The writer and organizer Nia Evans got in touch with me recently to talk about an amazing report she was working on with PEER: a student-centered analysis of toxic school facilities and their toxic financing.

This week, I’m sending along the report. It’s beautifully-designed and weaves together threads that we often don’t find in the same place, the relationship between how school buildings are financed and how they’re falling apart.

Credit ratings agencies, for instance, rate many diverse working class school districts as junk investments. The correlations between the junk status of their bond ratings and their buildings is glaring but underappreciated, students facing the brunt of the mold, heat, cold, lead, bad air, lack of light, cracked floors and ceilings, floods, etc.

Congrats to Nia and PEER! We need to add this to the curriculum of readings on the political economy of school infrastructure finance.