Sustainability in the Oregon School District

Sustainability in the Oregon School District

By Haylee Vejvoda and Alex Anderson

April 2022 | Oregon, WI

Every year on April 22nd, the nation celebrates Earth Day to show support for environmental protection. But the holiday originated not so far from home. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day in 1970 as a teach-in at colleges. But the day quickly grew beyond that and gained national traction in the media, with thousands of universities and colleges forming organized protests against the declining state of the environment. 

Fifty three years later, Earth Day has only continued to expand, and is now celebrated worldwide. Despite this, the state of the environment continues to deteriorate. Now it becomes more important than ever for students to learn about environmental change, and advocate for sustainability.

To understand sustainability practices within the Oregon School district, we sat down with the Oregon School District Business Manager Andrew Weiland. Mr. Weiland is in his 23rd year at Oregon and over time has played an integral role in managing and promoting sustainable practices in the school district. Most notably, Mr. Weiland had a big part in the construction of Forest Edge Elementary, the first Net-0 school in Wisconsin.

Mr. Weiland developed an interest for sustainability during his formative years. Mr. Weiland's childhood home was heated using a heat exchanger system that was powered by a wood boiler and solar panels. Seeing his dad build this system had a lasting impact on Mr. Weiland, and led to his continued pursuit of sustainable energy practices. 

“I had an interest in it from back when I was your guy's age, and I always kind of had that background, I guess, in thought and tinkering.” Says Weiland.

Outside of his background in sustainability, Mr. Weiland continues to use sustainable practices in his personal life. Mr. Weiland has two electric-using cars, a Volt and a Tesla, which he and his family drive. 

Vehicles such as these reduce the need for fossil fuels, which when burned release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As more greenhouse gasses such as CO2 are released into the atmosphere, Earth’s temperature will continue to rise, causing global climate change.

“I just put a new roof on my house, so I'm now looking at solar that's kind of a thing that you need to think about, is solar lasts between 20, 25, 30 years and your roof usually lasts about the same time. So you don't want to put solar on a roof that is, you know, at the point where it needs to be replaced. You really want to do both and kind of line them up.” Says Weiland.

“So there's a story I tell other groups that I've talked to about this and it's kind of a cool story. We actually had some board members who are very interested in climate change and actually wrote a paper. You can find it on our website. It's in the policy section. So there's a port policy that talks about this and there's an attachment to it that kind of is a position paper basically on it and saying things like, hey, we need to be a part of the solution. We need to educate our students about these topics. This is a real type of thing. And so there was this concern from a board of education point of view probably in the mid 2015 area. And that type of thing. So there was a heightened concern about it at the same time or even a little bit before with some middle school teachers.” Says Weiland.

The school board and educators in the school district pushed for sustainability’s critical role in the construction of Forest Edge; specifically Nate Mahr and Chris Mitchell (Science educators at OMS).

“Nate Mahr, you probably know, science teacher, was one of them and then some other folks that were, you know, trying to figure out what they could do. And they were always very sustainability minded. Nate was actually awarded Wisconsin Environmental Teacher of the Year last year along with Chris Mitchell.” Says Weiland.

Additionally, Mr. Weiland explained the progression in sustainability engagement, Mr. Mahr and Mr. Mitchell played integral roles in improving the environmental conscientiousness of the district, the first step to this was E- Gauges (pictured below) which show the energy usage of several district buildings. Later, educators pushed for a greenhouse at the middle school for plant labs and projects, then involving students through their own interests; 

“They engaged a company and they put two solar panels on the outside of the building and used that to actually charge a battery that you guys could use to charge your cell phones just from the energy outside.” Says Weiland.

As sustainability is discussed in the district, student involvement and interest has always been at the forefront of planning. In the elementary schools, electric bikes were brought in and attached to a small generator. When students pedaled the bikes, they could see how much energy they were generating themselves. The kids loved the opportunity for competition; who could generate the most energy? 

“So the idea is, hey, you really had to work hard to make, you know, 30 watts or 40 watts. The building uses a kilowatt, a kilowatt has a thousand watts, you know, trying to make it so people understand the magnitude of, yeah, the issues that we're working through.” Says Weiland.

“And there's actually a curriculum too, that uses those eight devices. The University of Stevens Point has a group called KIPP. Forget what it stands for at the moment, but they're trying to use that in curriculum with elementary kids to try to teach them about energy usage. So we are participating in that with our STEAM teachers right now.” Says Weiland.

The hope is that not only will these curriculum educate students about our environment and what we can do, but also foster interest in sustainability. Right now that is lacking in Oregon; students are not speaking out about these issues. Mr. Weiland says he wishes there was more student support in Oregon to push for change and increased environmental action.

“And you guys, believe it or not, have a lot of power in regard to this. So I've gone to different meetings like there was one this winter where I've talked about this and there's kids from Stoughton and Madison and all this stuff. Nobody from Oregon. It's kind of like… Oh geez, you know, I really want you guys to kind of push us a little bit.” Says Weiland.

In 2015 an OSD referendum passed in the community for the improvement of buildings and construction of Forest Edge, which notably uses 406 foot deep geothermal wells installed with heat pumps to heat and cool the school, in addition to installing specialized windows which conserve energy within the building. Forest Edge also has an additional feature in the lighting system which allows the lights to sense the amount of light in a room and lower the amount of energy used in rooms lit by the sun, improving comfort of students and teachers in the building.

During the 2015 referendum, the main priority for the district was to provide capacity to upgrade school facilities. These upgrades included re-doing the Commons at Oregon High School, along with the new gym and addition of the new wing. At Brooklyn Elementary they re-did the exterior and put an addition on the front of the building.

Oregon Middle School, Oregon High School, and Brooklyn Elementary all use different attachments for solar panels, as the district used a trial and error process to determine which method would work best for Forest Edge, which at the time was still in it’s planning stages.

“We tried three different things to see if we were comfortable with it. It was actually, you know, part of my concern is like, I don't know if I feel comfortable putting them right on the roof because then I need to change the order of what happens, right. What we learned is they seem fine. They weren't hurting the roof, or anything. We could do some things to protect it, put a little bit more padding and all underneath.”

At the elementary school the solar panels are cantilevered off the roof of the old gymnasium. Meanwhile at the high school, the panels are on top of a steel structure built above the gymnasium roof. After trying out these methods, they decided it was safe to place the panels directly on the roof.

“Then the thing with the high school was the superstructure. The issue with that is there's all these penetrations to hold the structure up. So penetrations in a roof are not always great because then there's more opportunity for leaks, right? You have to make sure that those are really sealed up really well. And that's over our gymnasium floor, which is a wooden floor that's like the worst thing we want, right? It's worked well. We've had no problem. We put a lot of effort into making sure that it's watertight. But we were like, you know, that that's probably not the solution for our next project.” Says Weiland.

Going forward there is still a lot the district can do to further reduce energy consumption. Although there is no clear goal as of now, Mr. Weiland is thinking about how the whole district can reach Net-0; thus creating that goal. Despite the nation-wide push to vastly decrease carbon emissions by 2030, seven years is too little time for the district to set this as the Net-0 goal. But it’s not just due to a lack of funding.

“How do you, you know, some of these technologies that we need to take like the high school to a net zero building don't exactly exist right now, to be honest with you. And so we need to kind of let that play out. And so, you know, I know everybody wants to push to be 2040, but let's just try to hit 2050, if we could, you know, as a starter.”

As of last week, Mr. Weiland, as a part of an advisory group, put together a paper for the Village of Oregon. This paper, if approved by the Village Board, will mean that the Village will start to track operational CO2 being produced. With this information they can work out a plan to target and reduce those emissions. 

“You know, again, I think if there's an opportunity, it is to establish more guidance, more goal setting, because then once you have that goal, then it's not, oh shoot, we could put solar on the high school of this roof that we just replaced. It's okay, now how do we get from here to there? But you want to start thinking about those things as much as possible. And for Pete's sake, if you're building a new building, you better think about heat pumps and geothermal in our climate, because that's the way to do it and to the benefit. Or to the credit of the Village of Oregon, the new library. And there were a few of us that were arguing, hey, you make them geothermal, you know, make it geothermal because then you don't have to burn fuel, make sure that it has heat pumps. That type of thing.”

As climate change worsens, the effects become more distressing. Ocean temperatures are rising, we’re seeing more extreme weather events, and the hottest 10 years on record have happened between 2010 and now. These issues are typically left to adults to solve, but if we’re going to make a difference, everyone has to lift a helping hand. So what can students do? Mr. Weiland says it’s simple;

“Continue to learn about it, continue to push the administration in quite a nice way. Right? We don't necessarily need people coming with pitchforks or anything, but just engage in the conversation, be inquisitive, continue to learn about these things because the more people that leave Oregon High School with a passion about these things, the better our chances are to be able to get those goals and change and reduce climate change.” Says Weiland.