Schools on front lines of facilities management innovation

A novel geothermal heating and cooling system will keep approximately 68,000 square feet of building space comfortable while significantly reducing energy costs at a 130-year-old elementary school in the Chicago suburbs, Trane Technologies said June 30.

The dynamic closed loop geothermal system in Highland Park, Illinois, which taps “the superior heat transfer properties of flowing water,” has a much smaller surface footprint than some other geothermal designs, making it ideal for suburban schools, Trane says.

North Shore School District 112 combined local, state and federal incentives to offset as much as 50% of the $6.7 million project cost. The system should reduce the facility’s carbon emissions by about 30% while trimming operations and maintenance costs, Trane says.

Education institutions are increasingly interested in geothermal systems, with colleges and universities from Colorado to Vermont studying or actively building infrastructure to more efficiently heat and cool campus buildings.

North Shore School District 112’s DCL system at Ravinia Elementary School is the first of its kind to be deployed in the United States, Trane says. 

DCL systems absorb and reject heat into subsurface water. That water’s depth and flow rate varies from place to place, thus any facility owner considering a DCL system should conduct a geological study to confirm that the local resource is adequate, Trane Technologies Turnkey Project Developer Andy O’Fallon said in an email. 

If it’s not, traditional dry-rock geothermal could be more cost-effective. But those systems typically require more boreholes and have a larger physical footprint.

“The decision to pursue either option depends primarily on the available land area and hydrogeology,” O’Fallon said. “This site does not have land area to accommodate the traditional geothermal option.”

Whereas a similarly sized traditional geothermal system might need 50 wells, the system at Ravinia has just three wells drilled down 10-inch boreholes, O’Fallon said. If the aquifer’s flow rates match “the ideal predicted design,” each well could produce up to 150 tons of cooling and 50 tons of heating at full capacity, O’Fallon added. 

Above ground, the system has more than 50 water-source heat pumps, plus a single-cell cooling tower for backup cooling and an electric boiler for backup heating if needed. The heat pumps exchange thermal energy with a building water loop that runs between 40 degrees and 90 degrees Fahrenheit, O’Fallon said.

The school district already had a working relationship with Trane, which helped overcome officials’ initial hesitation about deploying an unfamiliar technology, James Bock, the district’s director of operations, facilities and transportation, says in a video describing the project.

“We knew, because of our relationship with Trane, [that] they were bringing us something that was definitely worth taking a look at,” he said.

School District 112 deployed the DCL system as part of a bigger renovation project, according to O’Fallon. Other district facilities have had retrofits to improve their sustainability recently, including roof-mounted solar panels and building automation upgrades, he added.

Trane worked with the district’s accounting firm to provide technical documentation it needed to support its application for federal clean energy tax credits, O’Fallon added.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” President Trump signed on July 4 significantly shortens the eligibility window for those credits and adds new restrictions that experts say could make them all but impossible to qualify for.

Atlanta Public Schools is considering closing school buildings and redistricting over the next few years, pushed by enrollment declines and empty seats across one of Georgia's largest districts. 

The district is likewise looking at everything from consolidations to mergers and new facilities as part of a broader facilities plan that it is calling "a bold and necessary effort," according to a statement it released on Monday. APS has yet to share how many schools are susceptible to potential closures or related changes.

Any unused buildings would be repurposed to serve community needs, per the district's announcement on its facilities planning — which is still in early stages.

As of the 2024-25 school year, the district was only utilizing about 65% of its seats, according to its enrollment and school facility utilization report released in December. Projections suggest that enrollment will keep utilization hovering around that percentage until the 2029-30 school year. Currently, that means the district has more than 21,000 open seats. 

More recent data released in May as part of a draft report by HPM, a management firm hired by APS that oversees district construction projects, expects enrollment to decline from 49,944 students in the 2024-25 school year to 48,000 students in the 2028-29 school year. 

The largest percentage decrease during this time is expected to be in its elementary schools, according to the report. The district has 75 learning facilities, of which 49 are elementary or K-8, per the draft report.  

Atlanta Public Schools' planning for enrollment decline comes as other districts nationwide are facing similar enrollment drops and decisions. 

Last month, Missouri's St. Louis Public Schools proposed closing more than half, or 37 of its 68 schools, over just the next two school years. The district anticipates losing over 2,500 students by the 2025-26 school year. Student enrollment is projected to drop 30% over the next decade. 

The K-12 sector received a negative outlook from Moody's Ratings for 2025, with enrollment pressures among the top factors behind the industry's instability noted. Other factors included rising costs and slowing revenue. 

The Moody's report showed enrollment pressures were expected to mount partly as a result of declining birthrates and public schools' competition for students with charter and private schools.

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By Ameresco

Across North America, educational institutions—from K-12 schools to sprawling university campuses—are facing a common challenge: aging infrastructure and rising operational costs. With many buildings decades old, administrators must decide how to modernize facilities without breaking budgets or compromising sustainability goals. Increasingly, retrofitting existing structures is emerging as the most practical, cost-effective, and environmentally responsible solution.

Why retrofitting is the smart play

Constructing new facilities is expensive, time-consuming, and often constrained by supply chain delays and labor shortages. Retrofitting, by contrast, allows schools and universities to upgrade critical systems while preserving existing structures, reducing both costs and timelines. Financial benefits extend well beyond initial construction savings: energy-efficient retrofits can dramatically lower utility bills for years to come.

The U.S. Green Building Council estimates that green schools can save up to $100,000 annually, with roughly half of that from reduced energy costs alone. For higher education institutions managing multiple buildings, the potential savings multiply significantly—freeing up resources for academic programs and student services.

Cut carbon, cut costs

Retrofitting aligns closely with decarbonization goals for the built environment, a priority for both public school districts and universities committed to climate action plans. Studies show that building reuse typically results in lower carbon emissions than new construction, thanks to reduced material consumption and embodied energy.

Energy efficiency upgrades are at the heart of sustainable retrofits. Common improvements include:

• LED lighting systems to cut electricity use
• High-performance insulation and windows for better thermal control
• Modern HVAC systems that optimize heating and cooling while reducing energy waste

These upgrades not only lower operating costs but also create healthier learning environments. Improved ventilation, non-toxic materials, and enhanced natural lighting contribute to better indoor air quality—supporting student well-being and potentially reducing absenteeism.

Renewables and resilience

For institutions looking to go further, renewable energy solutions offer a powerful way to accelerate decarbonization. On-site solar installations can offset a significant portion of energy needs, while battery storage ensures resilience during outages. For campuses without space for solar arrays, community solar programs or power purchase agreements (PPAs) provide flexible alternatives.

Pairing renewables with battery energy storage also enhances energy independence, safeguarding operations during emergencies and reinforcing the role of schools and universities as community hubs.

Financing the transition

Budget constraints are often the biggest hurdle—but innovative financing models are making retrofits more accessible. Options include:

• Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs), which fund upgrades through guaranteed energy savings.
• On-bill financing, allowing repayment via utility bills.
• Commercial Property-Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) programs for low-interest funding.

Higher education institutions can also leverage federal and state incentives, green bonds, and partnerships with energy service companies to minimize upfront costs.

Beyond sustainability: Building resilience

Retrofitted facilities do more than reduce carbon footprints—they strengthen community resilience. Schools and universities equipped with efficient systems and backup power can serve as emergency shelters, providing critical resources during natural disasters or grid disruptions.

Next steps

Modernizing educational infrastructure is no small task, but retrofitting offers a clear path forward—one that balances cost, sustainability, and long-term resilience. By prioritizing energy efficiency, renewable integration, and healthy learning environments, educational leaders can transform aging buildings into future-ready facilities that support both academic success and climate goals.

Looking for a roadmap? Ameresco’s Reducing Costs and Carbon White Paper provides actionable strategies for planning and implementing sustainable retrofits across K-12 and higher education campuses.

Academic performance drops when temperatures rise, according to a study released Thursday by the Northwest Evaluation Association, or NWEA. When test-day temperatures clocked over 80 degrees, students had lower math MAP Growth scores, the organization that administers the assessment found. The findings are significant because HVAC systems are inadequate in more than 40% of public schools in the United States.  

Extreme heat affects high-poverty students especially. The NWEA study found that high heat negatively impacted math scores up to twice as much for students in high-poverty schools than for those from low-poverty schools.

The study recommends educators set testing schedules around weather conditions when possible, create better testing conditions by moving testing to cooler areas and testing during the morning, invest in updated HVAC infrastructure, and ensure that districts' infrastructure planning takes into account high-poverty communities. 

In 2020, over half of the nation's schools (54%) needed to update or replace multiple building systems or features in their schools, according to a report released by the Government Accountability Office. About 41% of public school districts needed to update or replace the HVAC systems in at least half of their schools, according to the report. 

"If not addressed, such problems can lead to indoor air quality problems and mold, and in some cases caused schools to adjust schedules temporarily," the GAO report found.

At the same time, the school year is getting hotter.

Heat waves impact schools "seemingly everywhere," according to the Climate Action Campaign, including in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. In August, for example, schools in Portland, Oregon, closed early in anticipation of a heat wave, according to local reports.

And by this year, about 2,671 additional school districts were expected to log 32 or more days of weather over 80 degrees —  the heat threshold where cooling systems are typically installed. That number of school districts is a 39% increase since 1970, according to a 2021 project by the Center for Climate Integrity. 

Such climate changes impact academics, a finding confirmed by the NWEA study released Thursday. 

It gathered data from nearly 3 million MAP Growth tests administered to students in grades 3-6 across six states between 2022 and 2024. The study found that on days hotter than 101 degrees, students' math performance was about 0.06 standard deviations below students who tested in 60 degree weather. The difference is about 10% of a 5th grader’s learning during a school year.

“Our findings show that as temperatures continue to rise, disparities in school facilities, such as having appropriate HVAC systems, can deepen existing inequities and make school infrastructure and building conditions significant issues of educational equity," said Sofia Postell, research analyst at NWEA, in a Thursday statement.

The findings expand on previous ones examining heat’s impacts on student achievement. 

In 2020, a study published by the American Economic Association found that "heat directly disrupts learning time," and that without air conditioning, a school year hotter by 1 degree reduces that year's learning by 1%. The same study also found that hot school days disproportionately impact minority students, and even account for about 5% of the racial achievement gap.

As federal funding for protecting people from extreme heat wanes, states, cities and counties must take the lead to protect residents — especially children and other at-risk populations, Dr. John Balbus, former Health and Human Services deputy assistant secretary and current principal of Climate Care Consulting, said during an August 13 Center for American Progress webinar on state and local efforts to protect children from extreme heat.

Children are uniquely vulnerable to heat because their bodies are not developed enough to regulate temperatures and recover from high heat exposure, Autumn Burton, senior associate of climate, health and environment at the Federation of American Scientists, said during the webinar.

Earlier this year, the New York legislature passed a bill that will go into effect next month requiring schools to take action “to relieve heat-related discomfort” when the occupied space temperature reaches 82 degrees Fahrenheit and remove students and staff from occupied spaces if it reaches 88 degrees Fahrenheit.

This year is on track to be the second or third warmest year on record, according to Carbon Brief, with 2024 holding the record as the hottest.

Extreme heat events are more frequent, more intense and last longer than they have in the past, Burton said. In addition, “the scope of impact continues to grow, so communities that didn't experience extreme heat in decades and years past are now facing it, and they don't have the infrastructure and planning and protocols in place to deal with it.”

In classrooms, research shows that for every 1 degree Fahrenheit increase above the average annual temperature, learning outcomes drop by 1% proportionately, Burton said. When schools close during extreme heat events, she added, “that's measurable losses in classroom time that translates to very direct losses in overall learning.”

Extreme heat affects children’s health, behavior, sleep and stress levels, said Joan Lombardi, director of the Early Opportunities Initiative. Grassroots advocates must send a strong message that schools, Head Start programs and child care centers need resources to provide for shade, hydration, emergency planning and building renovations, including HVAC and ventilation improvements.

“We’ve got great organizations that are working on these things — the Low Income Investment Fund and many others — but they need resources to do it,” Lombardi said.

New York State Sen. James Skoufis, who first introduced Senate Bill S775 regarding maximum temperatures in school buildings and facilities several years ago, said he fought an uphill battle to get it passed. When it looked like it was going to pass, he received “frantic calls” from school superintendents and administrators across the state who opposed the bill because of the costs it would incur their districts.

“This is not a luxury,” he said. “You can't satisfactorily — really, in any way, shape or form — actually teach if it's 90, 92, 94, 96 degrees in a classroom, never mind learn.” 

Skoufis urged local officials and lawmakers “to get out in the community” to understand the duress extreme heat creates for teachers and students.

“If you're not visiting a classroom, if you're not visiting a school building, if you're not visiting a childcare center in June at the end of the year, in September at the start of the year, then you're not doing your job,” he said. “You're not able to see what everyone else that you represent is living with.

The system that Arizona uses to maintain public school facilities that meet minimum standards is unconstitutional because it relies on funding differences that leave some districts unable to achieve adequate learning conditions, the Maricopa County Superior Court ruled August 12.

“The legislature has chosen to fund public schools through a financing system that itself causes substantial disparities between districts,” Judge Dewain Fox said in the ruling. “Arizona has … a system that forces districts to rely largely on local property taxation to fund their capital needs, and as such, property value is crucial to a district’s ability to fund its schools.”

The judge deferred determining what remedy to impose to allow the state an opportunity to appeal the decision. “The Court recognizes that its ruling will be the subject of appellate proceedings,” the judge said.

Arizona’s constitution requires the state to provide for a “general and uniform” public school system. In the late 1990s, following a state Supreme Court decision affirming the state’s responsibility to maintain and fund school facilities that meet minimum standards, lawmakers created a system for funding backlogged repairs and ongoing upkeep and to enable districts to add facilities to accommodate growth. 

After making an initial $1.2 billion appropriation to bring facilities up to standards, lawmakers routinely under allocated money needed for repairs, upkeep and future development and narrowed what the money could be used for and what was required for districts to get it. 

The funding gap has led to critically backlogged maintenance needs in some districts, the court found. In one district, for example, three schools have been waiting for years to get money for roof replacements. “One of those schools … has 17 identified roof leaks,” the ruling says. In one case, it says, the teacher “places a large trash can or janitorial bucket beneath the leaks to catch the water dripping into the classroom.” 

In another district, a school couldn’t replace a gymnasium’s HVAC system that no one in the area had expertise to work on. When it failed, “students played volleyball matches in … 90-degree temperatures” in the summer and in the winter “were practicing [basketball] at 5:00 a.m. in frigid temperatures indoors.”

The state’s funding program today is the product of changes over the years in response to legal challenges, but it remains unconstitutional because it relies on the ability of school districts to use their own taxing power to make up funding gaps, according to the ruling. 

As a result, disparities that were found to be unconstitutional in the past persist, the judge said.  

“Some districts have schoolhouses that are unsafe, unhealthy, and in violation of building, fire, and safety codes,” said the judge, quoting from a past Supreme Court finding. “Some districts use dirt lots for playgrounds. There are schools without libraries, science laboratories, computer rooms, art programs, gymnasiums, and auditoriums. But in other districts, there are schools with indoor swimming pools, a domed stadium, science laboratories, television studios, well stocked libraries, satellite dishes, and extensive computer systems.”

Districts are free to use their taxing power to go above and beyond the minimum standards for their school facilities, the judge said, but the system fails if local taxing power is the difference between meeting the minimum standards and not meeting them.

“The evidence shows that many districts without access to local bond or override funds must operate their schools in deficient facilities for months or even years while awaiting funding,” the judge said.   

Plaintiffs in the case were the Glendale Elementary School District and three others, a taxpayer and the Arizona School Boards Association, the Arizona Education Association and the Arizona School Administrators. The defendants were the state and the school facilities board that was created to set and assess compliance with the minimum standards.

Following a win in Arizona by low-income school districts over built-in state disparities in facilities funding, plaintiffs have sued California over something similar. A group of students, parents and advocacy organizations are contending the state’s reliance on local bond financing to meet the bulk of school facilities’ capital needs systematically widens the gap between have and have-not districts.

“State funding for modernization of aging school facilities … provides more funding to wealthy districts based on their local wealth, enabling them to meet local funding requirements more easily, which in turn qualifies them for more state bond matching funds,” say the plaintiffs in the complaint, filed Oct. 23 with the California Superior Court in Alameda County.

The funding gap violates the equal protection and education clauses of the state’s constitution, the plaintiffs say. The lawsuit seeks to rewrite the funding formula so it’s more needs-based and less reliant on how successful, and how quickly, districts are in generating their share of the funds.

California enacted education funding reforms in 2013 that addressed systemic inequalities in how school operations funds were allocated. But the reforms left capital allocations largely unaddressed, critics say. 

“Reforms have addressed only the State’s funding of day-to-day school operations,” the complaint says. “Meanwhile, the State’s scheme for financing capital improvements to school facilities has remained mired in a world where … separate and unequal is acceptable and where the very gears of opportunity are purposefully aligned to provide more to those who have more and less to those who have less.”

The state has close to $15 billion in unmet school facility capital needs, according to an independent research estimate included in the complaint.  

The Calexico Unified School District, just north of the Mexico border, for example, is forced to combat high temperatures with failing, antiquated HVAC systems, the plaintiffs say. The area has arsenic in its soil, and wastewater sewage leaks in its school facilities’ hallways and classrooms, creating foul smells and hazardous conditions, they say. 

The Fall River Joint Unified School District, in the northern part of the state, has asbestos in all of its schools and many have black mold, the complaint says. “Students must learn in the same modular classrooms that were present when their grandparents attended school, many over 55 years old despite being intended for 20 years of use,” it says. 

The complaint sets conditions like these against conditions at schools in higher-income areas where students get state-of-the-art athletic and science facilities. 

“By way of just a few examples, Laguna Beach Unified School District recently upgraded its decade-old track and field at Laguna Beach High School with environmentally friendly materials that offer cooler temperatures and reduce the risk of student injury,” the plaintiffs say. “La Jolla Elementary School in San Diego Unified was able to upgrade their play areas and structures in 2024, expand their parking lot to include a drop-off and pick-up area and replace their former field with a grass field and walking track.”

Under the state’s school capital funding system for renovations, districts are required to put up 40% of the money needed for the work, typically from voter-approved bond issues, before the state steps in with the balance. They must do it quickly as well; if they’re slow to generate their share of the money, the state pool of funds could be exhausted. Late-comers are then put on a “hardship” waiting list that can take years to work through.

“The … Hardship program imposes a burdensome, ‘second-class citizenship’ status on low-wealth districts,” the complaint says.  

The state made improvements in 2024 with passage of Proposition 2, which earmarked $4 billion for school modernization, and made tweaks to the funding formula, but the built-in disparities and the first-come, first-served application process weren’t addressed.  

“All modernization projects will continue to receive at least a 60% match from the State regardless of the wealth of the district applicant” despite the Proposition 2 reforms, the plaintiffs said.   

“The old and dilapidated facilities in low-wealth districts are literally robbing our children of their future,” said Jetaun Stevens, a senior staff attorney at Public Advocates, a nonprofit group that is among the plaintiffs suing the state. 

Liz Sanders, director of communications for the California Department of Education, told Facilities Dive the agency can’t comment on pending litiigation but it believes in the importance of access to modern, healthy school facilities. We’re “proud to have led significant work toward this end,” she said.

Schools in three districts in Florida will be testing the use of drones armed with nonlethal weapons to respond more forcefully to active shooter incidents, the company involved in the initiative told Facilities Dive. 

Lawmakers in the state approved $557,000 in the 2025-2026 state budget to pay for the demonstrations using drones operated by Texas-based company Campus Guardian Angel. The Florida Department of Education will select the districts, according to a CBS News report. Miami-Dade County Public Schools has shown interest in participating, CBS reported. 

More than 60 school shootings have been reported in Florida since 2018, Newsweek reported, based on data from the K-12 School Shooting Database.

The drones are stored on-site on charging pads in secure boxes. School officials can activate them using a silent alarm or other mechanisms, the company says. Once activated, the drones can get anywhere on school grounds within 15 seconds, according to Justin Marston, the company’s CEO and cofounder. Once airborne, they offer two-way communication through an embedded speakerphone. They also can break glass, make loud noises, fire nonlethal pepper-spray pellets or take other action within a minute as a first response to an incident. 

"In a school shooting, most of the death happens in the first 120 seconds, so it's really about how quickly can you get there to engage the shooter,” Marston said in the CBS News report. 

“We’re trying to buy the time that it takes for a human to get there,” said Bill King, the company’s chief tactical officer and cofounder, in a NewsNation report. 

Campus Guardian Angel operators control the drones from an operations center in Texas. Once the drones are activated, a company commander uploads a digital map of the school, issues a flight plan and coordinates tactical movements with the school and law enforcement and makes decisions on engagement. FAA-certified pilots fly the drones. 

Local law enforcement and first responders can see what’s happening on video and coordinate with the drone commander; the two-way communications and other features on the drone also can support those on site, the company says. 

"We feed live video to police, show exactly what's happening, where the suspect is, and even smash through windows with a glass punch to create distractions,” Marston told Newsweek. 

The pilots include former drone racers and military and police veterans, according to the company. “Our elite team … has saved hundreds of lives and logged tens of thousands of hours of professional drone piloting,” the company says on its website. 

At a demonstration of the drones at AcadeMir Preparatory High School in South Miami-Dade, the company showed how the drones are capable of using what the company calls “kinetic energy hits” to knock someone over. 

Once the Florida DOE selects the districts, they’ll pay about $1,000 per month for the drones needed for a school of 500 students, according to Marston.

A box of six drones with all networking and response effects costs $15,000, the company says on its website. Schools will need between three and 15 boxes, sometimes more, depending on the size of the campus, the company estimates. 

In Texas, installations are underway in four school districts and a university, Marston said in the CBS News report. The company has also conducted demonstrations in Colorado and Utah, the NewsNation report says. 

Facilitron is rolling out what it says is the first U.S. governance standard for community use of public school facilities, the digital facilities rental platform said Sept. 10.

The California-based company will debut the framework in San Diego this November at Facilitron University, its annual conference for school district leaders and facility managers.

The standard aims to align school facility use with districts’ mission and strategy, reduce legal risk, improve consistency and transparency across district operations and ensure equitable access for community members and groups, the company says.

Facilitron provides facility rental and management support for some of the largest school districts in the U.S., including Florida’s Broward County Public Schools, Nevada’s Clark County School District and California’s San Diego Unified School District.

That broad reach helped the company design a governance framework that goes beyond school boards’ existing model policies to encompass administrative regulations, site manuals, renter terms and audit tools, the company says. It draws on data from more than 15,000 schools, many of which have outdated, inconsistent and unenforceable facility-use policies, “exposing where current systems fail,” according to the company. 

“Every district on our platform has a data trail that tells a story,” Facilitron Chief Marketing Officer Trent Allen said in an email. “Even when data is missing — because poor policy and enforcement means a lot of facility use never gets documented — you can still see the problems, like a black hole bending light in its direction.”

Allen said many of those problems have a financial dimension. For example, many districts offer automatic subsidies for registered nonprofits, regardless of the actual public benefit the organization provides — so a national nonprofit with high participation fees gets effectively the same treatment as a grassroots group with a much smaller budget, Allen said.

Districts’ facility-use policies — and the state statutes enabling them — leave money on the table in other ways, like sweetheart deals for school employees, rates that remain static for years, and ambiguous language that discourages districts from tapping their facilities’ full value. 

As an example, Allen said, some Tennessee districts interpret a vaguely worded state statute prohibiting “private profit” in school facility use to mean that only nonprofit organizations can rent them, creating a situation where “essentially every use becomes a subsidized use.” That leaves out the possibility that private companies could use the facilities for charitable or other purposes. 

Additionally, many school boards give school administrators or facilities managers free rein to adjust or waive fees and or approve informal use outside the plain text of board policy, he said.

The upshot of all this, Allen added, is that larger districts forgo millions in potential revenue annually from facility rentals while creating conditions ripe for favoritism and inequity.

Once one group gets access under favorable terms, every similar group is usually given the same,” he said. “Suddenly the district is on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It quickly runs into the millions and it is never budgeted for.”

Facilitron says its national governance standard pushes back on the status quo by laying out detailed model school board policies and administrative regulations; a “modular policy toolkit” and site-level operations manual; a national terms and conditions template; and a “facility use audit framework,” which the company describes as “a diagnostic tool that reveals cost, risk and underperformance.”

The national governance standard also includes frequently asked questions, case studies and other resources for school boards.

“We require annual reporting, including an estimate of total subsidization. We make cost recovery the governing philosophy [and] move away from ‘nonprofit’ as the trigger for discounts, because that’s the wrong proxy for public benefit. And we separate policy into layers — board-level rules, administrative regulations, and site-level guidance — so principals aren’t left to invent their own rules,” Allen said.