Older brick public school building in Portland, Oregon Zachary Keimig via Unsplash
The average U.S. public school building is 49 years old, and many are due for renovations and infrastructure upgrades.

Grades are ingrained in the culture of U.S. schools. And with the new school year about to crank up, students will receive them every day, with varying results.

But once every four years, the script is flipped when ASCE issues its Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, a report whose categories include public schools. Unfortunately, those grades have been low and unvaried: 2025’s D+ was a repeat of 2021 and 2017 – after three consecutive Ds in 2013, 2009, and 2005.

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Those championing improvement point to the need for increased funding. Some of those advocates expressed optimism during an ASCE webinar about the sector’s performance and future.

One participant noted that infrastructure decision-makers should strive to make schools follow the lead of ports, which were the star of the 2025 report card.

“I think that there is absolutely a path forward so that by 2050, we can be at a B,” said Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund and one of the consortium leaders of the National Center on School Infrastructure. “I’d like to be at a B+, but I was noticing ports are at a B already. We should have schools as good as our ports, right?”

She laid out a path to get there.

“We have to think that we deserve and are capable of having modern schools in all of our communities by 2050,” said Filardo, who has dedicated more than 30 years of her career to improving public education infrastructure. “If we think we can’t do it, if we don’t care about it, if we don’t have that vision, believe me, it’s not going to happen. So, I think we need to be really clear that this is something that our kids deserve, our communities need, and we should be able to deliver.”

Critical needs must be addressed

The 2025 report card notes a massive and growing funding gap to reach a state of good repair for U.S. public schools. That gap reached $85 billion in 2021.

And the needs are critical and expensive, including lead removal from water systems and the installation of cooling systems. The report card cited a report noting that rising temperatures mean that nearly 14,000 schools that did not need HVAC systems in 1970 now do.

During the webinar, retired engineer Greg DiLoreto, P.E., P.L.S., BC.WRE (Ret.), Pres.13.ASCE, recalled growing up in Portland, Oregon, and never needing air conditioning.

“That’s since changed,” said DiLoreto, who is on the committee that writes ASCE’s infrastructure report card. “All new school facilities in Portland are air conditioned, and the district’s going through a program of retrofitting old buildings. And where you had school closures for snow, we’re now seeing school closures for heat.”

The report card noted that the average age of main instructional buildings in U.S. public schools is 49 years, meaning many schools are due for renovations. The falling U.S. birthrate, though, means some schools are underpopulated and targeted for closures. Conversely, fast-growing school districts are overpopulated.

A lack of data complicates the process of assessing school infrastructure. When the ASCE Oregon Section issued its 2025 state report card, it assigned schools an incomplete grade.

Filardo said it’s important to recognize what a massive undertaking it is to build and maintain U.S. public schools, noting the 8.3 billion square feet of building space for K-12 facilities.

“That’s a lot of roofs, that’s a lot of boilers, that’s a lot of chillers, that’s a lot of doors and windows,” she said. “So it’s a very big piece of infrastructure.”

Ally Talcott, executive director of the Build America’s School Infrastructure Coalition, has seen firsthand that ASCE’s infrastructure report card “does actually resonate with Congress.” However, she explained that awareness must translate into legislative action.

“We are not talking about curriculum or educator support or all of the other things that traditionally fall within an education-sector-specific bucket,” Talcott said. “We are talking about fundamentally an infrastructure sector. School buildings and grounds are brick and mortar, and they should be treated like the other 17 categories in ASCE’s report.”

Talcott emphasized that treating public school facilities as a core infrastructure sector requires establishing a dedicated federal funding stream and sustained support from Congress, explaining that without ongoing federal investment, under-resourced districts will continue to carry this burden alone.

Filardo said funding for school infrastructure has risen of late, but the process is complicated by many outside factors, including politics, changing weather patterns, and more.

“We must strengthen district-level capital planning for climate resilience and modern building codes,” DiLoreto added. “We must use life-cycle cost analysis to optimize total project costs. It’s been noted that long-term maintenance can be twice the cost of initial construction. And we must establish predictable, equitable funding for school infrastructure.”

How do we get there?

Filardo said getting better value for infrastructure dollars is critical to closing the funding gap. That means improving management and labor practices for operations, maintenance, and repairs. Having multiple state agencies involved in the decision-making process also complicates projects.

Schools are also notorious for piecemeal work, Filardo said. Often, a school will make an upgrade while ignoring other issues.

“We have to do more comprehensive projects,” she said. “It doesn’t mean you have to do them all at one time, but you have to plan them and work to do as much as you can at one time.”

Bill Bradley, Ph.D., AIA, a principal and practice leader for education at Stantec, said public-private partnerships can help keep costs down for school infrastructure. He cited P3 success stories in Philadelphia and Prince George’s County, Maryland. Under this model, a school board partners with a private consortium to deliver some or all aspects of a school’s design, construction, financing, and maintenance.

Bradley emphasized that it is imperative that we meet students’ basic needs while on school grounds. Students who are enduring a leaky roof or sweltering because of a malfunctioning (or nonexistent) air-conditioning system cannot focus on academics. Every student, he said, should be seen and known.

“Our students are our most vulnerable population, and they’re solely reliant on us to provide them not with just adequate but aspirational facilities in which to learn and grow,” he said. “The sense of urgency around addressing deferred maintenance and retrofitting in support of modern instruction is increasing.”

Pam Loeffelman, F.AIA, a senior principal with DLR Group, an integrated architecture and engineering firm, pointed to a situation in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where infrastructure, including schools, took a massive beating from back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes in September 2017.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is funding a $3.68 billion school reconstruction program that will rebuild schools to current industry standards as authorized under the 2018 Bipartisan Budget Act.

Loeffelman cited the need for clear guidelines and smart investments to result in good outcomes. Ultimately, what is best for the students can’t really carry a price tag, though.

“If you’re going to invest $3.68 billion, you better be sure that your structure and your building systems are going to last and are going to be operationally efficient,” she said. “I can’t say architecture makes students learn better, but if students are better engaged, then they pay more attention and that opportunity to learn is increased.”

Bradley said the focus must be on the critical teaching and learning dynamic that takes place every day in schools.

“Consider the positive and the negative impacts that a facility can have on teachers and learners and be very intentional and deliberate about erring grossly on the side of positive,” he said. “Do what’s right for the students and teachers and let the mark you leave on their behalf be positive and lasting.”

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