DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Some men get buildings named after them; others, streets. Ron Hillyer is getting a hallway. Such tributes are often reserved for the dead or the famous. Hillyer is neither. He is a former D.C. school custodian, a man whose job involved scrubbing waste off a playground at one school and discarding the burnt bottle caps of drug users at another.
Yet when Hillyer retired this year, ending a 32-year career with the system, Janney Elementary School realized that it was losing more than just the man who kept the terrazzo tiles clean. It was losing its talent show emcee, its guide for the Halloween walk through the building's scary underbelly, its mock Civil War soldier who, with little prodding, would show up dressed in full uniform, ready to talk about the roles that African Americans played during the war.

VIRGINIA: Loudoun County's 79 public schools, among them two new high schools and the county's first modern two-story elementary school, will open their doors to students Tuesday, Sept. 7.
Tuscarora High School in Leesburg will open as the largest high school ever constructed in the county, with space for 1,800 students, exceeding the previous high school design by approximately 200 seats.
In Purcellville, the opening of Woodgrove High School will mark the end of more than a decade of wrangling between the town, School Board and county supervisors over the location of the school. It will be the first new high school to open in western Loudoun in 48 years.
In the South Riding area, Buffalo Trail Elementary School will feature the first modern two-story design for elementary schools in the county.

WEST VIRGINIA: The decision to keep the swings has gone back and forth. Now, Cabell County Schools along with the West Virginia Department of Education's Office discovered that section 205 of the West Virginia Board of Education Policy 6200 states that swings are required at elementary schools with Kindergarten programs.
The biggest issue ahead of Cabell County Schools now is the surface. The surface must extend and least double the amount of feet on both sides of the swing, and the mulch must be nine inches deep. Superintendent Bill Smith says "you may think you put them in at the beginning of the school year and when a rain comes, 8.5 inches is not 9 inches. That's how specific it gets when it gets into legal issues."
Smith will meet with State Senator Evan Jenkins to discuss what can be done to limit lawsuits in the future if children are injured as a result of the swing sets.

WEST VIRGINIA: A state lawmaker is asking Cabell County Schools Superintendent William Smith to suspend the removal of swing sets from all elementary school playgrounds until he can bring involved parties to the table. Swings are scheduled to be removed from the 17 schools that have them by late December because of recent lawsuits and costs associated with meeting national standards for playground safety.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission sets playground safety guidelines. The current guidelines for swings require a protective layer of sand, pea gravel, wood mulch, wood chips or recycled rubber that equals twice the height of the swing in each direction. That means if a swing is 7 feet long, a layer of ground material is required 14 feet in front and 14 feet in the back. The safety standards also call for a depth of at least 9 inches.
Cabell County uses wood mulch on its playgrounds, but it is biodegradable and washes away when it rains, said Tim Stewart, safety manager for Cabell County Schools. That makes it difficult to comply with national safety standards, he said. The only other viable alternative is recycled rubber, but it has raised toxicity questions among parents across the country and is more expensive than wood mulch, Stewart said. He estimates it would cost about $8,000 to cover the ground around each of the 36 swing sets. That's a total of $288,000, a cost that would have to be repeated at least every seven years, he said.

MARYLAND: Summer may be over, but students at Sidwell Friends Lower School in Bethesda will be still playing, and learning, using the power of the sun. The school teamed with Common Cents Solar to install 120 solar panels on the roof of the gymnasium funded entirely by $5,000 "solar bonds" bought by 25 shareholders, mainly parents and community members.
The bond program creates a new approach to financing large-scale solar installations by taking the burden of cost away from the school, said Kirk Renaud, general manger of Common Cents Solar, a Bethesda nonprofit co-op that promotes solar initiatives through community collaboration and education.

Solar installations help save money for private and public schools. The system will cover half of the gym's energy needs and save the school $4,000 annually in electricity costs, Renaud said. Sidwell Friends had an electric bill of about $450,000 last school year for all campuses. Solar panels save the Montgomery County Public School system about $30,000 annually because unused electricity generated by rooftop panels receives a credit from Pepco that is taken off the bill. In fiscal 2010, the school system spent about $27 million to power its more than 200 buildings, spokesman Dana Tofig said in an email.

Eight Montgomery County Public Schools have rooftop solar panel systems that are used to save money and create clean energy, said Sean Gallagher, assistant director in the school system's department of facilities management. Schools pay to use solar electricity generated by panels installed by SunEdison solar company, which is based out of Beltsville. Solar panels are installed based on the size and age of the building's roof, Gallagher said.
About 500 solar panels will be installed on the roof of the upgraded Carderock Springs Elementary School in Bethesda this fall, Gallagher said. Not all modernized schools are able to get solar panels because stormwater management laws may require a vegetated roof to be installed instead. Additionally, eight other county schools have one or two solar panels on their roof paid for by grants or fundraising efforts, and are used primarily to demonstrate the technology to students, Gallagher said.

The $200,000 system at Sidwell Friends was purchased by a group of shareholders who will make their money back over a 10-year period using funds the school would normally pay to Pepco in their electric bill, said Michael Saxenian, assistant head of Sidwell Friends School, a private school with campuses in Bethesda and Washington, D.C. "We're very excited not just for the potential to reduce our environmental footprint but also to demonstrate a model that might help others do the same," Saxenian said. The shareholders should make a 3 percent return on their investment, Renaud said. Several people bought more then one bond, and the solar panels should be operational next week.

Solar panels provide a tangible way to teach the concept of harnessing energy to young children, said Sidwell Friends science teacher Sam Francis. Students at the Lower School will be able to view the energy production of their solar panels using monitors installed inside the school, and Francis plans to incorporate it into the science curriculum. In addition to the economic and environmental gains, the solar installation is also a way to bringing the community together to make a difference, said Ketch Ryan, sewing teacher at Sidwell Friends Lower School and co-founder of Common Cents Solar, who spearheaded the collaboration.

NEW YORK: About 17,000 thousand students will walk into brand new classrooms next week, and city officials say it is the most new space the School Construction Authority has ever opened in a single year since it was created in 1988. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said he could not be happier. "There are colleagues of mine, they don't see 30 buildings in the course of a lifetime, and we are seeing that basically this year in New York City," said Klein.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the construction at the new Mott Haven Educational Campus. It is the largest single project funded by the city's $13 billion school capital plan. The building covers nine acres of land, cost $250 million and will house 2,300 students in five different schools. Bloomberg said it is the largest public school project in modern memory. "Before we began construction here, this site, which had at one time been used as a commuter rail yard, had been vacant for close to 50 years," said Bloomberg. "So this striking new campus really symbolizes the revival of the South Bronx." The school includes a state-of-the-art, 600-seat performing arts center and a regulation-size football field includes lighting and scoreboard facilities.

Although Mott Haven is the largest, it's hardly the only new building this year. Other major sites include Eagle Academy High School in the Bronx, PS/IS 276 in Manhattan, Cypress Hills Community School in Brooklyn, the New York Harbor School on Governors Island, and the Metropolitan Educational Campus, Gateways to Health Sciences Secondary School in Queens. Construction at the Bronx campus was delayed over concerns that the site had high levels of toxins, and the city spent tens of thousands of dollars to address the problem. Officials and community groups came together to say the campus is safe and almost ready for classes to be begin.

Despite all the new seats, though, schools are still overcrowded in many neighborhoods. A report by the Independent Budget Office last month found half of high school students attended overcrowded schools last year. That is down 15 percent, thanks to the capital plan construction, but is still an ongoing problem.

MICHIGAN: The Flint school district will apply for a Qualified School Construction Bond worth $15 million after the board of education authorized the move. The funds would be repaid over three years using revenues from the sinking fund millage that voters approved last month. The bonds have spending restrictions similar to sinking funds, limiting usage to building and site repairs and improvements.
District Chief Financial Officer Andrea Derricks said Qualified School Construction Bonds, which are subsidized by federal stimulus funds, were distributed during the last school year. Some districts didn't spend all the money they were allocated before a July 30 deadline, resulting in about $90 million in remaining funds, according to Derricks. "They're considering reopening that process and reallocating that $90 million," Derricks said. She said the bond would allow more immediate usage of sinking fund money the district is set to receive in the coming years. "We would get $15 million within six months to hit the buildings hard and fast," she said. Derricks said the first expenditures would go toward energy efficiency improvements that would save the district more money.