School Modernization Overview

School Environmental Health

Poor environmental conditions negatively affect the health of our nation’s students and school staff and contribute to absenteeism, student medication use, learning difficulties, sick building syndrome, staff turnover, and greater liability for school districts. In 2004, to comply with Section 5414 of the No Child Left Behind Act, the U.S. Department of Education commissioned a literature review examining the relationship between indoor environments in schools and student academic performance and attendance. According to the report, “overall evidence strongly suggests that poor environments in schools, due primarily to effects of indoor pollutants, adversely influence the health, performance, and attendance of students.”

Every day, parents send their children to school, believing that the buildings dedicated to their children’s learning and growth won’t hurt their children. Many parents assume that the safety provisions that protect adults in their workplaces also apply to children in their school buildings. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act was passed in 1970 to ensure “safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women; by authorizing enforcement of the standards developed under the Act.” The overall purpose of the regulations is to protect healthy, adult workers in industrial occupations from unhealthy work environments and exposure to substances known to cause adverse health effects. The regulations are not intended to protect children in school buildings, where the weekly exposure to a “sick building” can often exceed a typical workweek. Unhealthy indoor environments, however, cause greater damage to children’s bodies than to adults’. According to the Department of Education report, “Children have greater susceptibility to some environmental pollutants than adults, because they breathe higher volumes of air relative to their body weights and their tissues and organs are actively growing.”

School environments must be examined in order to determine their overall effect on children’s health and, consequently, on children’s academic achievement. Sick children cannot attend classes, and repeated absences can cause children to fall behind, thus adversely affecting their academic performance. 

School Construction

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) releases an annual Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which grades the condition, performance, capacity, and funding of our nation’s infrastructure. Among the infrastructure categories examined are roads, bridges, dams, solid waste, mass transit, aviation, hazardous waste, and schools. In ASCE’s report card, schools earned a grade of D (poor).

The overwhelming national need to improve the condition of public schools and to construct new buildings to accommodate rising enrollments affects school districts in every state. A June 2000 report from the National Center for Education Statistics estimated that $127 billion is needed to fix America’s school buildings. This figure is consistent with the findings of an earlier U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) study that estimated the cost of bringing schools into good overall condition to be $112 billion. Other studies estimate that the cost to construct new schools and classrooms and to modernize existing schools is more than $300 billion nationwide. This figure includes the costs of health and safety renovations, as well as the costs of upgrades such as modern science labs and media centers, telephones in classrooms, cable hookups, wiring for computers, and Internet access. None of these figures, however, include the enormous costs associated with hurricane-related cleanup and rebuilding in Louisiana and Mississippi.

School overcrowding is another serious problem. Many schools are trying to reduce class sizes so students can receive the attention they need to succeed academically. In large classes, maintaining discipline can take teachers’ time and attention away from instruction. Large classes also make it more difficult to mainstream students with disabilities. Furthermore, overcrowding can limit instruction in subjects such as science, music, and art that require more space and special materials. Makeshift classrooms that schools are forced to carve from closets, corners, and hallways do not appropriately serve students’ learning needs and can have a detrimental effect on teacher and student morale. In addition, lack of space often impedes a school’s ability to offer before- and after-school enrichment opportunities and/or to create parent resource centers.

These problems demand a strong and sustained partnership of federal, state, and local entities. States and schools cannot address these problems alone, and equity in education must be a national priority. Modern, safe, and healthy education facilities will result in a better-educated, more informed, more productive population. This investment by our local communities, the state governments, and the federal government is essential if we are to create the schools our nation needs to compete in the 21st century.