How We Work

Universal and targeted technical assistance

NCSI provides universal and targeted technical assistance (TA) to the field. Our universal TA consists of freely available information resources that foster knowledge-building among state and local school facility stewards across the country. Universal TA is accessible to everyone through the resources we share through our website and via email newsletters. NCSI’s targeted TA primarily serves states and territories in the U.S. Department of Education’s Supporting America’s School Infrastructure (SASI) Grant Program via peer learning opportunities and other direct support. We also respond to information requests from the field; please contact us to make a request. A priority for NCSI is ensuring our universal and targeted TA helps high-need areas that face the steepest challenges to modernizing school facilities.

Resource library content

The primary audience for NCSI’s resource library is composed of professionals – including state and local education agency staff, state and local school administrators such as superintendents and business officers, facilities managers and specialists, school board members, state and local government agency actors, governors offices, and state legislatures – who are in positions to solve school infrastructure challenges. To effectively serve this audience, NCSI works to ensure that the library contains information resources that are relevant, timely, and useful for planning, building, operating, and improving school buildings and grounds, especially:

• Best practices, guidance, and tools
• Resources that explain the influence and impact that school buildings and grounds have on the well-being and success of students, teachers, and/or local communities
• Resources that document or assess policy, practices, and/or funding approaches

Content standards

The following standards govern NCSI’s decisions about what resources to include in the NCSI library.

Resources must be:

• Aligned to one or more topic(s) specifically relevant to public school buildings and grounds
• Applicable to local and state actors who serve as stewards for public school infrastructure.
• Published or validated within the past 10 years and still applicable to the present. Exceptions apply to unique resources deemed to be of high value to current practices of school facility stewardship, such as foundational research and/or reports, case studies where newer examples do not exist and findings remain highly relevant, datasets that enable longitudinal analysis, and policy resources that are the most recent authority.
• Available online (i.e., in electronic format) for free to the public. Exceptions apply to highly relevant research published in pay-walled academic journals and books that are not freely available online.
• Reflective of best practice as is currently widely understood in the field.

Resources must not:

• Overtly advertise or privilege a specific company or for-sale product.

NCSI collaborates with an ever-growing array of field leaders and subject matter experts to collect, organize, and create field-responsive materials.

The following organizations and individuals, along with our Advisory Committee, have been instrumental in helping NCSI to develop its resource library and other technical assistance offerings:

Organizations

Center for the Built Environment (CBE), University of California, Berkeley
CBE is a place where prominent industry leaders and internationally recognized researchers cooperate to produce substantial, holistic, and far-sighted research on buildings.

Center for Cities + Schools (CC+S), University of California, Berkeley
CC+S is an interdisciplinary, action-research center, conducting high-quality, non-partisan research that offers decision-makers innovative strategies for creating environments where young people of all backgrounds can thrive.

Center for Green Schools
The Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council is a global leader in advancing green schools and providing the resources needed to create sustainable, healthy, resilient, and equitable learning environments.

Children & Nature Network
Children & Nature Network is a national nonprofit that supports and mobilizes leaders, educators, activists, practitioners and parents working to turn the trend of an indoor childhood back out to the benefits of nature–and to increase safe and equitable access to the natural world for all.

Efficient and Healthy Schools Program
The Efficient and Healthy Schools Program offers customized support for K-12 schools and districts, helping them build capacity to enhance energy efficiency and create a better learning environment. This program is led by the U.S. Department of Energy with technical support from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and New Buildings Institute.

Green Schoolyards America
Green Schoolyards America inspires and supports systems change to transform asphalt-covered school grounds into living schoolyards that improve children’s well-being, learning, and play, while strengthening their communities’ ecological health and climate resilience.

Healthy Schools Network
Healthy Schools Network is an award-winning 501(c)3 that has fostered the national healthy school environments movement, widely recognized as the nation’s leading voice for children’s environmental health at school.

National School Plant Managers Association
The National School Plant Managers Association represents school plant managers, facilitators, and directors across the United States and promotes excellence in education through professional facility management.

New Buildings Institute
New Buildings Institute (NBI) is a mission-driven nonprofit organization working to advance scalable and practical approaches that equitably eliminate emissions from the built environment.

UndauntedK12
UndauntedK12 is a national nonprofit working to ensure that every student has the opportunity to attend a safe, healthy, and resilient school.

Individuals

Lauren Bierbaum
Lauren Bierbaum has two decades of experience as a consultant, research analyst, and organizational leader having served as research director and education nonprofit director. She has deep expertise leading and executing research projects on issues of educational equity, school transformation, school assessment, and accountability at the school, district, state, and federal levels.

Ken Doane
Ken Doane has worked in the education field for 30+ years, serving a variety of roles including: foundation program executive; education nonprofit director; academic researcher, and grade school teacher.

Peter Lippman
Peter Lippman is a leading expert with more than two decades of experience researching and crafting dynamic learning environments, including: editor for Creating Dynamic Places for Learning: An Evidence Based Design Approach (2023), and author for the book, Evidence-Based Design for Primary and Secondary Schools: A Responsive Approach to Creating Learning Environments (2010).

Kathleen Moore
Kathleen Moore has 30 years of experience working in public school facility planning and construction, including Director of Planning and Development for the Elk Grove Unified School District (California), Director, School Facilities and Transportation Services Division, California Department of Education, and providing consulting services to dozens of local educational agencies throughout California ranging from educational planning, maximizing and leveraging funding, facility program management, and master plan development and implementation.

Mary Morris
Mary Morris has more than 30 years experience working on educational projects for large architectural firms and consulting to assist school districts, architects, and contractors, including specialties in education specifications, facilities assessments, site committee and community meeting planning and facilitation, master and implementation planning, communications strategies and content development, peer review of design and construction documents, and serving as an owner’s architect representative for Design-Build projects.

Jerry Roseman
Jerry Roseman, MSc,IH is a leading national expert on the issue of adequate building conditions and school facilities, having worked as a public health, environmental science and occupational health and safety professional for more than 40 years.

William Savidge
William (Bill) Savidge has more than 25 years of experience in school facilities construction programs, including leading construction programs at numerous school districts in California, serving as staff to the State Allocation Board for the State of California (which funds K-12 school construction and modernization projects), and providing consultant services to dozens of school districts across California on matters of educational facility planning, bond financing, construction, modernization, and related tasks.

Kevin Quintero
Kevin Quintero holds a doctorate in Education in Policy, Politics, and Leadership from the Berkeley School of Education, with research interests focus on educational resources and racial and ethnic change in the American suburbs.