NCSF Calls for Rebuilding America's School Infrastructure

The Council joined a non-partisan coalition advocating for a federal investment in America's public K-12 school facilities, called the Re[Build] America’s School Infrastructure Coalition (BASIC). At the 2016 NCSF annual meeting, state school-facilities leaders from 25 states passed a resolution calling for “PK-12 public school buildings and grounds [to] be included in federal programs to address infrastructure needs."

Since 2016, many of our state school facilities officials have visited Congressional offices to educate representatives about the conditions of our public school facilities. They shared with them state level data on school facility spending and investments, and the needs for additional funding to address the inequitable conditions in our nation’s public school facility infrastructure.

Federal School construction and renovation programs

On April 4th, 2022 “Vice President Kamala Harris announced the Biden-Harris Action Plan for Building Better School Infrastructure to upgrade our public schools with modern, clean, energy-efficient facilities and transportation—delivering health and learning benefits to children and school communities, saving school districts money, and creating good union jobs. The action plan activates the entire federal government in leveraging investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and American Rescue Plan to advance solutions including energy efficiency retrofits, electric school buses, and resilient design.” For further information and to access tools and other federal agency school infrastructure information read this White House statement. 

Highlights include:

Improve Classroom Air Quality through the American Rescue Plan: the Department of Treasury will soon release additional information to help school districts understand how they can use State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds for a range of air quality and other school facility improvements, including energy efficiency.

Help Schools Access Resources and Best Practices: The White House released a toolkit to help schools and school districts access available funding, as well as technical assistance opportunities and planning tools to help schools improve air quality, energy efficiency, and more.

Expand Clean and Safe School Transportation: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with support from the Department of Energy (DOE), released online resources to help school districts and other eligible recipients prepare for the $5 billion Clean School Bus Program created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—with the first opportunity to fund clean and electric buses opening later this spring.

Support for Rural, Tribal, and Puerto Rican Schools: The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is announcing its full commitment to use its array of rural development loan and grant programs to support electric school bus acquisition, charging station infrastructure, energy efficiency investments at schools, and broadband and distance learning in rural school districts – to accelerate the shift from dirty fuel sources toward school facilities and vehicles powered by clean electricity.

American Rescue Plan Funding for State, Municipalities and K-12 Education

This interactive map is designed to help communities and districts understand the scale of new federal funding and encourage the planning and engagement to apply at least 20% of these funds to improve our public school buildings and grounds. The sources of data used for this map are the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Treasury Department.