school construction moratorium

No ground has been broken yet, but it can now be said that the much-maligned moratorium on school construction is officially over.

Governor Gina Raimondo today launched the new School Building Authority Capital Fund, a $20 million line item in the 2016 budget that will go to fixing Rhode Island’s aging and too often decrepit school buildings.

“We know our kids can’t learn in crumbling school buildings and that they must have access to a learning environment that inspires them to do their best,” said Raimondo according to a press release. “Today, we are hitting our school building challenges head on. With this plan, kids and teachers will get better schools and our construction crews will get back to work.”

Following a news conference, superintendents and other public school officials attended a workshop on how to apply for the new funds. Applications are due September 10, said education department spokesman Elliot Krieger. Then RIDE will begin the process of awarding the money for local school construction projects.

“For so many Rhode Islanders, success starts in the classroom, and it is my priority to make those classrooms the safe, creative, and challenging learning environments our kids deserve,” said state Education Commissioner Ken Wagner. “We are fortunate to have leaders who understand that investments in education are an investment in our future.”

Since 2011 there has been a moratorium on school construction in Rhode Island. Social justice and education activists blamed the lack of investment as a contributing factor to the education gap, and construction workers said the moratorium stood in the way of good jobs building positive additions to the community.

This year, RI Future and NBC 10, among others, have published pictures and accounts of the sub-par sometimes even dangerous conditions of urban schools. Aaron Apps called it a “kind of slow, horrible violence being done against the students and teachers expected to occupy these buildings.” The Providence Student Union held a high profile rally in March to lobby state officials to lift the moratorium. Raimondo proposed lifting the moratorium and establishing the $20 million account in her budget, ad the idea was left in by the state legislature.

Dan Lawlor has said Raimondo’s proposal is inferior to the model used in Massachusetts.

If you can believe it, until 1998 school building construction was a local matter in Colorado. Functionally speaking, with the current moratorium on state aid for school construction and rehabilitation, this is the case in Rhode Island right now. In Colorado in the 1990s, and in Rhode Island today, young people in low-income, politically-weak areas are less likely to attend high-quality public school buildings than those in wealthier, politically-networked areas.

Since 2008, however, Colorado has administered a competitive grant application for districts based on diverse state funding streams, including, since 2012, a small percent of taxes from marijuana sales.

“The state’s voters in 2012 legalized pot sales – and taxed them heavily – in part because the constitutional amendment promised that $40 million a year would go toward school construction across the state,” according to USA Today. “In the first full year of sales, however, the state expects to collect only about $17 million in special school taxes levied on the marijuana industry. Still, it’s better than what the state collected the year before: nothing.”

Colorado’s current state funding stream has its origins in a 1998 class action lawsuit (Giardino v Colorado State Board of Education), says Kori Donaldson s. “The lawsuit alleged that the state had not fulfilled its constitutional responsibility to establish and maintain a thorough and uniform system of public schools because of the deteriorating condition of many public schools and issues of overcrowding.”

In response, “Senate Bill 00-181 implemented the terms of a settlement, which required the General Assembly to appropriate $190 million for public school capital construction over a period of 11 years. In 2008, the General Assembly enacted the BEST act [Building Excellent Schools Today].

The BEST program distributes approximately $40 million a year. Yet, the demand for better schools in Colorado outpaces the funding supply, even with the BEST program. Colorado’s challenges include overcrowded classrooms and overstretched buildings (one principal, Melanie Moreno, noted, “Even if we hired more teachers, we wouldn’t have anywhere to put them.”)

Todd Engdahl argues, “The BEST selection process is unique in that the construction board has a certain amount of discretion in making its recommendations and because it makes its decisions request-by-request in an open meeting where applicants are allowed to make brief in-person pitches to the board, in addition to the voluminous applications they filed months ago…

The board uses a complicated process to cull the applicants. Projects require a majority roll-call vote to advance to a short list, but projects die if they don’t gain a majority, don’t get a second or fail to spark a motion at all.”

The Massachusetts model remains superior in that its application process has an emphasis on “urgency and need” in making decisions for construction, and provides a steady, consistent, and much larger funding stream. That said, Colorado shows a willingness to organize a formal, transparent grant process to make funding decisions, and the possibility of including new revenues.

Massachusetts and Colorado both have consistent funding streams to rehabilitate and construct school buildings. Rhode Island’s leaders have a great chance to be innovative and do right by students, families, and teachers.

Tag: school construction moratorium

Raimondo ends school construction moratorium

Colorado’s funding formula for school construction