AEC Industry Advocacy and Action

Lawrence, KS is faced with the possibility of closing several of our neighborhood schools. These are facilities that as a community we've invested millions of dollars in over the last decade to create better learning environments for our kids while also reducing their operational impacts on the planet. For any AEC industry professional, watching a community's dreams surrounding a project cut short before they've had a chance to be fully realized, with so many stories of sustainability and occupant success never getting a chance to be told, is demoralizing. For me, contemplating our own community's limited options at this point and the resulting outcomes, is deflating to say the least.

I was part of Lawrence's save our neighborhood schools effort that manifested over a decade ago when the district was faced with closing schools as a result of society's general undervaluing of public education, Kansas's specific history of underfunding public education, and the Great Recession. I then served on the subsequent community task force charged by the school board with formulating various scenarios to keep our neighborhood schools open, and the justifications for doing so.

Lawrencians and the school board at the time recognized the importance of our neighborhood schools for successful learning and strengthening our community. A plan for saving the vast majority of the schools was approved by the board, but with the caveat that these facilities would need to be improved through a bond effort. Many suffered from decades of deferred maintenance and effort was needed to create learning environments that would better support the thriving of students and educators.

I was one of the consultants who helped plan for the first bond, and as a community member I advocated for its passage (and to be clear, while BranchPattern was paid to help plan for it, we have not been involved in any of the subsequent bond work itself and so had no financial incentive for the passage of these bonds). Lawrence recognized the importance of making these much needed improvements to keep our neighborhood schools open and subsequently passed the bond. Later, as a school board member on the facilities committee, I helped oversee bond implementation. As board president, I helped the district advocate for the passage of the second bond (some of the results of which we're just now seeing).

These facilities, many with rich histories in our community, are now healthier and more effective places to learn and teach within; they're also more sustainable with lower EUIs (though more work is needed to further improve IEQ and reduce district operational emissions). The improvements have also contributed to the district's relative success in minimizing in-school SARS-CoV-2 transmission and keeping our schools open during the Delta and Omicron waves. But after a) the last decade of continued underfunding, b) increasing attacks from legislative conservative members and two Republican governors, c) inadequate time to financially recover after the Gannon ruling, and d) the negative impacts of the pandemic (financial and otherwise), our district is in a worse financial situation than it was a decade ago. And this time we'll unlikely avoid a more drastic combination of school closures and program/staff elimination.

As much of a gut punch this may feel to me and other community members who invested in the effort to save and renovate our neighborhood schools, it will be far more devastating to our students, their families, our educators, their neighborhoods, and our community as a whole. Not surprisingly, our black and brown families, and those with the least resources and power, will be negatively impacted the most. Much of what will be undone was intended to address some of these inequities.

Community members have again stepped up to advocated for our neighborhood schools and offer the district help in formulating solutions. But short of one time funds that might allow the district to limp through to next year without taking as drastic a course of action, there is no option I'm aware of at this point to prevent a painful elimination of programs/staff and/or school closure. Not surprisingly this has also created more conflict within the community, and that conflict will likely increase as we painfully work through this. It has also distracted the district from equitably educating our students, implementing other initiatives, and dealing with the pandemic as effectively as it could. What's worse, these are all intended outcomes of anti-public education activists and many Kansas Republican legislative members.

Starving districts of needed resources leads to conflicts at the local level as we debate and argue how to use the inadequate funding and what to cut or close. That effort to address the lack of resources at the local level and the resulting conflict distract us from what's going on in the Kansas legislature. Starving districts of resources along with other attacks (critical race theory, book banning, addressing the needs of transgender students, mask mandates, etc.) can lead to educators leaving a district or the profession overall, families pulling their students from districts, and poorer learning outcomes, which are then used to justify siphoning off public dollars for private schools. Such conditions act as a barrier to the construction, renovation, and/or operation of sustainable, healthy facilities. While I'm describing Kansas's situation, similar stories can be found in other states.

I've made similar appeals to the AEC industry before, but will do so again here. If you want to make schools (or the built environment in general) greener, more equitable, resilient and regenerative, if you want to build off of the awareness generated by the pandemic to improve IAQ/IEQ, if you want to improve building codes and standards, if you want to improve the environments that our kids spend so much of their time within, if you want thriving communities with walkable, neighborhood schools, then you must do a significantly better job advocating for it. You're going to have to do a better job fighting for it. You're going to have to get political and help put districts and their communities in a better position for doing these things. Politics and governing are intertwined, and the collective action and decision-making needed to achieve the above desired goals hinges on both.

As businesses, as professional organizations or industry alliances, as individuals, we must work with and support politicians, officials, and organizations who share these same goals. We must visibly and vocally stand up to those who are actively working (even indirectly) against these goals. Maybe that support is financial or it involves working on someone's campaign. Maybe it's speaking out at school board meetings, city/county commission meetings, or engaging with your state and federal representatives. Maybe it's writing opinion pieces for newspapers or industry publications. Maybe it's taking a definitive, public stance on a specific issue as a business or professional organization. Maybe it's refusing work not aligned with these goals or refusing membership to those actively working against said goals. Maybe it's getting involved with other advocacy groups (there are many) or exploring methods to generate prosocial collective action at multiple scales.

Maybe it's just being brave enough to have a one-on-one conversation with someone. Or maybe it's actually running for office ourselves. And not just the city, state, or federal offices everyone thinks of, but also school board, precinct committeeperson, water district, or others. And be willing to serve on a local or state appointed body of which there are a multitude of options, from planning commission to housing authority boards.

If we don't step up, advocate, and take action, then sustainable, regenerative, healthy schools (and other environments) will be that much harder to achieve. And we'll more easily lose any ground that we've previously gained, as may be the case for the Lawrence, KS school district.