Are facility maintenance and operations enabling performance: A study of K-12 public schools

Every year approximately $50B is spent nationally to maintain the facility operations of primary and secondary educational buildings across the United States. An expanding body of academic research attributes the performance of building systems and the standard of care of educational environments with academic performance. The research indicates an investment in strategic capital improvements to educational facilities can provide value in terms of student achievement, teacher retention, and standardized test scores. Despite this awareness, America's educational infrastructure by most accounts is underfunded. The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of plant maintenance and operations indirect expense spending at K-12 schools in the state of Arizona. A Pearson correlative analysis of facility maintenance spending and student performance in Arizona over a 5-year period, 2010 through 2015, indicates essentially no relationship exists between student performance and facility expense spending. This paper addresses the link between academic performance, categorized as return-on-assets, and facility management. The findings of this paper highlight the importance of establishing a process for prioritizing facility maintenance work orders. Moreover, the paper utilizes a process that can be used by other academic districts to assess the method by which decisions are made in support of academic facilities.