Saving on School Construction

Ted Kelly | July 12, 2026

A new school is a big financial and community investment. It makes a community more attractive to students, teachers, families, and businesses. It is also a 30+ year commitment.

Owning ≠ Maintaining

The key challenge is that schools are starting to conflate costs to build the new school with costs to own the building. This same conversation is going on in housing.

Owning a building means you are paying the utility bills, insuring the building, repairing damage, and repainting walls on top of paying off the purchase. And while a % of initial costs is a good rule-of-thumb, it struggles to account for investments in higher quality materials that are easier to maintain.

A dollar spent on owning and maintaining the building is a dollar that cannot be spent on teacher salaries, buses, school meals, or educational materials.

Buy Once, Buy for Life

A lot of time is spent looking at the lowest cost materials, get the new school at the lowest cost. But the MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) systems are a much bigger piece of the pie– roughly twice the cost of structure (see picture below from Washington County Public Schools). Spending $1 making sure a building is better insulated, means you may be saving $2 on your HVAC system. Netting you +$1. $1 that can be used elsewhere in the School Budget.

These choices in structural materials, underlie other things. Example a masonry wall does not need a layer of drywall or wall covering the way a steel stud wall would. They also underlie fire, safety, sound, and comfort. Do not be seduced by a low upfront costs, with high recurring charges.

As schools (and really anyone) look to make material decisions be sure to look at total lifecycle costs. That will truly make our schools and education more affordable.