CMS invited architecture firms to compete in a design competition for middle and high schools. The winners would get commissions to design two new schools each: the Belmeade Road and Ridge Road area middle schools, and the Bailey Road and Mint Hill area high schools. But -- this is key -- their designs had to be flexible enough to be prototypes. CMS held two week-long design charrettes -- a term architects use for an intense brainstorming-and-drawing workshop that includes public input. Teachers, principals and students were interviewed. Both of the winning designs are more compact. That might help alleviate a problem many high school students have trying to dash across a sprawling campus between classes.

The middle school winner, The FWA Group, reduced the building footprint so much that at one site a wetlands will be spared, saving money and time.Both prototypes stack classrooms in two stories but are flexible enough to be rearranged for different sites. Both cut the square footage by roughly 20 percent from CMS's most recently built schools. Is that a good thing? Yes and no. Smaller buildings cost less. The 1,200-student middle school is 35,000 square feet smaller. The 2,000-student high school is 58,000 square feet smaller. They feature shorter and narrower corridors, and the compact configuration means some rooms won't have windows. Some principals and teachers prefer no windows, saying they distract students. Others disagree. Studies show daylight can perk up student performance. Plus it lowers electric bills. [Article includes the winning designs.]

NATIONAL: Clarksburg High School Principal James Koutsos has an expansive view from his front office: the parking lot, the front entrance and, with just a few steps, the hallway that funnels 960 students to class each day. The $52 million building, which opened in August, is energy efficient, aestheticaly pleasing and designed with security in mind. The placement of the office makes it difficult for visitors to slip into the building unnoticed. The open stairwell in the front hall, visible from the window of the security team leader's office, makes it easier to keep an eye on students.

It is a legacy of the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School that in an increasing number of schools, security drives decisions about everything from where to place the principal's office to what kinds of locks and windows are selected. "There are a lot of schools that should be commended," says school architect Joel Sims, "but a lot of existing schools need money to be put into them to make them right. It's not that complex."

CALIFORNIA: Proposition 1D will provide $10.4 billion to relieve school overcrowding and repair older buildings. Funds would also be allocated to the California Community Colleges, University of California and the California State University. Specifically, the funds will help school officials build 6,000 new elementary and high schools, repair 31,000 existing classrooms and provide 3,000 vocational education facilities. It is supported by the California Teachers Association, California Community College Board of Governors and Coalition for Adequate School Housing. The California Taxpayer Protection Committee opposed the measure because it requires school district to match the funds received under the measure. "Unless you live in a wealthy district with surplus cash to supply the matching funds, your school will never see a penny from this bond -- but you will be required to pay higher taxes for the next 30 years. Is that fair?" said Thomas Hudson with the committee.

CALIFORNIA: Proposition 1D will provide $10.4 billion to relieve school overcrowding and repair older buildings. Funds would also be allocated to the California Community Colleges, University of California and the California State University. Specifically, the funds will help school officials build 6,000 new elementary and high schools, repair 31,000 existing classrooms and provide 3,000 vocational education facilities. It is supported by the California Teachers Association, California Community College Board of Governors and Coalition for Adequate School Housing. The California Taxpayer Protection Committee opposed the measure because it requires school district to match the funds received under the measure. "Unless you live in a wealthy district with surplus cash to supply the matching funds, your school will never see a penny from this bond -- but you will be required to pay higher taxes for the next 30 years. Is that fair?" said Thomas Hudson with the committee.

PENNSYLVANIA: The Amish community will build a school within sight of the one - now razed - where 10 girls were shot. Relatives of the girls, the school's teacher and school board members met at the Bart Township Fire Hall to approve a location for the one-room building. It will be built on a parcel from an Amish farmer's field near the site of the West Nickel Mines School, which was torn down Oct. 12. Ten days earlier, Charles Carl Roberts IV barricaded himself inside the school and shot 10 girls, killing five. He then killed himself. Since the shootings, 15 boys and two girls - including one of the girls who was shot - have been attending school in a nearby business. Security measures have been discussed for the new building, including a chain-link fence, a gate, doors with peepholes and chains, a paging system connected directly to police and cell phones. It is unclear if any will be implemented.

ILLINOIS: Visitors to Edison Middle School must now use a buzzer system to get in, and office staff are able to see who is at the school's main entrance before allowing them into the building. All the district's school buildings are scheduled to have such a system in place in the next three weeks. "Recent events have really heightened the awareness of a lot of parents and the administration," said Fred Clarke, director of pupil services. "We've been having a lot of conversations about what we need to do and that we really need to move quickly on this." Plans for safety improvements were already under way in the district, but school shootings across the nation earlier this fall led administrators to put some security measures into place more quickly, Clarke said. The estimated cost of the buzzer system and cameras and monitors for all the district's buildings is $45,000.

At Edison, Williams asked an Illinois State Police officer who specializes in school safety to come to the building for a walk-through last month, following the intruder report. Williams said the officer emphasized keeping outside doors locked and looking at how to better secure ground floor windows. Williams and the officer discovered some of the locks on classroom doors had been disabled, and they were repaired so teachers can use a key to lock a deadbolt from inside the classroom, if necessary. Williams said staff are checking to make sure all doors supposed to be locked, such as those to storage areas, the boiler room and attic access, remain locked. He is planning a crisis drill for December, so students and staff can practice what to do in case of an emergency. The state police officer also discussed keeping shrubbery and weeds cut around the school to eliminate potential hiding places. Such precautions were among the suggestions in a safety audit of the district, completed last summer. The district received a grant for a consultant to do the audit and help develop a crisis management plan.

Other immediate safety measures the district is taking include strictly enforcing the policy to keep all outside doors locked other than the front door, until the buzzer systems are installed. Clarke said principals are to remind their staff to take their keys with them if they have to leave the building, rather than propping a door open, and have custodians and teachers check during the day to make sure doors are closed. Administrators are also reviewing the requirement that visitors check in at a building's office and wear name badges. The high schools, Columbia Center, Jefferson Middle School and the Early Childhood Center have cameras at strategic spots throughout the building. Eventually the district plans to put more cameras in all its buildings. Clarke said the district is also making some changes to eliminate possible access to the roofs of buildings, and it is considering putting up more fencing around some buildings.

WASHINGTON: Few high schools come close to what the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation first envisioned when it started giving grants to help big schools carve themselves into smaller units — ideally, with no more than 400 students. The experiment — an attempt to downsize the American high school — has proven less successful than hoped. The changes were often so divisive — and the academic results so mixed — that the Gates Foundation has stopped always pushing small as a first step in improving big high schools. Instead, it's now also working directly on instruction, giving grants to improve math and science instruction, for example.

The Gates Foundation's push to shrink public high schools has been the best-known hallmark of its education giving. About the time it began in 1999, the foundation said typical comprehensive high schools needed a major overhaul if they were going to reduce the dropout rate and prepare all students for college or work. The foundation looked around the country for schools that achieved those goals and found that many were small — places where teachers and students knew each other well, and no one could slide by, or even disappear, without notice. In the past six years, the foundation has given grants to more than 2,000 high schools — of which about 800 were existing schools attempting to create smaller schools within schools. In theory, the big-school breakups are a way to keep using school buildings that would be too expensive to abandon, and create smaller high schools at the same time. But it was always a gamble.

TEXAS: Texas escaped hurricane season unscathed. Gasoline prices plummeted. But rising costs still threaten construction plans at the Garland school district. Administrators began worrying last spring, when they learned two new elementary schools would cost 25 percent more than an identical structure started two years before. Further price hikes, they realized, would put their $385 million bond package above spending targets, delay work on projects like an 8,000-seat football stadium and eventually cost each taxpayer hundreds of extra dollars. Garland ISD officials had hoped the mild hurricane season and falling gas prices would ease the pressure – and they may – but two new construction contracts show continued inflation.

Administrators earmarked $5.1 million in 2002 to renovate and expand Southgate Elementary School and Kimberlin Academy for Excellence. The bill came in 43 percent higher, at $7.3 million. This year's cost overruns mark a sharp departure from the first three years of the 2002 bond package. Bids generally came in at or below projected costs on the construction of Couch Elementary School and repairs and expansions at dozens of older schools. The tide began to turn two years ago, when construction booms in China and India created worldwide shortages of construction materials. Inflation accelerated after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita boosted oil prices and redirected construction workers and building supplies toward the Gulf Coast. Soaring costs soon pinched budgets at districts across the region, and Garland ISD was no exception. Early this year, bids on the two Couch clones came in at $10.8 million apiece – $2.1 million more than Couch and about 25 percent above initial estimates. Now, with the just-signed contracts for Southgate and Kimberlin at 43 percent above estimates, the district is falling further behind its targets.

District officials note that $6.4 million in cost overruns from four projects will hardly derail a $385 million construction plan, particularly when more than $25 million was set aside for inflation and other contingencies. However, they say, if subsequent bids overshoot initial estimates so much, big projects such as the football stadium or a middle school could face delays or cutbacks. The biggest single piece of the financial puzzle will remain a mystery until late next year, when Garland ISD will begin receiving bids to build what should be its last high school.

ARIZONA: Students walking to class in future Arizona schools could be more apt to find themselves in hallways than open air. The Arizona School Facilities Board unanimously voted to limit the number of buildings it would pay for a new school in an effort to save on construction costs. The logic is that fewer buildings mean fewer exterior walls, less utility installation and less outdoor concrete work. It also means fewer schools using the campus-style design, unless the district can cover additional costs.

Campus designs are prevalent across the state, thanks largely to the mild climate. These designs consist of multiple buildings with open-air spaces and little or no interior hallway space. "(Campus style) is fun. It looks good. It's fresh. But is it really necessary?" asked John Arnold, interim executive director of the state board. The Facilities Board, created in the late 1990s, approves state-funded school construction and sets minimum adequate standards for what the state will pay for. Under the new guidelines, schools with less than 60,000 square feet will only receive funding for one building. Schools above 60,000, but under 125,000, square feet will receive funds for two buildings. The bulk of school construction in the state falls under these two categories, Arnold said. Of the state's existing schools, only about 18 percent would meet the new building limitations, according to Facilities Board figures. The average number of buildings for an Arizona school is roughly estimated at 6.4.

NATIONAL : A new national report finds that building "green" would save an average school $100,000 each year - enough to hire two new additional full-time teachers. The report breaks new ground by demonstrating that green schools - schools designed to be energy efficient, healthy and environmentally friendly -- are extremely cost-effective. Total financial benefits from green schools outweigh the costs 20 to 1. With over $35 billion dollars projected to be spent in 2007 on K-12 construction, the conclusions of this report have far-reaching implications for future school design.

Sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers, the American Institute of Architects, the American Lung Association, the Federation of American Scientists and the US Green Building Council, the report includes a detailed analysis of 30 green schools built in 10 states between 2001 and 2006. The analysis demonstrates that the total financial benefits of green schools are 20 times greater than the initial cost, and include energy and water savings, and improved student health and test scores. If all new school construction and school renovations went "green" starting today, energy savings alone would total $20 billion over the next 10 years.

VERMONT: The Burlington School District is looking to beef up safety in its schools by replacing locks on some exterior doors with a card-reading security system that would allow access to only teachers and staff. Edmunds Elementary School, by December, will be the first to switch to the swipe card system that will be installed on two doors -- a back door and a side door that leads to the playground. The front door, as is standard throughout the district's schools, will remain unlocked. The rest of the district will be assessed, building by building, to determine which doors are best suited for the new system. There are 100 to 150 exterior building doors, said Chris Giard, the district's property services director. The goal is to address what district Superintendent Jeanne Collins calls an "atrocious" key issue across the district. She said many of the district's buildings are old and feature door locks requiring keys that are no longer made and can't be readily copied.

MARYLAND: Montgomery County School Superintendent Jerry D. Weast announced a plan to reduce the number of portable classrooms by two-thirds over six years, reasoning that without such a campaign temporary classrooms could well become a permanent fixture in many schools. Portables, often unsightly and unpopular, have increased more than threefold in the county in the past 10 years, as the 139,000-student school system has coped with rising enrollment, reduced class sizes and expanded kindergarten from a half to a whole day. In the 2004-05 and 2005-06 academic years, Montgomery schools had 719 portables, an all-time high and enough for three at every school. County schools have 607 this year.

A brief lull in enrollment growth -- driven by a slowdown in immigration, prohibitive housing costs and other factors -- offers "a propitious time to get rid of these mobiles," Weast said. The increase in portables at Montgomery schools has brought a corresponding surge in complaints from parents, who disparage the structures as cramped spaces with creaky floors and stale air. Weast, touring some portables with other officials, pointed out additional problems: Portables put students far from bathrooms and fountains, and they require repeated trips outdoors in bad weather. They eat up campus space. They leave children more exposed to security threats.

Educators in Montgomery and across the nation have embraced portables, despite their flaws, because they provide quick, inexpensive classroom space to further such academic goals as shrinking class sizes. But Weast said it was time the Montgomery school system moved away from relying on temporary classrooms. School enrollment has declined a bit this fall, from 139,387 to 138,520, based on preliminary data. He said he expects two to three additional years of flat growth after 20 years of steady gains. Weast said the reduction in portables would occur in two phases. The first, already funded in the five-year capital program, includes 14 school additions, 16 modernization projects and other improvements, reducing the number of portables from last year's 719 to 373 by fall 2012. The second phase requires $40 million in proposed amendments to the capital plan, including additions at Takoma Park Elementary and other proposed projects that are not yet funded, further reducing portables to 229.

VERMONT: Green Mountain College is seizing the power of cow dung. The 760-student school, located along the Vermont-New York line, started to get half of its electricity from farms that run generators powered by methane gas extracted from cow manure. The college will pay an extra $48,000 on its $250,000-a-year electricity bill for the privilege, which will help it reduce its reliance on non-renewable energy that pollutes the environment. The power company, which harnesses and delivers the power, allows customers to take 25 percent, 50 percent or all of their electricity from the cow power program. The program has been so successful that the farm has installed a second generator.

NATIONAL : When taking a broad look at some of the nation's—and the world's—most adventurous, well-endowed, and forward-thinking campuses, it's clear that one rising trend is toward encouraging increased cross-pollination between fields. The Frank Gehry-designed Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, which opened in 2004, is home to three departments: the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), and the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. The $138 million James H. Clark Center at Stanford University, meanwhile, designed by Foster and Partners and opened in 2003, houses the school's Bio-X program, which encourages multidisciplinary research in the fields of biology and medicine. Foster and Partners designed the 146,000 sq. ft. building with a radically large, flexible lab space, more warehouse loft than traditional boxy laboratory, that can be easily configured to accommodate a variety of layouts to maintain a sense of flexibility and open-mindedness.

The Clark Center also features glass walls for a literal sense of intellectual transparency and sharing. Balconies surround a central courtyard where faculty, students, and visiting researchers from different departments are encouraged to gather, ideally to exchange their ideas and come up with new ones. Similarly, MIT's new Brain and Cognitive Sciences Center, designed by Charles Correa (with research spaces by Goody, Clancy and Associates) and opened across from the Stata Center in 2005, features a lofty, 90-foot-tall atrium intended as an impromptu meeting place where collaboration is encouraged. Other well-funded top universities are taking the concept of collaboration to new heights, pouring pooled resources into superlative collaborative tools for the sciences and computing. A group of elite academic institutions—the University of Texas, Texas A&M University, Harvard University, MIT, the University of Arizona, the University of Michigan, and Australian National University—is working with Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to construct the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), to be located at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile for best viewing possibilities. The GMT, when completed in 2016, promises to be the world's largest telescope and will produce images 10 times sharper than those of the famed Hubble Space Telescope.

The University of Texas at Austin's Texas Advanced Computing Center, Cornell's Theory Center, and Arizona State University's Fulton High Performance Computing Institute are banding together with Sun Microsystems to create the most powerful general-purpose system for open research in the world. The start-up $59 million cost for the project, to be functioning by 2008, is funded by a National Science Foundation grant given jointly to the consortium. Both of these projects are reminiscent of the open innovation networks of, say, IBM, which involve a corporation tapping outside partners to foster inventive thinking that reaches beyond the boundaries of a company's resources.

In other words, the spirit of collaboration that is fueling the design of the nation's most innovative campus architecture and facilities is clearly fueled in part by efficiency—economic, intellectual, and scientific. Shared resources and spaces could mean ideas are exchanged and projects developed more rapidly than if fostered in a siloed department or in an individual institution with perhaps limited means. To evaluate whether today's radically inventive university buildings and resources herald future cross-disciplinary breakthroughs in science and engineering (or, in the case of the Stata Center, linguistics and philosophy, too) will take time. After all, these structures and tools are experiments in themselves.

NATIONAL : When taking a broad look at some of the nation's—and the world's—most adventurous, well-endowed, and forward-thinking campuses, it's clear that one rising trend is toward encouraging increased cross-pollination between fields. The Frank Gehry-designed Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, which opened in 2004, is home to three departments: the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), and the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. The $138 million James H. Clark Center at Stanford University, meanwhile, designed by Foster and Partners and opened in 2003, houses the school's Bio-X program, which encourages multidisciplinary research in the fields of biology and medicine. Foster and Partners designed the 146,000 sq. ft. building with a radically large, flexible lab space, more warehouse loft than traditional boxy laboratory, that can be easily configured to accommodate a variety of layouts to maintain a sense of flexibility and open-mindedness.

The Clark Center also features glass walls for a literal sense of intellectual transparency and sharing. Balconies surround a central courtyard where faculty, students, and visiting researchers from different departments are encouraged to gather, ideally to exchange their ideas and come up with new ones. Similarly, MIT's new Brain and Cognitive Sciences Center, designed by Charles Correa (with research spaces by Goody, Clancy and Associates) and opened across from the Stata Center in 2005, features a lofty, 90-foot-tall atrium intended as an impromptu meeting place where collaboration is encouraged. Other well-funded top universities are taking the concept of collaboration to new heights, pouring pooled resources into superlative collaborative tools for the sciences and computing. A group of elite academic institutions—the University of Texas, Texas A&M University, Harvard University, MIT, the University of Arizona, the University of Michigan, and Australian National University—is working with Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to construct the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), to be located at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile for best viewing possibilities. The GMT, when completed in 2016, promises to be the world's largest telescope and will produce images 10 times sharper than those of the famed Hubble Space Telescope.

The University of Texas at Austin's Texas Advanced Computing Center, Cornell's Theory Center, and Arizona State University's Fulton High Performance Computing Institute are banding together with Sun Microsystems to create the most powerful general-purpose system for open research in the world. The start-up $59 million cost for the project, to be functioning by 2008, is funded by a National Science Foundation grant given jointly to the consortium. Both of these projects are reminiscent of the open innovation networks of, say, IBM, which involve a corporation tapping outside partners to foster inventive thinking that reaches beyond the boundaries of a company's resources.

In other words, the spirit of collaboration that is fueling the design of the nation's most innovative campus architecture and facilities is clearly fueled in part by efficiency—economic, intellectual, and scientific. Shared resources and spaces could mean ideas are exchanged and projects developed more rapidly than if fostered in a siloed department or in an individual institution with perhaps limited means. To evaluate whether today's radically inventive university buildings and resources herald future cross-disciplinary breakthroughs in science and engineering (or, in the case of the Stata Center, linguistics and philosophy, too) will take time. After all, these structures and tools are experiments in themselves.

WISCONSIN: Are Janesville's high schools sick buildings? No one's going that far, but two Parker High School teachers are sure their classrooms give them laryngitis. Lesley Murphy and Crystal Callison say the air-handling fans in their rooms' ceilings can be so loud at times that they have to shout for students to hear them. Veteran teachers have confirmed that the noise has gotten worse over the years. Both teachers also complain about too much heat or too much cold. High temperatures and stuffy rooms are the most common complaints in both Craig and Parker high schools. Teachers and students complain about rooms that heat to 100 degrees on hot days and stay stuffy and overly warm even on cold days. Sometimes, the problem is the steam heat, said Jerry Tinberg, the district's energy specialist. Tinberg said steam heat requires temperatures in the pipes be at least 212 degrees. So even if the heat in a room is turned off, and even with insulation, the pipes running under floors will warm a room. "That alone can cause uncomfortable conditions, in the spring and the fall in particular," Tinberg said. The Nov. 7 referendum should fix such problems. For starters, the heating system would use hot water, not steam, so pipe temperatures would be much lower, Tinberg said. And while air handlers will always make some noise, excessive noise should also be fixed, Tinberg said. Murphy believes that yelling over the noise makes her hoarse, but the air quality gives her colds.

The district never has studied the high schools' air quality, said Doug Bunton, the district's business director. Since 1986, the schools have been maintained to comply with the 1986-87 building code, which calls for 5 cubic feet of outside air per minute per person, Bunton said. In recent years, the state code has been updated to require a minimum of 7.5 cubic feet per minute per person. Federal standards call for even more: 15 to 20 cubic feet of air. Bunton said the referendum project would be engineered to supply a minimum of 15 cubic feet. "These enhanced ventilation rates not only deliver more adequate supplies of fresh air but also help dilute or remove contaminants, especially chemical and biological contaminants (such as molds and bacteria) that have highly demonstrable health effects," according to a 2002 report by the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities. Air conditioning also can reduce mold. The high schools' libraries, administrative offices and certain classrooms already are air-conditioned. The referendum would replace the AC units with a chilled-water system that is said to be more economical to operate than conventional air conditioning.

NEW YORK: In New York City, air pollution levels have typically been monitored by inanimate objects, at more than a dozen locations around town. But in the South Bronx, from 2002 to 2005, air pollution monitors went mobile. They went to the playground, to the gritty sidewalks, even to the movies. A group of schoolchildren carried the monitors everywhere they went. The instruments, attached to the backpacks of children with asthma, allowed researchers at New York University to measure the pollution the children were exposed to, morning to night.

The South Bronx is home to miles of expressways, more than a dozen waste-transfer stations, a sewage-treatment plant and truck traffic from some of the busiest wholesale produce, meat and fish markets in the world. It is also home to some of the highest asthma hospitalization rates for children in the city. The N.Y.U. study found that the students were exposed to high levels of air pollutants in their neighborhoods and that children in the South Bronx were twice as likely to attend a school near a highway as were children in other parts of the city. The findings paint a bleak picture of the air quality in one of the poorest sections of the city and have focused renewed attention from community groups and elected officials on curbing pollution from truck exhaust.

NATIONAL : States and school districts spent almost $600 billion on building and renovating schools from 1995 to 2004, an amount that far exceeds earlier expectations, concludes a report released today. But the money, by and large, did not go to the disadvantaged districts that needed it the most, the authors say. Besides receiving the least money for facilities, the report says, high-poverty, predominantly minority districts were more likely than better-off districts to use the funds for basic safety needs, such as roof repairs or asbestos removal. Schools in the more affluent districts were likelier to spend their money for improvements intended to directly enhance learning, such as science laboratories and computer rooms. Over the 10-year period studied, the most disadvantaged students received about half as much school construction aid as their wealthier counterparts, the report estimates. The researchers divided areas into five brackets based on median household income and analyzed the amount and types of construction done in each income bracket. One reason that the report’s estimate of total expenditures is higher than earlier estimates of need is that it takes into account previously overlooked costs, such as land acquisition, furnishings, and interest payments on loans, according to the study’s authors.

NEW YORK: School-based clinics are capturing attention as one way to reach the nation's 8.4 million uninsured children, especially in areas where access to health care is limited. There are now about 1,700 school-based health centers across the country, up from about 200 in the early 1990s. In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently proposed establishing up to 500 school clinics in poor urban areas, and efforts to boost funding are under way in Florida. Dozens of schools across New York are waiting to open clinics.

Since travel can be tough in Delhi, 90 miles southwest of Albany, it's no surprise that 95 percent of the 1,000 students _ most privately insured _ are enrolled in the school clinic. Unlike the traditional school nurse, clinics can diagnose and treat conditions on school grounds. The Delhi clinic resembles any other doctor's office, with a spacious reception area, two exam rooms and a small laboratory in the corner for drawing blood. A nurse practitioner and counselor stay on site, and a physician makes weekly visits. Some offer everything from dental care to tobacco prevention programs, while others operate out of empty storage rooms, surviving on shoestring budgets.

Typically run by health care or nonprofit groups, school clinics do not replace school nurses, who continue to handle routine matters like scraped knees and tummy aches. In some cash-strapped districts, however, a school clinic might take on the duties of a school nurse. Studies show kids who go to schools with health centers are more likely to get regular checkups and comprehensive care. School clinics can also boost attendance, while reducing hospitalizations and emergency room visits. The impact is even more dramatic in urban areas, with their higher rates of uninsured children.

Medicaid or private insurance reimbursement depend on the state. Only about half of visits to the Bronx and in Delhi are reimbursed, and those clinics depend greatly on state funding for survival. New York state funding for school clinics has remained at around $23 million over the past decade, even as the number of clinics has doubled in that time to nearly 200. The problem, some state officials say, is that school clinics might duplicate health services already available in the community. There are critics among parents too; some resist clinics because they are required to provide pregnancy and HIV testing in New York. Other states may ban school clinics from providing reproductive health services, while others leave it up to the school district.

ARIZONA: State lawmakers approved a big bump in the funds available for school construction — but not as much as some educators say is necessary to do the job right. Members of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee agreed to let the state School Facilities Board, in charge of erecting new buildings, spend 12.2 percent more per square foot. That was the amount requested by the board, which reflects average construction costs developed by a project management firm and an international construction consulting group. Legislative staffers estimate the change will add close to $39 million in costs to taxpayers in contracts being awarded for new schools this year, on top of the $361 million now being spent this year. That is more than the 6.9 percent increase that the board would have been granted using indexes previously adopted.

But committee members balked at an alternative proposal by Rep. Linda Lopez, D-Tucson to boost construction funding by 20 percent — a figure based on the recommendation of the American Institute of Architects. That also is a figure backed by various school officials who said they are being forced to cut corners. School districts each used to be responsible for funding their own schools. But a 1994 Arizona Supreme Court ruling voided that system saying it created inequities between rich and poor districts. A 1998 law gave the responsibility to the state, with a formula given to the School Facilities Board based on the square footage of each building. The Joint Legislative Budget Committee adjusts that formula each year.

MINNESOTA: Another round of school closings may be ahead for Minneapolis. Not long after 13 schools were closed, administrators have concluded that the district needs to cut more building costs to help balance next school year's budget. They estimate a $15 million to $20 million budget gap. "We've got to do everything we can do to free up the resources for the classroom," said interim Superintendent Bill Green.

Besides the question of overcapacity, the district also has faced problems in reusing closed schools. It has put new programs or offices in three schools, one was sold, and the city will rent another. But the district hasn't found what it regards as acceptable offers for six other schools. It rejected leasing one school to an alternative school in the face of neighborhood opposition.

Heating and repairs at those schools also have put a drag on the district budget. For example, it costs more than $35,000 annually to heat a modest-sized aging building enough to keep pipes from freezing. One closed school, Cooper, needs a $125,000 chimney rebuilding after it was damaged by lightning.

The last closing process included a series of community meetings at which criteria for evaluating schools for closing were developed. Those areas included the school's program, district demographics, condition of facilities, other operational questions and the school's academic and enrollment trends. A facilities team then evaluated those criteria to give the greatest weight to school success and the least to recent and upcoming investments in schools.

MARYLAND: A week after a spate of violence in Baltimore schools, officials announced their latest strategy to keep children safe: blanketing campuses with digital surveillance cameras. The city's school system and Police Department have received a $500,000 federal grant, which must be matched with local money, to install 280 cameras at 10 schools. Over the summer, the city spent $1.1 million to install about 575 cameras in 11 other schools, averaging 52 cameras per school.

Surveillance cameras are used to some extent by school systems around the region, including those in Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties. Around the country, they are commonly found in urban school systems, and sometimes in suburban and rural systems. The grant for the project was awarded by the Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which gave $14.8 million to 174 local law enforcement agencies nationwide for school safety initiatives.

CALIFORNIA: Outgoing Los Angeles schools Superintendent Roy Romer warned of a possible $2.5-billion shortfall in the school district's massive construction program, a result of skyrocketing building costs and steadily declining student enrollment. Building costs have climbed rapidly in recent years. The $200 per square foot for new school construction that district officials had budgeted in 2002 is a distant memory. Today, bids routinely come in at more than $500 per square foot and the district received one recently at more than $625, officials said.

Romer's warning was not entirely unexpected — district officials have talked for more than a year about the twin hit of rising costs and falling student numbers on the $19.3-billion program. But Romer put a number on the problem, while outlining his proposal to do something about it and reiterating the need to push ahead. Romer sketched out plans to create a $1.3-billion reserve fund to help offset the shortfall. The money, he proposed, would be redirected from the roughly $4-billion Measure Y bonds voters approved last year. Though the bond money has yet to be earmarked for specific projects, if the reserve is ultimately approved by the school board and bond oversight committee it would mean at least temporarily scaling back plans to modernize schools, improve district technology and other goals. An additional $1.2 billion, Romer said, could be recouped elsewhere. Most pressing for the district is whether voters next month approve Proposition 1D, a statewide school construction bond measure that would provide $475 million to the Los Angeles Unified School District to build schools. The district plans to save $300 million by scaling back the fourth, and final, phase of the construction project. For example, district officials originally had envisioned the need to build 21 elementary schools. But, with enrollment continuing to decline, the district now plans to build about 15 campuses. Romer also said the district would continue to press state lawmakers to overhaul complicated rules that determine how much school districts receive in state construction funds. Under the current guidelines, funding is based on enrollment projections, which means a significant loss of money for the district — about $900 million.

FLORIDA: When Miami-Dade school leaders rolled out an ambitious plan to eliminate overcrowding -- building new schools, constructing additions at others, renovating the most decrepit -- their promises were deliberately fuzzy. The projected cost was about $3.2 billion, but the state was only expected to provide about $2 billion. Barring an unlikely windfall from the Legislature, the School Board will either have to ask voters to approve a tax-supported bond referendum to fill the gap or start canceling and scaling back more than 100 projects across the county.

Despite the addition of more than 38,000 new student stations over the last two years, far exceeding expectations, board members have remained loath to even broach the subject of a bond issue, which would be financed with a special sales tax or increase to property taxes. Years will pass before the impact of the dried-up funding stream is visible. Schools and additions considered the highest priorities were fully funded; some have already been built and others are scheduled to open in 2007-08 and 2008-09. Beyond 2009, however, everything is in doubt. Administrators have not made a detailed contingency plan, and could alter plans for projects as large as a $90 million senior high in Northwest Miami-Dade and as small as a $62,000 renovation project at Palm Springs Middle in Hialeah.

CALIFORNIA: California voters have approved major statewide education bonds in all but one election year during the past decade at a cost of more than $37 billion. Combined with scores of local school bonds passed during the same time, California voters since 1996 have authorized $95 billion in borrowing for school construction -- more than in the previous 50 years combined. As Californians this fall confront another mega education bond issue -- Proposition 1D -- polls show voters are becoming wary of the continued borrowing. If approved, the bond measure would push the total for school construction borrowing in California to well over $100 billion during the past decade, before interest payments. There also are signs indicating the state's borrowing cycle for school construction may not be sustainable. Even before this year's bond issue -- which would add $680 million in annual repayment costs if approved by voters -- California's bills to cover past education bonds were escalating.

And despite its size, Prop. 1D would provide only a fraction of the money state officials say is needed to keep pace with California's projected classroom needs. It would account for about a quarter of the state's school construction needs for the next decade, according to long-term bond plans of the Schwarzenegger administration. Even if voters approve Prop. 1D, they likely will be asked to approve an additional $40 billion or more in state and local school bonds before 2015, according to estimates of state officials and school groups.

Education proponents promise the cycle of school bonds will level off some day, but for now they say the continuous ballot requests reflect the need. California does not set aside money in its annual budget to build schools or provide substantive repairs. That forces local districts to rely almost entirely on bond money for everything from air conditioners and leaky roofs to refurbished classrooms.

California voters have been generous. The amount spent per pupil in recent years on construction is greater than in any other state. Between local and state bonds, public schools and colleges in the state have spent an average of $26 million a day -- every day -- for the past 10 years on construction or refurbishing. School districts have built 40,000 classrooms and modernized 97,000 others. State education officials say that has improved the learning environment for nearly half the state's 6.3 million kindergarten through 12th-grade students. Colleges have built campuses, upgraded labs and opened key facilities.

By other measures, progress remains elusive. In 1998, after voters approved $9 billion in statewide education bonds, the Department of Finance estimated $10 billion more would cover California's share of school construction needs for a decade. Since then, voters have approved an additional $25 billion in state bonds, but the estimated need has grown. In January, the state Department of Finance pegged the state's need at about $11 billion by 2011. The governor's plan suggests Californians will need to approve three-and-a-half times more in state bonds by 2015, plus local matching bonds. The state Department of Education calculates the need differently. California must each day build 18 new classrooms and modernize 25 others through 2010 to keep pace with maintenance needs and a student population that is forecast to grow by about 40,000 students -- or less than 1 percent -- in the next four years. But Prop. 1D, education officials acknowledge, won't cover that demand alone. To build that many classrooms, voters will have to approve billions more in state bonds in 2008. It won't end there. By the next decade, thousands of schools renovated in the 1980s will hit the 25-year mark and be eligible again for modernization funds.

CALIFORNIA: California voters have approved major statewide education bonds in all but one election year during the past decade at a cost of more than $37 billion. Combined with scores of local school bonds passed during the same time, California voters since 1996 have authorized $95 billion in borrowing for school construction -- more than in the previous 50 years combined. As Californians this fall confront another mega education bond issue -- Proposition 1D -- polls show voters are becoming wary of the continued borrowing. If approved, the bond measure would push the total for school construction borrowing in California to well over $100 billion during the past decade, before interest payments. There also are signs indicating the state's borrowing cycle for school construction may not be sustainable. Even before this year's bond issue -- which would add $680 million in annual repayment costs if approved by voters -- California's bills to cover past education bonds were escalating.

And despite its size, Prop. 1D would provide only a fraction of the money state officials say is needed to keep pace with California's projected classroom needs. It would account for about a quarter of the state's school construction needs for the next decade, according to long-term bond plans of the Schwarzenegger administration. Even if voters approve Prop. 1D, they likely will be asked to approve an additional $40 billion or more in state and local school bonds before 2015, according to estimates of state officials and school groups.

Education proponents promise the cycle of school bonds will level off some day, but for now they say the continuous ballot requests reflect the need. California does not set aside money in its annual budget to build schools or provide substantive repairs. That forces local districts to rely almost entirely on bond money for everything from air conditioners and leaky roofs to refurbished classrooms.

California voters have been generous. The amount spent per pupil in recent years on construction is greater than in any other state. Between local and state bonds, public schools and colleges in the state have spent an average of $26 million a day -- every day -- for the past 10 years on construction or refurbishing. School districts have built 40,000 classrooms and modernized 97,000 others. State education officials say that has improved the learning environment for nearly half the state's 6.3 million kindergarten through 12th-grade students. Colleges have built campuses, upgraded labs and opened key facilities.

By other measures, progress remains elusive. In 1998, after voters approved $9 billion in statewide education bonds, the Department of Finance estimated $10 billion more would cover California's share of school construction needs for a decade. Since then, voters have approved an additional $25 billion in state bonds, but the estimated need has grown. In January, the state Department of Finance pegged the state's need at about $11 billion by 2011. The governor's plan suggests Californians will need to approve three-and-a-half times more in state bonds by 2015, plus local matching bonds. The state Department of Education calculates the need differently. California must each day build 18 new classrooms and modernize 25 others through 2010 to keep pace with maintenance needs and a student population that is forecast to grow by about 40,000 students -- or less than 1 percent -- in the next four years. But Prop. 1D, education officials acknowledge, won't cover that demand alone. To build that many classrooms, voters will have to approve billions more in state bonds in 2008. It won't end there. By the next decade, thousands of schools renovated in the 1980s will hit the 25-year mark and be eligible again for modernization funds.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA : D.C. School Superintendent Clifford B. Janey is launching a campaign to upgrade decrepit and outdated athletic facilities, proposing to begin spending $10 million at five senior high schools next year where student-athletes have long complained about unusable showers and toilets, old uniforms, and sub-par fields and courts, officials said.

Janey shifted gears after a Washington Post report detailed rundown conditions in Dunbar's athletic program: a condemned running track, rusty weight-training equipment and moldy showers, as well as a lack of toilet paper, soap and dispensers for feminine hygiene products. He also faced pressure from parents and student-athletes, who bombarded his office with phone calls complaining about the conditions, and a church civic organization that demanded immediate repairs.

FLORIDA: Like many businesses, law schools need a competitive edge. For the Florida Coastal School of Law, now 10 years old, part of that edge is found in its newly renovated, multimillion-dollar building on the Southside. The new campus is touted as being able to facilitate education through good design. As far as students and professors are concerned, it's working. [Article includes a gallery of the designs, photos of the rooms and explanations behind the designs.]

COLORADO: Next month, voters in the Boulder Valley School District will decide upon the largest bond issue in district history. At nearly $300 million, it is also the largest proposed school bond issue in the state this year and one of the largest ever for Colorado. The biggest single item in the bond issue is a budgeted $31 million to tear down the 1924 Casey Middle School building and replace it with a new one. But, if approved, officials plan to make improvements to every school in the district, where the average age of the buildings is 43 years, and district leaders believe repairs are long overdue. "This bond measure is really an investment in the existing neighborhood schools and in protecting them into the future," said Don Orr, the district's director of planning and engineering. "That makes this bond issue tougher to sell because it's not sexy. It's tough to get people interested in boiler replacements and roof replacements." The district - with an enrollment of 27,933 students - also plans to improve ventilation and heating and cooling systems, upgrade athletic fields, enlarge some buildings and improve Internet wiring throughout the schools. Critics of the bond measure don't question whether the schools need improving. Instead, they question whether the district can be trusted to handle all the money.

ARIZONA: Higley school district taxpayers will have to spend $3.5 million more to build the same school again. Gateway Pointe Elementary was bid in 2004 for $7.8 million, with state money paying for the entire project. Two years later, Chaparral Elementary, which will open next fall, went out to bid for $12 million even though it's the same design. A Nov. 7 vote will decide whether Higley gets the $3.5 million to equip Chaparral, with items the state will not fund, such as carpeting, landscaping and a bus loop. School construction costs have gone up about 20 percent while funding from the School Facilities Board, the state agency responsible for building public schools, has increased 12 percent.

ALABAMA: The Jefferson County Commission approved a resolution to release the funds for school construction and improvements. School systems will be able set up an account with Wachovia Bank to receive their share of the money. County superintendents will meet with bank officials. Commissioners will vote on proposed refinancing of the bonds. Commission President Larry Langford says the refinancing is needed to cover the cost of the measure which initially will be financed with a loan.

CALIFORNIA: Tuesday President Bush convened a national summit along with Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to discuss ways of making schools safer. According to Spellings "Statistically, the safest place for a child to be is in school"; however Gonzales urged the nation's school administrators to limit access to campuses.

Riverside Unified School District has perimeter fences around most schools and plans to install new fencing at Poly High School and University Middle School, said Kirk Lewis, the district's assistant superintendent of operations. School grounds in the San Bernardino City Unified School District are generally closed to the public while classes are in session to protect children," said spokesperson Linda Hill. Steve Ellis, Corona-Norco Unified School District’s coordinator of student safety and security said they are in the process of installing security cameras and fences at its high schools and River Heights Intermediate School. Inland officials claim district schools have been much better at detecting crime before it occurs. "There's more tip lines out there. There's a closer working partnership with law enforcement. Mental health professionals are now working much closer with staff, parents and students," said Ellis.

National statistics show a steady decline in school crime, including murder, over the past decade. Attacks like the ones in Colorado and Pennsylvania - by outsiders, not students, account for two percent of those deaths. Most schools get less than $10,000 in federal security aid, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Federal funding to combat crime and drugs in schools has steadily fallen since Bush entered the White House. But Bill Modzeleski, who runs the U.S. Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, says there's plenty schools can do now: limit access; keep areas well lit; install security cameras; monitor visitors; and train teachers, parents, and students to report suspicious activity. Perhaps most of all, they should intervene with children early before emotional issues explode into violence.

PENNSYLVANIA: Manheim Township School District and Lancaster County Career & Technology Center will receive funding from the Pennsylvania Energy Harvest Grant Program. The Pennsylvania Energy Harvest Grant Program rewards projects that utilize clean energy technology, reduce dependence on foreign fuels and cut air and water pollution. Manheim Township School District will receive a $250,000 grant to help defray the cost of a ventilation system for its $80.6 million high school construction and renovation project. Lancaster County Career & Technology Center will get a $67,000 grant for homes built by students at its Mount Joy campus that use solar technology. The Manheim Township school utilizes a geothermal/ground-coupled radiant cooling floor system and a dedicated ventilation system. Jeff Harris, the chief mechanical engineer for the project, said the ventilation system is one of several environmental features of the construction project that will reduce energy consumption for the district; the district chose construction methods that are more expensive in the short term but will be cost-effective into the future. The Mount Joy project involves Career & Technology students building houses on school-owned land that will later be sold to the public. The homes feature solar electric, solar hot water and ground-source heat pump systems. The technology is expected to reduce electricity consumption by 14,700 kilowatt-hours per year and cut air pollution.

NATIONAL: President Bush had a Conference on School Safety at the National 4-H Conference Center in Chevy Chase Maryland on Tuesday October 10th. 350 people, including school officials, police officers and youth advocates attended the conference arranged by the White House, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education. The onstage panel consisted of the President, a Florida sheriff, a Los Angeles specialist in school crisis counseling, a survivor of the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School and the Fairfax County school system's director of safety and security.

The conference began with a national expert saying that schools are still among the safest places. Children ages 12 to 18 are far more likely to be killed or seriously assaulted outside school, said Delbert S. Elliott, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado. Although high-profile attacks are relatively rare, he said, statistics show that "everyday violence," such as fights and gang attacks, are on the rise. The president heard calls for more coordinated planning between schools and police, more character education, more peer mentoring programs, more parental involvement and more counseling for suicidal children who might also have homicidal tendencies. Adding metal detectors and more security cameras can create a "lockdown" atmosphere and make the school less hospitable, several panelists said. Frederick E. Ellis, head of safety and security for Fairfax schools, said safety plans need to be updated frequently and practiced.

The president announced no new funding or policy initiatives to handle the problem but said he wanted the conference to reveal "concrete actions to help people understand what's possible and what's working."

NATIONAL : Each morning, the 16,000 students in the Spring Independent School District in suburban Houston swipe their ID tags as they climb onto the school bus. A radio frequency tag tracks them, as it does when they arrive at school and as they leave the building. Nearly 1,000 cameras watch them all day. Every visitor — parents, volunteers, the guy who fills the Coke machine — must surrender his or her driver's license to a secretary who checks it against a national database of sex offenders. This fall, nearly one in three schools literally trap visitors inside a "secure vestibule," a bulletproof glass room, until they're checked out. Welcome to the brave new world of school security. In an era when deadly school shootings seem to happen like clockwork, schools are hardening up, trying unconventional means to deter violence and keep track of students and adults.

Schools have long been beefing up security — often in the face of diminishing funding — creating "crisis plans" and investing millions in systems they hope will deter the next deadly incident. "If somebody's really determined to get into a school and they have a high enough caliber weapon, they're going to get in," says Alan Bragg, chief of Spring's school police. But ID checks and the like are "a huge deterrent" to most would-be criminals. And though shootings like those at Columbine High School in 1999 prompted schools to be on the lookout for violent students, safety experts say kidnapping and molestation cases also have forced them to pay attention to adults on campus.

WEST VIRGINIA: Rising construction costs may lead to changes in how new schools are designed; Chuck Wilson, facilities director for Kanawha County schools, estimates school construction costs have gone up about $100 per square foot in the last three years. He said costs have spiked mainly because of increased steel and fuel costs. David Sneed, interim executive director for the state's School Building Authority, agreed the cost of school construction has significantly increased. "Copper wiring, roofing, insulation, any kind of plastic or material made with petroleum. . . they've all gone up," Sneed said. Sneed said the building authority has been forced to boost its funding formula for schools numerous times to compensate for increased costs. The last time funds were divvied out, the building authority provided $161 per square foot for the construction of high schools, $165 per square foot for middle schools and $142 per square foot for elementary schools. Kanawha County school board members decided in August to construct two new elementary schools. According to cost projections, the price tag for the two new schools, after some redistricting, is about $26.1 million. According to preliminary cost estimates, the building authority might provide about $10.5 million of that, leaving the county to pay the remaining $15.5 million. "Costs have gone up tremendously since we started looking at those schools. I imagine that by the time we build it, costs will have doubled," Wilson said. "We need to look at ways we can use our educational facilities and be as efficient as possible.” Wilson said. Instead of full computer labs, Wilson said he has suggested rolling or mobile laptop labs; instead of each teacher having his or her own classroom, one teacher uses the room while another spends off time in the planning room.

WEST VIRGINIA: Rising construction costs may lead to changes in how new schools are designed; Chuck Wilson, facilities director for Kanawha County schools, estimates school construction costs have gone up about $100 per square foot in the last three years. He said costs have spiked mainly because of increased steel and fuel costs. David Sneed, interim executive director for the state's School Building Authority, agreed the cost of school construction has significantly increased. "Copper wiring, roofing, insulation, any kind of plastic or material made with petroleum. . . they've all gone up," Sneed said. Sneed said the building authority has been forced to boost its funding formula for schools numerous times to compensate for increased costs. The last time funds were divvied out, the building authority provided $161 per square foot for the construction of high schools, $165 per square foot for middle schools and $142 per square foot for elementary schools. Kanawha County school board members decided in August to construct two new elementary schools. According to cost projections, the price tag for the two new schools, after some redistricting, is about $26.1 million. According to preliminary cost estimates, the building authority might provide about $10.5 million of that, leaving the county to pay the remaining $15.5 million. "Costs have gone up tremendously since we started looking at those schools. I imagine that by the time we build it, costs will have doubled," Wilson said. "We need to look at ways we can use our educational facilities and be as efficient as possible.” Wilson said. Instead of full computer labs, Wilson said he has suggested rolling or mobile laptop labs; instead of each teacher having his or her own classroom, one teacher uses the room while another spends off time in the planning room.

PENNSYLVANIA: Open doors. Side or rear entrances that should have been locked - but weren't. School staff who allowed visitors to enter without asking who they were or why they were there. Even after the carnage at an Amish school in Lancaster County, a spot check by Inquirer reporters found a surprising number of security lapses at schools across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In spite of rules aimed at limiting public access, reporters who fanned out on a single day walked into more than a dozen schools unannounced and without being challenged.

Experts agree that minimum security standards should apply to all schools - including a single access point and careful screening of visitors. A number of area superintendents say they are considering tighter security measures in light of recent school shootings. But thus far, no state or federal laws set security standards for schools, leaving them up to districts. The result, The Inquirer found, is a hodgepodge of safety policies that leaves some schools vulnerable.

NATIONAL : Since the killings at Columbine High School seven years ago, schools have locked their doors, posted adults at entryways and drilled students in emergency procedures. The result, say experts, has been an increase in safety, but there remains little that can be done to stop a distraught outsider intent on killing children. William Pollack, a Harvard University professor who has done studies of school shootings, estimates that a child in this country has a one-in-a-million chance of being shot in an attack or suicide at a school. Fights and stabbings, in which one student targets another, remain the most common form of violence in schools. Students who kill indiscriminately are far more rare, occurring on average only eight or nine times a year across the country. Even rarer is the type of shootings perpetrated by adults that occurred in Colorado and Pennsylvania. But if parents and teachers overreact to the events of the past week by locking schools down -- requiring students to go through metal detectors and installing other security devices -- they are likely to traumatize children, Pollack said. The best way to prevent school killings is for teachers and administrators to establish an atmosphere of trust so students report promptly signs of danger, whether troubled students or intruders, said Kenneth S. Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services of Cleveland.

NATIONAL : At the Samuel H. Daroff Elementary school in West Philadelphia, students must pass a security officer who uses a metal detector wand to search for possible weapons. A network of cameras pans the grounds and beyond for any sign of trouble. It's a typical scene in a city where schools have become a refuge from drug-fueled gang shootings. It's also a scene in sharp contrast with schools in suburbia, rural America and at the one-room Amish schoolhouse an hour west of Philadelphia where a gunman struck Monday. The attack, which left five girls dead, was the latest school shooting far from an urban center, illustrating for some experts that city schools have often succeeded in making themselves safer. Last week in Bailey, Colorado, a man held students as hostages in a classroom and then killed one of them and himself. Also last week, a principal was fatally shot by a student in rural Cazenovia, Wisconsin.

Despite such shootings, the public tends to view city schools as less secure and more dangerous -- yet urban districts are consistently better prepared, said Ken Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services, a consulting firm in Cleveland, Ohio. Suburban, rural and private schools frequently "have not gotten past the 'it can't happen here' mentality," he said. Jeffrey Jackson, the Philadelphia school system's manager, said security systems are not the only reason schools like Daroff Elementary have never had a shooting, despite violence in the community. He cited an urban attitude in which guns are looked at with greater suspicion than in rural areas, where you have "that God and country thing, the right to bear arms."

MISSOURI: When city voters approved the construction of a giant "monolithic dome" to house an elementary school gym and band room, they thought they would get an inexpensive, if unconventional, structure. As it turned out, they got an echo chamber. "If you stand in the middle, the sound bounces back on you," said Darrell Sy, superintendent of the Pontiac-William Holliday School District, as he stood in the middle of the dome this week. "Someone can speak on one side of the room and be heard like they're right next to you."

Since the fall of last year, when construction of the copper-colored dome was finished, the district has tried various methods to fix the problem. First, they installed a "sound flower" - a star-like formation of panels - on the building's ceiling. Then they tried installing sound panels, another sound flower, and more panels. Sy and his custodian have spent weekends wrapping fiberglass panels in denim and hanging them on the band room walls. They invented something they dubbed the "sound quilt" and enlisted the help of a local seamstress and a 26-foot ladder to install it. "Nothing has worked," Sy said.

Several years ago, the district decided it wanted to build a gym and band room for the prekindergarten through sixth-grade students at William Holliday School, which never had its own gym. The district proposed a $1.9 million, four-walled structure, but voters rejected it. Voters continued to balk, rejecting three more building proposals before accepting the considerably less expensive dome proposal in 2004. "We had four referendums, and it never passed," Sy said, adding, "Our custodian was looking at a magazine and read something about domes. They were cheaper, energy efficient. We said, 'let's give it a shot.'" Sy and some others did some research. They visited the Valley School District in Missouri's Washington County, which had recently built two domes, and liked what they saw. Voters liked the price tag - $1 million - of which they would pay $800,000 and the district $200,000. But now that price is climbing with each attempted fix, while no affordable solution seems to be in sight. So far, the district has spent at least $14,000 for the panels and flowers, while the architects have thrown in another $6,500. Sy says these costs, combined with post-referendum construction cost increases and unforeseen charges for a pricey sprinkler system, have brought the price tag closer to $1.3 million.

Acoustic problems with domes aren't unusual. When school officials at the Valley district in Missouri visited existing domes, they were warned about potential issues, so they included a dropped ceiling in the original building plans to absorb sound. "The echo in the gym would've been unbearable," said Steve Yount, the district's superintendent. "When people come here to tour our domes, we say, 'Whatever you do, make sure you account for the acoustics.'" Sy says he just wishes the district could've afforded another structure altogether. "It's not unusable, but it's annoying," he said, " and it's not really cheaper."

NATIONAL : The deadly shootings at an Amish school in Pennsylvania have parents and teachers around the country taking a closer look at school safety. Worried parents say if it could happen there, it could happen anywhere. What's being done to keep our students safe? Short of a complete lockdown, and that is one idea some suggest, the bottom line seems to be no one can guarantee that a disgruntled student, employee or even a stranger won't suddenly open fire at your children's school.

School violence plunged after Columbine. But now, some say the latest events call for drastic measures. In the movie "Lean on Me," a high school principal kept criminals out by locking the doors. To Joanne Bragg, who is a parent and school therapist, that makes sense, "so that someone off the street can't just can't walk up and walk in and cause harm." But officials say that's not always feasible. William Modzeleski, Associate Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education says, "You can't just lock the door after they're in there and wait till three o'clock and reopen it, because they are public places."

A 2002 government report suggested instead of chains and metal detectors, schools should focus on helping troubled students who could turn violent. Edward Dejesus of the Youth Development and Research Fund thinks everyone should be involved, "This is something parents have to be concerned about because all our students could be that student in that class one day when that happens."

But what about the stranger who walks in unexpectedly? The government has sponsored 350 emergency drills, so students know what to do. Pennsylvania state police commissioner Jeffrey Miller says, "If they do what they're told when an emergency situation occurs, they'll be safe." A Florida company, CADD, is helping first responders by making school layouts, photos and 3-D images instantly available in an emergency, "This will save lives cause it's simple. It's easy to use."

What's not simple: finding a one-size fits all answer to keeping students safe. The Bush administration actually recommended cutting some funds for school safety, but Congress disagreed and restored some of that money. The administration says it was for programs that weren't working.

NATIONAL : Years ago, in a classroom that had chalk, blackboards and students seated in neat rows, teacher Lee Dorman had a desk of her own. But she found herself constantly roaming to oversee projects and answer questions. She never used the desk, so she got rid of it. "I just never figured out how on earth to teach sitting down," said Dorman, 58, a veteran teacher at Kenmore Middle School in Arlington County. She calls herself "a walker and a stalker." She carries what she needs in her pockets and keeps students in what she considers a useful state of alertness because they are never quite sure where she is going to be.

Here and there, a small but growing number of teachers is following Dorman's example, educators say, abandoning the traditional classroom power center. To them, a desk is really a ball and chain, distancing them from students. "You're always moving around. I think you need a desk or something," a student complained to Aaronthomas Green, a middle school science teacher who works without a desk in Los Angeles. Green said he took the remark as a compliment. With the new emphasis on raising achievement for all students, many teachers say they have to stay mobile to make sure they are reaching everyone in their classroom.

The no-desk movement seems to have had little visible impact on schools so far. David Horn, director of marketing communications for the School Outfitters Web site, said he saw no sign of teacher desk sales falling off. There appears to be no research on how many instructors have abandoned their desks and, in a field replete with specialist groups, there apparently are no declared associations of deskless teachers.

NATIONAL : The rampage at an Amish school in Pennsylvania, the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week, was another in a series of attacks in which four exurban schools were targeted in the last month by intruders committing murder, mayhem and sexual assaults. Save for a disturbed teenager killing a principal in a rural Wisconsin school, the recent rash of shootings were done by outsiders going against a decade-long trend of insular school violence committed mostly by students. "It's a disturbing change," said William Lassiter, manager for the Center for the Prevention of School Violence in North Carolina. "We've never seen anything like this." Of the 400-plus deaths in school violence in the last 12 years, only a handful were at the hands of intruders, experts say. Now, just in the last month, at least five people have been killed and several wounded by intruders shooting in schools. According to Ronald Stephens, director of the non-profit National School Safety Center in California, "It's whole different level of crime. It means schools are so vulnerable that anyone can walk in off the street and do something so heinous. What is the next wave of shock we can get?"

The shootings in the last month have occurred in small towns outside big cities or in rural areas where trust among residents is high and few precautions are taken at school sites. Smaller schools such as the one-room schoolhouse in Pennsylvania rarely have the metal detectors or elaborate security found in schools in big cities. But even in small school districts, there can be warning signs. In last week's shooting in Colorado, the gunman was on campus the day before and was asking students questions, experts noted. "The best preparation is a well-trained and highly alert staff and student body," said Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety and Security Services consulting firm in Cleveland, which trains school in safety measures. Still, Trump said: "In the case of a roaming monster walking around a school, you have to be realistic. There are some incidents you're not going to be able to prevent."

NATIONAL : Metal detectors, threat-evaluation software, police officers -- hundreds of American schools have added tighter security since 1999’s attack at Colorado’s Columbine High School. But these solutions "are not likely to be effective," and are potentially harmful, according to federal researchers who conducted the most thorough study of school shootings across the nation. Of what value is a metal detector, the researchers asked, when an attacker is willing to kill others and take his or her life?

After the nation’s third deadly school attack in a week, one of the researchers said that he was ambivalent about encouraging every one of the 100,000 schools in the nation to add metal detectors. “Because you’ve had three school shootings in this country, is that a reason to make sure that every school in the country has a metal detector?” said the researcher, William Modzeleski, director of the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program for the U.S. Department of Education, which studied school shootings with researchers from the U.S. Secret Service. “Would it have stopped what happened?”

Is it practical, or effective, to add physical security in Cazenovia, Wis., or in Bailey, Colo., or at the one-room Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pa., each the scene of a shooting in the past week. “We’re cognizant of the fact that metal detectors do keep out some type of guns, but I think it’s a balancing act,” Modzeleski said. “Some schools with a weapons problem can benefit from them. But they can send a wrong message and have an adverse effect on the climate of the school. It also sends a message that if you have a metal detector, you’re safe. And I’m not sure that’s so.” Modzeleski noted that the high school in Red Lake, Minn., where seven were killed by a student last year, had a metal detector and a security guard. The gunman, Jeffrey Weise, shot and killed the guard, then walked down the hall shooting students and a teacher.

NEW YORK: Dozens of New York school districts in the past few years have renovated or added classrooms and hall space, and have been faced with the question of lockers. Surprisingly, locker size, shape and configuration appear to be wholly dependent on the year the school was built and the whims of the architect, and even the architect sometimes leaves them to the last minute. "Lockers are the red-headed stepchildren of school construction," said Daniel J. Peterson, senior production manager/lockers with Penco Products Inc., one of the country's largest makers of commercial steel lockers. "They'll suddenly say, 'Oh, we need lockers, too.' And then, lot of times, it's driven by design and aesthetics," he said. "Very few times is it driven by form and function."

The state Education Department, which must approve all school building design, has only two requirements for lockers: hallways must have 8 feet of clearance when the locker doors are open, and new lockers have to be handicapped-accessible. For new construction, the rule of thumb is to take the population of the school and the amount of available hall space and divide them, then add more lockers for future growth. Schools with little space and lots of students opt for thinner lockers or for stacking wider lockers above each other. Renovations usually mean a school duplicates existing lockers, but can go wider — or narrower — if the original lockers weren't working for students. Clarkstown North High School, built in 1953, has 9 1/2-inch-wide lockers in its original building, 12-inch-wide lockers in the section built in 1960 and 10-inch-wide lockers in the new science wing added during the summer.

Lockers provide private space for kids to store their books and coats, and alleviate hall crowding and inadvertent whacks with 30-pound backpacks. Today's students carry more stuff than their predecessors, pointed out veteran educator Pam Schaefer, who began teaching at North Rockland High in 1969. They carry class books, college textbooks, papers, binders, of course. Add to that compact discs, MP3s, cell phones, headsets, college literature and SAT prep packets crammed into backpacks. Their parents quaintly carried books and papers in their arms. Some schools with narrow lockers allow students a second one if they need it or switch them to a larger one, if available. Paradoxically, many students never see their lockers during the school year, having lost the combination or just decided the mad dash to a locker two floors or a building away isn't worth it.

NEW YORK: On local streets, new home and business construction may be leveling off, but it is booming on college campuses across the region. Educators and real estate analysts say that colleges and universities, public and private, big and small, are adding classrooms, dormitories, student centers and athletic centers at a scope and rate that have not been seen in decades. While students consider many factors when choosing a college, educators say that first-rate physical facilities are becoming increasingly important in attracting students.

NEW YORK: On local streets, new home and business construction may be leveling off, but it is booming on college campuses across the region. Educators and real estate analysts say that colleges and universities, public and private, big and small, are adding classrooms, dormitories, student centers and athletic centers at a scope and rate that have not been seen in decades. While students consider many factors when choosing a college, educators say that first-rate physical facilities are becoming increasingly important in attracting students.

COLORADO: The deadly Columbine High School shootings in 1999 changed the way architects design schools. Now, in addition to the usual concerns about fire safety and natural light, architects and principals talk about visual distances, entrance security and video cameras.

Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, where Duane Morrison held six students hostage before fatally shooting a 16-year-old girl and killing himself, had incorporated some of those new security measures into its extensive expansion five years ago. Gov. Bill Owens credited those designs for making it easier to isolate Morrison and get most students to safety.

The designers of Platte Canyon's renovation, Christiansen, Reece Partners, of Colorado Springs, have built numerous schools since the Columbine massacre, Leland Reece said. "We try to incorporate features that help to secure the building and also use the passive observation of spaces to see who is coming into the building and who is leaving," Reece said. That means putting the administrative offices close to the front entrance and designing the walls, windows and hallways so a single administrator or teacher on duty can get an unfettered view of who is coming and going.

Still, security isn't yet a part of the international building code that builders and architects must follow. While there are exact rules on fire safety dictating the number of exits, for example, decisions on security are made case by case by principals, parents and architects.

COLORADO: In the post-Columbine world, many Colorado students are experts at evacuation and lockdown drills, and teachers have learned that "Mr. Green is in the building" may mean something else entirely. It's one school's old code for Get Out Now. But while safety and security procedures have improved dramatically in many schools across the state since 1999, the tragedy in Bailey has some educators wondering if they can ever do enough. The hostage-taking at Platte Canyon High School, an hour's drive from Denver, shocked many educators into yet another review of their emergency plans.

Denver high school principals can tick off various security measures they've employed: an armed cop on site, three security guards with portable radios, nearly 30 cameras and fire, evacuation and lockdown drills. Schools in rural areas don't always have all those resources. State Education Commissioner William Moloney said he believes Colorado is better prepared for a school shooting than any other state "for the simple and tragic reason that we experienced Columbine with an intensity that no one else did." .

NEW JERSEY: The Jamesburg school district hopes that expanding its video surveillance system will mean a safer school ground at John F. Kennedy School. New cameras with DVD-recording capabilities have been installed in the school's playground area, and a new monitor for viewing the images produced by the cameras, allowing better image quality, also has been installed in the school office. The additions are meant to keep trespassers off school grounds. Superintendent Shirley Bzdewka said there have been no problems, but she wants to provide an extra line of security at the school. "We want to create an environment that makes students and teachers feel more secure and safe," said Ms. Bzdewka.

The new technology is part of the district's desire to remain ahead of the curve when it comes to safety, Ms. Bzdewka said. Video surveillance systems have been monitoring every door at both JFK School and Grace M. Breckwedel School for nine years, a time during which many other schools had only one camera each, according to Bzdewka. "When we first did it, we did it because it was the right thing to do," she said. "Our philosophy has always been to be proactive." Since its installation, the surveillance system has been used during work hours as part of other procedures meant to ensure safety at the district's schools. Any visitor to either school must be buzzed in by the secretary, who first confirms the individual's identity on the video monitor in the office, Ms. Bzdewka said. It is also used to ensure that students do not slip outside during the school day and to check for doors that have been propped open, she said.

NATIONAL : Just a short drive away from the Littleton, Colo., the location of the 1999 Columbine massacre, Platte Canyon High School in Bailey — the scene of a hostage situation-turned-murder-suicide on Wednesday — had an architectural design that authorities said helped them corner the gunman. "It (the school's design) allowed us to keep it to one room," Sheriff Fred Wegener said at a press conference Thursday. "It lessened angles he could see out." But Platte Canyon High School, which was designed in 2000 and completed in 2002, was not able to keep Duane Morrison, the homeless man who took six students hostage and killed one before shooting himself in the head, outside. Any many schools nationwide do not have the best security to keep out intruders.

At Homestead High School in Fort Wayne, Ind., the doors are always locked and a security guard screens everyone who enters the building. The facility also houses a state-of-the-art security system which maps the school's layout and would give police an edge in case the unthinkable were to happen. But security analysts say most schools around the country have nowhere near this level of security. "Very often we find that schools have crisis plans on paper. But many of those plans are outdated, have questionable content, and staff have not adequately trained," said school safety consultant Kenneth Trump.

Seven years after the Columbine massacre, 77 percent of schools do not have security cameras and less than half have security personnel on campus. Seventy percent of schools lock some, but not all of their doors, and nearly all leave their front doors unlocked.

But funding security is an issue, as school districts across the country complain of tight budgets and limited resources. Many schools simply have other priorites. "School safety is competing with academics for time and money," Trump said. "Oftentimes school safety loses out on both counts. " And federal money for school safety recently declined. One safety program that was given more than $400 million last year would get zero dollars under a new administration proposal. "The program was ineffective," according to William Modzeleski of the U.S. Dept. of Education's office of safe and drug free schools. "There does not look to be a correlation between funding, at least from our program, and overall school crime." The Columbine tragedy did lead the federal government and many communities in working more closely with police on how to respond to attacks. And, authorities say even the most basic security and a plan may avert an attack and save lives.

COLORADO: Momentum to make schools safer after the 1999 Columbine massacre stalled in the past few years as the push for higher test scores consumed time and funding, experts said. Still, schools communicate more with law enforcement and have better plans for emergency lockdowns and parental notification than they did before 12 students and a teacher were murdered at Columbine High School. Cuts in federal and state funding for school safety in the past few years have diminished schools' ability to run through mock emergencies or set up hotlines for students to report threats or bullying, experts added. "The vast majority of school districts have never practiced a hostile school takeover or a pandemic-flu crisis," said Del Elliott, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado. "They are so totally absorbed with the CSAP and academic requirements that they aren't spending a lot of time and resources on this issue."

Since Columbine, schools have gotten tougher about having one entrance watched by a school employee, who is supposed to question visitors. Students will find their way around metal detectors, and principals don't want to put them up anyway, said Kenneth Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety Services. "Principals struggle to strike a balance between having a prisonlike environment, yet still having a more secure building," he said.

NEBRASKA: Picture this: on the crest of a hill in far northwest Lincoln, a new middle school shares space with a new YMCA, a 31-acre example of public and private working together. Both the school and the YMCA would use the gymnasiums, the exercise rooms, the art rooms. Entrances would be separate and students couldn’t get into the YMCA during school hours, nor YMCA patrons into the school. Parking would be separate. A city park would be nearby, possibly with soccer, baseball and softball fields. The shared project would be built in the Fallbrook residential and business development that borders U.S. Highway 34. The Lincoln Board of Education approved a design concept. An $18.1 million middle school was among the projects included in the $250 million bond issue voters passed in February. It is scheduled to open in August 2009.

Dennis Van Horn, Lincoln Public Schools associate superintendent for business affairs, said the concept of sharing locations isn’t new — city recreation centers are attached to Belmont, Irving and Calvert elementaries and the city runs a teen center at Park Middle School. But this is the first time the city and a private agency are planning to share bricks and mortar. The concept saves both money, because they share cost as well as space, Van Horn said. The YMCA will also provide a place for afterschool programs or Community Learning Centers. "It extends services for our students beyond the school day," he said. The entire project is in the preliminary stages and even the land purchase hasn’t been finalized.

FLORIDA: Officials think they can safely shoehorn a planned $15 million elementary school on part of an arsenic-polluted site east of Sanford if the state gives the go-ahead on the long-delayed project. The new Midway Elementary would be built on the half of the 30-acre parcel where none of the poison has been found. District officials hope someday to construct a middle school on the polluted section as well, if a way can be found to cleanse the land -- or the arsenic somehow disappears.

Officials are downplaying pollution concerns and say the school site is safe. "I'm assuming that if the Department of Environmental Protection gives the green light, the parcel of land they are going to build on is going to be safe for all concerned," said Sharon Tanner, principal of the current Midway Elementary. DEP is considering restrictions on the property, possibly including no use of groundwater. Allen Nettles, environmental coordinator for the school district, said he expects the restrictions to apply only to the eastern half of the property, where the arsenic was found. But some parents whose children would attend the new school are not confident the site is safe. They worry that their children will be exposed to dangerous arsenic contaminants on the old farmland off State Road 46 in the low-income, high-minority neighborhood. Arsenic was widely used as a pesticide on huge vegetable farms once common in the Sanford area.

ILLINOIS: Construction on a new high school in Hampshire will stop at the second floor and eliminate a third story because of rising steel, copper, concrete and asphalt costs, Community Unit School District 300 officials said. Eliminating the third floor will save $2.6 million, and using cheaper building materials, which school officials called "value engineering," will save $2.8 million. Even so, the $75 million high school, scheduled to open in August 2008, is coming in about $2.5 million over budget, and the school district will have to dig into a $7.8 million contingency fund, said Cheryl Crates, District 300's chief financial officer. The district can cope with less classroom space for a few years, but the third floor will definitely be needed, school officials said.

FLORIDA: Windmills might be the first tip-off that this will be no ordinary school. The shade from the windmills is designed to form sundials. Greenhouse-like labs will open into a courtyard that will be a microcosm of the 150-acre Pine Jog Environmental Education Center preserve surrounding the elementary school, which will be built starting in April. Architects released design plans to show how learning can be improved through environmental architecture. Natural lighting, acoustics, color and views are physical factors designed into the building to influence teaching effectiveness. Architects Jose Murguido and Robert Kobet also will design science and engineering lessons throughout the 964-student school, which will open at Jog Road and Summit Boulevard in 2008.

The cost estimate of $20 million last year was increased to $25 million last week. The School Board agreed last January to spend another $3 million to build a separate Pine Jog Environmental Education Center next to its new "green" school. "Great ideas are coming from every corner, making this school rich with learning opportunities," Murguido said. "I've been in educational architecture for 25 years and I've never seen such passion before. There's been so much energy." Much of the creativity comes from Florida Atlantic University, which owns Pine Jog and has leased 15 acres to the school district for the elementary school.

ALABAMA: Talking about plans for new high school construction is productive, but good schools have little to do with buildings, budgets, or locations. Globalization has taught us that, if only recently. Susan Patrick, director of the U.S. Office of Educational Technology, in speaking to educators from Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi, called for them to be "educational pioneers" as she talked about the currency of a new economy composed of creativity, innovation and ideas. She said schools with crumbling buildings and no windows in countries like India and China emphasize math, science and computer technology and provide the inspiration students need to keep up with companion changes in business paradigms. The results, globally, have been dramatic — and economists no less than Alan Greenspan found a correlation between U.S. students lagging behind those in other countries and our educational system’s evolution.

In short, those with the best levels of education receive the best jobs. A member of the secretary of education’s Rural Education Task Force, Patrick said all school systems, no matter their size or budget, can use the National Education Technology Plan to create a learning environment more in tune with how students live, work and play today. Real-time data, just-in-time information and other recently developed technology resources have become standards in our lives and our economy, according to Patrick, and they will help bring about a renaissance in education. She said students themselves, who are already advanced in using the latest technology, can take leading roles in making these changes happen. "Students are multitasking, and studies show they do it well," she said. "Their thinking is non-linear. Open leadership involving teachers, parents and students in generating ideas for change can meet students’ needs. Today’s students are different. They were born into the age of the Internet. Technology is in their blood." Whatever the outcome of Albertville’s current high school debate, I hope city leaders will put the most emphasis not on the building itself but on communicating with students in the language of the future and giving them the tools they will need to prosper there.

ALABAMA: Talking about plans for new high school construction is productive, but good schools have little to do with buildings, budgets, or locations. Globalization has taught us that, if only recently. Susan Patrick, director of the U.S. Office of Educational Technology, in speaking to educators from Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi, called for them to be "educational pioneers" as she talked about the currency of a new economy composed of creativity, innovation and ideas. She said schools with crumbling buildings and no windows in countries like India and China emphasize math, science and computer technology and provide the inspiration students need to keep up with companion changes in business paradigms. The results, globally, have been dramatic — and economists no less than Alan Greenspan found a correlation between U.S. students lagging behind those in other countries and our educational system’s evolution.

In short, those with the best levels of education receive the best jobs. A member of the secretary of education’s Rural Education Task Force, Patrick said all school systems, no matter their size or budget, can use the National Education Technology Plan to create a learning environment more in tune with how students live, work and play today. Real-time data, just-in-time information and other recently developed technology resources have become standards in our lives and our economy, according to Patrick, and they will help bring about a renaissance in education. She said students themselves, who are already advanced in using the latest technology, can take leading roles in making these changes happen. "Students are multitasking, and studies show they do it well," she said. "Their thinking is non-linear. Open leadership involving teachers, parents and students in generating ideas for change can meet students’ needs. Today’s students are different. They were born into the age of the Internet. Technology is in their blood." Whatever the outcome of Albertville’s current high school debate, I hope city leaders will put the most emphasis not on the building itself but on communicating with students in the language of the future and giving them the tools they will need to prosper there.

VIRGINIA: Loudoun County public schools employs a full-time land shopper. It's a critical job in a system that plans to open 23 schools in the next six years as enrollment is expected to climb by 40 percent to nearly 70,000 students. With its wide-open fields and expansive views, the western reaches of the county would seem the likeliest place to find land for a new campus. But efforts to restrict residential growth there have fueled a land rush over the past year, and planners say hunting for future school sites has been anything but easy.

Historically, the school system in the eastern part of the county has relied on land donated by developers in exchange for being allowed to build higher-density housing -- a trend that's starting to change there. But that option would not exist in less-populous western Loudoun under the pending ordinance. So instead of cooperating with developers to build schools, the system must compete with them for land.

NEW JERSEY: a New Jersey task force looking to propel the state’s stalled school building program is recommending $3.2 billion in new funding, but also new steps to expedite work and beef up project management oversight. The additional money would fund projects already approved for construction last year, after the state’s School Construction Corp. found it had used up $8.6 billion earmarked for the mandated program, begun in 2002. The cash would include $1.9 billion for 97 suspended school projects, including 59 already funded, says an SCC spokesman. Construction contracts have been awarded on 13, he adds. But required legislative approval for funds is far from certain in an election year in a state already plagued by existing budget deficits, observers say.

The task force also recommended process changes to "prioritize" construction projects. SCC now will focus work based on health and safety risks, need for early childhood centers and overcrowding. Available sites, project schedules and incurred costs would be secondary. The state also has "initiated aggressive efforts to address the legacy of past mismanagement, waste and possibility of fraud," says the report. "A multifacted plan is being implemented to identify, and whenever possible, recover funds that were inappropriately paid individuals or companies." No details were provided.

Among other steps, the state is adding staff experienced “in multiple project delivery methods” and boosting SCC budget and project management oversight. SCC estimates a $500-million shortfall in its current capital budget. The agency may also boost local involvement in projects, but will bar repeated changes in project scope. The state is close to hiring a new CEO for the schools agency, says the spokesman, who would not disclose candidate names. A state appointed attorney has been in the role since 2005. The shortfall has changed priorities for program architects and construction managers. "A lot of firms set up New Jersey offices and thought they’d be there 10 years," says Tom Fantacone, principal of architect Fletcher Thompson, East Brunswick, N.J. Three of its five SCC projects are on hold, including a new $50-million high school in Elizabeth. The firm was paid for its work, he says, but "it’s hard to see what’s going on."

NATIONAL : The federal government announced that it will supply hazard warning radios to all 97,000 public schools in the United States. The National Weather Service, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, operates more than 950 short-range radio stations. It has encouraged schools to buy warning radios that are automatically activated with a broadcast signal. The Homeland Security Department has decided to provide $5 million to make sure these radios are in every public school, NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher said. Originally conceived to deliver weather warnings, the system now covers all hazards, including terrorism and derailed trains carrying toxic materials.

In announcing the plan to distribute the radios, NOAA pointed out that more than 10,000 major thunderstorms, 2,500 floods and 1,000 tornadoes hit the U. S. annually, and that hurricanes threaten the Gulf and East coasts. Lautenbacher said weather experts from local Weather Service offices will be available to assist school officials in determining how best to use the radios. The radios operate 24-hours-a-day, receiving forecasts and warnings from the Weather Service's 123 forecast offices as well as other information. Six states - Washington, Tennessee, North Carolina, Maryland, Florida and Mississippi - already mandate use of the radios in schools. NOAA said those schools will also be included in the new program to make sure they have the most recent models. Also included will be tribal schools and public schools in U.S. territories. Typically the radios are smaller than a clock radio, have a battery backup in case of power loss and are sold at electronic and other stores for $20 to $80. Most can be programmed to respond only to warnings for a specific area - a county or city, for example. Lautenbacher said the distribution is expected to begin in October and should take a few months. He said the NOAA radio system covers about 97 percent of the country with the few gaps in some sparsely populated mountain areas.

FLORIDA: A dozen new schools, scheduled to open in 2007 and 2008, are the first products of an ambitious prototype program that Rose Diamond, the school district's facilities chief, proposed in late 2004. Copies of those schools are expected to follow regularly for at least a few years, cutting millions of dollars and dozens of months from the time and expense of drafting plans for each school from scratch.

Using such prototypes is an old idea. They have been wildly successful in Las Vegas, a costly mistake in North Carolina, and controversial in large and small districts across the country. Miami-Dade County's architectural archives are littered with so-called prototypes that were used only once or twice. And a grand jury chastised Broward County in 1997 for choosing innovative architectural plans instead of simpler designs, as well as for reusing the same designs without waiting to see if they had any problems.

To prove that Miami-Dade's new prototypes could be adapted easily to different sites, architects and engineers who designed them were also required to build the first three. Their contracts included performance reviews, allowing them to tweak future designs based on feedback from school staffs. The key for each type -- an early childhood center for kindergarten through second grade, an elementary, a middle school and a K-8 center -- was designing the school as numerous buildings that could be reconfigured into different shapes. Most buildings are linked by covered walkways or courtyards.

For the first 12 schools, the total cost is more than $310 million, and the prototype process saved about $9 million in planning costs, Diamond said. Other savings may come in the future. Standardizing things such as air filters, light bulbs and flooring at so many schools will allow maintenance crews to buy in larger bulk. For these new schools, Diamond wanted artful design. She began the project by putting all four design teams -- one for each prototype -- together for nearly a year of research and development. They reviewed studies about how building design can influence student performance and talked with educators about their frustrations and wish lists for new schools. "We literally scanned the planet to find the most innovative learning tools that are out there," one of the prototype architects said. "We looked at England's exemplary-school models; we looked at Canada, and what the Japanese are doing. We looked at California and Texas, and we took the best lessons out there to generate this new generation of schools." Natural light and outdoor learning spaces were major topics. Every classroom has windows, larger and more plentiful than school building codes require. Indoor light is often reflected off walls or ceilings, which is less harsh than institutional fluorescent lights. Even the shape of the classrooms has changed, especially for younger students. Instead of a box, the room is shaped like a Z or an L, with nooks where students can work or play in small groups. Air quality was also a priority, especially after Miami-Dade's well-documented scandals with leaky buildings, moldy walls and sick teachers. The new schools will have anti-mildew materials, well-ventilated air handlers and other features.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA : Arrelious Benn, a senior on the Dunbar Senior High School football team, is living every student athlete's dream: The all-Met wide receiver is so good that he is a prime reason his team was chosen to be featured on national television next month. But he and other athletes worry that the school in the District's Shaw neighborhood will become a national disgrace should the telecast highlight conditions that athletes confront daily: The running track that encircles the football field has been condemned because of potholes. The carpet in the locker room is tattered and the showers moldy. The secondhand equipment in the weight room is rusty; the floor tiles are cracked and the benches so ripped that nearly as much foam padding as black vinyl cover is showing.

A week after Superintendent Clifford B. Janey released a $2.3 billion, 15-year plan to upgrade school buildings and academics, a group including student athletes and parent activists is fighting to ensure that sports programs get their share of the funding. The group has flooded his office with complaints about the conditions and demanded $350 million for citywide athletic facility repairs now -- not years in the future. Janey said every track, football field, baseball field and other sports facility would be upgraded as part of his master plan to modernize all schools. "Our kids deserve access to high-quality sports and athletic facilities," Janey said in an interview.

Many other public schools across the city are in the same shape or worse. The deficiencies were caused by a complicated set of factors that have yet to be addressed: repeatedly shifting athletic department funds to the academic side to fill revenue gaps that resulted from declining enrollment systemwide; ignoring routine maintenance until small problems escalated into large, expensive ones; and hiring contractors who did shoddy work.

MAINE: Where schools are built can have a major impact on the character and growth of a community. With a push from state education officials, communities are consolidating small schools and building new ones near town centers. This is a welcome change. For years, many believed the state's school construction policy contributed to sprawl by requiring large lots for new buildings. Such lots are typically found at the edges of town, not near their centers. In July, the State Board of Education removed the minimum acreage requirements from the site-selection criteria. The rules had required that an elementary school site have at least five usable acres, a middle school at least 10 acres and a high school 15 acres. The acreage was needed not just for the building, but for parking, bus traffic and recreation areas and playing fields. The acreage could be noncontiguous and the board could waive the minimum acreage requirement if a district proved there was no alternative site and that a smaller one met the board's other criteria. Removing the minimum acreage requirement eliminates a problem, whether real or imagined.

CALIFORNIA: Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana has long been one of the state's perennial athletic powers. But the Roman Catholic school never had a place to display its prowess — the tiny gymnasium wasn't big enough to hold a regulation-size basketball court, much less hang 60 championship banners. This week, the school's teams will move into a facility that would be the envy of some colleges: an $18-million athletic and aquatic complex. A three-court gymnasium will seat 3,200 fans, four times what the 50-year-old gym held, while a 12-lane pool gives the school's swimming and water polo programs their first aquatic facility.

Mater Dei's athletic center debuts just months after one of its parochial school rivals, JSerra, opened a $10-million sports complex in San Juan Capistrano. Santa Margarita High, another Orange County Catholic sports power, has just begun building its first aquatic complex. As money pours into high school sports facilities, it has created a fevered competition for such athletic showpieces. Some college athletic officials say it's becoming harder to tell high school and college sports complexes apart. "Just as there's been an arms race in Division I college sports, you're starting to see a trickle-down to the high school ranks," said Tim Pruess, athletic director at Concordia University in Irvine. "Mater Dei and JSerra are two high-profile programs, and part of their goal is to attract the best athletes. Facilities are obvious tangible evidence of their commitment to athletics."

ALABAMA: The $1 billion bond issue for school construction in Jefferson County, in the long run, would mean dozens of new and refurbished schools for area children. But adding the $1 billion rapidly to the county's annual construction market would increase demands for workers and building materials, driving up wages and prices, according to economists and those in the building industry. School officials say there currently is no effort to coordinate projects among school systems so they are spread over time.

The Birmingham-area construction economy did $2.5 billion in business last year, employing 37,000 people in 2,500 businesses, according to the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce. Of the $2.5 billion, $151 million went for school and college projects, according to the chamber. Univeristy of Alabama economist Seung-Dong Lee said staggering the projects might prevent some wage and material inflation. "There should be some coordination," Lee said. "If every project is done at one time with $1 billion, that's going to create havoc." The county began in January 2005 to collect money to pay for the bond issue through a 1-cent sales tax added to the existing 8 percent levy. The plan to distribute money among the county's 12 school systems was challenged in court and upheld last month by the Alabama Supreme Court. The high court has been asked by opponents of the funding plan to rehear arguments. The Jefferson County school district has plans for six new high schools. If all 12 school systems started building at once, it would fuel supply-and-demand curves and send building and labor costs skyward.

WISCONSIN: School buildings often lose out in an era of tight education budgets already squeezed by the rising cost of employee health care and pressures from revenue caps. A $48 million building program in the New Berlin School District, however, is turning that notion on its head. Not only will the initiative, once it's completed, be responsible for the construction of a new elementary school and the overhaul of two district buildings, but it will have been done without a referendum-approved tax increase. All the money for the program is being generated by borrowing that will be paid off over 20 years out of the district's operating budget. With other school districts in Wisconsin dealing with deteriorating buildings and electorates with disagreeable attitudes toward tax increases, New Berlin might just prove to be a model, or a warning, about how school construction projects should be funded.

Even school officials in New Berlin say the circumstances have to be right to replicate their building financing program. For one, they were operating seven elementary schools, the majority of which were below average size for the state. Mergers can save the district money. Combining 330-student New Berlin Center with 278-student Prospect Hill into the new Ronald Reagan Elementary School, which is expected to open later this year, is expected to save $655,000 a year in operational costs, according to Tony Goedheer, the district's director of business and auxiliary services. Merger savings come from the elimination of a number of staff positions including teachers, principal, secretary, librarian, a technology aide and noon-hour supervision as well as reductions in custodial and utility costs, he said. In addition, the School Board had been building up its commitment to capital projects for years. This year, that aspect of the district's operating budget amounted to $1.9 million, more than half of the $3.1 million the district will pay toward its construction loans, Goedheer said. The district's annual budget is just over $50 million.

The district also has profited from selling property in the booming New Berlin area. Calhoun Elementary School's property was sold for about $1 million after the school closed and its students were moved in with those from Cleveland Heights at the newly named Poplar Creek Elementary School. Another parcel is currently on the market with an asking price of $1.25 million. "For districts facing similar problems like New Berlin, it certainly should be looked at," School Board member Marc Duff said of the district's financing plan. "We had a situation where we were able to close two schools to generate the savings to pay for the building programs, and some school districts may have that ability and some may not."

New Berlin's non-referendum building program is "rather unusual" among Wisconsin school districts, which are often reluctant to pay large building expenses out of operating budgets, which are capped by the state, said David Carlson, director of school financial services for the state Department of Public Instruction. Because districts have to take out loans for such projects, those payments become an obligation and the "first draw" on their operating budgets, he said. "There could be a risk that, maybe not this year or next year, that their obligations that they've committed themselves to, that they're not going to have enough revenue sources," Carlson said. But an evaluation of New Berlin's borrowing habits by Moody's Investors Service gave the district a favorable Aa2 rating. In awarding the district its third highest rating, Moody's noted that the district has a large and affluent tax base in a growing area.

LOUISIANA: Despite a dip in student enrollment since Hurricane Katrina, the Jefferson Parish public school system is forging ahead with plans to build three new West Bank schools, though construction timetables and financing sources remain uncertain. Continuing with plans already in motion before the storm, the board is pursuing a new elementary and high school in Marrero as well as a permanent home for the Patrick Taylor Science and Technology Academy near Avondale. "I'm convinced (these schools) will be necessary," Superintendent Diane Roussel said. "I'm confident the West Bank will once again be at capacity or over capacity."

LOUISIANA: Despite a dip in student enrollment since Hurricane Katrina, the Jefferson Parish public school system is forging ahead with plans to build three new West Bank schools, though construction timetables and financing sources remain uncertain. Continuing with plans already in motion before the storm, the board is pursuing a new elementary and high school in Marrero as well as a permanent home for the Patrick Taylor Science and Technology Academy near Avondale. "I'm convinced (these schools) will be necessary," Superintendent Diane Roussel said. "I'm confident the West Bank will once again be at capacity or over capacity."

FLORIDA: Florida needs to spend $2.88 billion on classrooms during the next four years to meet class-size requirements, the state Board of Education estimates. That price tag was part of a $26.6 billion annual budget proposal. But the board made no recommendation on how to pay for adding nearly 7,000 classrooms across the state. "If we don't get the money in this budget, we won't have the classrooms in 2010-2011," said Education Commissioner John Winn, a member of the board. That's when the class-size limits approved by voters in 2002 will be fully implemented. They cap kindergarten through third-grade classes at 18 children; fourth through eighth grade at 22 pupils; and high school at 25 students. The board also recommended a class-size spending increase of $714 million for hiring additional teachers and other operational costs.

House Education Appropriations Chairman Joe Pickens, R-Palatka, questioned the need to appropriate all the construction money in one year, saying the state has spent only about half of $2.9 billion allocated in the past four budgets. He also said the request is based on enrollment figures that may be too high and suggested school districts should pay costs of higher enrollment. The proposal will be forwarded to Florida's next governor because Gov. Jeb Bush leaves office at the end of this year. Bush has opposed the class-size measure as too expensive. The $26.6 billion overall spending plan for public schools, community colleges and universities would be 13 percent more than the current allocation of $23 billion, which represents about 30 percent of the total state budget.

KANSAS: The sights and sounds of school construction — high chain-link fences, rumbling concrete trucks and whining electric masonry saws — are all over the city on seven school campuses. A $31.9 million South Junior High project includes razing the old building, which opened in 1968, and constructing a cafeteria to be shared with Broken Arrow School. Also, construction crews are working on projects at Lawrence’s three other junior highs: at Southwest, work is moving along on $6.9 million in projects that include adding classrooms and enlarging the cafeteria; at West, $6 million in construction is under way on building 13 classrooms; at Central, $4 million is being spent on six classrooms and a gym addition. There also are projects going on at both high schools: $1.8 million for a new industrial technology addition at Free State High School; $3.6 million for east gym renovations and new locker rooms and for science labs at Lawrence High School.

CANADA: State-of-the-art school or miniature police state? In the wake of the September shootings in Montreal, parents are again wondering what, if anything, can be done to safeguard their children from a similar tragedy. The question is rife with controversy, say experts in the field of school security, because it forces people to weigh concerns about their children's security against the importance of a school experience that doesn't involve constant surveillance. Americans got a head start on grappling with this issue following the tragic shootings at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo., in 1999. Many of the security solutions advanced since then are invasive and expensive — and hotly debated by parents and teachers alike.

One way to discourage crime in schools is to install cameras. "There's no hard evidence that says it has caused a reduction in anything. But those of us who have fairly extensive and elaborate systems will tell you story after story about people who show up, notice a camera, and leave." Again, the costs are high. "For a base system of 16 cameras, we budget out $2,000 a camera... That would include wiring, hardware, all the stuff to make the camera work." Staff to monitor the cameras would cost extra, as would technology that could transmit the camera feeds to an outside security office that can respond to emergencies. Ray says many schools manage this cost by having monitors at the desks of administrative staff."I don't know a school district that can afford a staff member to look at 40 or 50 cameras."

But if cameras in schools could discourage a predator from sneaking onto campus grounds or into a building, they might encourage an attack from within. Dr. Randall Atlas of Atlas Safety & Security Design, Inc. in Miami, wrote a 2002 essay about school security in Campus Security Magazine, a Los Angeles-based journal. He describes a strategy called CPTED: crime prevention through environmental design. It uses building and landscape design to maximize safety potential. Schools, he wrote, are relying too much on technological safety fixes. In particular, video cameras in the halls might not be the crime disincentive others think it is. "Many of the kids committing school crime terrorism are trying to have their moment of fame on video," Atlas wrote. "(Security cameras) give kids their chance to be famous and to be on videotape, which is what they wanted." Robin Hattersley Gray, executive editor of Campus Safety Magazine, elaborates on CPTED. "It's basically building standards on how to design schools so they'll be safer... the design of the school, the layout." Among the examples: "Plenty of exits, but only one place where a visitor can enter. A closed vestibule where you have to sign in." Other CPTED strategies, such as eliminating deep alcoves and blind spots in the building design, and opening up sightlines are already part of design elements adopted by the Toronto District School Board.

In 1997, Stephen Teeple, principal architect at Teeple Architects Inc., rebuilt Eglinton Public School, at the traffic-heavy intersection at Eglinton and Mt. Pleasant Aves. Safety is always one of the design determinants when a school is built or renovated, he says. Before Teeple rebuilt Eglinton Public School, a chain-link fence was all that separated its playground from both traffic at the busy intersection and the eyes of passers-by. "The Toronto District School Board develops their project with a local community design team. Teachers and everybody are involved in the designs of the school, things like the entrances being turned so kids don't run out onto the street. Eglinton Public School was wrapped right around the corner to create a protected playground so that kids wouldn't be running out into the street, and to attach the playground areas to the neighbourhood." The school's outer windows, Teeple says, adhere to a long-standing school building code that says however large the window, the part that opens to let in fresh air can't be big enough to allow anyone to crawl through. Inside the school, sightlines are wide open. Teeple says it fosters a sense of community inside the building. But the safety aspect ties directly into CPTED's design rule about open sightlines indoors. "The central office is right in the corner. It's an L-shaped building, so there are two hallways. They can look down both hallways. The building is also opened up sectionally so you can see what's going on on other floors, as well. "It's just good design practice. But the school board has been aware of this for a long time. They always look over the drawings for hiding spaces and try to eliminate all of them. So if there's any kind of recess, you want people to be able to see into it. You want everything kind of visible. That's advice the school board would give to every architect and every school."

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA : D.C. School Superintendent Clifford B. Janey outlined an ambitious 15-year plan to transform the city's dilapidated schools into gleaming, new facilities with model academic programs, a move designed to raise student achievement and attract parents back to a school system with declining enrollment. The $2.3 billion modernization plan would build 23 schools, renovate 101 and close 19 by 2019. Officials said the school system would be smaller -- with 121 buildings compared with 146 -- but more educationally rigorous and better organized into campuses and clusters.

High schools would have more Advanced Placement courses, and some would focus on themes, such as the hospitality industry, construction trades and foreign language immersion. Officials said the renovations would also address the system's soaring special education costs with classrooms designed to bring students in private placement back into the city's public school classrooms. This plan, which for the first time identifies the schools that would be closed, is a result of months of research and consultations with city and school officials as well as business and community leaders and experts on social demographics. Officials said they hope the modernization plan will help to stem the flow of students into charter and private schools. Although the funding has been approved, the specifics of Janey's proposal face final authorization by the D.C. Board of Education. In the spring, it directed him to identify 3 million square feet of excess space in a system that has lost 10,000 students in the past five years, many to public charter schools.

VERMONT: Voters in November might be asked to approve installing a wood chip heating plant at South Burlington High School, which would also heat Frederick Tuttle Middle School. The state could pay for 90 percent of the capital costs, according to district officials and Cathy Hilgendorf, Vermont Department of Education school construction coordinator. The school district sees the switch from natural gas to wood chips as a way to save substantial amounts of money and use a renewable energy source, said David Young, acting co-associate superintendent. Though administration and the School Board are in favor of making the switch, a question remains over how the issue will be presented on the ballot, Young said. One option is to request the bond money from voters outright. The other is to ask voters for approval to re-designate a $2.7 million bond they approved a few years ago for an administration office and cafeteria project to construct the wood-chip facility.

School administration is looking into the legal issues of asking voters to reassign an approved bond, Young said. The district would address the administration building issue as it and the city continue looking at citywide infrastructure needs. Administrative offices are spread out over the high and middle schools. Wood chip heating systems are not cheap -- Young estimates it will cost about $1.9 million to get the high school and middle school on line -- but with the state reimbursement plus the cheaper fuel costs, the system could pay for itself in a few years, Young said. Hilgendorf said she has not seen South Burlington's proposal and could not comment on how the state would pay for it, but capital improvements dealing with renewable energy are eligible for 90 percent reimbursement. Regular heating system upgrades, which would have to be done with or without the switch, are eligible for 30 percent reimbursement, she said.

School administration is hoping voters approve the wood chip plant in November, because the state reimbursement level drops from 90 percent to 75 percent for projects approved after Jan. 1. About 25 schools in Vermont have wood chip heating systems, Hilgendorf said, and about 10 more are asking voter approval on the November ballot to switch. Cost savings are "huge," and in some districts, fuel costs have been cut by more than 50 percent, she said.

MASSACHUSETTS: After a two-year moratorium, the state approved the long-awaited program to assist communities in building the next generation of schools. But municipalities will need to wait just a bit longer before they can get their hands on the money. The Massachusetts School Building Authority Board and its chairman, State Treasurer Tim Cahill, unanimously approved final regulations for school construction projects, effective in July. Under the new regulations, towns and cities will need to meet a tough new competitive process based on eight criteria that will allow the state to prioritize what communities are in most need of assistance, said MSBA spokeswoman Carrie Sullivan.

The newly approved plan was created to eliminate an earlier process that was considered rife with favoritism and alleged corruption. The new regulations establishes a framework for approval of projects based upon identifiable deficiencies within buildings, particularly immediate health or safety issues or severe overcrowding, noted the Authority, said Sullivan. And the state is talking big bucks. For the fiscal year beginning July 1, the MSBA will authorize up to $500 million in grants in the first year of the new program, with 4.5 percent annual growth for school construction projects. The annual increase will create a five-year capital plan of $2.7 billion, making it the state's largest capital grant program. While the Authority has adopted the new regulations, it is only accepting Statement of Interest from communities, as the moratorium will continue until July 1, said Sullivan. The final day for statements to be received from cities and towns is July 31, 2007. But the delay in creating the new regs and the added wait hasn't stopped cities and towns from lining up at the Authority's threshold, cup in hand. The MSBA has already accepted 71 statements from municipalities.

GEORGIA: Five years and more than $250 million later, Forsyth County schools have actually lost ground in their efforts to keep students out of trailer classrooms. "We don't get ahead. We just desperately try to keep up," Superintendent Paula Gault said. "We're constantly planning for the growth and feel we've done a good job of managing it all along. It's just going to be important that we not stop." That's why the Forsyth County school board will ask voters, when they return to the polls in November, to approve a second, five-year extension of a 1997 local option sales tax for school construction.

The last time the board made this pitch for pennies, in 2001, the school system had 18,841 students in 22 schools and 85 trailers. This time, the system has more than 28,000 students in 27 schools and 154 trailer classrooms — including three that have been added since the first day of the new school year. School officials are banking on voters being able to realize that the growth all around them translates into more pressure on their already crowded schools. To date, the special purpose local option sales tax approved by voters in 2001 has pumped $94 million into improvements, far less than the $200 million projected when it was approved. A 2005 bond issue provided another $170 million.

NEW JERSEY: New Jersey's lawmakers should authorize $3.25 billion in funding for school construction, and change how it prioritizes projects, a report from a group created by Governor Jon Corzine said. About $2.5 billion of the money should be spent on the state's poorest school districts, the Interagency Working Group on School Construction said in its report. Authorization for new construction can't wait until the Legislature finishes work on restructuring the state's school aid program, the group said.

Corzine, who took office in January, created the working group in February to review the Schools Construction Corporation and recommend ways to address mismanagement and waste. The building program, which committed to borrowing $8.6 billion to build new schools, was forced to halt work on 97 projects last year after it ran out of money. Funds should be provided to allow for work to proceed over the next two to three years, the report said. When a new school aid program is adopted, a new construction program could be incorporated into that plan, said Weiner, who is transitional chief executive officer of the Schools Construction Corporation. The corporation was created by the New Jersey Legislature in 1998 to build schools required by a state Supreme Court decision. The so-called Abbott ruling ordered the state to rebuild obsolete and decaying schools in New Jersey's poorest communities. In a report last year state Inspector General Mary Jane Cooper said the agency was ``vulnerable to mismanagement, fiscal malfeasance, conflicts of interest, and waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars.' The group recommended that the corporation change its methods for prioritizing construction projects, replacing a "first come, first serve" basis with one that considers criteria such as projects that ease overcrowding or fulfill an educational purpose. The group also recommended that the construction corporation be disbanded and a new state authority be established to oversee the school-building program. The agency would no longer be a subsidiary of the state's Economic Development Authority. Such a change "would not result in turnover of personnel or abandonment of prior investments in facilities and equipment," the report said.

CALIFORNIA: Twenty students may meet in a classroom but what, where and how they are taught creates the essence of their education. So think the school headmaster Dr. Brian Nixon, who focuses on "what," and CTA Architect's lead architect Andy Taylor, whose talent is designing the "where" for Horizon Prep's new campus in Rancho Santa Fe. In creating the most innovative learning environment the gap between technology and learning is closed when both educator and architect tangibly engage the "how" together as a team. In this way a marriage of advances in education technology and process can be employed in harmonious concert in the classroom for the maximum benefit to the student. Information delivery approaches and respective systems have always been the heart of the education process and shape the personality of an institution. These approaches, as well as newer building materials and construction methods, have undergone much evolution in pace with technology. The team emphasis on bringing the best both industries have to offer into the classroom is the essence of the approach to the design of Horizon Prep.

The Horizon Prep School program is designed around the creation of a school within a school. Classrooms are grouped according to grade level in separate clusters. These core academic learning centers for each of three grade ranges flank the central library -- the symbolic heart of the school and home to the latest advances in media technology. Each Learning center integrates all the core disciplines around a support services center for both students and teachers, which bolsters regular educational programming and an extensive after school program as well. The classroom designs successfully address all curriculum areas, particularly collaborative learning and team teaching as well as the vision to engage students in technical hands-on exploration. The movement toward learning spaces developed for notebook computers allows for tremendous flexibility in the configuration of teams and individual learner stations. Each core area is served by an outdoor court for play and where a centrally located outdoor lecture area promotes learning, both inside and out.

FLORIDA: Decades of updates have taken their toll on Miami's first high school. A renovation seeks a return to glory. Miami Senior High is like no other school in South Florida. With its Corinthian pillars, Roman archways and open-air patios, Miami-Dade's oldest high school looks like a Mediterranean palazzo. But nearly 80 years of use and updates have taken their toll. The terra-cotta roof tiles leak and pipes and wiring snake beneath false hallway ceilings. Most of the windows in the Little Havana high school are covered to help conserve air-conditioning. Previous renovations added a patchwork series of boxy additions behind the school. Now, local architecture firm Zyscovich Inc. has been hired by the school district to 'detoxify' Miami High by stripping away years of haphazard changes. After more than six months of work, Zyscovich architects have released a master plan intended to return the school to its former elegance, while updating it in a way that blends future with past.

FLORIDA: Decades of updates have taken their toll on Miami's first high school. A renovation seeks a return to glory. Miami Senior High is like no other school in South Florida. With its Corinthian pillars, Roman archways and open-air patios, Miami-Dade's oldest high school looks like a Mediterranean palazzo. But nearly 80 years of use and updates have taken their toll. The terra-cotta roof tiles leak and pipes and wiring snake beneath false hallway ceilings. Most of the windows in the Little Havana high school are covered to help conserve air-conditioning. Previous renovations added a patchwork series of boxy additions behind the school. Now, local architecture firm Zyscovich Inc. has been hired by the school district to 'detoxify' Miami High by stripping away years of haphazard changes. After more than six months of work, Zyscovich architects have released a master plan intended to return the school to its former elegance, while updating it in a way that blends future with past.

INDIANA: Indiana school districts, known for their Taj Mahal tastes in construction and expansion projects, are finally starting to rein in out-of-control spending. That's the good news reported by Governor Mitch Daniels. "The trend lines are very positive," he said, "and I think credit should be given to the local school administrators who are helping make that true." Here's the bad news: "Indiana is still building much bigger and much more expensive schools and additions than elsewhere," Daniels said in releasing a building cost analysis by the Department of Local Government Finance.

The report compared the size and cost of school projects in 2004 and 2005 with national averages and assessed the impact on taxpayers of new cost-per-square-foot guidelines implemented by the state.Among the findings: In 2004, the cost of new school construction in Indiana was 48 percent higher than the national average. Last year, it was 40 percent higher than the national average. In 2004, new school buildings were on average 43 percent larger than the national average. In 2005, they were 39 percent larger.

As it works now, both supporters and opponents of a school bond have a chance to gather signatures from like-minded property owners; the side that collects the most names wins. Since 1995, school districts have proposed 78 bond issues, with 40 winning approval. But the appeals court said the process is unconstitutional because it permits only property owners to take part. The court said the remonstrance process is essentially an election or referendum on school spending so all voters - renters included - must have a voice. The judges gave lawmakers until the next session to fix the law before its ruling takes effect.

Critics of the current system say the school boards that support and vote for construction projects in the first place have an advantage gathering signatures. For that reason, some legislators have suggested that school bonds go before all property taxpayers for an up-or-down vote. Kenley said a more viable suggestion is that a referendum take place whenever a bond issue exceeds a certain amount - say $10 million - and some minimum number of remonstrators object.

No matter what the Legislature does, school districts need to continue to downscale projects and seek out less expensive designs and materials. In 2004 and 2005, schools spent nearly 20 percent of all construction dollars on soft costs (architect, financing and consultant fees) rather than actual building construction. They should be encouraged to cut soft costs by using standardized building designs rather than insisting on one-of-a-kind architectural gems. For every dollar in property taxes paid by Hoosiers last year, 54 cents went to schools and almost 11 cents of that went just for construction debt. Debt service eats up more property tax revenue than townships and libraries combined. Sadly, there's no relationship between debt service and student achievement. We have learned that Indiana students' SAT scores, already below national average, dropped rather steeply. Were it otherwise, a case just might be made for continued extravagance.

INDIANA: Any homeowner considering a new roof or replacement windows is likely to first consider, "Can I afford it?" But somewhere in the decision-making process comes the second question: "Can I afford not to?" The same holds true when the project applies to 54 school buildings and a price tag as high as $100 million or more. Those are questions Fort Wayne Community Schools officials – and the property owners who make up the district’s tax base – must answer in the next few months.

By early next year, a building and renovation plan, along with its projected cost and effect on the tax rate, will be available. The figure is certain to be a target for the no-new-taxes crowd. Gov. Mitch Daniels is a vocal critic of school construction spending, and so a plan that involves any new buildings could draw the attention of his administration. But it’s important for district officials and community leaders to draw a sharp distinction between FWCS needs and the excessive costs that have drawn Daniels’ disdain. The governor, in fact, should visit Fort Wayne and take a look at its schools. Because the project will undoubtedly affect the school building cost figures he is tracking, it’s important for him to know where the money will go, even if it is local taxpayers who will bear the burden. There’s nothing to indicate “Taj Mahal tastes” – as one conservative columnist describes Indiana school districts – have ever ruled at FWCS. It’s not excessive to ask taxpayers to provide safe, energy-efficient and comfortable schools.

MICHIGAN: Three years after a statewide, bipartisan council urged the Michigan Legislature to change how public schools decide where to build their new facilities, a state representative who was once a township official has finally succeeded in transforming a key council recommendation about the matter into law. Public Act 276 of 2006, sponsored by Phil LaJoy (R-Canton), fulfils, albeit to a limited extent, the council’s recommendation that the state require schools boards to follow their communities’ master plans, instead of continuing to allow the boards to make siting decisions independent of local planning. As enacted, the measure calls for school boards that are planning to significantly expand existing high schools or their athletic facilities to communicate with local township planning officials.

The August 2003 council recommendations, which also suggested awarding incentives to school boards for revtializing old facilities and building new ones in existing town centers, were subsequently buttressed in a special report published by the Michigan Land Use Institute in February 2004. The report, Hard Lessons: Causes and Consequences of Michigan’s School Construction Boom, found that changes in how the state funds public schools triggered widespread abandonment of established neighborhood schools in favor of building huge, expensive “trophy” schools far from established population centers. The report said that the policy contributed to sprawling development and forced local, non-school taxes upward to finance the new road, sewers, water main, and public safety costs such development requires.

CALIFORNIA: Green buildings may have a measurable effect on the way students perform on tests, said the CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council. Early research has shown that students perform 20 percent better on tests inside green buildings, said Rick Fedirizzi, CEO of the Council. Other early research has shown that green buildings increase worker productivity, influence earlier releases from hospital stays and can even increase retail sales per square foot, he said. The founding chairman for the U.S. Green Building Council talked about green building last month at a one-day symposium called "Investing in the Future: Building Green Schools" at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Sponsored by Turner Corp., Global Green USA and U.S. Green Building Council, the symposium invited architects, school administrators and builders to talk about how green schools can be built and what their effect has been, especially in cost savings.

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PENNSYLVANIA: After three years of planning, the Microsoft Corporation-designed "School of the Future" opened its doors, a gleaming white modern facility looking out of place amid rows of ramshackle homes in a working-class West Philadelphia neighborhood. The school is being touted as unlike any in the world, with not only a high-tech building -- students have digital lockers and teachers use interactive "smart boards" -- but also a learning process modeled on Microsoft's management techniques. The company didn't pay the $63 million cost — that was borne by the Philadelphia School District — but shared its personnel and management skills. About 170 teens, nearly all black and mainly low-income, were chosen by lottery to make up the freshman class. The school eventually plans to enroll up to 750 students.

Students — who are called "learners" — use smart cards to register attendance, open their digital lockers and track calories they consume. They carry laptops, not books, and the entire campus has wireless Internet access. Teachers, or "educators," rather than using blackboards, have interactive "smart boards" that allow teachers to zoom in and out, write or draw, and even link to the Internet. There's no library, but an "interactive learning center" where information is all digital and a "multimedia specialist" will help out students. Instead of a cafeteria, there's a food court with restaurant-style seating. The performance center — where two sections rotate close to create a smaller space — replaces the typical auditorium.

CALIFORNIA: The school year began for about 415,000 Los Angeles-area students, thousands of whom will benefit from the opening of 13 schools. To mark the day, officials showcased three new schools and two controversial construction sites as well as some academic reforms. The highlights included a school that returns young children to their neighborhood, a high school within a trade school, and a bridge over a busy street that leads to a pool fit for Olympians.

Thirteen schools would make up an entire small district in many states; L.A. Unified is 63 schools and six years into a building boom of 160 campuses planned over 12 years. The school system operates more than 800 campuses. The first stop on the tour was Wilshire Park Elementary, a 3-acre, two-story campus for 450 students that relieved crowding at two nearby schools. As in many other new schools, a multilevel design saves space, and the play area includes grass — the district says it will add 800 acres of green space to the city through its new schools. The school is an example not only of elevated design but also of rising costs. A few years ago planners talked of elementary schools priced in the $4-million range. Wilshire Park's $37 million in project expenses works out to more than $82,000 per seat. Construction costs over the last three years have gone up at a rate of 2.5% a month, said Guy Mehula, who oversees district construction. Critics, however, accuse the district of wasting money. All told, new schools and school buildings in the Koreatown area have helped take more than 3,000 children off the bus, returning them to neighborhood schools.

The tour also stopped at the new Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, which is built for about 1,800 students and resembles a high-end office park. The cafeteria features a soaring wood-beam ceiling that extends above an outdoor patio. The $160-million campus includes a shaded bridge over 3rd Street to a 13-acre athletic complex that will serve multiple schools. The facilities include tennis and basketball courts, two gyms, a football stadium, a track and an Olympic-sized pool.

Another jumping off point was the construction site of the $208-million performing arts high school. The school's approval was contentious because it had higher design costs than a standard campus. And Romer made sure to include the problem-plagued Belmont Learning Complex site. Notorious as the nation's most expensive — and unfinished — high school, the complex is scheduled to open for the 2008 school year. On Tuesday, workers were installing a system to deal with methane and hydrogen sulfide fumes that could rise from the site, an old oil field. "The story here," Romer said, "is that we're going to turn a lemon into lemonade."

MASSACHUSETTS: More than half of 113 Massachusetts public school construction projects reviewed by state officials came in significantly over budget, with cost overruns totaling $200 million, a new analysis shows. Sixty-eight of the 113 projects audited by the Massachusetts School Building Authority came in 5 percent or more over budget, and some were significantly higher, according to a document prepared by the authority. The projects were approved by the state Department of Education before the building authority took over the state's school construction program in 2004. Katherine Craven, executive director of the school building authority, said the state can recoup some of the payments from the cities and towns, but only if the expenses violated the rules of the former education department program, which allowed for extras that went far beyond a basic school structure.

The school building authority's board of directors will approve new rules designed to make communities more prudent and cautious in budgeting for new schools. Communities will be required to come up with detailed construction documents before their projects are approved, and will be required to stay within their budget, she said. In the past, she said, the education department would approve projects even though drawings were not yet final and construction details later changed. In addition, the authority will conduct financial and quality control audits as buildings are being constructed , she said . That way, if auditors find problems the state can withhold funds immediately and require the problems be corrected. It took the education department auditors years to review projects, and they often completed the reviews years after the project was finished, she said. The authority inherited 800 projects that hadn't yet been audited.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA : It was the first day of classes at St. Coletta Special Education Public Charter School, a brand-new facility that will serve close to 260 of the most severely mentally disabled children (and some adults) in the area. The face of the new school combines several geometric shapes -- four cubes turned to various angles, and a cylinder -- and a full palette of color, ranging from Carolina blue to deep burnished orange to sea-foam green. One side is brick-red and creamy vanilla. Windows come in rectangles, squares, circles. The impression is almost whimsical, like a child's elaborate drawing come to life. The building's pedigree, however, is far more impressive than that. The design firm is headed by Michael Graves, the architect famed for his postmodernist style and powerful use of color.

While the exterior of St. Coletta has been generating buzz in the city -- particularly in its Capitol Hill neighborhood -- for some time now, it's the world inside that has truly stunned the families of its students, many who have had nothing but negative experiences involving the D.C. public school system. "Truthfully, I just wanted to cry," said Doreen Hodges, whose 6-year-old son, Titus, suffers from Down syndrome. "It's so beautiful and you could just feel the love in the building. . . . You never thought anything like that was ever going to be available to kids like this in D.C." At over 99,000 square feet -- and costing $32 million, which came from congressional appropriations, a bond secured by Bank of America, and a capital fundraising campaign -- St. Coletta is nothing like any other public school in the city. The gymnasium looks like a field house at a Division I college. The cafeteria kitchen would be suitable for an upscale restaurant. The central atrium is cavernous, with a soaring, arched ceiling and multiple skylights. Dubbed the "village green," the open space is large enough to fit at least a half-dozen standard-size classrooms. Off the atrium are five individual "houses," each one home to a different age range of students. And everywhere, that riot of color: more Carolina blue and creamy yellow, pinks in all hues, soft greens, vivid oranges.

WASHINGTON: There was talk of smart schools and smart boards and even Phil Smart, but students said the best thing about Roosevelt High School's new $93.8 million renovation is this -- they were in no hurry to leave. It was Roughrider Day, which for any other school means orientation. But Roosevelt, a school steeped in tradition and refurbished with help from community pressure and a responsive Seattle School Board, is clearly not just any school. Its transformation from a dark 1922 building to an airy, light-filled, high-tech campus left kids' mouths agape, as much in awe of their new surroundings as for chatting up friends and comparing classes and lunch periods. "When I first saw it, my jaw just dropped," said senior Mackenzie Argens, who like her other classmates suffered the older school as a freshman, then exile to Lincoln High during the two-year remodel. "It's bright, it's inviting, it's beautiful," Argens said. "Areas like the new commons -- no one ever went there when it was a cafeteria, but now people want to go and just hang out." "Everybody's pumped up about the new school," said Davey Friedman, senior class president. "The old building really had this feel like nobody really cared about it; it really did look like a prison, a dark dungeon. Now, the library -- you want to go sit and read, it's the perfect place. It's like they designed it so we can learn better." Linda Lesnik, whose daughter, Lauren, is a sophomore, summed up the new school. "It's the 'Street of Dreams' school," said Lesnik, who was volunteering to help direct orientees to the new sky-lit library (formerly a theater), the new (state-of-the-art, 750-seat) theater, the new spacious commons, and the office, where administrators wore the same green-and-gold, school-color necklaces as the students.

Roosevelt's worth-saving history was shared by such notable alumni as former U.S. Sen. and Gov. Dan Evans, former King County Executive Randy Revelle and former City Councilwoman Sue Donaldson. Before they became famous, a number of artists, athletes and celebrities were Roughriders, including musicians Michael McCready (Pearl Jam) and Duff McKagan (Guns N' Roses), actor Richard Karn ("Home Improvement"), author Dave Guterson ("Snow Falling on Cedars"), former NBA star James Edwards and former NFL quarterback Hugh Millen. Carter Davis Bagg, northwest regional coordinator of construction programs for the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said Roosevelt is the latest in a small but growing state trend of refurbishing historic schools instead of tearing them down. Stadium High in Tacoma is opening its doors this week after a $106 million restoration -- believed to be the most expensive in the state. Garfield and Cleveland in Seattle also are undergoing historical renovation, following West Seattle and -- years ago -- Franklin High. The state's School Construction Assistance Program provided $9.1 million for Roosevelt, which has city landmark status.

Bagg said whereas seismic, technology and safety upgrades are the common drivers behind school remodeling, communities are increasingly trying to save old schools, even when it costs more to do historic renovation. "Seattle is a national leader, at the forefront of this movement of saving community schools," said Lorne McConaghie, principal in charge of the project for Bassetti Architects in Seattle. Lani Johnson, a member of the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association who was also on the school design team, agreed. "It was very important to the neighborhood to save Roosevelt, but also to see the building brought up to meet the operational needs of a modern school," Johnson said.

But for others, Roosevelt was -- and remains -- a treasure. "What struck me was what they (the architects) retained of former times," Smart said, noting the restored proscenium -- the classical frame for the former stage -- and other saved architectural details. "It seemed to put its arms around me and say, 'Welcome back; you didn't do too badly with what we tried to teach you,' " Smart said. "It's emotional for me; this school changed my life during the Depression years." But the school looks to the future, too. The library is a shared space of books and computers, opened up by skylights that brighten three stories of adjacent classrooms through windows that replaced the former theater's walls. The latest technology, including "smart boards" -- the interactive replacement for blackboards -- will enhance student learning, principal Chuck Chinn said.

TEXAS: Old schools are overflowing – and school districts are building – in many of the region's aging neighborhoods, thanks largely to the influx of Hispanic families, which tend to be larger and younger than their black, Asian and Anglo counterparts. There are, to be sure, other factors driving school construction, even in established neighborhoods. Developers have squeezed in new houses here and there. Landlords have several families sharing some single-family homes. Development elsewhere can change school attendance zones. But changing demographics are a bigger consideration, demographers say, in districts such as Dallas, Garland, Mesquite, Grand Prairie, Irving and Richardson. Surging student numbers in Garland's older areas helped necessitate expansions at elementary schools including the aging Davis and Cooper. This summer alone, the Garland district expanded four more. With other old neighborhoods changing, further expansions are likely.

Administrators across North Texas are asking similar questions. They are also building lots of classrooms in unexpected places. In 2003, voters in the Grand Prairie district approved an $86 million bond package. The plan was to build three elementary schools near new developments in the southern end of town, but the district wound up building one in and one near central Grand Prairie, where student numbers shot up despite a lack of new construction. The third is being built now, in the south.

Other districts have done much more. The Dallas district has built several schools to serve older neighborhoods that suddenly produced record student numbers, said Dennis Harner, an Austin-based demographer who has worked with 75 school districts, including Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Garland, Grand Prairie, Rockwall, McKinney and Red Oak. Most of the Dallas construction took place around Love Field and in the Five Points area of northeast Dallas. Officials in area districts, while acknowledging the importance of family size, say the population influx is just one of several growth drivers.

TEXAS: Old schools are overflowing – and school districts are building – in many of the region's aging neighborhoods, thanks largely to the influx of Hispanic families, which tend to be larger and younger than their black, Asian and Anglo counterparts. There are, to be sure, other factors driving school construction, even in established neighborhoods. Developers have squeezed in new houses here and there. Landlords have several families sharing some single-family homes. Development elsewhere can change school attendance zones. But changing demographics are a bigger consideration, demographers say, in districts such as Dallas, Garland, Mesquite, Grand Prairie, Irving and Richardson. Surging student numbers in Garland's older areas helped necessitate expansions at elementary schools including the aging Davis and Cooper. This summer alone, the Garland district expanded four more. With other old neighborhoods changing, further expansions are likely.

Administrators across North Texas are asking similar questions. They are also building lots of classrooms in unexpected places. In 2003, voters in the Grand Prairie district approved an $86 million bond package. The plan was to build three elementary schools near new developments in the southern end of town, but the district wound up building one in and one near central Grand Prairie, where student numbers shot up despite a lack of new construction. The third is being built now, in the south.

Other districts have done much more. The Dallas district has built several schools to serve older neighborhoods that suddenly produced record student numbers, said Dennis Harner, an Austin-based demographer who has worked with 75 school districts, including Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Garland, Grand Prairie, Rockwall, McKinney and Red Oak. Most of the Dallas construction took place around Love Field and in the Five Points area of northeast Dallas. Officials in area districts, while acknowledging the importance of family size, say the population influx is just one of several growth drivers.

TEXAS: Engineering students entering their classrooms this fall at Southern Methodist University are learning the latest engineering concepts not only from their professors, but from the classrooms themselves – the walls, the windows, the floors, the cabinetry – as well as from the hallway outside, the bathroom down the hall, even the building's main lobby. SMU's new $16 million engineering building is on track to be the first college building in Texas to be certified as environmentally friendly by the leading arbiter of such things, the U.S. Green Building Council. The structure will save the university an estimated $70,000 in energy costs annually, but the bigger impact will be its use as a learning tool for the next generation of North Texas civil and mechanical engineers.

SMU officials say that meeting the LEED criteria added 3 percent to the construction costs. The building is designed to be environmentally friendly in a number of ways. For instance, the landscaping will be irrigated with water recycled from the campus air-conditioning chillers – water that would otherwise get dumped into the sewer. In addition, the men's restrooms have flushless urinals, each of which can save 40,000 gallons of water a year. Windows throughout the building are larger to let in more natural light and reduce the need for interior lights, increasing energy efficiency. Lights in offices, classrooms and hallways are attached to sensors that turn them on only when someone is present.

NORTH CAROLINA: Durham Public Schools officials said they had completed screening water samples from a final three schools for lead and found them to be safe. The news comes a week after the district announced it had disconnected selected drinking fountains at eight schools following tests that found lead in the tap water above the federal safety limit. The affected locations include two high schools, two middle schools and four elementary schools. The fountains left in service were deemed safe. An Aug. 24 media advisory released by the district said the contaminated fountains were recorded at "actionable levels" -- referring to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandate that lead in amounts greater than 15 parts per billion require government action.

Durham's water supply has been under scrutiny since April, when a child was found to have been poisoned by lead after drinking from a faucet in a South Durham apartment. The case is only the second time in state history an incident of lead poisoning has been linked to a city water system. Lead is especially dangerous to young children and fetuses, causing developmental difficulties and brain damage.

WASHINGTON: Seattle Public Schools plans to ask voters to approve a $490 million school-construction levy in February, but lingering anger over planned school closures and the competition for voters' tax dollars may make it a tougher sell than in the past. Details are still being worked out, but district staff members sketched out plans during a School Board workshop. Under two options being considered, the district would use about $380 million to either focus on renovating middle and high schools, or scale those projects back slightly and include significant remodeling projects at two elementary schools. Money also would go toward fixing the backlog of school-maintenance projects, some of which have been deferred for years because of tight budgets. Among them are expensive but needed fixes to improve indoor air quality at some schools, upgrade water systems and modernize some child care facilities. The levy also would pay for seismic upgrades, classroom additions and new synthetic sports turf at some schools, as well as $42 million in technology upgrades. But even if the levy passes, the district won't be able to fix all its buildings.

NORTH CAROLINA: Several dozen county leaders journeyed to Raleigh looking for help figuring out one of the thorniest local problems: paying for public schools. At a conference sponsored by the N.C. Association of County Commissioners, local leaders heard that nearly $10 billion will be needed statewide in the next five years. Much of that will go toward building new schools to meet a projected enrollment increase of nearly 70,000 students across North Carolina, according to a recent report from the N.C. Department of Public Instruction.

Proceeds from the new N.C. Education Lottery will help counties pay for some construction, but the biggest share will remain the responsibility of the counties. The lottery will raise an estimated $160.5 million a year for school construction, allocated to counties based on a sliding scale that accounts for enrollment and local tax effort. Wake County is betting on a $970 million bond referendum Nov. 7 to finance most of a $1.056 billion construction program for the next four years. Mecklenburg County is holding off on a second try at a major bond vote after a $427 million proposal was soundly rejected last fall. County leaders now plan to meet immediate needs by borrowing $123 million by using certificates of participation that don't require voter approval -- and scheduling a bond vote for November 2007. In the meantime, Mecklenburg County Manager Harry Jones said a citizens committee has said the school district should reduce construction costs by 10 percent and look for other innovations. Schools may be built without gymnasiums or without cafeterias, and contract instead with private businesses for food service as ways to save money.

CALIFORNIA: The Poway School District’s first solar-powered school, Monterey Ridge Elementary, will open using solar energy to power 50 to 60 percent of the school’s electrical needs. The solar photovoltaic system will lower electrical costs for the Monterey Ridge Elementary School by $30,000 to $40,000, said Doug Mann, Director of Facilities.

Lemon Grove installed solar panels at three existing schools in October 2005 that will provide about 95 percent of the school's energy needs. Half the $4 million cost was funded by a grant from the San Diego Regional Energy Office; the remainder will take about 15 years to pay back.

San Diego Unified School District has installed photovoltaic systems on the rooftops of 19 district buildings through a public-private partnership with Solar Integrated Technologies and GE Commercial Finance Energy Financial Services. The private entities pay all the up-front and maintenance costs, while the district agrees to buy the solar power for the next 20 years. Since the panels double as roofs, the district doesn't have to pay for roof maintenance, said J. William Naish, the district's energy utility coordinator. The system saves the district $100,000 in electricity costs and $46,000 in avoided roofing maintenance costs every year. San Diego Unified plans to install photovoltaic roofs at 24 more sites over the next two years.

NATIONAL : U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced the award of over $23 million in grants to 74 school districts in 26 states to help them enhance and fortify their emergency response and crisis management plans.

The Emergency Response and Crisis Management program provides funds to help local education agencies prevent or mitigate, prepare, respond and recover from crises. Funds can be used to train school personnel and students in crisis response; communicate emergency response and reunification procedures to parents and guardians; coordinate with local emergency responders, including fire and police; purchase equipment; and coordinate with groups and organizations responsible for recovery issues, such as health and mental health agencies. This year, school districts must also commit to developing a written plan designed to prepare for a possible infectious disease outbreak, such as influenza pandemic. [A complete list of the 74 grant awards is included.]

ALABAMA: Instead of build it and they will come, Birmingham school Superintendent Stan Mims is taking a different - and smarter - approach to the system's construction priorities: Build it where they are. In the wake of the state Supreme Court decision this month that upheld the Jefferson County Commission's plans to distribute $1 billion in bonds among the school systems in the county for school construction, Mims said there will be a close look at school population trends before deciding what to build. The Birmingham school system will get a big chunk of the construction dollars - about $354 million. Part of that money could be used for a new high school in the eastern part of the city and renovations on existing schools - there are plenty of construction and renovation needs in the system. But Mims also is taking into consideration that Birmingham schools have lost more than 7,000 students since the 2000 school year, and they continue to lose more than 1,000 students a year. Mims put the Board of Education on notice that there could be school consolidations and closings along with new school construction. Of course, that makes sense, and school board members need to hear Mims' warnings.

WASHINGTON: The Everett School District's new elementary school construction project will get a $250,000 boost for being environmentally friendly. The state's High Performance School Buildings Volunteer Projects grant encourages "green" buildings. Everett's new elementary school will be two stories tall in order to leave a smaller footprint on the land and makes greater use of natural daylight, among other features. All public school construction projects soon will have to meet similar building standards under the state's "green buildings" law, passed in 2005.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA : At McKinley Technology High School, students celebrated the first day of school by walking on a makeshift red carpet as they entered a building recently transformed into a first-rate technology center. The specialty-school model will be replicated when the D.C. school system revamps several struggling high schools. Uptown, officials at Brightwood Elementary welcomed students to a newly renovated building, a $15.5 million showcase that will serve as a guide for the system's ambitious plan to spend $1 billion to refurbish dozens of dilapidated buildings. And at Scott Montgomery Elementary, last year's 24 fourth-graders enrolled as fifth-graders at KIPP DC: Will Academy, a new public charter school housed in the same building. The first-of-its-kind partnership will allow the high-achieving Knowledge Is Power Program to share teaching methods with Montgomery, a traditional public school with decreasing enrollment.

The schools are three examples of unprecedented changes that thousands of District youths encountered yesterday as they returned to a school system determined to improve student performance and its public reputation. The 58,000-student system faces perennial problems such as dismal test scores and enrollment decline. And education is a top concern of voters who will elect a new mayor, D.C. Council chairman and school board president in November. D.C. school leaders say they are introducing programs this year that will raise the quality of instruction, give students and teachers clean and updated schools and spur the type of innovation that can make a difference in the classroom.

GULF COAST: This fall, the three R’s could easily represent repopulation, rebuilding, and ‘rithmetic, as school districts affected by Hurricane Katrina try to provide an education with fewer intact structures, smaller tax bases, and an undetermined and traumatized population. In Mississippi, where 16 schools were completely washed away in the storm surge and only 14 of 152 school districts didn’t close, students were back in school by October 2005. Interviewees attribute the quick rebound to the efforts of Superintendent Dr. Hank Bounds to loosen up federal dollars for portable classrooms. Most students will continue to attend classes in these temporary structures this year while officials determine where schools may be built to comply with the new FEMA flood elevation maps, and how they will be financed. Ironically, the Hurricane Recovery Act provided funds for restart but not reconstruction, says Caron Blanton, communications director with the Mississippi Department of Education.

The picture in southern Louisiana is far more fragmented. In New Orleans’ St. Bernard Parish, where all housing stock was destroyed and 10 of 22 school buildings were recommended for demolition, 3,000 students still are expected to return to school this fall. They will attend classes in two renovated schools and portable classrooms. "We were a financially healthy school district, so we were able to buy our own trailers to get it up and running," says Beverly Lawrasen, assistant superintendent. "We’ve since been reimbursed by FEMA for the trailers, but reconstruction, which is a 90/10 split, is a different story." Between lost sales and property taxes and state funding that’s based on student population, St. Bernard is having a hard time coming up with the 10 percent match. To circumvent stipulations for Hurricane Recovery Act funds, the district is using its operational money for construction and shifting the federal dollars into its operation budget. "It would have been advantageous if a lot of the red tape had been cut for us," Lawrasen says.

In Orleans Parish, 56 of the 117 schools managed by the Louisiana Department of Education will be open. Approximately 12,000 students (down from 65,000) had attended classes last year. Meg Casper, director of communications, notes, "We’re planning for 34,000 this fall, [but] the demographers are telling us we will have much less than that." Assessing damage, the order schools should be repaired, and availability of workers and materials has been more cumbersome for Orleans Parish than securing funds, Casper explains. "We are dealing with all the issues that people who are trying to rebuild their houses face. Costs are higher, and there is trouble finding materials and workers." Schools are being repaired according to the amount of damage and repopulation trends. "As residents come back and the city is able to do more planning, hopefully we’ll be able to make more decisions," Casper says.

GULF COAST: This fall, the three R’s could easily represent repopulation, rebuilding, and ‘rithmetic, as school districts affected by Hurricane Katrina try to provide an education with fewer intact structures, smaller tax bases, and an undetermined and traumatized population. In Mississippi, where 16 schools were completely washed away in the storm surge and only 14 of 152 school districts didn’t close, students were back in school by October 2005. Interviewees attribute the quick rebound to the efforts of Superintendent Dr. Hank Bounds to loosen up federal dollars for portable classrooms. Most students will continue to attend classes in these temporary structures this year while officials determine where schools may be built to comply with the new FEMA flood elevation maps, and how they will be financed. Ironically, the Hurricane Recovery Act provided funds for restart but not reconstruction, says Caron Blanton, communications director with the Mississippi Department of Education.

The picture in southern Louisiana is far more fragmented. In New Orleans’ St. Bernard Parish, where all housing stock was destroyed and 10 of 22 school buildings were recommended for demolition, 3,000 students still are expected to return to school this fall. They will attend classes in two renovated schools and portable classrooms. "We were a financially healthy school district, so we were able to buy our own trailers to get it up and running," says Beverly Lawrasen, assistant superintendent. "We’ve since been reimbursed by FEMA for the trailers, but reconstruction, which is a 90/10 split, is a different story." Between lost sales and property taxes and state funding that’s based on student population, St. Bernard is having a hard time coming up with the 10 percent match. To circumvent stipulations for Hurricane Recovery Act funds, the district is using its operational money for construction and shifting the federal dollars into its operation budget. "It would have been advantageous if a lot of the red tape had been cut for us," Lawrasen says.

In Orleans Parish, 56 of the 117 schools managed by the Louisiana Department of Education will be open. Approximately 12,000 students (down from 65,000) had attended classes last year. Meg Casper, director of communications, notes, "We’re planning for 34,000 this fall, [but] the demographers are telling us we will have much less than that." Assessing damage, the order schools should be repaired, and availability of workers and materials has been more cumbersome for Orleans Parish than securing funds, Casper explains. "We are dealing with all the issues that people who are trying to rebuild their houses face. Costs are higher, and there is trouble finding materials and workers." Schools are being repaired according to the amount of damage and repopulation trends. "As residents come back and the city is able to do more planning, hopefully we’ll be able to make more decisions," Casper says.

OKLAHOMA: Many of today’s students have never had to share a bathroom, let alone a bedroom. They want college living, but with all the comforts of home. Oklahoma State University and other universities have responded in recent years with dormitory renovations and apartmentstyle housing. No longer are students segregated by gender or confined to cell-sized rooms. Now, they have larger living spaces with hotelstyle amenities.

OSU this month opened six new four-story buildings that are arranged into suites serving about 20 students each, for a total of 850 beds. The $55 million project is aimed at creating “learning communities” so students can live and study with small groups of their academic peers. Most students have individual rooms with private baths that ring a shared living and kitchen space. This gives students their own space but encourages them to leave their rooms to hang out with friends and study together. The buildings have wireless Internet access and cable television. Phone service is optional since most students carry cell phones.

INDIANA: Video cameras peek from hallway corners and black, bulbous security domes cling to ceilings. The sort of security systems that department stores and casinos have relied on for years are helping keep things safe in area schools. A couple of years ago, officials in the Lake Central School Corp. watched on monitors as three teens from another district lurked around cars in the high school parking lot. After being apprehended, the teens confessed their plan to steal car radios. They probably didn’t know they were under the surveillance of high-resolution digital cameras at the time, said Lake Central's Assistant Superintendent Rocky Killion. About 99 percent of Lake Central High School in St. John is monitored by cameras, both inside and out, he said. At Thornton Fractional North High School in Calumet City, a security camera once caught a student who vandalized the building. About 30 security cameras monitor the campus at Homewood-Flossmoor High School in Flossmoor, said Homewood-Flossmoor Spokesman David Thieman. Cpl. Troy Williams, school resource officer with Portage Township Schools, said the Portage schools are equipped with inside and outside cameras. Williams said he hopes the cameras act as a deterrent, not just as evidence.

When it comes to deterring crime in school, people think immediately of metal detectors, said Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services. But metal detectors aren’t a cure-all, just a piece of the whole picture, Trump said. Trump, who travels all over the country talking about school security, said stationary metal detectors are more common at schools that have a history of chronic weapons offenses. It’s a legitimate tool there, he said. After a slashing incident in a classroom at Valparaiso High School two years ago, Trump was called to evaluate the school’s security. Many parents said metal detectors were the way to go, but Trump talked with them realistically. He asked them how metal detectors would prevent weapons from being brought on school buses and asked whether they wanted their children to arrive at school at 6 a.m. to go through the screening process.

Trump’s assessment of the high school determined that a metal detector would be counter-productive, said Principal Patrick Weil. Students won’t walk through metal detectors any time soon at Lake Central High School. Killion did a study on what they would cost the school corporation. "You’re looking at a quarter million dollars just to get it started," he said. Two security workers would be needed at every station, and it would take students an hour and a half to get through the screening. "What I’ve learned as a school security specialist is that no amount of technology is ever going to prevent a human being from doing something," Killion said. "What will prevent it is human beings that are keeping their eyes and ears open, that report suspicious activity." Trump discourages schools from relying solely on cameras and metal detectors. "Before putting in 50 cameras, put in a well-trained staff," he said. "Any technology has to supplement, not substitute for, a comprehensive safety program."

MISSOURI: Imagine a classroom with the sound quality of a movie theater. The amplified voice of the teacher comes from every direction, regardless of where students are seated. Amplified classrooms have become a reality in the metro area. Teachers wear infrared wireless microphones that transmit sounds to amplifier/receivers installed in their classrooms. The sound of their voices is relayed to speakers that help students in the middle or back of the classroom hear better. School administrators and teachers say the systems decrease teacher vocal fatigue, reduce student fatigue and improve classroom management.

TEXAS: Katy Independent School District trustees voted to place a $269.4 million bond package on the Nov. 7 ballot. The proposed bond, nearly $8 million more than a measure voters narrowly rejected in May, would finance improvements at more than a dozen of the district's 45 campuses, as well as pay for five new schools and technology upgrades.

CALIFORNIA: Many of the approximately 2,750 La Costa and Encinitas homeowners who have been taxed $800 a year to pay for a new middle school and other construction projects are outraged that the San Dieguito Union High School District has all but abandoned plans to build the school. Residents say they bought their homes with the understanding that the school would be financed through the special tax district, which includes the master-planned community of Villages of La Costa and surrounding neighborhoods.

The Mello-Roos fees, the taxes paid by homeowners in the new housing developments since the late 1990s, have been used by the district to purchase a 20-acre district property on Calle Barcelona for $6 million. A sign on the property advertised the "future middle school" for years. But when the sign came down about a year ago, residents began questioning the district. About 450 homeowners have signed a petition demanding their middle school. School officials say the sharp spike in student growth in recent years has leveled off and district enrollment has stabilized. Two nearby middle schools in Encinitas can accommodate additional middle school students if needed, eliminating the need for a new school, the officials say. However, the taxes aren't going to waste, district officials say. As part of the tax agreement, the Mello-Roos fees are financing school construction projects at five district campuses that serve students in the tax district.

LOUISIANA: For three West Bank schools, the opening of classes meant more than just a vacation-ending return to the books. At Terrytown, Woodmere and Lincoln elementary schools, it also marked a homecoming of sorts. Among the Jefferson Parish public schools most damaged by Hurricane Katrina and forced to share facilities with other schools for months, the trio opened on their own campuses this month, albeit in temporary classrooms and offices. While school leaders said they are pleased to return to familiar turf, system officials said it could be months -- or perhaps a few years -- before repairs are complete and students and teachers return to their traditional buildings.

Under Federal Emergency Management Agency guidelines, the agency will pay for construction of some new buildings if the old structures are more than 50 percent destroyed. In the meantime, about many students are learning inside modular classrooms. In January, the School Board approved a $14 million contract with Fibrebond, a Minden company that makes the concrete modular classrooms being used at most schools. When repairs are complete, the system can buy the buildings from FEMA or sell them and give FEMA the money back. Overall, the system suffered $70 million in damage from Katrina, most of which will be reimbursed through FEMA or the district's insurance companies.

NEW YORK: Products with names like Earth's Choice, Sustainable Earth and Green Knight will fill janitors' closets this fall as schools around New York comply with a new law that requires "environmentally friendly" cleaning supplies. Concerns about the harmful health effects chemicals can have, especially on children, and a realization that cleaners with reduced amounts of potentially dangerous ingredients are increasingly available prompted the legislation, which takes effect September 1.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates human exposure to air pollutants indoors can be two to five times higher than outdoor levels. Some of the culprits are cleaners, waxes and deodorizers. Reducing or eliminating potentially harmful ingredients helps protect the environment and water supply, according to the legislation's sponsors. The state School Boards Association supports the measure but has had some questions about the law, such as whether the "greener" products would cost more and clean as well as traditional ones, spokesman David Ernst said. Prices of the environmentally friendly cleaners are comparable to others on the market, said Christine Burling, a spokeswoman for the state Office of General Services. Schools don't have to throw away cleaners that aren't on the state's list of approved products for cleaning products, vacuum cleaners and sanitary paper products, she said. They can use them up before buying green ones. The new law applies to buildings and grounds at all public and private elementary and secondary schools. A number of groups and parents have criticized the regulations, saying they don't go far enough to protect children. The state stands by the guidelines, Burling said.

WISCONSIN: Sheboygan Area School District will receive $105,000 in exchange for the naming rights to the stores and women's team locker rooms at the new North and South high school field houses. The Sheboygan School Board approved all donations to the Sheboygan Public Education Foundation. To date, the Sheboygan Public Education Foundation has received $1.46 million in donations in exchange for naming rights at the field houses, which are scheduled to be completed in November.

Superintendent Joe Sheehan said contrary to what some community members believe, the school district is not up for sale. "What we are doing is contacting companies that are entities in our community — there's no Pepsis or Cokes or Nikes — they're companies that are directly related with our schools and our community," he said. "We're asking them, can you assist us in having funds for our Sheboygan Public Education Foundation to invest?"

The field houses are under construction as part of a $32 million expansion of the schools that got voters' approval in a fall 2004 referendum. About $12.5 million of the money is being used to add 3,000-seat field houses, common areas, practice areas, weight-training rooms, classrooms at each school and build the new Jefferson Elementary School. The rest of the money was used for renovations at the three schools. The school board voted in July 2005 to allow the Sheboygan Public Education Foundation, a nonprofit entity, to sell the naming rights on school facilities.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA : Ten years after Congress imposed charter schools on a reluctant city, the District has emerged as one of the nation's most important laboratories for school choice and one of the first to confront a central tenet of free-market theory: Will traditional public schools improve with competition? Or will charters take over? Both sides agree that the District is approaching a critical juncture. With public confidence in the schools at an all-time low, more than 17,000 public school students -- nearly one in four -- have rejected the traditional system in favor of 51 independently run, publicly funded charter schools. That share is one of the largest in the nation and is expected to rise when six more charter schools open their doors this fall.

Charters, which once focused mainly on rescuing children from the worst schools in the city's poorest neighborhoods, are expanding to more affluent areas and appealing to middle-class families. Capital City Public Charter School, is one of the District's most popular. Founded in 2000 by middle-class parents frustrated by administrative problems and crumbling facilities at Hearst Elementary in Northwest, Capital City has about 225 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade -- and a waiting list of more than 600. Unlike traditional schools, charters have access to special facilities funds created by the city, Congress and nonprofit groups that allow them to borrow large sums. As a result, Capital City's founders were able to raise about $6 million to buy and renovate an imposing brick church in Columbia Heights. The colorful, light-filled space has a state-of-the-art computer lab, a well-stocked library and a music room -- extras that have proven difficult to maintain in many traditional schools. Most classes have two teachers and access to a team of special education instructors, who offer discreet help in the regular classroom.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams, who supports the expansion of charters, said he has tried to protect the traditional system by increasing its budget and authorizing $1 billion to modernize aging facilities. Still, some public school parents look at the gleaming facilities, freshly hired teachers and other amenities at charters and complain that officials are doing little to help traditional schools compete.

The notion that traditional schools are being shortchanged is at the heart of the Save Our Schools lawsuit. The suit claims that school officials helped the mainly white and middle-class founders of Two Rivers avoid predominantly African American neighborhood schools. In addition to other support, school officials permitted Two Rivers to move into half of a building occupied by Eliot Junior High, an underenrolled school near RFK Stadium. When the charter opened in 2004, the contrast was stark: Two Rivers students, many of them white, passed through a bright blue door to a freshly renovated space filled with art, bright lights and highly motivated teachers. Eliot students, all of them black, passed through a separate door into a dim and dingy building with roaches in the cafeteria and a stench in the bathrooms.

ALABAMA: Spending $1 billion on school construction in Jefferson County is just one phase in a three-phase effort to improve education, Jefferson County Commission President Larry Langford told school superintendents. The second phase is a computer literacy center for children and adults. Langford, adding a dash of drama, declined to unveil the third phase until phase one has cleared all of its legal hurdles.

Superintendents of Jefferson County's 12 school systems got Langford's update, five days after the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the County Commission's plan to fund and distribute $1 billion in bonds for school construction. The bonds will be paid for by a 1 cent sales tax. He also offered the superintendents a bit of financial advice: Spend it wisely, involve the public and don't get in a building contest. "We need efficient facilities, not the largest facilities," Langford said. "We need schools that are well-thought-out that allow for 5 or 10 percent growth in the communities that they serve."

ALABAMA: Spending $1 billion on school construction in Jefferson County is just one phase in a three-phase effort to improve education, Jefferson County Commission President Larry Langford told school superintendents. The second phase is a computer literacy center for children and adults. Langford, adding a dash of drama, declined to unveil the third phase until phase one has cleared all of its legal hurdles.

Superintendents of Jefferson County's 12 school systems got Langford's update, five days after the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the County Commission's plan to fund and distribute $1 billion in bonds for school construction. The bonds will be paid for by a 1 cent sales tax. He also offered the superintendents a bit of financial advice: Spend it wisely, involve the public and don't get in a building contest. "We need efficient facilities, not the largest facilities," Langford said. "We need schools that are well-thought-out that allow for 5 or 10 percent growth in the communities that they serve."

CONNECTICUT: Connecticut's aging public school buildings leak heat in the winter and cold air in the summer, giving them a failing grade in energy efficiency in a report by the Institute for Sustainable Energy at Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic. William Leahy, the chief operating officer of the institute, said that about 90 percent of the schools in the state were built at least 25 years ago, when standards for energy efficiency were less stringent.

The study analyzed energy bills for 119 of Connecticut’s 1,026 public schools, taking into account the size of the schools and how much of the year they stay open. Connecticut schools scored 26 on a scale of 100, "which makes them among the least energy-efficient schools in the country," the report said. The average score nationwide, as determined by energy-use data from the United States Department of Energy, is 50. The report estimated that Connecticut’s public schools spent 35 percent more on energy costs during the last school year than the previous one.

Inefficient systems are not the only reason energy costs are rising. Gas and electric prices have risen in the last two years, but improving school construction would help ease that burden, Mr. Leahy said. Bringing Connecticut’s schools up to the national average would save school districts $46 million in annual energy costs, the report said. The problem with the state’s schools is that they were built when energy was cheap and efficiency was not foremost on the minds of builders, Mr. Leahy said. Large single-pane windows and slab construction allow hot and cold air to seep out, he said, and old heating and air-conditioning systems gobble energy. A few Connecticut schools, including the Barnard School in New Haven, which has solar panels on its roof, have been built to higher efficiency standards in recent years.

UTAH: Utah residents say their students are heading back to overcrowded classrooms this fall, and a new poll shows most would be willing to pay more taxes to make classes smaller. In a survey of 420 Utah adults, 77 percent said Utah's public school classrooms are overcrowded. Numbers are even higher — 87 percent — among those with children in public school. When it comes to money, nearly two- thirds of Utah residents surveyed said they would pay more taxes to shrink class size, and 74 percent said they would favor the Legislature using unprecedented income tax revenue growth to take care of it.

Big classes have been a thorn in Utah's side for years. The Beehive State has the nation's biggest classes, with an average teacher-to-student ratio of 1-to-23 students. The national average is 1-to-15.6. Teachers say those ratios don't do the problem justice: Those in big school districts say high schools can have 40 or more students per class.

While building new schools cuts back on the number of students in the school overall, it doesn't do much to shrink class size, which is determined by district staffing ratios. "As soon as new schools are built, more building takes place, and more people move in," Davis spokesman Chris Williams said. "If anything, it is a temporary sort of situation where you build a new school, relieve some overcrowding, but our staffing ratios continue to be the same. ... The only way to come up with a way to reduce class size is if we come up with more money from the Legislature."

NORTH CAROLINA: Students returning to class at Durham's Northern High School may be provided bottled water after testing on a drinking fountain found lead levels above those considered safe by federal guidelines. Lead also was detected in the water from kitchen taps at Burton Geo-World Magnet Elementary School and Merrick-Moore Elementary School, though at concentrations below the danger level. High levels also were confirmed at Y.E. Smith Elementary School, where previous testing found lead in 2004 and students have been drinking bottled water for more than two years.

Durham Public Schools decided to test selected taps at 27 of the system's older facilities after previous rounds of testing by state and local health officials found elevated lead levels in water samples collected from private homes across the city. It is suspected a chemical until recently used to treat much of Durham's water might have contributed to an increase in the amounts of lead leaching from old plumbing fixtures. The city ceased using the chemical in question, ferric chloride, July 6. Lead was banned from use in the solder joining pipes in 1985, and buildings constructed after then don't appear to be affected. The oldest sections of Northern High were built in 1953. Burton and Merrick-Moore also date to the early 1950s.

In light of the latest test results, the school system has contracted a private lab to test every tap used for drinking or cooking at every Durham school built before 1990, as well as the downtown administration building. Based on the results of the expanded round of testing, the school system could mandate the use of bottled water or disconnect selected drinking fountains. Cafeteria staff are being instructed to run the taps at least five minutes before using the water for drinking or cooking, a precaution shown usually effective in flushing out the contaminated water.

MINNESOTA: Houston Public Schools are getting greener — by the ton. Because of a grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the school district has recycled more than 8 tons of garbage, helped the environment and saved thousands of dollars. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, which received the grant from the EPA, chose Houston and two other Minnesota public schools for the pilot program. The MPCA then distributed the $40,000 grant last year for the three schools to share. Based on Houston’s success, the program, called Minnesota Healthy Schools Program, will now be considered for other schools in Minnesota.

Students, parents and staff in Houston have noticed improvements — cleaner air, energy efficiency — and it has made a world of difference for the school, said Rick Bartz, elementary school principal. Since the program launched, students and staff have seen many changes. Previously the district did not recycle. Though some staff members gathered cans, the schools had no programs or bins for recycling, Bayer said. The new program also yielded “green” cleaning solutions that are less noxious, and buses no longer run idle in front of schools, which make for cleaner air and a quieter neighborhood. Buses were also fixed to reduce diesel emissions. And the schools have pledged they will be mercury-free. Among other changes, they are reducing paper use, using energy-efficient vending machines, removing unsafe chemicals from laboratories and urging students and teachers to turn off lights and recycle. Houston was so successful that the MPCA is considering this program for other schools, Moore said, but details have not been worked out.

FLORIDA: When prospective families tour Nova Southeastern University, President Ray Ferrero Jr. likes to say that parents want to see the library while students look for the student life and recreation hub. Starting this week, students have a lot more to see as NSU unveiled its new University Center, a 360,000-square-foot complex with an indoor arena, fitness center, student lounge, multipurpose gymnasium, racquetball courts, rock-climbing wall and outdoor swimming pool. "It'll be the center of life for all our residential students," Ferrero said. At a cost of more than $75 million, it's an investment NSU expects will return a boost in undergraduate enrollment and an elevated visibility for the university in the tri-county area. Seating as many as 5,500, the arena instantly becomes the second largest of its kind in Broward County, behind the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise. The arena will host concerts, lectures and special events such as high school graduations.

Crews still must build a food court and complete the performing arts facility, which is expected no later than August 2007. The three-story arts center will house NSU's visual and performing arts departments and include scene and costume shops, rehearsal rooms and a 300-seat performance theater. To recoup some of the costs, NSU plans to sell the naming rights to the University Center, the arena and the performing arts venue.

LOUISIANA: Public schools throughout New Orleans are throwing away thousands of desks, books, computers and other items that officials fear may have been exposed to toxic mold or simply have fallen into disrepair. Meg Casper, a spokeswoman for the state-run Recovery School District, said it's less expensive for the state to replace the items than to clean or repair them. School officials want students to attend school in the safest surroundings possible. "We believe that we have to err on the side of caution when it comes to giving students materials that have been exposed to mold and other toxins like asbestos," Casper said. "We must provide a healthy environment for these children. They deserve nothing less." Casper said FEMA is footing the bill for all items damaged by the storm. The state will cover the cost of replacement in some instances if FEMA does not, she said.

LOUISIANA: In a move designed to avoid confusion in the event of another evacuation, the Jefferson Parish School Board approved the purchase of a system that would allow officials to deliver messages to staff and parents in a matter of minutes. The board agreed to spend $161,000 on a one-year contract with Connect-ED, an automated telephone messaging system that can communicate emergency information and other types of school-related messages in a timely, efficient manner. The system can make 400,000 calls in 30 minutes and in the event of another hurricane can relay information to parents and employees about school cancellations, school restart dates and the status of the parish. During Katrina, relaying such information was nearly impossible because of widespread communications disruptions. Under the new plan, parents and staff will provide six phone numbers, and Connect-ED will continue to call the numbers until a person answers or the message is delivered via answering machine or voice mail. The system also can be used to deliver information related to testing, study guidance, meal eligibility, transportation and employee payroll. In addition, principals can use it to send important messages to their student bodies and faculties.

NORTH CAROLINA: Less than a month old, Brier Creek Community Center already has a regular group of 15 preteens who drop by to play foosball. The out-of-school programs are nearly at capacity. And folks have started registering for the more than 50 classes and programs that start next month. Brier Creek is among a new breed of community centers for the city. The school system and city share a gym attached to Brier Creek Elementary School. A new center on Barwell Road in Southeast Raleigh will operate under a similar agreement when it opens this fall. And, this month, the City Council authorized officials to move forward on another deal with the school system for land around Leesville and Strickland roads near Interstate 540.

It is a concept that some opponents of a proposed community center at Horseshoe Farm Park in northeast Raleigh have latched on to. They say that school-city partnerships would allow the city to keep Horseshoe Farm as a nature preserve, where visitors could explore the meadow, forests and river and watch the deer, wild turkey and other wildlife. But at the same, it helps city parks officials provide adult sports leagues and after-school programs.

There are limitations to joint school and park sites. Working with the school means that the general public doesn't have time during the day to use the gym for lunchtime basketball or volleyball leagues, for instance, Lebsock said. The move to more year-round schools also complicates the issue because schools are in use all the time.

VIRGINIA: Lots of school construction means something not too many people want to talk about around here, growth. It's something experts say is inevitable. From Waynesboro's Kate Collins to Harrisonburg's new high school, a lot of school projects starting and finishing in the Valley. But what does this mean? "I think it does represent growth in terms of new schools being built," says Associate Economic Professor Jane Pietrowski of Mary Baldwin College. "Certainly families are moving to the valley and they are bringing their kids and their kids need educational services."

Maybe that's why all six major school systems within Page, Rockingham and Augusta County are spending close to a quarter billion dollars in construction! "This would be an indicator that work is coming here," says Pietrowski. "The question is what kinds of services are coming here and what kinds of skills are these people going to need." Experts suggest more jobs and location for the steady growth but some projects like in Staunton, say old buildings and technology are fueling its renovations. "Growth was not the driving factor when we started planning this," says Mark White of the Staunton City Schools. "It was just to renovate an old facility and make it a usable school." Staunton is keeping an eye on growth, as well as Augusta County. Its new Wilson Middle School opens Monday, alleviating overcrowding issues at two other schools.

TENNESSEE: Hamilton County commissioners approved a $3.44 million contract for fire code upgrades that a school district official said was $600,000 more than first planned. The improvements at Chattanooga Middle Museum Magnet School and Chattanooga School of Arts and Sciences are an early warning that construction costs are increasing drastically, according to Gary Waters, the school district’s assistant superintendent of auxiliary services. Mr. Waters said costs now are 40 to 45 percent higher than in 2001, a harsh reality officials will face in the next year as the county builds several new schools and renovates others. In June, the commission agreed to a $125 million bond issue to pay for school construction and possibly other projects. The commission is expected to finalize that bond issuance Aug. 31. The fire code upgrades are not part of the upcoming building program. Mr. Waters said China’s growth, Hurricane Katrina and high construction activity locally are among reasons for the increase.

TENNESSEE: Hamilton County commissioners approved a $3.44 million contract for fire code upgrades that a school district official said was $600,000 more than first planned. The improvements at Chattanooga Middle Museum Magnet School and Chattanooga School of Arts and Sciences are an early warning that construction costs are increasing drastically, according to Gary Waters, the school district’s assistant superintendent of auxiliary services. Mr. Waters said costs now are 40 to 45 percent higher than in 2001, a harsh reality officials will face in the next year as the county builds several new schools and renovates others. In June, the commission agreed to a $125 million bond issue to pay for school construction and possibly other projects. The commission is expected to finalize that bond issuance Aug. 31. The fire code upgrades are not part of the upcoming building program. Mr. Waters said China’s growth, Hurricane Katrina and high construction activity locally are among reasons for the increase.

FLORIDA: Marion County Public Schools unveiled its five-year construction plan that includes $140 million in renovations and new school construction to be launched this fiscal year. The project list shows that the school system will need $512 million in the next five years to renovate and build new schools, as well as complete maintenance on existing schools that need upgrades. Robert Knight, the school system's supervisor of facilities, told the board that the 2006-07 projects are fully funded, but the school system will be $217 million short in the next five years. Knight used all known income sources, from impact fees and sales tax to money that already has been allotted by the state for construction, to formulate the facilities plan. The school system will receive some state funds for construction projects in the future, but how much remains unknown. That's because school districts can only request construction money when a need is shown and that need can't be based on projected population numbers.

MARYLAND: Privately developed 910-bed student housing that opened in Hyattsville, Maryland will eventually be a 56-acre development with shops, restaurants, a movie theater and offices. And it's filled with students from nine schools, including the University of Maryland, Howard University, American, Georgetown, George Washington, and Trinity. It might just be a sign of things to come, with booming enrollments and student expectations driving changes in housing. Some experts said they believe the Towers at University Town Center is one of the first such projects in the country to serve so many schools at once.

FLORIDA: Teacher Sarah Hard saw something disturbing in her religion class at Cardinal Mooney High School. A handful of students were playing with a glob of liquid mercury on a desk. Hard immediately called principal Steve Christie, who raced to the classroom building to learn that from two to four ounces of mercury, in a pill-size vial, had been brought to school by a student. The mercury had seeped from the student's backpack. Soon after, Cardinal Mooney High School was shut down and the Sarasota County Fire Department, the county Health Department, including the medical executive director, a Bartow hazardous materials firm called American Compliance Technology and local media converged at the school.

When it was all over, none of the school's 500 students, including the six or so who touched the mercury, showed any symptoms of illness due to exposure, Christie said. But hundreds of students and some personnel endured quarantine for hours while authorities checked them. A small amount of mercury was vaporized, exposing about 70 students, said Crystal Bruce, a Health Department spokeswoman. The classroom building was quickly closed off and American Compliance Technology began checking to make sure the school was safe for students, Christie said. The human nervous system is sensitive to all forms of mercury and exposure may cause breathing problems, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, increases in blood pressure or heart rate, skin rashes and eye irritation, Bruce said.

MARYLAND: Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. will borrow an additional $100 million this year to pay for school construction needs, after a special committee that sets guidelines for state borrowing granted him permission to take on the additional debt. Ehrlich's fiscal 2007 budget will devote $322 million to school construction. Ehrlich initially proposed investing $261 million in plans to build or renovate schools. Democrats in the General Assembly voted to increase that amount to the current level. The move to borrow the additional money will increase by $500 million the amount dedicated to school construction during the next five years. The decision by the Debt Affordability Committee, which includes representatives from Ehrlich's administration, as well as the state treasurer and comptroller, marks the second time since Ehrlich took office that the state borrowing limit was expanded by $100 million.

WEST VIRGINIA: The new Wayne Elementary School is just the first of many new schools for students throughout the Tri-State. Cabell County and South Point, Ohio, are also in the process of building new facilities. The Wyne project cost more than $7.5 million, and the state School Building Authority helped fund it. The old school was built in 1929, and Wayne County Schools Assistant Superintendent Jerry Workman said the new school will have to last decades as well. The facility is a result of the support from the building authority, the board and the community. "These kids have lived in a substandard schools all their lives," Russell said. "We want to teach them to be proud of the building and to take care of it."

Five major building projects continue to race through the planning stages in Cabell County. All of the new buildings are a result from a January levy passed in the county that will bring in $65,455,000 over the next 15 years to supply new buildings for Barboursville Middle School, Milton Middle School and Martha Elementary School and a new building that would consolidate the current Cammack and Miller elementary schools. A portion of that money, more than $3 million, will come from state School Building Authority funds that have already been approved for a new Martha Elementary. The bond money would pay to renovate Cammack Middle School for the current populations of Cammack and West Middle School students.

When it's all said and done for the South Point Local School District, every school will be in a new building. Construction is continuing for the middle and high schools, and both are scheduled to open next fall. Both buildings are on the same site, and will have a common connector to the buildings, said superintendent Ken Cook. The Ohio Building Projects is funding about 80 percent of the projects, while local taxpayers passed a levy to fund the rest.

OHIO: In 1997 the Ohio School Facilities Commission (OSFC) was established to provide funding, technical assistance and management assistance to school districts in order to create state-of-the-art learning environments for Ohio's school children. Within the OSFC, the legislature -- in 2000 -- implemented Rebuilding Ohio's Schools. We are continuing the commitment to this program today -- concentrating our resources on improving the learning environments for our children. The OSFC has spent more than $4.2 billion toward this goal with 420 new or renovated buildings opened around the state. In fact, more than $2 million is spent each and every day across the state in an effort to improve school facilities around Ohio.

FLORIDA: As Broward teachers cleaned classrooms, drew up lesson plans and decorated bulletin boards to prepare for the start of a new school year, security personnel introduced a system that will instantly do criminal background checks on school visitors. The new security system is a computerized identification system -- called Security Tracking and Response, or STAR -- that will run background checks on all visitors to school campuses who come in contact with students, including parent volunteers and vendors.

Using a driver's license or other government-issued ID, a computer runs the visitor's name through the U.S. Department of Justice's sexual offender watch list -- a list of offenders in all 50 states -- and the Broward Clerk of Courts database to check for criminal violations. If the visitor has a record of sexual offenses, a red warning sign will pop up on the screen, along with their photo. Under the plan, that person should be banned from entering the school. Those with other, non-sexual criminal violations will be considered on a case-by-case basis, said Reginald Browne, project manager of the STAR program. Visitors who are cleared to enter the school must wear a black-and-white adhesive paper badge that includes their photo, name, date, and reason for the visit. All information on them is then saved in a districtwide database and used on subsequent visits.

The $2.1 million ID system, similar to those used in hospitals and on cruise ships, already has been in place for about a year in a pilot program in 15 Broward schools. When school starts next week, it will be in place in 180 of of the district's 229 schools, and the remaining schools, many of which are under construction, will likely be equipped with the system by mid-October.

CONNECTICUT: Colleges have traditionally tempted top students with ivy-covered campuses, towering Gothic buildings and up-to-date student centers. But nowadays, there is a sense that a beautiful campus is not enough. An alluring college town is seen as necessary as well.

In Columbus, Ohio, the City Council acknowledged that in 2002 when it adopted “A Plan for High Street: Creating a 21st-Century Main Street,” which includes a $130 million mixed-use development for the two-mile stretch of the street that runs past Ohio State University. At the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, university officials announced plans in June to demolish a section of the north side of a main artery, Walnut Street, and add a $75 million development of midrise apartments and retail space.

After the state committed to spend more than $2 billion for improvements to all its campuses, the University of Connecticut decided on a sweeping project at its main campus in this hamlet in the still-rural town of Mansfield. Working with local officials, it plans to demolish the meager downtown, which looks more like a makeshift set for a Hollywood western than a New England college center, and build a town from scratch. Construction of the development, called Storrs Center, is scheduled to begin next year. The project will include up to 300 market-rate rental housing units, up to 500 residential units for purchase, about 200,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, 40,000 to 75,000 square feet of office space and 5,000 to 25,000 square feet of civic and community space. A town square will be at its core, mimicking the greens at the center of hundreds of New England villages. Of the 49-acre project, just 15 acres will be developed, a little less than is currently in use. The rest will be preserved for conservation. The development will incorporate existing town buildings and sit directly across the street from the university’s still-in-progress Fine Arts Center, designed by the architect Frank Gehry in association with Herbert S. Newman & Partners of New Haven. The Newman firm is also the architect for Storrs Center.

MARYLAND: Take a few steps inside the new Great Seneca Creek Elementary School in Germantown, Maryland and it’s clear there is something different about it, something a little greener. Great Seneca is well on its way to becoming the first public school in the state to achieve the stringent "green building" certification issued by the U.S. Green Building Council. The classrooms are brighter, the paint is lighter and the ceilings are slanted to allow maximum sunlight into classrooms through large, fiberglass-framed windows. Sure to cause wonder in the boys’ bathroom are waterless urinals. And kindergarteners will get a refresher course on their colors every time they use the bathroom. They’ll push one button if it’s yellow and another if it’s brown. The toilet will dispense the needed power and water to flush whichever it is down.

But it’s the things that can’t be seen that will make the biggest difference at the 84,000-square-foot school, which is expected to enroll 550 students at 13010 Dairymaid Drive when it opens later this month. The geothermal heating and cooling system installed under the school’s athletic field, operating at a constant ground temperature of 58 degrees, will save about 30 percent in the school’s energy costs. The white Energy Star roof reflects heat and will reduce air conditioning output. Low-flow water fixtures will result in a 43 percent savings in potable water. Dozens of signs posted around school will educate students about the Earth-friendly initiatives that surround them. The school’s principal, Gregory Edmunson, is eager to welcome students. "I can’t wait for the first day of school," Edmunson said. "I love that we can teach kids just by walking through the halls. You don’t even need a textbook. They can live it."

VERMONT: Eleven-hundred students in Milton may not be headed back to their classrooms when school starts in Vermont this year. That's because mold was found in most of the elementary school building. And it has prompted school officials to close the building indefinitely.

The Milton Elementary School discovered mold about 2 years ago. Officials thought they fixed the problem. But last week's heat and humidity was too much for the ventilation system. And a small problem quickly became a big one. "Literally, just all of a sudden, water vapor condensed on all the walls and floors and ceilings, and we had pools of water in the classrooms," said Superintendent Holden Waterman, of the Milton School District. The next day, school officials spotted mold on desks, on carpets and even on walls. The school was immediately shut down -- and only folks wearing respirator masks are allowed to go inside.

Cost is the major concern. Originally, school officials thought it would cost about $150-thousand dollars to fix the problem. Now that mold has spread to over 25 rooms, the district could spend close to $300,000. "And that's just to fix the symptoms I should say, to get us back in operation, it's a short term fix, the longer term fix is going to be probably perimeter drains working on a central ventilation system, which at this point we don't have we just have the unit ventilators," Waterman said. Mold samples have been sent to a testing facility in New Jersey to determine how serious the situation is. School officials should know the test results by the end of the week.

VERMONT: Eleven-hundred students in Milton may not be headed back to their classrooms when school starts in Vermont this year. That's because mold was found in most of the elementary school building. And it has prompted school officials to close the building indefinitely.

The Milton Elementary School discovered mold about 2 years ago. Officials thought they fixed the problem. But last week's heat and humidity was too much for the ventilation system. And a small problem quickly became a big one. "Literally, just all of a sudden, water vapor condensed on all the walls and floors and ceilings, and we had pools of water in the classrooms," said Superintendent Holden Waterman, of the Milton School District. The next day, school officials spotted mold on desks, on carpets and even on walls. The school was immediately shut down -- and only folks wearing respirator masks are allowed to go inside.

Cost is the major concern. Originally, school officials thought it would cost about $150-thousand dollars to fix the problem. Now that mold has spread to over 25 rooms, the district could spend close to $300,000. "And that's just to fix the symptoms I should say, to get us back in operation, it's a short term fix, the longer term fix is going to be probably perimeter drains working on a central ventilation system, which at this point we don't have we just have the unit ventilators," Waterman said. Mold samples have been sent to a testing facility in New Jersey to determine how serious the situation is. School officials should know the test results by the end of the week.

MARYLAND: A Harford County councilman is charging that the county government is violating a law delaying development around crowded schools - a touchy issue this election year. Suburban politicians are under pressure from voters resentful of school crowding and traffic congestion to limit home construction, while builders complain the restrictions are driving up housing prices and forcing people to commute farther to work. But Harford County government approved nearly 2,200 residential permits in 2005, the most in at least a decade, according to figures from the Planning and Zoning Department. Despite that, county officials said the planned opening of a new school next year should relieve the crowding, while at least one councilman says that is not good enough.

In a letter to County Executive David R. Craig, Councilman Dion F. Guthrie said that allowing development around three overcrowded schools based on projections that crowding will decrease next year violates the county's adequate public facilities law. The law prevents new projects being planned around county schools at more than 5 percent of their rated capacity.

Counties throughout Maryland have laws designed to prevent new homes from overwhelming essentials such as roads, water and schools - with varying degrees of success. In Baltimore County, a task force was formed in the spring to study why homes were continuing to be built near severely crowded schools. At the same time, a study by the University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth found that building restrictions in Harford, Howard and Montgomery have caused housing shortages, driven up home prices, and steered growth to areas that were meant to be preserved. As far back as December, Harford's Adequate Public Facilities Advisory Board had suggested moratoriums would be lifted because of redistricting and the opening of Patterson Mill.

LOUISIANA: A $200 million block of federal hurricane relief aid is planned to help repair schools damaged by Katrina and Rita, though schools being completely rebuilt will have to follow design criteria being developed by state officials. A legislative panel reviewed the plans and the governing board of the Louisiana Recovery Authority will consider them.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is covering much of the costs of repairing hurricane damage to schools around south Louisiana, but local officials are required to pick up 10 percent of those repair costs. Some other items, including fire code violations and damage not resulting directly from the hurricanes, aren't covered by FEMA. The $200 million pool _ federal block grant aid in which Louisiana has wide discretion to spend on hurricane recovery _ will provide the 10 percent match to the FEMA dollars for local public school districts and will cover the costs of some other emergency needs that may not be eligible for FEMA reimbursement, according to Andy Kopplin, executive director of the LRA.

New schools built to replace hurricane-damaged ones or schools that involve significant reconstruction will be expected to meet certain criteria to receive the money, if the LRA board agrees, however: smaller schools with integrated technology, adjustable lighting, flexible classrooms and equipment and other design and safety standards.

Lawmakers on a joint House and Senate education panel applauded the plans presented by LRA staff, saying those criteria ensure the dollars will be appropriately spent. Before the dollars can go out, lawmakers must approve the spending by mailed ballots. Local school districts will have to apply for the repair money, and the LRA, governor's office, Legislature and education department will review the projects before the money is spent, according to a process outlined by LRA staff. Kopplin said estimates of the school repair needs reach as much as $387 million, but LRA officials didn't want to set aside that much in block grant aid until they get a better idea of local district repair requests. He said he expected that all needed school repairs would be covered with the federal block grant dollars.

VIRGINIA: John T. West School was a foundation for education for African-American students in Norfolk. But it's been 26 years since students passed through its doorways. And Monday, the historic school came crumbling down. After 100 years, it could not stand up to the bite of a bulldozer. The red brick wall came showering down as a bulldozer sliced away at the 100 year old school. In its claws were pieces of pipe, wire, insulation...

Alton Robinson knows the school's history well. He was part of a group who tried to preserve it. Armed with his camera, he'll now pass its history down through pictures. "I'm taking pictures for my children so I can show them the building that they're grandmother went to school in, and the day they tore it down to teach them about the history of it so they can write their ideas about why they think it should have been preserved for them" Robinson said.

Community leaders had tried for more than 20 years to preserve Norfolk's first African-American high school. But the millions of dollars to save the past didn't add up to the possibility of the future. "I think what we need to do is look at the community as a whole - look at where we're going as a city and try to make the best use of all the land that we have." said Norfolk city councilman Anthony Burfoot. City leaders hope to build a small park and plaque to commorate the school's spot in Norfolk's history.

ALABAMA: A drive during Governor Don Siegelman's administration rolled away about two-thirds of the portable classrooms in Alabama, but the number is no longer going down. Even in affluent districts, portable classrooms dot school campuses. "It looks like a trailer park," said Stephen Hobbs, a parent observing Chelsea Elementary School, which opens with 18 trailers. "It's a shame the richest county in Alabama struggles to build schools." Siegelman's initiative lowered the number from 3,413 in March 1999 to 1,056 by August 2002, according to a report released at the time. While the exact number was questioned, about two-thirds were removed in a funding and building program aimed at eliminating all of the trailers by 2002. But school officials say growth and less money for new schools have caused the trailers to reappear.

Almost 50 percent of the 1,227 portable classrooms now in the state belong to seven school systems - Jefferson, Madison, Mobile, Montgomery, Shelby and Tuscaloosa county schools and Birmingham city schools. "We will always be dealing with portables because it's a quick answer to the growth," said Nez Calhoun, spokeswoman for Jefferson County schools. The system added about 20 trailers this summer. She said the system has done well by having only 122 trailers for 52 schools. The state's fastest growing county - Shelby - will have 36 schools with at least 160 trailers this year, up from 100 last year. The system will probably add another 10 after the schools open, said Tom Ferguson, assistant superintendent of operations for Shelby County schools. Another 50 trailers will be needed for the 2007-2008 school year. Shelby County had as many as 185 trailers in 1997, a number that dropped to 25 by 2000. But a failed tax effort in 2004 kept the school system from adding at least five new schools needed to keep the county ahead of the growth, Ferguson said. "As dollars for construction began to decrease and the growth kept increasing, the tide began to turn," he said.

FLORIDA: After two years of construction and $47.5 million, Brevard Public Schools' first new high school campus in eight years is expected to open its doors to about 960 students and 100 teachers, administrators and support staff. Interviews and a review of construction documents show the 298,000-square foot school was built on budget but delayed by labor shortages during a booming construction market. And the school district is proud to complete a high school that, while not representing a bold new design, offers a comprehensive, 21st century facility for what now seems like a bargain. With contracts, officials locked-in a guaranteed maximum price just as construction costs took off and contractors became scarce. District officials say they are delivering the best value possible with limited taxpayer dollars.

If Viera High looks familiar, it should. It was built from the same boilerplate design as Bayside High, which opened in 1998, a plan used by more than 30 schools across the state. But district officials sound almost apologetic to Bayside when they describe Viera's upgrades. They include "21st century" classrooms featuring digital projectors that bring the Internet and PowerPoint presentations to a pull-down screen or whiteboard; a lighter, brighter feel; widened breezeways allowing more natural light, airflow and landscaping; a "black box" theater for for plays and musical performances, opening onto the cafeteria, which designers expect will add flexibility for a variety of community events; storm shelter; windows throughout the school use impact-resistant glass; and the school also includes a child care center that will double as training ground for students interested in early education, a state-of-the-art TV studio that will produce district programs and a pellet-gun range for Jr. ROTC students.

Reusing old school designs, which the district has done with its last three elementary schools, saves money by cutting design costs and cultivating a network of contractors familiar with the work.

But changes in teaching and curriculum have pushed planners to reshape traditional school spaces, driven by new technology and understanding of different learning styles. For example, many new schools strive to create more varied and flexible spaces, from L-shaped classrooms instead of traditional rectangles to lecture halls and large, open rooms combining individual student stations and meeting spaces. "The traditional model of a teacher in front of a classroom with 30 kids at stationary desks, while probably the norm in many places, is breaking up, especially in high schools," said Judy Marks, associate director of the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities.

ALABAMA: The Montgomery Board of Education, City Council and County Commission should certainly be commended for coming together and recently approving the new school facilities plan and budget. Indeed, this joint effort has the potential for important long-term improvements to Montgomery County schools. However, even with such potential, whether these improvements are fully realized remains uncertain because two critical questions have yet to be unanswered: Where will the new schools budgeted under this plan be built? How will they be designed?

These two questions are critical because where school districts locate new schools and how they design them intrinsically affect a variety of key factors ranging from student scores to student health to community cohesiveness. Here's how: Today, one of the biggest causes of unsustainable sprawl in our towns and cities is when school districts place new schools on the peripheral fringe -- isolated from the neighborhoods where our students live. Worse still, school districts then build mega-sized schools surrounded by vast asphalt parking lots on these remote sites (sometimes because they are forced to do so by state law -- as is the case in Alabama).The end result being that