Green Schools Don't Make the Grade

Green schools… Cost more Green.

            School has always been based on teaching the three “R’s”. While the world around them has become more and focused on the other three R’s, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. When this as inspiration, attention has been turned to how effective our school buildings are at saving the planet. Modifying how our educational facilities are heated, cooled, lit, and constructed has become talking points across the nation. Our government has only added to the issue with the various “Green Laws” that they have put into place.

According to the article “Green Schools Don’t Make the Grade, there were several problems with the approaches to the green schools that were used in the examples. There were several goals for eco-friendly schools that they seemed to fail at measuring up to. First, the green schools cost more to manufacture than projected. This was likely due to the fact that green technology isn’t cheap. Even if it is the most efficient insulation can cost substantially more than the regular stuff. Second, the green schools were not as efficient as projected. It was believed that a 30% reduction in the schools “carbon footprint” could be established. However, the reality was only a small margin of improvement. This is largely because the projected outcome was unreasonable. Thirty percent was just too large of an improvement for current green technology to achieve. These results were also based on uncontrollable factors. The schools carbon footprint was based on student’s behaviors. One such expectation is that more students would ride their bike to the school than before, which simply didn’t happen. I suppose this was going to be something that the green school was to inspire its students to do. However this inspiration simply didn’t occur.

Since coming to work at the Murfreesboro City School System there have been several attempts to cut the electrical bills. From what I understand, we have had some rather pricey bills that have really taken their toll on funds for other projects. A few years back there was a competition to see which of our twelve schools could reduce their electric bill by the highest percentage. Since the school that I work at , Scales Elementary, attempts to win at every competition we run across, we gave it our all. In fact we were able to reduce our electrical consumption by almost double what the next school could accomplish. However, similar to the schools in the study, our energy savings came at a cost. We were so focused on turning off lights, computer, and running the A/C at a minimum that we were loosing instructional time to our efforts. We knew it was slowing us down a bit on the curriculum schedule but we had no idea just how badly it was. Once our competition ended many of our teachers realized that somehow almost five days of instruction time had been sacrificed to the small changes in routine that had been used to save energy. So we did what any other self-respecting school would, bragged about our victory while scrambling to overcome our sacrifices.

There are several limitations and hurdles to overcome to create a green school. Wisely using what the climate is in the schools area is always the starting point (Allen, 2011). Then using the climate to your advantage is the next. By collecting rain water to cool an air conditioning unit, a school can cut energy consumption and water the landscaping (Gordon, 2010). By planting trees to shade key areas of the building energy loss can be managed (Gordon, 2010). There is one key advantage to creating a green school. There is a wealth of education built into the building’s design itself. Sure we may loose educational value in some areas of these buildings but being able to show a student how their school is saving the planet should only inspire them to do the same.

Reference:

Gordon, Douglas. (2010). Green Schools as High Performance Learning Facilities. Retrieved on 10-27-11. Retrieved from: http://eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED512700.pdf

Allen, Nathaniel. (2011).Department of Education lauches Green Ribbon Schools Program. Retrieved on 9-27-11. Retrieved from: http://centerforgreenschools.org/utility-nav/blog/11-09-29/Department_of_Education_launches_Green_Ribbon_Schools_Program.aspx