When Johnston Mayor Joseph M. Polisena visits the town’s high school, it’s a bit like taking a step into the past – and not just because he’s an alumnus.
Structurally, little has changed within the building, says Polisena, a 1972 Johnston High School graduate.
“Nothing has been done since it was brand-new when I entered the school 54 years ago,” he said.
And at other schools in Johnston, the situation is even worse. One of the town’s four elementary schools, Thornton, was built more than a century ago. The aging buildings are costing the town.
“Our schools are in desperate need of repairs. … Between energy and maintenance, we’re putting a lot of good money into bad money,” Polisena said.
That’s not an unusual predicament in Rhode Island, says Victor Mercurio, an associate professor of education at Johnson & Wales University. The resulting damage extends beyond municipal finances.
“Many, many buildings that we use to support teaching and learning are at the end of their lives,” Mercurio said. “Many buildings being used are 50 years or older, and needless to say, the context under which we are trying to engage students is very different.”
Johnston leaders knew it was time for a change, and earlier this year, town voters approved a $215 million bond to consolidate the town’s four existing elementary schools into one new, modernized building, in addition to making improvements to the middle school and high school.
Provided that the town follows state rules and regulations, the state will reimburse up to 56 cents per dollar spent on the projects, Polisena says.
To attain this reimbursement, Johnston applied for a bond through a Rhode Island Health and Educational Building Corp. program dedicated to providing bonds for new school construction and renovations.
Johnston isn’t alone in jumping on this subsidized bond opportunity – in fact, it’s one of the last communities in the state to make use of the RIHEBC bonds. With Johnston taking on a bond, only New Shoreham has yet to make use of the program.
In another recent project, East Providence took out a $124 million bond to construct a new high school as part of a project costing $190 million overall. The former high school building was 70 years old.
RIHEBC, a quasi-public agency designed to provide institutions cost-effective access to capital through tax-exempt bond issues, began running the school program in 2006, after the General Assembly passed legislation requiring the corporation to issue bonds specifically for school construction projects while at the same time making these projects eligible for state aid to subsidize bond services.
Since its launching, the program has issued more than $2 billion in bonds for school construction projects across approximately 75 projects, which ranged in scope from renovations to the construction of new buildings, said Kimberly W. Mooers, RIHEBC executive director.
Market conditions have varied considerably since the program launched over 15 years ago, Mooers says, but typically, municipalities save about 2% on taxable interest rates. That works out to roughly $40 million per year in total savings for schools in the state, she says.
The state will reimburse about 37.8% of $100 million awarded to a district, Mooers says, depending on how the bonds sell, creating a “robust” demand for the program.
“The interest rates do go up, but you kind of have to look at the bigger picture,” Mooers said. “The interest rates go up in the taxable world too, so there’s always going to be that favorable rate between taxable rates and tax exempts.”
Municipalities and school districts have more than just financial savings to consider when renovating old buildings or constructing new schools, Mercurio says.
When working in aging buildings, teachers end up trying to support modern, digitized learning in structures that don’t support needed technology, Mercurio says.
“When buildings were constructed in the early ’70s, [school districts] didn’t contemplate how computers would take over the world,” Mercurio said. “They didn’t contemplate many of the things that we take for granted that are in schools now.”
Older buildings were also designed in keeping with outdated practices, he adds, such as separating students with individualized educational plans and other special needs from their peers. The issue extends nationwide, Mercurio says.
The need for the bond program is greater than it has ever been, Mercurio says, with the COVID-19 pandemic further exposing issues such as the lack of up-to-date technology and heating and ventilation systems in schools.
But while the RIHEBC program provides clear guidelines for the state’s school districts to seek a bond issue, Mercurio says, the process of obtaining one isn’t easy: District leaders need to do extensive work to maximize every dollar within reach and “engage in the very political process of trying to get a bond approved for the community.”
School leaders are confronting “profound questions” about the future direction of education and student needs, which they can’t predict with certainty, Mercurio says.
“These are once-in-a-generation decisions,” Mercurio said, “and while schools and districts do a very good job of trying to gain as much information as they can about the current reality and where the work is headed, we simply don’t know what we don’t know. ... A lot of it is looking out into a future that hasn’t materialized yet.”
