The American Infrastructure and Capital Planning Study: Education: Consumers unwilling to fund aging school infrastructure
New survey data from Brightly Software highlights Americans’ perceptions of public K-12 school infrastructure and reveals capital planning opportunities
It’s summer vacation time, and budgetary conversations for the 2024-2025 school year are in full swing.
As external stressors such as weather events, extreme heat, power outages and more increase in severity and volume, the impact of facilities planning and sustainability efforts are becoming more important to support aging school buildings across the country.
So, what do Americans think about these challenges?
To better understand current opinions on the state of infrastructure and assets in education, we polled 1,000 general U.S.-based consumers. The data found that the majority don’t believe their local public K-12 schools have the funding needed to repair (59%) or replace (66%) aging school infrastructure, but only 42% believe that schools should prioritize getting more money and funding.
Let’s dive deeper into the data.
Examining the findings
- 1 in 5 respondents graded their local public K-12 schools building conditions and infrastructure a “C”.
Despite the good to average ratings from respondents, which far surpasses the ASCE 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure rating of D+, only half (51%) believe their local school district knows the age and condition of facilities. Similarly, only 38% were confident that air systems, HVACs and air conditioning in their local schools were safe and up to date.
The ASCE Infrastructure Report card notes 4 in 10 schools do not have a long-term facility plan to address operations and maintenance, so some of this concern is warranted. Technology can be a solution to help facilities managers within schools audit and identify the health of their entire asset portfolio, which also offers data to better communicate with area residents.
- 78% of respondents don’t feel confident their schools are energy efficient, and 55% don’t know if their local schools have a sustainability program in place at all.
With the threat of extreme weather events, sustainability and climate change are an ongoing part of national and global conversations. Much of the built environment - especially prominent facilities like community schools - can do their part to cut emissions and carbon output. According to the data, respondents don’t feel confident about their local schools’ energy efficiency and don’t know if the schools have sustainability programs in place.
However, 53% of respondents believe their local town or city governments should prioritize infrastructure improvements over sustainability initiatives.
This is likely not a surprise as the nation faces a crisis of crumbling infrastructure closing schools or disrupting classes. Take, for example, these recent stories in Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Texas of closed schools or interrupted learning due to weather events. Despite respondents’ view of infrastructure health, 56% are somewhat confident their local schools could manage a natural disaster.
Almost half (46%) of respondents believe the quality of facilities is an important decision when evaluating district quality, and 44% would consider alternative education options due to the condition of a school’s infrastructure, meaning overall asset health and infrastructure condition play a role in how local citizens view the quality of education.
- 61% don’t believe their local town or city has a long-term facilities plan in pace to maintain and upgrade infrastructure; 64% aren’t confident their local schools have data needed to make informed decisions about upgrades.
Consumer confidence is low about their local town or city’s ability to capture data or enact long-term plans about asset upgrades. While the public acknowledges facilities need repairs and improvements, they also acknowledge that schools don’t have the necessary funding, but don’t want to provide that funding through tax dollars.
When combined with their low confidence about funding, and the reluctance to provide that funding, the data highlights the need for local community governments to stretch their dollars further, optimize budgeting for short- and long-term asset maintenance and find creatives ways to accomplish more with less.
What does this mean?
Capital planning enables proactive budgeting and long-term forecasting, supporting educational institutions in anticipating and planning for construction projects, infrastructure improvements or asset replacements. Having the right technology and methodology in place brings data and insights together in one place to inform budgeting discussions and decisions, directing the right funds towards essential projects at the right time.
What’s next?
Education infrastructure will continue to degrade unless properly addressed, but as the data shows, budget and resources remain a concern. From a budgeting perspective, asset investment planning (AIP) helps schools optimize asset investments to achieve maximum value and efficiency. It supports better planning and understanding of the costs associated with operation and maintenance, allows for better data-driven decisions and unified finance and facilities data.
Learn more about what actionable next steps education facilities managers can take today on the path towards asset investment planning.
Methodology: This survey was conducted via Dynata and polled 1,000 general U.S.-based consumers over 18 years of age in April 2024. Respondents were segmented and analyzed across age groups, gender, marital status, having children and household income.
