Facilities Master Plans

This project analyzed publicly available facilities master plans across California school districts through a multi-year web search effort conducted from Fall 2022 through December 2025. Researchers identified 264 publicly accessible FMPs and evaluated 208 PDF-format plans using a rubric covering facilities conditions, enrollment planning, climate risk, energy resilience, financial planning, and related categories. The analysis used a large language model (GPT-5.1-nano) alongside iterative manual validation by the research team to assess plan quality and consistency based on a developed rubric.

Around 270 of California's 930+ school districts have showed evidence of FMP adoption. Around 30 of those plans could not be accessed. Of the remaining, ~230 were in PDF format and ~30 were web-based (see dashboard below).

This collection should not be taken as a complete picture of FMP adoption statewide. Many districts may have adopted plans that are not posted publicly, or that were not surfaced by the search approach. The ~260 plans represent districts that have both developed an FMP and made it publicly accessible.

Note that ~ indicates that this number is an approximation rather than an exact figure.

This variability presents challenges for both human and automated review. Inconsistent structure and format make it difficult to systemically locate, compare, and evaluate key content across plans, particularly when information is distributed across slides, webpages, or visual elements rather than clearly labeled sections. Variation in how FMPs are structured and presented introduces noise into analysis and complicates efforts to assess the quality of FMPs in a consistent and comparable manner.

All of the plans were adopted in the past two decades, with the earliest plan from 2004. Most plans were adopted between 2014 and 2022. Nearly half ~40% were adopted between 2020-2025, ~50% from 2014-19, and ~10% from 2004-2013. When looking at the current plan in use, the majority of plans are relatively new and published within the last 10 years. 

Overall, ~70% of plans have not been revised since their initial adoption. The remaining plans have been updated at least once, most commonly within the last 5 years. ~30 of the plans were updates of previous plans, with widely varying time periods between updates: from 1 to 14 years, with the majority updated within 5 years of original plan adoption.

FMP adoption increases with student enrollment. ~90% of extremely small districts don't have an FMP. For those school districts ranging from small to extremely large districts, adoption percent goes up to around ~45%.

The ~250 districts for which we found public FMPs are not representative of California districts as a whole. They tend to be larger and more urban or suburban. Differences by district locale, region, and county are analyzed in the sections below to understand which districts have published plans and how adoption varies geographically. 

School districts have been categorized by the NCES into four locale classifications: Urban, Suburban, Town, and Rural.

The majority of FMPs (~75%) are from urban and suburban school districts, even though these districts represent less than half of all districts statewide. ~30 FMPs were identified among California’s ~350 rural school districts - meaning only ~8% of rural districts have a publicly accessible FMP. Less than a third of districts have an FMP, representing ~50% of California’s students. This pattern may reflect differences in district capacity, access to planning resources, or reporting and publication practices across district types.

FMP adoption also varies widely by county, with a small group showing notably high participation. Yolo County leads with 80% of districts having an adopted FMP, followed by Alameda (72%) and San Mateo (65%). Placer, Riverside, and El Dorado counties also stand out, each with roughly 60% or more of districts having an FMP. Several single-district counties (Alpine, Amador, Del Norte, Mariposa, San Francisco, Plumas) have full adoption at 100%. In contrast, 41 counties out of 58 have adoption rates below 50%, including 10 counties that have no adoption of FMPs: Calaveras, Lassen, Modoc, Inyo, Kern, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sierra, Trinity, and Tuolumne. 

The map (bottom) shows the % of districts with FMP adoption within each county. The color scale from light to dark indicate the % of adoption from smallest to largest. 

Use the County filter to select specific county/counties.

The integration of environmental and climate considerations in district FMPs and their relationship to environmental pollution burden and climate impacts were analyzed. This discussion focuses on the three components developed to assess climate planning: Outdoor Spaces and Greening, Climate Risk and Mitigation, and Energy Efficiency and Resilience. The rubric was developed based on guidance from Ten Strands, Center for Cities + Schools, and key partners regarding what constitutes a climate-ready school, specifying the strategies, data, and implementation elements expected at each tier. Despite the limited number of FMPs available, examples were identified for each tier, and expectations were refined to reflect what is more commonly present in published plans. 

The following dashboard shows the distribution of FMP scores across the three climate planning categories, filterable by whether plans were scored by human reviewers, the LLM, or both. Outdoor Spaces and Greening and Energy Efficiency and Resilience were scored on a scale from 1 to 4, representing least to most comprehensive integration. Climate Risk and Mitigation was scored on a scale from 0 to 4, where 0 indicates no evidence of consideration and 4 represents the highest level of integration. For more details on what each tier entails, please refer to the rubric linked in the appendix of the report.

*scores are only generated for PDF-based FMPs

Climate Risk and Mitigation is the lowest-scoring component by a wide margin: half (50.8%) of all scored plans score only at the minimal level, acknowledging climate change in passing without any substantive assessment or strategy, while an additional ~32.1% make no mention of climate considerations at all. Only ~3% of plans scored at the higher tiers for this component, and there are no exists plans that achieves the top score of 4. 

Energy Efficiency and Resilience scores somewhat higher but remains uneven in scope and depth. While many plans reference solar panels or LED light upgrades, only around one-third of FMPs engage substantively with energy resilience, electrification pathways, or alignment with state requirements such as Title 24 and Zero Net Energy goals. 

Outdoor Learning and Greening is the strongest-performing category overall, though relatively few plans demonstrate comprehensive integration. Only 5 percent of FMPs achieve the highest score in this category, and most plans do not address outdoor spaces as strategic priorities connected to climate adaptation, heat mitigation, biodiversity, or student wellness. 

The following dashboard compares the average pollution burden between districts with and without planning in each of the three categories, no substantial differences are observed. This may suggest that factors other than environmental exposure may play a larger role in shaping facilities planning priorities. 

To examine the relationship between environmental and climate planning in FMPs and the implementation of climate mitigation strategies, the share of districts implementing drought preparedness, heat protection, air quality management, wildfire protection, and stormwater management was calculated for districts with and without planning. 

The stacked bar charts below show these calculated rates, revealing a relatively even distribution between the two groups. This indicates little to no alignment between planning documented in the FMPs and the actual implementation of the climate mitigation measures.

• Large planning gap: Fewer than ~10% of California school districts have adopted a FMP within the last five years.

• Capacity challenges: Districts without plans tend to be smaller and more rural, and often lack the staff, time, or resources to develop plans independently.

• Need for targeted support: Many districts will likely require technical assistance, planning templates, and possibly funding to complete an FMP.

• Wide variation in plan formats: Existing plans range from short summaries to extremely long documents, reflecting very different approaches to facilities planning.

• One-size guidance may not work: Because districts vary widely in size and capacity, statewide guidance should allow multiple pathways and scaled expectations for completing an FMP.

Ten Strands would like to thank the following researchers for their expertise and contributions to this project:

• Co-Author and Investigator: Sara Hinkley, Center for Cities + Schools, UC Berkeley

• Data Analysts Interns: UC Berkeley Data Discovery Intern Teams

  • Fall 2025: Hamza Khalilullah, Sierra Meisel

  • Spring 2023: Daniel Escajeda, Elaine Zhang, Jerry Wu, Kayla Zhu, Madeleine Larson

  • Fall 2022: Arjun Banerjee, Dylan Nguyen, Ricardo Yin, Luke Chang, Moko Eto

• Data Advisor: Curtis Atkisson, George Washington University eScience Institute