By Brenna Angel/Gary Pitts
Frankfort, KY – A new report on the condition of roughly a third of public school buildings in Kentucky estimates that repair and improvement needs for those buildings would cost around 3.7 billion dollars. Department of Education spokesperson Lisa Gross says evaluations were conducted at 477 buildings across the state.
"They looked at the school's actual physical condition. They looked at its educational suitability, which means does it provide the things that students need to have a really robust learning experience. And they also looked at technology readiness, whether or not a school building was wired for Internet and e-mail access, does it have wireless capability?
The report covers buildings that previously fell in the category of 3 or 4 in the Department of Education's old measurement tool, which was a scale of 1-5. For this assessment in our region, most schools scored around the state average of 62 out of 100. Calloway County Middle School had the highest score in the region with a 92, and Lowes Elementary in Graves County had the lowest with a 42. Gross says lawmakers and local school leaders will use the data to prioritize funding decisions.