Climate-Resilient California Schools: A Call to Action
Amid fires, wildfire smoke, extreme heat, and other climate-driven disasters and health hazards, California’s leading experts in children’s health and education have come together to call for a cost-effective, ten year $150 billion investment to ensure K-12 public schools can remain open and provide safe and healthy places for California’s children to learn and grow….
Gauging Good Stewardship: Is California Adequately and Equitably Investing in its Public School Facilities?
Public school districts across California struggle to upkeep and modernize their school facilities. For many districts, aging inventory, coupled with limited capital funding opportunities, has led to school facilities with ballooning deferred maintenance problems and classrooms that do not appropriately support modern instructional practices. These realities also work against California’s priorities for high quality, equitable…
Planning for Resilient Early Care and Education: Addressing Climate Vulnerabilities
Children born today will bear the brunt of the burden of climate change despite having the least responsibility for causing it. Growing calls to position climate change as a child’s rights crisis are rooted in research on the unique physical and mental health impacts that high temperatures, poor air quality, and stress associated with living…
New National Initiative: Planning for Pk-12 Infrastructure: Adequate Public School Facilities for All Children
CC+S is partnering with the 21st Century School Fund, The Center for Green Schools, and the National Council on School Facilities to address the structural problems of inequitable and inadequate school facilities found in too many communities across the U.S.
Joint Use School Partnerships in California: Strategies to Enhance Schools and Communities
While successful joint use partnerships can be found across California and the country, lack of information, guidance, and best practices keep many localities from pursuing this collaborative strategy. CC&S partnered with Public Health Law and Policy (PHLP) to conduct initial research on joint use school facility partnerships in California. Our report looks at joint use…
San Francisco’s Public School Facilities as Public Assets: A Shared Understanding and Policy Recommendations for Community Use of Schools
This report presents research findings and policy recommendations from a year-long process involving a diverse stakeholder group to establish a more effective “joint use” strategy in San Francisco that supports students, families, schools and communities. The report includes: a) detailed descriptions and diagrams of current SFUSD facility policies and processes; b) findings on current utilization,…
Small Districts, Big Problems: Understanding Barriers to Planning And Funding School Facilities In California’s Rural and Small Public School Districts
In 2017, the California Department of Education (CDE) announced the “Small School District Assistance Initiative,” aimed at providing targeted assistance to small and rural school districts in the state. To aid CDE’s efforts, this study investigates the facility challenges and issues facing rural and small school districts in California. We utilize a mixed method approach to understand the capital investment…
Ad-Hoc Coalition for Healthy School Siting Recommendations to the California Department of Education
CC+S partnered with the Local Government Commission and other members of the Ad-Hoc Coalition for Healthy School Siting to provide school facility planning and design policy recommendations to the California Department of Education (CDE). The Ad-Hoc Coalition for Healthy School Siting is a group of five entities across California that have analyzed research and policies…
How Well Do New K-12 Public School Sites in California Incorporate Mitigation Measures Known to Reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled?
Problem Statement: To support its policy goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in recent years, California has enacted land use and transportation policies aimed at reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT). One of these new policies, Senate Bill (SB) 743 (Steinberg, 2013), requires lead agencies to measure development impacts on VMT and identify feasible mitigation…
Transportation Access and Equity in San Francisco Unified School District: A Route to Success
A research report on the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) student assignment policy, which was designed to help with school choice to reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school, and to provide equitable access to programs offered in the district.
Public Schools as Public Infrastructure: Roles for Planning Researchers
Our nation’s public schools are important elements of public social and physical infrastructure. The quality of cities depends on the quality of schools.
Joint Use of Public Schools: A Framework for Promoting Healthy Communities
Despite the growing interest in expanding the joint use of K–12 public schools by public health and planning practitioners to promote healthy, sustainable communities, the topic has received little attention in the urban planning and public health scholarship. The objective of this article is to situate joint use in the academic literature focused on the…
Adequate & Equitable U.S. PK-12 Infrastructure: Priority Actions for Systemic Reform
A joint report from the Center for Cities + Schools, 21st Century School Fund, Center for Green Schools, and National Council on School Facilities Our country’s elementary and secondary (PK–12) public school infrastructure is in crisis. Every day, millions of children in the U.S. attend public school in unhealthy, unsafe, educationally inadequate, environmentally unsustainable, and…
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