Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers releases a report evaluating the state of the country’s infrastructure — “an interconnected system of highways, streets, public buildings, mass transit, ports, airports, inland waterways, water systems, waste facilities, the electric grid, broadband networks, dams, levees, and other public and private facilities.”
The introduction of the 2025 report card cited how the 2021 passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) has contributed to reversing the steady decline that America’s infrastructure has seen since 1998. These investments, however, have brought the overall grade up from a C- in 2021 to a solid C in 2025.
“A few years later, IIJA investments and policy changes are already improving the performance of our transportation, water, energy, and waste networks. As a result, nearly half of the grades are increasing for the 18 categories we assess in this 2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” according to the report. “This forward momentum is due in large part to the actions of the federal government in partnership with state and local governments and the private sector.”
Schools
The grade for school infrastructure reflects the aging buildings where students spend most of their days with a D+. Nationwide, schools average 49 years old and resources to address aging infrastructure are scarce. According to the report, just 10 percent of total school spending in 2021–22 was directed to facility expenses. “The annual funding gap to reach a state of good repair for the nation’s public schools has grown from $60 billion in 2016 to $85 billion in 2021,” the report states. Top needs include removal of lead from water systems and installing cooling systems.
The report notes that less than half of states collect representative data on their school facilities but researchers determined through publicly available data that 38 percent of public school buildings were constructed before 1970, with another 41 percent split evenly between the years 1970 and 2000 and between 2000 and 2023. Fewer than half of those buildings have undergone significant renovations or replacements since their construction.
According to a 2020 Government Accountability Office report, 41 percent of school districts needed to update heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in at least half of their schools, making HVAC repairs the most common infrastructure need across school systems. And at least 28 percent of school districts must upgrade interior lighting, roofs, and safety or security systems in half of their overall buildings.
“With most of the dedicated annual funds from federal, state, and local government used for school staff payroll and other non-facility operations, support for school facilities is often left to bond or tax measures voted on locally,” the report states. “Voters approved these measures at an average national rate of 76 percent recently, but approval rates vary greatly by state.”
The report cites a growing need to address current struggling school infrastructure, as well as the need to prepare schools for a present and future where extreme weather and seismic threats create a greater need for “resilient school buildings.” From 2017 to 2019, 54 percent of American school districts received Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster-recovery funds, covering 67 percent of all students nationwide. Local educational agencies serving higher populations of children from low-income backgrounds, English learners and other social vulnerabilities needed more recovery assistance than school systems in areas with higher incomes.
“To meet resilience needs and implement the latest research on public health, some state and local governments are rethinking school facility design,” the report cites. “In Oakland, CA, the public school system partnered with Trust for Public Land to create green spaces out of campus playgrounds. Natural landscape elements reduce extreme heat on hardtop play surfaces and improve social and emotional well-being of students. One 2024 study estimated that most California public schools have less than 5 percent tree canopy, a measure of land area that is naturally shaded. Tree planting also assists with stormwater management, a task with infrastructure regulations from which some school districts are exempt, like the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Broadband is another key piece of school infrastructure examined in the report. In good news, 74 percent of public school districts met a Federal Communications Commission benchmark on bandwidth per student in 2023, up from 67 percent and 59 percent in the previous two years.
Recommendations
- The American Society of Civil Engineers makes the following recommendations: Expand school facility data already collected by the National Center for Education Statistics and encourage the U.S. Department of Education to coordinate with school districts to collect and publish statistics on school infrastructure conditions, investment needs, and emerging threats to students and staff.
- Improve coordination across federal and state governments on necessary technical assistance and funding mechanisms to implement building condition assessments of existing schoolinfrastructure and staffing to support ongoing, proactive maintenance.
- Establish regular, predictable funding mechanisms for physical school infrastructure, providing equitable investments in lower-income communities.
- Urge school districts to adopt life-cycle cost analysis principles in planning and design processes to evaluate the total cost of projects.
- Develop capital planning frameworks at the LEA level to enhance resilience to extreme weather requiring new structures and retrofits to use the most up-to-date codes and standards.
- Update the Government Accountability Office’s 2020 study on school facility conditions.
- Explore alternative financing for public school facilities, including lease financing, as well as ownership and use arrangements, to facilitate school construction projects.
