Findings and purpose

(a) Findings Congress finds the following: (1) A significant percentage of federally impacted local educational agencies serve schools with facilities that fall far short of meeting basic life-safety standards that ensure a safe learning environment for students and staff alike. (2) The American Society of Civil Engineers rated school facilities nationally a D+. Many school buildings of schools served by federally impacted local educational agencies were built more than 65 years ago. (3) A 2009 study by the Government Accountability Office found that better school facilities were associated with positive student outcomes in academic achievement, attendance, and higher graduation rates. A second Government Accountability Office study conducted in 2020, concluded that many school facilities of schools served by federally impacted local educational agencies are in need of repair, modernization, renovation, or replacement. (4) Data compiled through surveys of federally impacted local educational agencies by both the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools and the National Indian Impacted Schools Association revealed the following: (A) 65 percent of respondents indicated their facilities are in fair to poor condition. (B) 26 percent of respondents have buildings that are more than 80 years old. (C) 53 percent of respondents have no practical capacity to issue bonds. (D) 82 percent of respondents identified lack of funds as a reason for delaying construction projects. Construction costs in rural, many times geographically remote, local educational agencies have increased by 30 percent or more in recent years making facility upgrades and replacement even more challenging. (5) Local educational agencies with some bonding capacity or that have access to other sources of funding are still in need of assistance to improve their buildings to ensure a safe learning environment. (6) Federally impacted local educational agencies located in rural settings have generally higher labor costs and transportation costs for workers and materials that have to be brought to a school construction site than local educational agencies located in an urban setting with school construction costs. Such costs are normally built in by the contractor affecting the total cost of the project. (7) Teacher recruitment and retention is a major challenge for local educational agencies serving students residing on Indian Treaty and Federal trust land as well as land conveyed pursuant to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (43 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.). Because there are no private housing or rental units available to non-Tribal members, the local educational agency must build and maintain rental units. Without local educational agency owned housing, the daily commute can be as much as 90 miles or more each way. One Arizona local educational agency estimated that the cost to rebuild antiquated teacher housing to be $100,000,000. (8) It is common practice that State educational agencies compile infrastructure needs in the local educational agencies located in the State. For example, the Hawaii Department of Education has identified more than $2,000,000,000 in needed repair, renovation, and construction projects to address— (A) structural and health and safety needs; (B) compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq.) and title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (20 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.); and (C) various other infrastructure and construction needs. (b) Purposes The purpose of this Act is to provide a collaborative Federal-local community partnership that will provide both Federal and local funding to address the facility needs of federally impacted local educational agencies. The partnership shall be designed to— (1) provide formula grants to federally impacted local educational agencies that have no capacity to issue bonds because of the presence of large parcels of non-taxable Federal property; (2) provide partnership grants requiring a local match to local educational agencies that have a limited capacity to provide facility funding; (3) base local matching dollars on the learning opportunity threshold total percentage, as described in subparagraph (B)(i) of section 7003(b)(3) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 7703(b)(3)); and (4) provide grants under section 7007(a) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 7707(a)) to address local educational agency needs to modernize and provide basic building improvements.