Monday 28 October 2013

Green Schools, Healthy Schools

When Colorado’s Poudre School District began building green schools some years ago, school officials had the idea to design buildings with large, high-performance, glazed windows so that natural light could help lower lighting costs and create a more cheerful learning environment.   The idea worked well -- but there was a hiccup. During parts of the year, when the sun shined at a particular angle, the light entering classrooms with a southern exposure overwhelmed the protective glazing and left classrooms too bright for comfort.
A mistake? Yes. But as more school boards nationwide embrace the concept of green schools -- ones that promote energy efficiency and environmentally friendly operating practices -- there is inevitably going to be a steep learning curve. As with any pioneering effort, there are hard lessons to be learned.
“Some of the things we’ve learned are things not to do again,” admits Stu Reeve, energy manager for the Poudre schools. “But people are very interested in learning about things that didn’t work out … and sharing information about what a high-performance school looks like.”
That’s perhaps the most important lesson school boards should take to heart if they choose to go green. Tap the expertise of the trailblazers. They’ve learned what works -- and what doesn’t. In later school designs, for example, Poudre officials started installing smaller windows on the south side of buildings and looked to sun tubes -- mini skylights -- to bring more indirect light into classrooms through the roof.
These school officials also have learned that green schools don’t necessarily cost more to build. Costs often were higher when green strategies were added on to a traditional school design. However, school construction experts have learned that incorporating green strategies into the original design of buildings keeps construction costs down and maximizes the savings of energy conservation practices.
Case in point: It’s all well and good to install costly solar panels as an accessory to trim a school’s electricity bill. But similar savings may be attainable with a decidedly low-tech strategy: When designing a school, officials can locate the gym and auditorium in the center of the building, so that surrounding classrooms act as an insulation barrier for these hard-to-heat (or cool) spaces.
“Now we really know how to do this,” says Daniel Bankhead, general manager of construction and facilities services for the Houston Independent School District. “We did not see a significant premium in the cost of having sustainable facilities. … We grabbed a lot of the low-hanging fruit. Around the country, initial costs can include a 2 percent to 4 percent premium to do some measures -- so when you do that, you put your budget hat on ... and look to see the payback later.”
Meanwhile, new technologies -- from energy-efficient HVAC units to sophisticated energy management systems -- have added new tools to the repertoire of budget-minded school officials. A green school today can save a district $100,000 annually in direct operating costs, says Rachel Gutter, director of the Center for Green Schools, a program that promotes energy efficiency and environmental practices in K-12 schools. For larger districts, some advocates say, the savings can run into millions of dollars over the years.
It’s little wonder then that many states have begun to mandate the use of design standards that promote energy efficiency. Some are encouraging schools to seek LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. But Gutter says school officials can do so much more.
“We just hit the 3,000 mark on K-12 schools that have pursued or obtained LEED certification,” she says. “That’s a nice number, but it still pales to the work we have to do to put every child in a green school in a generation. There are 133,000 schools in the U.S.”
The green team
So how does a school board begin if it’s interested in more energy-efficient and environmentally responsible schools? Perhaps the most important step is to invest in the creation of what Poudre school officials call a green team. This is a working committee of architects, contractors, electrical engineers, plumbers, key administrators, and facility managers, including the supervisors of groundskeepers and custodians.
The mission of this team is to contribute early input into school designs to maximize their energy efficiencies and lessen their negative impact on the environment -- and to review the ongoing design and construction work until the school is completed so that nothing is overlooked, Reeve says.
In practice, for example, the architect might turn to a traditional design with a single HVAC unit for a school, but others on the team might point out the advantages of dividing the building into separate climate zones -- each with a small energy-efficient HVAC unit, he says. That design would allow parts of the building to be used at night and on weekends while other parts are shut down to conserve energy usage.
Others might suggest building upward instead of outward to minimize water runoff or loss of green space on the campus -- or urge the use of recycled construction materials.
“You have this group that hopefully works well together, who check their egos at the door and work to design a good building -- and then once the building is designed, they’re doing the same thing with the folks who construct the building,” Reeve says. “We want to make sure that everyone is on the same page.”
This kind of back-and-forth dialogue should occur with every school construction project, but a green school offers even greater opportunities for creative design work. In Nashville, for example, school designers and groundskeepers realized they could lower their water use -- and cut water utility bills -- if they switched to using native and drought-resistant plants in future schoolyard landscaping.
“We also have utilized rainwater … collecting it from roofs and using it for irrigation or for flushing toilets,” says Ken Murdock, the Nashville, Tenn., school district’s director of planning and construction.
Sometimes there are so many choices that school officials have to make tough decisions. Moving into a 40-year-old building several years ago, the Evergreen Community Charter School in Asheville, N.C., had to decide whether to tear down an aging gymnasium or renovate the structure. Cost considerations and a desire to recycle and limit rubble sent to a landfill led to a decision to renovate.
But that merely led to more decisions. Heating and cooling the gym with geothermal energy was considered, but given the up-front costs, officials opted for new high-tech HVAC systems and energy-efficient lighting, says Business Manager Gordon Simmons. In the end, he says, “we came out about 95 percent to 97 percent as efficient as if we’d gone with geothermal. It’s all about compromise.”
School officials can get excited about cutting their utility rates, but advocates for green schools say that boards also should consider how school designs can be environmentally responsible. In Houston, for example, officials are giving more thought to the placement of parking lots, access roads, and the streets surrounding their schools. Creating quicker and more efficient routes for school buses to move on and off campus, for instance, meant “less idling time and fewer emissions in the air,” Bankhead says.
In Neptune, N.J., meanwhile, the landscape design of some schools includes a bioswale. This is a drainage system that slopes the school grounds to divert rainwater from the school roof and parking lot to a “rain garden,” says Joshua Loveland, the district’s science department chair.
“It funnels the water so that plants and soil can act as a natural buffer zone to collect pollutants and oils from driveways before the water rushes into rivers or [storm] drains,” he says.
Setting priorities
Such innovative ideas have been around for years -- for those who long ago went green. But for school boards whose thoughts are just turning in this direction, they might look to the Houston school board, which almost a decade ago adopted a policy to embrace LEED construction principles in future school construction projects.
“Our policy is to be more energy conscious,” Bankhead says. “We’re one of the larger school districts in the state, and you can imagine what our utility bill looks like. We wanted to be more efficient and better stewards of tax dollars. Other benefits, of course, are that our policy creates a learning opportunity for students, as well as creates a healthier indoor environment that may improve student attendance, health, and performance.”
That latter goal means more sunlight in classrooms, improved ventilation systems, and the use of cleaning supplies and construction materials that don’t release toxic or irritating chemicals into the air, he says. It even means paying more attention to the acoustics of classrooms, where teachers can go hoarse trying to make themselves heard.
Thinking of all the parameters that can go into a green school can be a challenge. So when school officials begin to put together their green team, they may need to look beyond their traditional pool of architects and contractors to find those with experience with LEED or other green construction guidelines, says Justin Kelton, senior vice president for education services at McCarthy Building Companies, one of the nation’s top commercial builders.
“When you go out to pick your team, look at their credentials, look at their expertise,” he says. And, echoing the advice of Reeve, he recommends meeting the entire architectural or contracting team to ensure they are all ready to tackle a green school. “Can the in-house mechanical engineer go to the architect and challenge him by asking if we can find some efficiencies with the [choice of] HVAC systems?”
School officials also should look online for valuable information from the Center for Green Schools, the U.S. Green Building Council, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and others. In addition to the LEEDS standards, officials might look to the standards developed by the American National Standards Institute and the Green Building Initiative.
Kelton also advises school officials to make the effort to visit green schools in other districts. “I think one of the biggest things you can do for your schools is just go look at what other people have done. Don’t be afraid to say that you’re going to take some time and see some of the buildings out there, whether it’s next door or across the country. It can save you a lot of money to talk about what went right and what went wrong with other people’s projects.”
What you may find are fascinating innovations, green school advocates say. The Midtown Community Elementary School in Neptune, N.J., is known for its ambitious mix of green technologies, from a digitally controlled geothermal heating and cooling system to waterless urinals to solar panels. Two years ago, the school earned a platinum LEED certification for its green design, which has led to per-square-foot energy costs about a third lower than a nearby traditionally built middle school in the district.
Meanwhile, Poudre school officials have installed thermal ice storage systems in three schools, Reeve says. During off-peak night hours when electricity rates are lower, the schools make ice in insulated storage tanks and then run air over the ice during the day to cool the buildings.
“It’s really just taking a step back and looking at how electric rates work and how to manage this,” he says. “There’s definitely more than one way to skin the cat.”
Meanwhile, the ultimate goal in Washington’s Olympia School District’s newest building is a Net-Zero school. It will be a building that generates as much energy as it uses, says Bonnie Meyer, the district’s resource conservation manager. The district will break ground for this building this fall.
Meyer says, “It’s still in the design phase. But it probably will have ground-source heat pumps and solar power … with every energy efficient technology we can afford. We’re hoping by 2015 to have it done.”
Del Stover (dstover@nsba.org) is a senior editor of American School Board Journal.

Going green with operations
Every administrator knows to adjust the thermostat when a school will be closed and empty over the weekend.
So “going green” is not a new concept for school officials, whose daily operational procedures often include energy-saving measures. Most schools have switched to high-efficiency light bulbs and installed motion detectors that turn out the lights in empty rooms. Others have banned coffeemakers and other appliances in classrooms.
“Utility bills are the second highest operational expense after teacher salaries,” says Rachel Gutter, director of the Center for Green Schools. “The U.S. Department of Energy estimates you can save 25 percent of your utility bills by making simple improvements and educating students and teachers to be part of the change” by practicing energy conservation measures.
School officials have relied on energy-management systems for years to automate and monitor energy usage in their buildings. But, as with most technologies, the power of these systems has grown dramatically.
“We can look at the lighting in each individual classroom, see what heaters are doing, how our water heaters are performing. … We can really drill down to see if something is not running well,” says Bonnie Meyer, resource conservation manager for Washington’s Olympia School District. “We can determine which individual piece of equipment is having a problem and fix it. That diagnostic ability saves us so much time.”
Although not as helpful to the budget, some schools also are putting a higher priority on recycling. For example, although it’s impractical to compost all its food waste, the Neptune, N.J., school system does encourage schools to use lawn trimmings and some food waste in compost heaps. Meanwhile, the Olympia schools no longer sell milk by cartons but by the glass, so the district is no longer sending waxy cardboard boxes to landfills.
A similar thinking lies behind the practice of the Evergreen Community Charter School in Asheville, N.C., where school officials recycled old sinks and toilets from a renovation project. “We gave them to Habitat for Humanity,” says Business Manager Gordon Simmons. “We have families in need.”

Going green for good health
With so many students and teachers suffering from asthma and allergies, it’s logical to expect environmentally concerned school officials to pay some attention to the environment inside their schools.
Most districts now have an indoor air quality management program that promotes the use of less-toxic cleaning supplies, seeks to limit moisture problems that lead to mold, focuses on odor control, and takes care with the selection of carpet and construction materials that may release irritating fumes after installation.
“The type of floor tile, carpet, glues, the insulation around water pipes -- you want to use materials that don’t have certain chemicals in them,” says Ken Murdock, director of planning and construction for the Nashville, Tenn., schools. “We want the environment to be great for kids … the air cleaner, with fewer toxins.”
A lot of attention nowadays has turned to the efficiency of ventilation systems, with maintenance staff cleaning or replacing ductwork, air supply diffusers, return registers, and outside air intakes. More attention also is being directed at circulating air throughout a building and paying attention to the quality of outdoor air that’s brought into a building in urban or industrial areas.
Plenty of research shows that such an effort offers schools great benefits. Asthma is the leading cause of absenteeism in schools, reports the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and it says improved air quality can improve attendance rates and academic performance.
But air quality isn’t the only environmental factor that matters. Some school leaders have embraced research that suggests natural light is beneficial to students, although the link is more suggestive than proven. That was the conclusion of “The Impact of School Buildings on Student Health and Performance: A Call for Research,” a 2012 report by the McGraw-Hill Research Foundation and the Center for Green Schools.
Meanwhile, some schools are paying attention to research that suggests student performance improves when classroom temperatures are lowered to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. One of these is Washington’s Olympia School District. “In some cases, the teachers prefer to be warmer, but it’s about what’s best for students … and its saves money,” says Bonnie Meyer, the district’s resource conservation manager.

Reading, writing, and the environment
The up-front costs of solar panels discouraged Neptune, N.J., school officials from making a major investment in the technology. But they did install a few panels at Midtown Community Elementary School, a LEED platinum school that’s the pride of the district’s green policy advocates.
“We have some solar panels. They provide some electricity, but mostly they’re a teaching tool,” says Joshua Loveland, chair of the district’s science department.
And why not? If a school board is going to make an effort to be environmentally responsible, it might as well make an effort to educate kids, too.
In fact, Nik Kaestner, who champions green school projects in San Francisco, once put it more strongly: “We’re an educational organization, and we … believe that, in addition to teaching kids to read and write and do math, we need to educate eco-literate citizens who understand environmental programs.”
How school districts go about this educational effort varies widely. At Houston’s Carnegie Vanguard High School, science classes are sometimes conducted on the “green roof” of the library, where a small garden has been built to provide an outdoor laboratory for the science curriculum, says Daniel Bankhead, general manager of construction and facilities services. At another of the city’s schools, a kiosk in the hallway shows students “how many gallons of oil they save by recycling plastic.”
In Neptune, N.J., one elementary school has a 30-acre wooded area that provides science teachers with opportunities to incorporate the environment into everyday lessons. Some students are tracking the population of invertebrates in a stream.
“They go out and collect samples, come back and count how many they have of various species and figure out the health of the stream from that,” Loveland says. “Then they upload that data to the state Environmental Protection Agency website. It helps them realize that we need to do things to stop the pollution in rivers.”
Not every school has such accessibility to nature, and in San Francisco, school officials have converted asphalt playgrounds and other less-than-desirable areas into “green schoolyards.”
So far, 84 city schools have gardens built with school funds, private grants, and volunteer work overseen by the city’s Green Schools Initiative and Education Outside, a private nonprofit dedicated to creating green space and outdoor educational classrooms.
Many urban students have little understanding of how food is grown, says Arden Bucklin-Sporer, executive director of Education Outside. But the green schoolyards offer learning opportunities that are useful in all areas of the curriculum, from using math to calculate the amount of dirt needed to fill a plant bed to basic biology. “There are real living things to look at … real creatures living in the gardens, so it’s compelling and interesting. It’s really an easy transition to take what’s going on in the classroom outside.” 

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