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An Expanded Study of School Bond Elections in Michigan
November 3, 2026
Birmingham Public Schools: A proposed $240 million bond
Gallery: School Bond Referenda
As of January 2022, there were a few municipalities in the United States that allowed non-citizens to vote in local elections, but no entire states. These municipalities included:
San Francisco, California: Non-citizens are allowed to vote in school board elections.
Chicago, Illinois: Non-citizens are allowed to vote in school board elections.
Takoma Park, Maryland: Non-citizens are allowed to vote in local elections.
It’s worth noting that these policies may change over time as local governments make decisions regarding voting rights. For the most up-to-date information, it’s best to consult the specific laws and regulations of each municipality or state.
“Election Day, 1944” | Norman Rockwell for the Saturday Evening Post
School bond elections — either at county or district level — are processes through which communities vote to authorize the issuance of bonds to fund various projects and improvements in their local school districts. The elections determine the quality of educational settlements –new school buildings, renovating existing facilities, upgrading technology, and improving safety measures. The outcomes of these elections directly affect the quality of education and learning environments for students within the county. Successful bond measures can stimulate economic growth by creating jobs and attracting families to the area.
Community involvement and voter turnout are essential in determining the allocation of resources and shaping the quality of life for its citizens. In recent years, however, voter ambivalence about the education “industry” in general, the rise of home schooling and other cultural factors, complicate choices presented to voters.
Gallery: School Bond Referenda
In terms of total spend, the US elementary and secondary school industry is about twice the size of the higher education industry according to IBISWorld. About $100 billion is in play every year for both (which we cover during our Ædificare colloquia); with higher education spending only half of what elementary and secondary school systems spend on facilities.
Note that some districts are including construction for faculty housing.
Our focus remains on applying global standard to create educational settlements that are safer, simpler, lower-cost and longer-lasting — not on the hurly-burly of local school bond elections. We recommend consulting the coverage in American School & University for more detailed and more timely information.
Fenestration
2026 North American Fenestration Standard
The oldest door still in use in Pantheon (115 A.D.)
“No work of art can be great,
if it is not composed of the smallest things.”
— Vitruvius (Book VII, Chapter 9)
Today during our usual hour we sweep through standards action in building glazing, entrances and means of egress. The word fenestration (Latin: fenestra) has become a term of art for the design, construction, and placement of openings in a building, including windows, doors, skylights, and other glazed elements. While the word has sparse use in the International Code Council and National Fire Protection Association catalog it is widely used by the Construction Specifications Institute in its MasterFormat system for organizing construction standards, guidelines and building contracts.
The percentage of a building envelope “skin” that is comprised of doors and windows varies depending on the specific building design, function, and location. However, a commonly cited range is between 15% to 25% of the total building envelope. The actual percentage will depend on several factors such as the building’s purpose, orientation, local climate, and energy performance goals. Buildings that require more natural light or ventilation, such as schools, hospitals, and offices, may have a higher percentage of windows and doors in their envelope. In contrast, buildings with lower lighting and ventilation requirements, such as warehouses, may have a smaller percentage of windows and doors.
Fenestration presents elevated risk to facility managers. The education facility industry is a large target and a pattern of settling out of court. For example:
- In 2013, a former student at Yale University sued the school over a broken window in her dorm room. The student alleged that the university was negligent in failing to repair the window, which allowed a burglar to enter her room and sexually assault her. The case was settled out of court in 2015 for an undisclosed amount.
- In 2019, a student at the University of California, Los Angeles sued the school over a broken window in her apartment. The student alleged that the university was negligent in failing to repair the window, which allowed a swarm of bees to enter her apartment and sting her. The case was settled out of court for $4.5 million.
- In 2020, a group of students at Harvard University sued the school over its decision to require them to move out of their dorms due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The students alleged that the university breached its contract with them by failing to provide suitable alternative housing, including functioning windows and doors. (The case is ongoing; best we can tell as of the date of this post).
These cases illustrate that colleges and universities can face legal action related to doors and windows, either due to alleged negligence in maintaining or repairing them, or due to issues related to student housing and accommodations.
Our inquiry breaks down into two modules at the moment:
Exterior facing fenestration
Interior window walls and doors
Join us online at the usual time.
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Related:
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
— Ramin Nasibov (@RaminNasibov) May 25, 2024
Eurocodes
Erasmus+ EU programme for education, training, youth and sport
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The Eurocodes are ten European standards (EN; harmonised technical rules) specifying how structural design should be conducted within the European Union. These were developed by the European Committee for Standardization upon the request of the European Commission. The purpose of the Eurocodes is to provide:
- A means to prove compliance with the requirements for mechanical strength and stability and safety in case of fire established by European Union law.[2]
- A basis for construction and engineering contract specifications.
- A framework for creating harmonized technical specifications for building products (CE mark).
Since March 2010 the Eurocodes are mandatory for the specification of European public works and are intended to become the de facto standard for the private sector. The Eurocodes therefore replace the existing national building codes published by national standard bodies, although many countries have had a period of co-existence. Additionally, each country is expected to issue a National Annex to the Eurocodes which will need referencing for a particular country (e.g. The UK National Annex). At present, take-up of Eurocodes is slow on private sector projects and existing national codes are still widely used by engineers.
Eurocodes appear routinely on the standing agendas of several of our daily colloquia, among them the AEDificare, Elevator & Lift and Hello World! colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
So proud to announce the @ellisoninst is beginning construction on our new campus at the @UniofOxford and broadening our mission: Science & Engineering for Humanity. EIT develops & deploys technology in pursuit of solving four of humanity’s most challenging & enduring problems.… pic.twitter.com/vSkHWSS8EK
— David Agus (@DavidAgus) October 15, 2023
More
REGULATION (EU) No 305/2011 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL
Methods of Building Measurement
BOMA International sets the standard for measuring buildings. In 1915, BOMA published its first office standard, Standard Method of Floor Measurement. Throughout the years, the standard has been revised to reflect the changing needs of the real estate market and the evolution of office building design.
BOMA International is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) secretariat for a suite of area measurement standards.
The BOMA catalog remains active, with recent revisions reflecting changes in building use, energy accounting and increasingly complicated mixed-use occupancies.
Government capital aid for schools is usually capped by classified building type and measured area. States sort facilities by grade band (elementary, middle, high school) and program (special education, CTE), then apply published gross-square-foot-per-student allowances.
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Eligible size is typically gross area to the exterior walls; circulation, walls, and mechanical space are included via net-to-gross markups. Only that baseline is state-funded; extra square footage is a local cost. Misclassification or a different measurement method (net vs. gross, interior vs. exterior) changes the funded envelope and can cut or inflate aid.
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Higher-education inventories often use FICM assignable-versus-gross rules for similar reporting and reimbursement. K-12 inventories take into account stairs, voids, mechanical rooms, portables, and renovations. So classification plus the chosen measurement method can change what is eligible for public money.
“The Ideal City” 1480 Giuliano da Sangallo
Inspired by Lord Kelvin’s “If you can not measure it, you can not improve it” and Peter Drucker’s adage “If you can’t measure it, You can’t improve it” and W. Edwards Deming’s counter-argument — “It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth.” we present the standards catalog of the Building Owner’s Management Association:
BOMA Area Measurement Standards Timeline 1915-2021
At the moment all titles in this catalog seem to be stabilized. Largely because a sizeable portion of square footage in every school district, college, university and university-affiliated healthcare research and clinical delivery system derives at least part of its funding from governments at all levels there are workgroups devoted to measuring square footage and documenting its use. For example:
Space Management: University of Oklahoma
Space Management: Texas A&M University-San Antonio
Space Management Policy: University at Buffalo
Getting square-footage right is essential for securing an organization’s sustainability and “green” claims for example. The links in previous posts provide for information about future public consultations.
We maintain the BOMA catalog on the agenda of our Space Planning, Hammurabi and Architectural colloquia, hosted 6 to 8 times annually. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting, open to everyone.
Posted March 20, 2021
We drill into the specifics commonly found in education communities: sub-lease of space to private industry in publicly-owned facilities. The Building Owners and Managers Association International is an ANSI-accredited consensus standard developer and revised its standard — BOMA Z65.5 Retail Properties: Standard Method of Measurement. Measuring the area of a retail building can quickly become complex when variables must be considered such as ancillary space, mezzanines and storefront lease lines. Many large research universities have long since leased space within many of their building envelopes for private industry to service their communities — student unions, hospitals, dormitories and athletic venues, for example. From the project prospectus:
Z65.5 is intended exclusively for retail properties and their associated structures and may be applied to single-tenant, multi-tenant or multi-building configurations. It features a single method of measurement, with two levels of measurement data, known as Partial Measurement and Overall Measurement for retail properties. It does not measure sidewalks, surface parking, drainage structures, or other ancillary site improvements. This standard is chiefly designed to generate Gross Leasable Area figures, a key metric in retail leasing; however, it also produces area figures which may be of interest to those examining space utilization, valuation, benchmarking, and the allocation of building expenses to various cost centers. The scope of this standard is not intended to be submitted for consideration as an ISO, IEC, or ISO/IEC JTC-1 standard.
Public consultation is open until February 8th.
You may obtain an electronic copy from: floorstandards@boma.org. Send comments (with optional copy to psa@ansi.org) to: floorstandards@boma.org. We encourage user-interest subject matter experts in education facility management to participate directly in the BOMA standards development process by communicating directly with Tanner Johnson at BOMA (tjohnston@boma.org) or 202-326-6357 for more information.
We keep the BOMA catalog on the standing agenda of our colloquia devoted to building construction best practice. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
Issue: [14-117]
Category: Architectural, Facility Asset Management
Colleagues: Jack Janveja, Richard Robben
More
Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education
Posted February, 20 2020
The Building Owners and Managers Association International (BOMA) is an ANSI-accredited consensus standard developer. BOMA has initiated the process of revising its real property measurement standard — BOMA Z65.2 For Industrial Buildings: Standard Methods of Measurement. The primary objectives of this standard are:
– To promote an unambiguous framework for determining the areas of Industrial Buildings with a strong focus on Rentable Area calculations;
– To facilitate transparency and clear communication of building measurement concepts among all participants in the commercial real estate
industry;
– To allow a comparison of values on the basis of a clearly understood and generally agreed upon method of measurement; and
– To align concepts and measurement methodologies with the International Property Measurement Standards: Industrial Buildings (January 2018)
document.
Comments due March 15th
Click here to view these changes in full (Page 2)
Send comments (with optional copy to psa@ansi.org) to: tjohnston@boma.org
Standards Michigan follows, but d0es not advocate in most of the BOMA standards suite for the following reasons:
- Educational facility occupancies are fairly well accounted for in existing federal and state regulations
- Advocacy in energy-related best practice titles are a better use of resources at the moment.
We encourage user-interest subject matter experts in education facility management to participate directly in the BOMA standards development process by communicating directly with Tanner Johnson at BOMA (tjohnston@boma.org) or 202-326-6357 for more information.
We maintain the entire BOMA suite on our periodic Model Building Code colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
Issue: [15-200]
Category: Architectural, Space Plaaning, Facility Asset Management
Colleagues: Jack Janveja, Richard Robben
LEARN MORE:
Facilities Information Management
Guideline for Square Footage Requirements for Educational Facilities
Guide to School Site Analysis and Development
5.18.20
Postsecondary Education Facilities Inventory & Classification Manual
The federal manual has gone approximately 20 years without a comprehensive revision. Some settlements have gone ahead and made modifications of their own. Today at 3:00 4:00 PM EDT the Campus FM Technology Association is hosting a “Water Cooler” discussion about organizing an update. MORE
Western Michigan University maintains a locally updated FICM classification resource dated 2024.
WMU Facilities Management — FICM
Ohio Department of Higher Education maintains area classification codes adapted from the 2006 federal manual. Its documentation explicitly acknowledges differences between its classifications and the updated FICM definitions.
Ohio Higher Education — Area Type Codes
Washington State University continues to identify the 2006 FICM as its official campus space-classification reference.
Washington State University — FICM
Elevator Safety Code
Today, special attention to managing elevator passengers trapped in elevators during power outages. Incident management involves the following:
- Automatic battery-lowering systems (standard in modern elevators) gently descend the car to the nearest floor and open the doors within minutes.
- Backup generators or UPS units keep lights, intercoms, and ventilation running.
- Mandatory two-way communication and remote monitoring allow instant contact with 24/7 response teams.
- Fire-service phase II keys and firefighter overrides ensure rapid rescue.
- Clear emergency instructions and regular maintenance of brakes and overspeed governors prevent falls.
These redundancies, required by ASME A17.1 codes in most jurisdictions, have made prolonged entrapments extremely rare and almost never dangerous.
CMP-12 Public Input Transcript | CMP-12 Public Comment Transcript
Elevator, escalator and moving walk systems are among the most complicated systems in any urban environment, no less so than on the #WiseCampus in which many large research universities have 100 to 1000 elevators to safely and economically operate, service and continuously commission. These systems are regulated heavily at state and local levels of government and have oversight from volunteers that are passionate about their work.
These “movement systems” are absorbed into the Internet of Things transformation. Lately we have tried to keep pace with the expansion of requirements to include software integration professionals to coordinate the interoperability of elevators, lifts and escalators with building automation systems for fire safety, indoor air quality and disaster management. Much of work requires understanding of the local adaptations of national building codes.
Some university elevator O&M units use a combination of in-house, manufacturer and standing order contractors to accomplish their safety and sustainability objectives.
In the United States the American Society of Mechanical Engineers is the dominant standards developer of elevator and escalator system best practice titles; its breakdown of technical committees listed in the link below:
C&S Connect: ASME Proposals Available for Public Review
Public consultation on a new standard for electrical inspector qualifications closes May 27th.
ASME A17.7/CSA B44.7 – 20XX, Performance-based code for elevators and escalators (280 pages)
Safety Code for Existing Elevators and Escalators
Guide for Inspection of Elevators, Escalators, and Moving Walks
Guide for Elevator Seismic Design
As always, we encourage facility managers, elevator shop personnel to participate directly in the ASME Codes & Standards development process. For example, it would be relatively easy for our colleagues in the Phoenix, Arizona region to attend one or more of the technical committee meetings; ideally with operating data and a solid proposal for improving the A17 suite.
University of Wisconsin Stadium Elevator
All ASME standards are on the agenda of our Mechanical, Pathway and Elevator & Lift colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next online teleconferences; open to everyone. Use the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.
Issue: [11-50]
Category: Electrical, Elevators, #WiseCampus
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Jim Harvey, Richard Robben, Larry Spielvogel
More:
Bibliography: Elevators, Lifts and Moving Walks
ISO/TC 178 Lifts, escalators and moving walks
Bleachers, Folding Seating & Grandstands
“View of the Colosseum” 1747 Giovanni Paolo Panini
Play is the making of civilization—how one plays the game
more to the point than whether the game is won or lost.
We follow development of best practice literature for spectator seating structures produced by the International Code Council, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA 102), the American Society of Civil Engineers Structural Engineering Institute (ASCE SEI-7). There are also federal regulations promulgated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. (Note that some of the regulations were inspired by the several regional building code non-profits before the International Code Council was formed in year ~ 2000)
The parent standard from the International Code Council is linked below:
ICC 300 Standard on Bleachers, Folding and Telescopic Seating, and Grandstands
The development of this standard is coordinated with the ICC Group A Codes. We have tracked concepts in it previous revisions; available in the link below.
2024/2025/2026 ICC CODE DEVELOPMENT SCHEDULE
As always, we encourage our colleagues with workpoint experience to participate directly in the ICC Code Development process. CLICK HERE to get started.
Issue: [15-283]
Category: Athletics & Recreation, Architectural, Public Safety
Contact: Mike Anthony, Jack Janveja, Richard Robben
Virtual reality technology in evacuation simulation of sport stadiums
LEARN MORE:
BREAKING NEWS: Woman spotted at the game has been voted by netizens as one of the most beautiful women in the world.
“I’ve never seen a woman as beautiful as her,” one netizen shared. pic.twitter.com/sA1j8Ju3a7
— 🎼🌺Music Love♥️ (@ThoNg676733) June 7, 2026
Progress Sentinels
We collect a sample of cameras that follow construction from start to finish. Fixed on rooftops, poles, or nearby buildings, they record the work as it unfolds—foundations poured, steel raised, façades closed in, interiors finished. They do not interrupt the site. They simply keep a clear, continuous record.
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Their role is practical: project teams check daily conditions, facilities staff document milestones, and the campus community can see a building take shape over months that would otherwise pass unseen. Time-lapse footage turns a long construction schedule into a fun, brief story of how a new building joins the campus.
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New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwB pic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
— USPTO (@uspto) July 13, 2023
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