School Districts Receive $32 Million in Grants to Improve Facilities
Grants from Department of Education's School Infrastructure Program to Help Improve Facilities and Address Energy Needs

Education departments in several states received grants to improve facilities.

A FacilitiesNet article reported that education departments in Alabama, Arizona, California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and the Northern Mariana Islands received more than $32 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Supporting America’s School Infrastructure grant program. The funding is designed to assist school districts in improving their facilities by addressing energy needs.

The article stated that according to the U.S. Department of Energy, K-12 school districts spend $8 billion annually on energy costs. Aging facilities combined with limited school budgets can result in deferred maintenance of facilities improvements, resulting in nearly $270 billion needed for infrastructure repairs.

In a recent episode of the Facility Voices Podcast, Diana Ferrer-Schwartz, Chief Administrative Officer at the New York City Department of Education Division of School Facilities, discussed the challenges and initiatives shaping the facilities landscape, including the availability of funding.

Schools can use clean energy tax credits for qualifying projects or investments, such as the investment tax credit, production tax credit, commercial clean vehicle credits, and alternative fuel vehicle refueling property credits. School districts can utilize the credits in combination with grants and loans to reduce the cost of improvement projects. Projects that can be supported by the tax credits include geothermal systems to heat campuses and community buildings, solar panels on school roofs to provide electricity, and microgrids with solar and energy storage to support facilities during grid outages. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department also said schools can channel these credits toward buying electric school buses or other clean energy vehicles and charging equipment.

The availability of these funds comes at a perfect time given our aging schools, aging facility equipment, and deferred maintenance. Feel free to share this post with friends and colleagues from the states mentioned in this article.

One of the most efficient ways to stay ahead of facility maintenance in the field is by using your mobile device to conduct real-time updates, minimizing the need for Facility Condition Assessments, addressed in Maximizing Operational Performance with FCAs, a blog from ARC Facilities.

Read the article from FacilitiesNet here.