OK. Texas started. In addition to the ones mentioned here, there are also schools with some solar panels. Can the whole country do this? Can we do a better job at recycling at school? Can we turn in more work electronically and not on paper? Can they cut down on the AC sometimes? What’s happening where you live?
Schools find it easy being green
Districts strive to make campuses eco-friendly.
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, August 26, 2007When it comes to building schools, district leaders and taxpayers are focused on being green: being environmentally friendly as well as fiscally responsible.
Several campuses are opening for the first time Monday in the Austin area, and dozens of other campuses and school buildings are under construction or are being renovated. Many have gone green — using recyclable materials in construction and operation and saving on water and energy — as part of a nationwide movement that touts green schools as healthier for students and cheaper to operate.
Almost four years ago, the Austin school district made the largest purchase to date of renewable energy from Austin Energy’s GreenChoice program: 45.7 million kilowatt-hours annually of solar, wind or geothermal power. It was the largest such purchase by a school district nationwide. The district is eligible for $430,000 in Austin Energy rebates for environmentally friendly projects in the 2004 $519.5 million bond program.
When Pickle Elementary School opened in Northeast Austin in 1999, it was the first Austin campus to include green building features like proper solar orientation to better take advantage of natural light, which helps it use 25 percent less energy than other campuses, along with rainwater collection to replace water that evaporates out of air conditioners and salvaged long-leaf pine floors. An analysis estimates that those features will save the district $12 million over the life of the school.
Schools represent the largest construction sector in the nation, with $53 billion being spent this year, and they are the fastest-growing market for green building, which is expected to account for 5 percent to 10 percent of the school construction market by 2010, according to the Council of Educational Facility Planners International.
About 60 schools across the country, including two in Dallas and Houston, have been certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit organization in Washington that sets “green” standards. An additional 370 are in the pipeline; one San Marcos school is among the nine in Texas.
Click-2-Listen
I wonder who is behind THESE people.
Not everyone believes that it’s easier being green, however. Saying that building costs would skyrocket, the Fast Growth School Coalition, a group of 124 Texas school districts, helped defeat a bill during the most recent legislative session that would have required all school construction to fall in line with standards set by the Green Building Council.
August 26, 2007 at 12:57 pm
VP Dick Cheney said that conservation may be a personal virtue, but can never be the basis for sound public policy.
That makes sense only to the neo-cons. What they are trying to say is that consumption of resources and energy creates wealth and thus helps the economy grow. If you spend more, more people are put to work and more economic growth is created down the line. Energy smart, environmentally friendly schools that save the taxpayers money are therefore bad for the economy and nation …
That is all messed up nonsense, naturally. But if you don’t think too hard, and really *want* to believe it, you can trick yourself into thinking that is the gospel truth (pun intended). You can then wall off your rational mind behind blind obedience to the ones who tell you this economic gibberish, and become irrationally hateful of all those who contradict that point of view. These are the loyal Bushies who support the neo-con agenda even while they are creating unsustainable economies of rapid resource depletion, coupled with its pollution and greenhouse gas related global warming effects that are increasingly ruining local communities and the ‘carrying capacity’ of planet itself.
One thing you need to know here that is actually 100% true.
There is no global warming or resource depletion scenario so bad that the super-rich won’t still be better off than everyone else … why, after all, are the US, Canada, and Russia all fighting over the rights to the future ‘ice free’ north pole if global warming is not the reality? The lie of global warming denying Bush loyalists is revealed in that simple truth.
How can global warming be a myth, and the US gas, oil and mineral rights to the future ‘ice free’ north pole be a vital national interest at the same time?
August 26, 2007 at 7:09 pm
“I wonder who is behind” the Fast Growth School Coalition, we ask ?
Texans for Public Justice’s Lobby Watch
http://www.tpj.org/page_view.jsp?pageid=934&pubid=697
mentions:
Fast Growth School Coalition (gave)$245,000 (for) 6 (contracts) to the School Districts’ Lobby.
so they gots gobs of dough.
state comptroller web site SEZ(!):
http://www.window.state.tx.us/comptrol/fnotes/fn9903/fna.html#schoolhouse
“The Fast Growth School Coalition, representing the fastest growing school districts in the state, was formed to address the issue of rapid enrollment growth in Texas public schools. The organization conducts research on 122 districts that grew at least 10% or gained 3,500 or more students within the last five years. The coalition estimates these districts account for 80% of the state’s enrollment gains in the last five years.”
they gots gobs of i-don’t-know-what-we-call lobby chutzpah.
this is what i believe to be FGFS parent org web site: http://www.investintexasschools.org/
which looks benign enough.
perhaps they just hate the environment because they think it will cost too much money,
SO,
someone may need to enlighten them, i guess.
thanks, freckles!
~ carry on
April 25, 2008 at 11:08 am
We are trying to make our school “eco-friendly”