Fight over school funding in Arizona headed to court

A public advocacy group is accusing the Arizona State Legislature of failing to fund its fair share of public school construction costs.

The matter is likely to be settled in court. The Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest says the legislature is ignoring a 1994 ruling by the state Supreme Court that found it illegal to have taxpayers in each school district solely responsible for school construction. The court said that disparities between each district’s ability to raise taxpayer funds for school construction were too great.

The organization is working with local school districts to ask Arizona judges to force lawmakers to properly fund the system. In 1996, the legislature agreed to put $100 million into a special fund that could be tapped by poor districts for construction needs. It also agreed to provide another $30 million a year for nine more years.

The Supreme Court found that plan did not satisfy the constitutional requirement for a "general and uniform'' school system.

LPA Architects conducted a post-occupancy evaluation, or POE, of the eSTEM Academy, a new high school specializing in health/medical and design/engineering Career Technical Education, in Eastvale, Calif. The POE helped LPA, the Riverside County Office of Education, and the Corona-Norco Unified School District gain a better understanding of which design innovations—such as movable walls, flex furniture, collaborative spaces, indoor-outdoor activity areas, and a student union—enhanced the education program, and how well students and teachers used these innovations.

Resiliency | Jun 24, 2021

Oceanographer John Englander talks resiliency and buildings [new on HorizonTV]

New on HorizonTV, oceanographer John Englander discusses his latest book, which warns that, regardless of resilience efforts, sea levels will rise by meters in the coming decades. Adaptation, he says, is the key to future building design and construction.

A rendering of a new school campus with flexible indoor-outdoor teaching spaces

K-12 Schools | Jun 20, 2021

Los Angeles County issues design guidelines for extending PreK-12 learning to the outdoors

The report covers everything from funding and site prep recommendations to whether large rocks can be used as seating.

Exterior rendering of mass-timber TimberQuest school building

Wood | Jun 10, 2021

Three AEC firms launch a mass timber product for quicker school construction

TimberQuest brand seeks to avoid overinvestment in production that has plagued other CLT providers.

Multifamily Housing | Jun 3, 2021

Student Housing Trends 2021-2022

In this exclusive video interview for HorizonTV, Fred Pierce, CEO of Pierce Education Properties, developer and manager of off-campus student residences, chats with Rob Cassidy, Editor, MULTIFAMILY Design + Construction about student housing during the pandemic and what to expect for on-campus and off-campus housing in Fall 2021 and into 2022.