Washington, D.C. - March 10, 2023 - The BASIC coalition commends President Biden for a positive step forward in increasing the budget for the U.S. Department of Education FY24 appropriations request by $10.8 billion. His emphasis on expanding pre-school opportunities, mental health funding, school safety, and community schools is a step in the right direction. 

Mary Filardo, one of the founders and President of the BASIC Coalition stated, “With a divided Congress there is little chance for a new federal program to address educational facilities inequity and relieve our students and teachers of poor school facilities conditions, as was envisioned in the Rebuild America’s Schools Act (RASA). This remains our primary goal. 

However, one important step forward was funded in the last Congress. It provides state education agencies with resources to develop technical assistance on school facilities so they can help districts deliver better and healthier school buildings and grounds. The U.S. Department of Education, at long last, is recognizing that the federal government has a role in helping states and districts ensure that America’s school children go to safe, healthy, educationally suitable, energy efficient, resilient, and environmentally sustainable public school facilities. This program needs to continue in FY2024.”

Facilities remain a significant cost center for local school districts. We want to note that in just FY2020, elementary and secondary school districts used $61.4 billion of their annual operating funds for maintenance and operations of buildings and grounds and another $21 billion to pay interest on long-term debt for long-term facilities improvements. They also spent $69 billion for school construction. This means a total of $130.4 billion was spent for public elementary and secondary school infrastructure in just one year. 

Timothy D. Unruh from the National Association of Energy Service Companies commented,  “Over the last two years, the Biden Administration has demonstrated its commitment to keeping schools open with its support for COVID funding and making practical investments in preventing lead pipe poisoning, electrifying the nation’s school bus fleet and creating a new Department of Energy program to make our schools more energy efficient. But it is clear that much more needs to be done for our highest-need and lowest-wealth districts, particularly among our nation’s rural schools and urban districts. In the preliminary reports on the response to the infrastructure funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, school districts requested $5.5 billion for school facilities projects for energy retrofits for only $80 million of funds available from the U.S. Department of Energy."

Filardo also expressed concern, “We have schools in districts with so much federal property, that there is no mechanism, other than through Federal Impact Aid grants, to renovate old and deteriorated school buildings and grounds. Congress needs to increase the President’s proposed budget for school construction and maintenance for Impact Aid substantially.”

Filardo continued “One issue that needs to be addressed is ending the simplistic “either/or” debate on how local districts spend COVID funding, pitting learning loss versus money on facilities. This was the lead in a recent NBC Evening News story. This is a false choice and a trap that too many educators and researchers fall into. Local districts are upgrading facilities and installing new HVAC systems because poor facilities have been causing learning loss for years. Every day thousands of children stay home sick from school because of asthma and the fact that their schools are essentially unhealthy.