Our Statement on Governor Newsom’s May Revise Budget Proposal

Statement on Governor Newsom’s May Revise Budget Proposal: Ensure proposed school infrastructure investments are aligned with student health, equity, climate-resilience, and state emissions goals

May 16, 2022

Governor Newsom’s May Revise budget proposal included $5.85 billion in funding for school facilities that will support new construction, modernization, retrofitting, and maintenance. This is an important investment in our state’s schoolchildren, school employees, and community resilience. With 10,000 K-12 public schools, totaling 730 million square feet of buildings and 124,616 acres of land, school buildings constitute one of California’s largest sectors of public infrastructure and play an essential role in supporting student health and learning

As Californians work to advance our vital goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045, it is critical that we ensure that all public school buildings and grounds are part of the solution.

This means working toward aligning every dollar spent in K-12 infrastructure with building an equitable zero carbon future – and supporting every education leader to understand how rapidly changing climate threatens their core mission.

If we do not have clear health, climate-resilience, and decarbonization goals for the proposed investment in school infrastructure, we run the risk of exacerbating the impacts of climate change in our state, creating unsafe conditions for our students and teachers in school buildings and grounds due to heat waves and wildfires, and investing in fossil-fuel driven infrastructure and stranded assets at odds with our goal of carbon neutrality by 2045.

It is imperative that the proposed dollars are spent wisely, creating healthy, equitable school buildings and grounds that also achieve the dual goals of expanding the climate-resilience of our school facilities and moving school infrastructure toward zero emissions.

We urge the Governor and legislature to commit resources in this year’s budget to develop a statewide master plan for healthy, equitable, and climate-resilient school buildings and grounds, and to boost technical assistance to districts to ensure these goals are met.

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