Committee hears $600 million proposal to help replace aging K–12 school buildings

Representative Murphy presented House Bill 16 04 to the House Education Committee as a state‑level approach to replace and renovate aging school buildings, calling it a “North Dakota model” that would use a sliding‑scale state contribution to reduce local tax burdens and standardize designs to achieve construction efficiencies.

Murphy said the proposal aims to address an “impending crisis” in many rural districts where buildings are structurally deteriorating, heating and cooling systems are near end of life and local property‑tax capacity is insufficient to fund replacements. He described a scalable set of state‑approved plans and a construction management model intended to reduce locality cost premiums, and he said projects for which the state funds 40% or more would require use of the state plan to control costs.

Key…