USGBC Releases State of Our Schools Report

Washington, DC, March 12, 2013--The Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) released its first State of Our Schools report, highlighting the critical need to modernize facilities to meet current health, safety and educational standards. 

The report, featuring a foreword by former President Bill Clinton, states that schools are currently facing a $271 billion deferred maintenance bill just to bring the buildings up to working order. This breaks down to approximately $5,450 per student. 

The last comprehensive report on America's school facilities was conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 1995 and indicated that 15,000 U.S. schools were circulating air that at the time was deemed unfit to breathe.

The USGBC report calls on the GAO to conduct an updated survey on the condition of America's schools in order to paint a more complete picture of the scale and scope of today's needs.

The USGBC report also estimates that the cost to both bring schools into good repair and address modernization needs is $542 billion over the next ten years for pre-K-12 school buildings. Approximately 50 million students attend the nearly 100,000 public elementary and secondary schools in the U.S.