Funding comes and goes these days in the K-12 education facilities market.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, aid for schools to upgrade HVAC and other systems has been provided through initiatives like the Education Stabilization Fund, which includes various programs such as the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER).
These programs and other legislative bills have provided billions to schools for upgrades, but funding for many of those programs is now beginning to expire. Including the funding uncertainties surrounding a presidential administration change and school choice trends that can affect the funding allocated to specific districts, K-12 districts are facing some challenging times.
Melissa Turnbaugh is the senior principal and firmwide PreK-12 market leader for architecture firm PBK, which works with K-12 districts on building design and funding strategies. Her firm has more than 40 years of experience working with K-12 districts and encourages clients to consider outside-the-box thinking to thrive in these times.
“A lot of the facilities we’re fortunate to work with are pillars in the community, so we want to make sure that what we’re doing is being good stewards with their resources, but also really going to serve them as education evolves and changes,” she says.
Turnbaugh discussed some of the ways that districts can overcome funding challenges and produce thriving results.
Not all efficiency-related projects inside school buildings have to be costly ones like boiler replacements or even building new schools. Sometimes a team of engineers and consultants can find huge savings by merely auditing energy use.
Often, easy fixes like adjusting controls to adapt to how buildings are used can create tons of savings opportunities.
“We had an entire district in Houston a number of years ago where we just helped fine-tune existing systems, looking at presets that had been set for a decade because there was a basketball game there one Sunday,” Turnbaugh says. “They had been conditioning that gym every Sunday for a couple of years. It ended up saving hundreds of thousands of dollars per year just by fine-tuning their systems and their operations.”
When school districts do upgrade and expand their facilities, they should start planning with generating extra revenue in mind.
Examples of this include renting performing arts spaces out to community groups for plays, musicals, concerts or other types of events or renting out gymnasiums or other parts of the school district spaces for youth sporting events, charity benefits or religious groups to use for weekend services.
“Finding alternative funding streams is a creative solution,” Turnbaugh says. “A lot of districts right now from coast to coast, even in thriving and growing areas, are having to look at school closures and consolidations.”
Adaptive reuse has emerged as a popular trend for commercial office buildings as workplace trends and demands from companies and employees continually change. Turnbaugh says that school districts should also hop on the bandwagon.
Since many school districts are closing or right sizing their buildings as population trends add and subtract students, districts can consider options such as providing affordable housing for teachers and staff to take advantage of their spaces. Other examples could include leasing land for retailers to open grocery stores or other kinds of commercial businesses that might benefit the school’s students and the area surrounding them.
“The market right now is ripe for innovation for how districts can be a lot more fiscally resistant so that they’re not waiting for the next ESSER funding or waiting for this and that, that they can take it into their own hands and think creatively about how they can withstand the ebbs and flows,” Turnbaugh says.
Turnbaugh encourages districts to think outside their box when seeking creative solutions for how to use land and buildings for the benefit of many. Her view is the more voices on how to find benefits to using land and buildings, the better.
“The most successful models we’ve seen is when in the very conception of some of these design processes, you bring in a really diverse group of thought leaders, so it’s not just administrators or teachers,” she says. “Not that they don’t have a valuable perspective, but if you bring in community members, students, even politicians talking about what is happening in the region, the city, and they see what we need and how can the district support that, a lot of times we’re seeing districts might have the initial capital to build these institutions.”
While school facilities executives may be experiencing some levels of distress given the current funding climate, Turnbaugh encourages leaders to look at the positives that are emerging as districts are encouraged to adapt.
“I’ll be interested to see a decade from now what we learned from all of this, but also potentially, a lot of the innovation that came out of this time,” she says.
Dave Lubach is the executive editor for the facilities market. He has a decade of experience writing about facilities management and maintenance issues.
