Campus Technology
An Illinois district has installed a $300,000 private LTE network to deliver internet connectivity to students. Collinsville Community Unit School District #10 worked with IT solutions provider STEPcg to address the needs of about 500 students in the area.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 04/14/21
Cybersecurity
A cyberattack forced a Massachusetts school district to close for a day, just as kids were about to return to the classroom, and then revert to remote learning for most grades. Haverhill Public Schools made a public announcement when the district computer system was hit with a ransomware attack.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 04/14/21
Policy
K-12 instruction is being delivered in many different permutations right now, and so families are making various choices for the education of their students. By mid-March 2021 more than three-quarters of fourth- and eighth-grade students (76%) were being offered the chance to attend public schools open at least some of the time for face-to-face lessons. But just a fraction of those students attended in-person instruction. The remaining 24% of grade 4 and grade 8 students were in schools that were only online.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 04/13/21
Campus Facilities
Despite widespread perception that architects and designers are fearless innovators, many, in the author’s opinion, are quite resistant to change. When a product works reasonably well, building professionals tend to stick with it until strong evidence justifies a change.
Campus Facilities
A student cafeteria doesn’t have to feel like a student cafeteria. The new Student Dining Commons at Mount Holyoke College – a 1,000-seat, state of the art, anytime dining center created by Boston design firm Bergmeyer – is intended to offer an inviting, personal experience that evokes some of the school’s long tradition of intimate dining rooms. An important element of that effect is an unusual ceiling.
New Construction
The Utah State Legislature recently approved the construction of a new home for Utah State University’s foreign language programs. The $17-million Mehdi Heravi Global Teaching and Learning Center will house all of the university’s language-based programs under one roof.
Campus Sustainability
Clean technology integrator Ameresco, Inc. has announced a partnership with Holy Cross Energy to build a solar and battery energy storage project on land leased from the Spring Valley Campus of Colorado Mountain College, located in Glenwood Springs, Colo.
New Construction
Towson University has opened its new Science Complex. The building is a 320,000-square-foot facility—the largest academic structure on the Maryland university's campus. It features 50 classrooms, 30 research laboratories, 10 collaborative student spaces, eight lecture halls, an outdoor classroom leading to the Glen Arboretum, a rooftop greenhouse complex, a new planetarium and an observatory.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 04/12/21
Campus Facilities
In the Spirit Lake Community School District in Spirit Lake, Iowa, the school board has awarded a construction bid for a project that Superintendent Dr. David Smith says has been in the pipeline for quite some time—a “bus barn” to house the district’s school buses.
Campus Renovations
Lake Highlands High School, located in Richardson, Texas, announced this week that it has completed a campus expansion and renovation project. The work was done by Cadence McShane Construction and includes updates to multiple school facilities.
New Construction
This weekend, school leadership in Finneytown, Ohio, broke ground on a new elementary school slated to open in spring 2022. The facility will measure in at 90,000 square feet, and its $22 million price tag will be split between the Ohio Construction Commission and the Finneytown Local School District.
New Construction
The Moses Lake School Board in Moses Lake, Wash., has awarded a contract for the construction of a new high school, informally referred to as the Real World Academy. At a meeting last week, the board voted 4-1 to give the $48.9-million contract to Absher Construction Co., based out of Puyallup, Wash. The project was originally budgeted for $51 million.
COVID-19 and Schools
UV-C disinfection solutions provider INVZBL has launched a new line of products dedicated to reducing the risk of virus transmission through shared devices in K-12 schools.
Funding
K-12 professional learning provider BetterLesson announced that it will distribute $300,000 in grant money for professional development services among six K-12 school districts around the country.
Campus Renovations
The University of New Mexico, located in Albuquerque, N.M., has announced plans to renovate a former sorority house into a center for the campus ROTC program.
Campus Expansion
Upgrades to the College of Aviation at Western Michigan University’s campus in Battle Creek, Mich., are almost complete. The $20-million renovation project includes new classrooms, labs, a simulator bay, and a research center, and it takes the education aviation center from about 16,000 square feet to more than 60,000 square feet.
Campus Renovations
Western Illinois University, located in Macomb, Ill., is set to debut its Digital Rec Center (DiRC) in fall 2021. The center will play home to the university’s eSports team and offer students a space for competitive gaming, console gaming, a virtual reality station, and more.
Campus Facilities
A large concrete slab, part of the façade of Van Hise Hall on the campus of UW-Madison in Madison, Wis., fell three stories and crashed near the building’s entrance on Sunday. No injuries were reported.
Sustainability
A school district in Northern California will be adding new infrastructure to bring down the cost of recharging its electric school bus fleet. Palermo Union Elementary School District has signed with AMPLY Power, which will supply energy management intended to reduce the cost to a dime per kilowatt hour versus 19 to 39 cents/kWh under the previous charging program.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 04/07/21
Campus Sustainability
A New York school district is now generating all of its electricity needs through a 4.1-megawatt solar project. Maine-Endwell Central School District in Endwell activated its system, located on district property next to an elementary school, on March 23. It's expected to save the district more than $6.2 million in future energy costs over the course of 25 years.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 04/06/21
Campus Construction
North Carolina's Meredith College will soon resume work on a new facility to house the institution's communication and exercise and sports science programs. Construction plans had been paused in 2020 when the pandemic struck. The building will be located on the northwestern side of the school's 225-acre campus.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 04/06/21
Campus Technology
Purdue Online has recently launched a Disaster Recovery Certificate course for construction professionals. The course was developed as a means to educate workers in the construction industry on the nuances between disaster recovery work and normal construction practices.
Campus Facilities
Device sanitation solutions company iCleanse recently launched its newest product, the iCleanse Swift UV. The Swift UV serves as a chemical-free UV-C disinfection station for mobile phones and was created for a wide variety of markets including airports, retail stores, restaurants, doctors’ offices, corporate offices, higher education environments, and more.
Campus Facilities
Ball State University, located in Muncie, Ind., held a virtual ribbon cutting for its new Esports Center this week. The 3,600-square-foot facility will serve as the home of the College of Communication, Information, and Media’s new Esports program.
Campus Technology
Web security platform ContentKeeper announced this week that it’s launching a generation cloud filtering and security platform designed specifically for use in K-12 educational environments. The ContentKeeper Cloud helps teachers and administrators maintain the balance between letting students explore the Internet to access potentially valuable content and basic student security and safety.
COVID-19 and Schools
Victory Innovations, a provider of surface disinfection solutions, announced that it is expanding its yearly “Keep Kids Healthy” campaign, which launched in 2018. The company will donate electrostatic sprayers to underserved schools, and it will offer more than $10 million in product discounts to help combat the spread of COVID-19 in newly reopened educational environments.
Campus Modernization
The San Diego Unified School District has officially begun modernization projects on two of its schools: La Jolla Elementary School and John Muir Language Academy. California builders C.W. Driver Companies broke ground on both construction projects last week.
Campus Facilities
VS America, a leading provider of school and office furniture solutions, will host a webinar on Wednesday, April 14, titled “Learn How to Transform Learning Spaces Using COVID-19 Relief Funds.”
Campus Operations
Becker College, a small private college with campuses in Worcester and Leicester, Mass., announced on Monday that it will shut down at the end of the academic year. The college’s permanent closure is due to financial difficulties exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Campus Renovations
The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pa., is in the process of revamping its outdated biomedical library into what a press release calls “an open center for cross-disciplinary learning, prototyping, and collaboration.” The university is working with Voith and Mactavish Architects LLP (VMA) to finish the renovations by June 2021 and open the building to students for the fall 2021 academic semester.
Campus Technology
vFairs, a hybrid and virtual event platform, will be offering its services to public schools, colleges, and universities as the second graduation season of the COVID-19 pandemic draws closer.
COVID-19 and Schools
A news release from CatchOn, a data analytics and application monitoring solution used by K-12 schools, reveals that digital engagement among students has increased during the pandemic. A comprehensive data analysis suggests that even if districts saw a sharp dip during the beginning of remote learning, the level of engagement has since spiked above normal, pre-pandemic standards.
Campus Technology
An upstate New York public school recently saw a major upgrade to its AV capabilities through a partnership with Ashly Audio and Advance Sound Company. Stissing Mountain Junior/Senior High School of the Pine Plains Central School District in Pine Plains, N.Y., updated its suite of audio amplification and control solutions to serve not just the school’s students and faculty, but the wider community.
Transportation
Two Illinois public school districts recently purchased electric school buses from Georgia-based bus manufacturer Blue Bird Corporation. These buses are both the first operational electric school buses in the state, as well as the first commercial application of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology in the country.
University Research
Solar panel arrays that cover canals and other waterways—also known as floating solar farms—have become an increasingly intriguing possibility as sustainable energy practices gain momentum. Researchers from the University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland, and Lancaster University in Lancashire, England, have finished the first detailed model of floating solar installations’ environmental effects on the bodies of water they cover.
Sustainability
The Batesville School District in Batesville, Ark., isn’t the first school district to save money on utilities by switching to solar power. It may, however, be the among the first to pass those savings directly to teachers.
Clean Air
During the COVID-19 pandemic, air purifiers are growing in popularity as a method of cleansing interior spaces of the airborne SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, a new study from Colorado State University has revealed some of the unintended consequences of some of these devices.
School Facilities
A career and technical high school in New Jersey has added new professional recording gear to one of its teaching spaces. County Prep High School, part of Hudson County Schools of Technology, added hardware from Solid State Logic (SSL), a UK-based company that manufactures analog and digital audio consoles for music and audio production. Students in the music and audio technology program learn how to write their own songs and produce their own music.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 03/29/21
Campus Renovations
After four years of discussions and stakeholder input, a high school in Pennsylvania is undertaking a $24.4 million project to improve its accessibility. Radnor High School, part of Radnor Township School District, recently received board approval to begin its "accessibility and wellness infrastructure project." The money will come from a capital reserve fund.
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 03/29/21
School Construction
Construction on the new Wilkes-Barre Area High School in Plains Township, Pa., is nearing completion. The district plans to merge its three high schools into the new building upon its opening, which could force as many as 37 teachers to be furloughed.