CEBE to Host Webinar on School Building Crisis

The Washington & Jefferson College Center for Energy and the Built Environment will host a free August 12 webinar on the state of America's K-12 school buildings as part of its Energy Lecture Series.

"Built to Last? Understanding America's School Building Crisis" will be presented at 11 a.m. Wednesday, August 12. The webinar brings together three presenters who approach the same set of questions from different vantage points.

Mary Filardo, Executive Director of the 21st Century School Fund, will cover the federal funding landscape. Filardo founded the 21st Century School Fund in 1994 and is the lead author of the State of Our Schools reports, which have served as the principal national accounting of K-12 facility investment for more than a decade.

Tim Shrom, Director of Research at the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials (PASBO), will share what is happening inside Pennsylvania districts. PASBO's site-level data drawn from the PA Annual Financial Reports allows building-by-building analysis of where districts are putting facility dollars, a level of detail that has been missing from the national conversation.

Dr. Corey Young, Executive Director of CEBE, will present findings from his recent peer-reviewed research on national school building conditions and regional disparities, published in Cogent Education (May 2026). The article uses national building stock data to document patterns of deterioration across the U.S. school inventory and the regional disparities that correlate with facility conditions.

Each presenter will speak briefly and a moderated discussion about where their viewpoints agree, where they diverge, and the most useful next questions for districts, state officials, and researchers, will follow. The hour-long webinar is free and open to the public. To register, visit wjenergy.org or CLICK HERE. The seminar is approved for Continuing Legal Education in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Contact the Washington County Bar Association at wcba@washcobar.org for information.