Green Schools Online News 1/2009
Happy New Year, and Welcome to EcoSchools.us, the independent change agent advocating green schools.
EcoSchools mission is to make sustainable, healthy school buildings available to all children-everywhere.
For our logo we chose a bee, busy pollinating flower after flower to grow greener schools.
EcoSchools.us connects experts with advocates and provides resources from individuals, agencies and organizations active in the green schools industry.
The stakeholders and members are schools and school systems with their administrators, facility managers, support services, teachers and students, as well as community members, environmental organizations, parents and the engineering and design industry.
Membership is free and includes the online listing in our membership section, a subscription to our online newsletter, and access to our ever growing members only resource page on our website.
EcoSchools.us is a free bee - independent and not affiliated with any other organizations.
Our website www.EcoSchools.us successfully launched last year, and now we proudly present this independent green schools online news and events, with plenty of good “clickables”.
Since everyone is aching about the economy these days, today’s green schools clips focus on good, free fun- because we all need more of that right now.
If you have green schools news of your own to share, please send them our way for future editions.
I invite you to join my personal quest to make America's schools the greenest, most advanced, most peaceful and most inspiring buildings this society is capable of.
Changing the World of Children so Children will Change the World !
With warm wishes for a New Green Year,
Anja S. Caldwell,
anja@EcoSchools.us
Green Schools News
European Parliament turns Lights off on Edison’s Incandescent Light Bulb
The European Parliament in Brussels recently decided to phase out the energy intensive incandescent light bulb still used in most households and some commercial buildings by 2012. Gradually bulbs above 100 Watts will be taken off the shelves in 2009, bulbs with more than 40 Watts will follow early 2010, and all more heat than light producing incandescent bulbs will be replaced by much more energy efficient bulbs by 2012. Alternatives available are Compact Fluorescents Lightbulbs (CFLs), Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) – because of their excellent energy
efficiency some have also called these short for Luminously Excellent Decision- and halogens. Savings including higher initial costs of the alternative bulbs are estimated at about 15% of electricity costs per household.
For all of Europe this means savings of five to ten billion Euro per year – Ecoschools calls this a funding mandate.
UK’s CABE Blames Architects for Unsustainable Schools
This summer an article by Marguerite Lazell for Building Design Online discussed the lack of most school architects qualification to design sustainable schools in the United Kingdom, a fact that certainly holds true in most American school designs as well.
CABE, the UK’s Commission of Architecture and the Built Environment, claims on their website to also stand for an improvement in people’s quality of life through good design.
The design watchdog reviewed 700 designs over the past two years and found that only around seven schemes boasted proper sustainability strategies.
“We’ve got architects who don’t know how to design low-energy, high natural light buildings,” Richard Simmons, the head of CABE said at a national jury.
“[Architects] have been used to designing with air conditioning and lots of artificial lighting. Simple things like which way buildings face on site to make the best advantage of the sun and natural light aren’t necessarily driving projects.”
Source: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3118457&origin=BDweeklydigestThis certainly also hold true for many American school designers, given that many schemes are still being developed without a site visit or proper solar orientation, one of the fundamentals of sustainable and energy efficient designs. A proper oriented building is proven to save up to 50% over a not ideally situated floor plate, so it is crucial for the designer to know where for example exactly North is and what that means for the buildings energy performance.
How Much Can Energy Cost Matter for a School District?
The Board of Education for Montgomery County Public Schools (205 schools) in Maryland had to submit a request to the County Council last year to supplement their budget by $5,682,000 to offset an expected deficit due to rising diesel fuel prices. When the FY 2009 budget was developed, fuel was $2.75 a gallon and rose to $ 4.50 a gallon.
Efforts to conserve fuel, such as monitoring bus idling times and reviewing bus routes, had resulted in fuel savings of 68,474 gallons in FY 2007 and 44,672 gallons in FY 2008, but were not enough to prevent the significant deficit.
Montgomery County School buses travel around the globe more than five times every school day, not counting students, parents and staff driving individually.
Experts say that up to 40% of all car traffic on US roads is school related. In comparison, countries like Germany do not have any school buses and students use the public bus system – for free, and at $10 a gallon most students could not afford to drive anyway.
It is Not Your Grandmas Windmill Anymore...
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into useful form, such as electricity, using wind turbines. In conventional windmills, wind energy is directly used to crush grain or to pump water. At the end of 2007, worldwide capacity of wind-powered generators was 94.1 gigawatts. Although wind currently produces just over 1% of worldwide electricity use, it accounts for approximately 19% of electricity production in Denmark, 9% in Spain and Portugal, and 6% in Germany and the Republic of Ireland (2007 data). Globally, wind power generation increased more than fivefold between 2000 and 2007 (Source: www.researchandmarkets.com).
Windpower can also be used for schools. While the large propellers you might be thinking of right now have been critized for posting a threat to birds and generating noisy vibrations, new, vertical turbines are a much more practical application.
A Windspire turbine for example has been installed at several schools to date and a sample installation can be viewed in Washington, DC, in front of the National Botanical Gardens. The unit produces 1.2 kWh, enough to power one classroom. While that does not seem much the real value of an installation like this for now is certainly that of a teaching tool about renewable energy sources.
Personally I am envisioning a couple of units like this for every future home. That would mean at least 50% green power and no more power outages, certainly not during a storm.
Student Design Competition - School of the Future Competition 2009
- Apply NOW
National School Building Week's School of the Future Design Competition offers an opportunity to illustrate the kind of creativity that students bring to the planning and design process. The competition highlights the importance of well-planned, high performance, healthy, safe and sustainable schools that foster student achievement and enhance community vitality. The annual competition, open to middle school students, challenges student teams to design their schools to enhance learning, conserve resources, be environmentally responsive and engage the surrounding community. The multi-disciplinary solution requires students to follow a planning process from the concept phase to completion of the project, with thorough documentation. The students will present their project to a jury for review.
The application deadline for the national School of the Future Competition conducted every year by the CEFPI ends January 15th 2009.
Middle school teams and potential mentors should not miss out on this great opportunity to work with an award winning curriculum and teach a group of students about construction, school design and green building. Winning teams and their teachers get to spend national School Building Week (April 2009) in a fancy hotel in Washington DC to meet US Senators and visit DC's historic sites and area green schools.
Information about the competition is available at: http://www.cefpi.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3338
Contact EcoSchools.us if you are a school that needs help signing up or mentor contacts, or if you want to be a mentor. We will be happy to put you in touch with our knowledgable volunteers or area student teams.http://www.cefpi.org/sbw/
School Building Week YouTube Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKPgy2c4d0
Senator Lieberman with students from Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School, Old Lyme, Connecticut
Award of Excellence Winners in 2008
List of Green Schools in the Region
There is nothing more convincing that green schools are the only way to build schools than touring one.
A useful list of green schools in the Washington Metropolitan region with contact information for tours can be downloaded at www.ecoipso.com
The latest and most exciting one not yet on the list is the new Friends Community School in College Park, MD built of straw bales, putting the three little pigs to green shame once and for all. The school was designed by Hord Caplan Macht in Baltimore and the contact is Paul Dibos at HCM www.HCM2.com.
Green Attributes Presentation Best of GreenBuild 2008
EcoSchools.us voted a panel presentation on the National Academy of Sciences’ definitions on “Green Schools Attributes for Health and Learning” our Best of GreenBuild 2008 for greening schools. The presentation and document gives green schools advocates all the hard evidence they will ever need to show that school facilities and our built environment do have a significant and documentable impact on student health and student performance.
Members of EcoSchools.us can obtain a link to view the presentation by sending an E-mail to membership@ecoschools.us
A PDF of the document can be downloaded here
Districts and Schools Can Now Join CHPS for Free with CHPS Registered
Schools and districts can now become members of CHPS for free by joining CHPS Registered. The program will give schools and districts free access to tools and resources for designing, constructing, modernizing and operating high performance educational facilities.
“By offering this free program, CHPS will increase awareness of the benefits of high performance schools and stimulate the demand for green, healthy educational facilities nationwide,” said Charles Eley, executive director of CHPS. “CHPS Registered is an important step in getting the best technical information available on green schools into the hands of the people who need it most.”
The CHPS Registered program will foster school districts’ commitment to building high performance schools, track their progress in the CHPS program, and help schools and districts to receive recognition for their green building accomplishments.
Members of the program will have access to the suite of CHPS tools and resources, including the six-volume CHPS Best Practices Manual and discounts on CHPS goods and services.
Blueprint for a Green School
The Center for Environmental Education is a non-profit part of Unity College in Maine with the mission to green K-12 schools. Their website is www.ceeonline.org. They have developed a Blueprint for a Green School, which is a free online guide that offers advice and resources geared towards physically greening the schools and green curriculum. Teachers can search green curricula by subject, length and grade level.
Solar Energy Projects for Schools in Montgomery County
Montgomery County Public Schools Plans to Tap into Solar Energy to Help Power Clarksburg and Richard Montgomery High Schools and College Gardens Elementary School
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) , the largest and most affluent school district in Maryland, will install solar photovoltaic (PV) systems on the roofs of several schools. Each solar PV system within the program will be capable of producing between 100 and 400 kilowatts (kW) of electric power. This amounts to between 20 and 40 percent of the total power requirements of the school during peak sunlight conditions. The Board of Education has contracted with SunEdison, North America’s largest solar energy services provider, to develop the program. SunEdison has installed similar systems on commercial and institutional buildings, primarily in California, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
The first schools selected for the solar PV systems are Clarksburg High School, Richard Montgomery High School, and College Gardens Elementary School. Other installations will be announced pending further analysis of potential installation sites and the success of the first phase.
Under a solar power services agreement, SunEdison will finance, construct, and operate the solar PV systems. MCPS will avoid all upfront capital costs and will purchase the electricity produced by the solar PV systems at fixed prices that are below retail rates. Federal renewable energy tax credits and State of Maryland power portfolio requirements allow SunEdison to offer such attractive rates. The solar PV systems will produce clean, renewable energy without generating noise, pollution, or green house gases. These solar PV systems will also lessen the stress on the electric infrastructure by increasing locally generated electricity and reducing the need for additional transmission lines.
The solar PV systems are estimated to deliver 694,925 kilowatt hours (kWh) of solar energy in the first year of operation, the annual equivalent of powering 65 homes or removing 75 cars from the road.
The first installation at Clarksburg HS is complete. View a video here:
http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/facilities/greenschoolsfocus/multimedia/WUSA9SolarPanel_WMV9_320x240.wmv
For more on green programs of Montgomery County Public Schools go to www.GreenSchoolsFocus.org
EVENTS
Wetland Poetry Workshop for Students
“Sweet is the swamp with secrets,” wrote Emily Dickinson over 100 years ago. Today, Environmental Concern still seeks to unlock those secrets with a wetlands poetry workshop A Muse in the Marsh. This workshop, for regional high school students, will spend the day using creative writing prompts, poetry, and most importantly nature itself as inspiration to explore a different side of wetlands. Special guest for the day will be Michael Glaser, poet laureate of Maryland.
A Muse in the Marsh will take place Saturday, March 3 2009, from 9 to 4 at the Environmental Concern Wetland Learning Center in St Michaels, MD. The workshop costs $10 with all materials, drinks, and snacks included. Please contact Laurie Raines, Wetland Youth Educator for Environmental Concern with any questions by email educate@wetland.org or by phone 410-745-9620. www.wetland.org
Green Education Conference in February in Ocean City, Maryland
The annual conference of the Maryland Association of Outdoor and Environmental Education (MAEOE) attracts a variety of people working in environmental education and related fields. Attendees, presenters and exhibitors include environmental professionals, classroom teachers, naturalists, environmental educators, outdoor center staff and many others who have an interest in working with children and adults in the environmental education field. To see locations of environmental education organizations as well as Green Schools and Centers throughout Maryland, please visit their website at
www.maeoe.org Since the conference is on a weekend this makes for a great family outing and kids activities are also provided. My family built a rain barrel from recycled barrels and drove home with a lemonade car smell – great fun.
For information about the conference go to
MAEOE Conference or download the MAEOE Conference Brochure
Upcoming LEED for Schools Workshops in the Area
If you are involved in the facilities management or design of school facilities, attending one of the USGBC’s all day workshops on LEED for Schools, at least once in your life, is a professional must.
The next available LEED for Schools Technical Review in our area will be in Chesapeake, VA on May 20th from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm. To register click here
Free Conference for Facilities Managers and Planners
When times are tough free is extra good. For anyone involved in facilities design and management the annual National Facilities Management and Technology (NFMT) conference in Baltimore is a great bargain with the extra bonus of a small carbon footprint.
It will be held March 10-12 at the Baltimore Convention Center. The conference includes
- Access to 100 educational sessions. Get new insights and information to manage facilities in these demanding times.
- Entry to exhibit hall. Make contact with 500 suppliers and discover the best solutions for your facility.
- Free networking events to share and compare challenges and solutions.
- CEUs from IFMA, BOMI, AFE and AIA. Plus IACET approved CEUs for all training programs.
Learn from facility experts as they share best practices, cost-cutting strategies and advice. Over 100 educational sessions to choose from. EcoSchools picked some for your relevant to greening schools:
- Facilities Management in a Down Economy, Marc Fischer, Transwestern
- LEED 2009 Update- Craig Sheehy, Envision Realty Services
- Prioritizing Maintenance Work for Maximum Effectiveness, C. Paul Oberg, EPAC Software Technologies
- Energy Management: From Audit to Action, Rick Lubinski, Think Energy Management, LLC
- The Economics of LEED-EB, Michael Arney, Leonardo Academy
- Understanding the True Costs of Sustainability and Alternative Energy, Dr. John Studebaker, Studebaker Energy Consulting, LLC
- Repair and Renovation Construction... A Better Way, Mike Coberley, KBR
- Developing a Facilities Management Vision for the Future, James Whittaker, Facility Engineering
- Maintenance without Money, Mike Cowley, CE Maintenance Solutions
- Green Facilities Management for Schools – Anja Caldwell, ecoipso LLC
A complete list of speakers and educational sessions is at http://www.nfmt.com/EducationEvents/Speakers.asp
Register at: http://www.nfmt.com . For a free registration use Priority Code EMJV.
Free Native Plants Workshop
Join the Calvert County Green Schools Program, CHESPAX, for a community workshop Series:
"Natives for the New Year"
Learn from experts and share with your school the benefits of native plants and grasses and find out why they make wonderful habitats and how they can help your school yard. Participants receive a planting indoor starter kit.
The first workshop will be held at Southern Middle School on Wed. Jan 14th at 4:30pm
Click here for "Natives for the New Year" flyer, RSVP with Michelle Daubon at daubonm@calvertnet.k12.md.us
Planet Connect Grant for High School Project
Do you have an innovative solution to protect the environment?
Planet Connect, a program by the National Environmental Education Foundation, can help make it happen!
It is a new online network for High School students to learn about the environment plus green college and career options. They are looking for your creative ideas to fix an environmental problem at your school or in your community.
Planet Connect is offering grant winners $1,000 awards with $500 to support your idea and $500 for an environmental internship in your community. The competition is sponsored by the Weather Channel and NBC Universal. Apply before January 20, 2009 at www.planet-connect.org
Energy Efficiency Strategies for Schools Webinar Series
US Green Building Council and Council of Educational Facilities Planners International offer Energy Efficiency Strategies for Schools Webinar Series
This three-part webinar series has compiled energy efficiency measures that have proven to significantly improve the energy performance of school facilities nationwide. Interested in obtaining best practices and hands-on tools that will reduce the energy consumption of our schools by as much as 20%? Let national experts share their information and resources from successfully implemented green school programs and help your school reduce costs and energy consumption.
This series runs live from November 2008 through January 2009. Last on is on January 21st. Archived webinars are also available.
Register here (First session is free for everyone. Second and Third Sessions: $10 per computer for USGBC members, $15 for non-members) More details
More great green schools resources are available at the USGBC’s www.buildgreenschools.org website.
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