School Facilities: A Multi-Billion Dollar Problem

The condition of our public school buildings says a lot about the importance we place on our students’ education. Poorly lit, ill-maintained, overcrowded and unsafe school facilities can send a message of indifference to the pupils inside—a message that can “send the signal” that the community does not value their education enough to provide an adequate place to learn. Not only have these types of conditions been proven to hinder student achievement, they also can demoralize students and teachers, and could influence decisions to drop out or quit.

The ACLU of Maryland strongly believes that the state constitutional guarantee of a “thorough and efficient” education extends to school facilities and is committed to advocating for new, renovated or upgraded buildings in both overcrowded and poor school districts.

What Thornton Does Not Cover

The Bridge to Excellence in Public Education Act provided increased funding for Maryland schools, but it did not allocate any money to upgrade school facilities. With many buildings well over 40 years old — including some that date back to the nineteenth century — and other districts growing so quickly that there is rampant overcrowding, Maryland’s public schools desperately need additional funding to replace and renovate their existing structures and erect new buildings to relieve overcrowding. 

The State established a task force to study school facilities in 2002, which set minimum adequacy standards for school buildings and then compared those standards with existing facilities. The commission reported back in 2004, having determined that nearly $4 billion was needed for all Maryland public schools to meet the minimum standards. Of this amount, $600 million was needed for Baltimore City alone.

This number will only get larger over time, as the Building Construction Index (BCI)—a measure of construction costs similar to the Consumer Price Index—continues to increase. This index has risen 17 percent since 2003, raising Maryland’s estimated cost to repair all school facilities problems by an additional $700 million.

Creating a Task Force

In 2002, the General Assembly established the Maryland State Task Force to Study Public School Facilities, as an outgrowth of the Commission of Education Finance, Equity and Excellence, or “Thornton” Commission. Just as the Thornton Commission was asked to look at the adequacy of Maryland’s public schools, the task force was asked to examine the adequacy and equity of the Maryland Public School Construction Program.  To accomplish that goal the Task Force had every school building in the state surveyed to see how they performed against 31 predetermined criteria, which encompassed minimum local, state and federal health and safety guidelines.

In its final report, delivered in February of 2004, the task force found that the total cost to bring all of Maryland’s school up to the minimum level of adequacy, as defined by the Task Force, was $3.85 billion. Of this number, $1.54 billion, or 40 percent, was needed for additional student capacity for the 2007-2008 school year; $910 million was needed for high and middle schools; and $634 million for elementary schools. Just taking care of the health and safety deficiencies, meanwhile, would cost around $321 million.

Not only did the report document the existing gap, it also noticed that the state’s contribution for improving school facilities had steadily decreased from $286 million in fiscal year 2002 down to a proposed $100 million for fiscal years 2005-2009. At that rate, it would take nearly four decades to meet the current needs.

As a solution, the task force recommended that the state contribute $250 million every year for the next eight years, which, combined with local county funds, would begin to address the need.

To see a copy of the task force’s report, click HERE.

ACLU Conducts Its Own Studies

The ACLU Four State Study of State School Facility Programs

As the task force convened, the ACLU investigated how other states that faced litigation over school facilities had handled the matter, including identifying criteria that define adequacy, pricing the improvements that would be needed and allocating the funds.

The result of this work was “Funding for Educational Facilities,” a March 2003 study that examined Ohio, Wyoming, Arizona and New Jersey—states that had all successfully implemented large-scare school facilities renovation programs. The goal was for the task force to use the experiences of other states in preparing its own report.

The study pointed out that other states had measured school facility adequacy by constructing a series of pre-determined criteria and then measuring each building against those items. The study also recommended that Maryland use Arizona’s model for remedying identified deficiencies by creating a one-time State funded Deficiency Correction Fund, which would issue a series of bonds that would be serviced by a small rise in the sales tax.

The Four State Study had exactly the desired effect. The task force took many of the study’s recommendations to heart, including the criteria-based approach for identifying and costing out deficiencies.

Click HERE for the full text of the Four State Study.

Prioritization

To help the task force determine its priorities, the ACLU released its own study, which looked at the 31 factors used by the task force to determine which had the largest impact on student performance. This information could then be used to target schools with specific deficiencies first, on the grounds that some problems had a larger impact on student achievement than others.

Conducted by Dr. Glen Earthman, a professor emeritus of educational administration at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, the study found that students in poor school buildings scored between five to 10 percentile rank points lower on average than students in functional buildings. In some cases, the study found that poor buildings could cause up to a 17 percentile rank drop.

Having established the discrepancies in test scores that are attributable to poor buildings, Dr. Earthman looked at which factors have the largest impact in creating this gap. He concluded that the criteria with the most impact upon student achievement (excluding health and safety, which he proposed should be the first order of business) are:

1. Human Comfort — i.e. reasonable temperatures
2. Indoor Air Quality
3. Lighting
4. Acoustical Control
5. Secondary Science Laboratories
6. Student Capacity in Elementary Schools
7. Student Capacity in Secondary Schools