Outlook 2008
Jan 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Mike Kennedy
Based on the survey, state officials concluded that the schools that have achieved the most success converting to green cleaning are those that embrace the philosophy and show that commitment through staff training.
“We found that some schools have employed green-cleaning strategies long prior to the enactment of the law,” the report says. “There is anecdotal information that those districts and schools that have been most successful appear to be those which fully embrace the concept of using less toxic, environmentally friendly cleaning products in schools, and who actively work with vendors and others to provide appropriate training to custodial and maintenance staff on the proper use of new products. This may also involve changing cleaning practices and techniques.”
Schools that convert to green cleaning may see costs rise. Two-thirds of those that responded to the survey said their expenditures for cleaning supplies climbed 10 percent or more because of the switch to green products.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in a guide for environmentally preferred purchasing, points out benefits that can offset the costs of green products: Products with positive environmental attributes, such as biodegradability, low toxicity or low volatile organic compound content can minimize the harm to custodial workers and building occupants, and reduce water and air pollution. In addition, buying cleaners in concentrates with appropriate handling safeguards, and reusable, reduced, or recyclable packaging, reduces packaging waste and transportation energy.
OUTLOOK security
Toward the end of 2007, “Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2007,” an annual report from the U.S. Justice and Education departments, contained good news about crime in the nation's K-12 public schools. “There is some evidence school safety has improved,” the report's executive summary states.
Non-fatal crime against students aged 12 to 18 declined from 144 incidents per 1,000 students in 1992 to 57 per 1,000 in 2005. Over the same timeframe, comparable drops were seen in violent crimes (from 48 per 1,000 to 24 per 1,000) and serious violent crimes (10 per 1,000 to five per 1,000) against students.
Still, any positive thoughts that school and university security officials can extract from those statistics are eclipsed by the horrific shooting deaths on April 16, 2007 on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va.
Virginia Tech student Seung Hui Cho fatally shot 32 students and faculty members and wounded 17 others before killing himself. Authorities say it was the deadliest shooting incident in U.S. history.
In 2008, those responsible for school and university security will use the lessons learned from Virginia Tech, as they have done with previous school-related tragedies, to identify flaws in their own safety and security provisions and take steps to prevent similar episodes from occurring on their facilities and grounds.
After Cho killed two students in a residence hall, some two hours elapsed before he turned up at another campus building and began shooting. A report from a task force formed by the Virginia governor said that the university could have sent out a campuswide warning or cancelled classes in response to the initial shootings.
“It is critical to alert the entire campus population when there is an imminent danger,” the task force concluded. “There are information technologies available to rapidly send messages to a variety of personal communication devices.”
The report recommends that in an emergency, immediate messages must be sent to the campus community that provide clear information on the nature of the emergency and actions to be taken. The task force says campus police, as well as administration officials, need to have the authority and capability to send an emergency message.
In the months following the Virginia Tech shootings, many college campuses beefed up their notification systems to alert students and staff about campus emergencies no matter where they may be. Technology enables schools to send information via voice mail to cell phones or landlines, e-mail, text messages, campus message boards and loudspeakers. The more avenues for delivering a message, the more likely an emergency message will reach the targeted audience.
University administrators also are taking note of the consequences that could befall them and their campuses when violent incidents are handled improperly. Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti has been entangled in controversy throughout most of 2007 because of the deceptive way it dealt with the slaying of a student in her residence hall room.
Laura Dickinson was killed in December 2006; although police immediately considered her death a possible homicide, the university maintained in the days after her death that “at this point there is no reason to suspect foul play.” The school maintained that stance even after police told officials there was “obvious evidence of a murder and a sexual assault.”
The U.S. Education Department announced in December that it was fining Eastern Michigan $357,500 for its “very serious, numerous and repeated” violations of the Clery Act, which governs disclosure of crimes on college campuses.
“Despite the ongoing homicide investigation, including the identification of a possible suspect, who may have had the student's keys to the dormitory as well as her car, EMU did not issue a warning to the campus community,” Mary E. Gust, director of the U.S. Department of Education's Administrative Actions and Appeals Division, said in a letter to the university. “EMU did not take any steps to re-key any of the locks on the dormitory.”
Police arrested a suspect in February — 10 weeks after the killing. “It was only at this point … that the university advised the campus community and the student's parents of specific information about the crime,” Gust wrote.
Also in its investigation, the education department found that Eastern Michigan did not report or disclose properly its crime statistics in 2003, 2004 and 2005.
“These failures have endangered EMU's students and employees, who must be able to rely on the timely warning of a serious crime, the accurate reporting of crimes and crime statistics, and disclosures of campus crime policies and statements in order to take precautions for their safety and security,” Gust wrote.
Before the fine was announced, the school's bungling of the Dickinson case already had led to the firing months earlier of the university president and the resignation of two other top administrators. Eastern Michigan also has agreed to pay the victim's family $2.5 million to settle a lawsuit.
OUTLOOK technology
Computer availability and Internet access have become almost universal in U.S. public schools.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, virtually every public school has had Internet access since the early 2000s. In 2005, 94 percent of public school instructional rooms had Internet access; of the schools with Internet access, 97 percent of them connected to the Internet with broadband connections.
From 1998 to 2005, computer availability in the average public school went from one computer for every 12.8 students to one for every 3.8 students. As wireless Internet access and laptop computers become more prevalent, technology trends point to schools having a computer for every student.
“America's Digital Schools 2006,” a report by The Greaves Group on technology in school districts, found that 19 percent of student computers are mobile; by 2011, 50 percent of student computers will be mobile.
The report also found that 24 percent of school districts have taken steps to establish some degree of 1:1 or ubiquitous computing (defined as “each student and teacher has one Internet-connected wireless computing device for use both in the classroom and at home”).
The research found that 88 percent of the schools that tracked academic results in a ubiquitous computing program reported positive outcomes.
“It appears that properly implemented ubiquitous computing solutions can help improve student achievement to a significant degree,” the report says.
Ubiquitous computing will require teachers to receive training so they can work more effectively in a one-on-one environment. Only 17 percent of district curriculum directors believe their professional development program is set up to effectively support ubiquitous computing.
“Professional development is perhaps the single largest factor in the success or failure of the digital school,” the report says.
The prevalence of computer networks and Internet connections at most schools and universities also has led to a boom in online courses and distance learning. In “America's Digital Schools 2006” school districts reported that 3.8 percent of students were taking part in online courses in 2006; by 2011, the report projected, 15.6 percent of students will be taking online courses.
At the higher-education level, nearly 3.5 million students — about 20 percent of all students — were taking an online course in fall 2006, according to “Online Nation: Five Years of Growth in Online Learning,” a report by the Babson Survey Research Group. The report gathered responses from more than 2,500 colleges and universities.
More than two-thirds of higher-education institutions have some form of online offerings, the report notes. The most prominent school specializing in online courses is the University of Phoenix. Its online campus reported an enrollment in fall 2006 of more than 165,000 students, far outpacing the numbers found on any brick-and-mortar campus.
Administrative support for online programs is critical for online courses to flourish, the study found.
“For online education to continue its rapid growth, it must be perceived as important by the chief academic officers who are planning tomorrow's educational offerings,” Online Nation says.
With Internet connections in place for academics, schools and universities can take advantage of the bandwidth their computer networks provide. Some districts and college campuses have set up Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone systems to replace traditional phones.
Continuing technology improvements allow schools and universities to boost student security. Computer networks typically have enough capacity to accommodate numerous video cameras that can provide surveillance of many parts of a school campus. The images captured can be monitored in real time, or recorded and reviewed after the fact. Their presence deters crime and allows security officers to more effectively investigate incidents that do occur.
Some schools have adopted high-tech identification systems using biometric software to determine who is allowed to enter a facility. The systems can scan a finger, hand or even a person's eyes. In Nashville, Tenn., a pilot program that began in 2007 at three schools uses face-recognition technology to compare someone trying to enter a building with a photo database of those authorized to come into a facility.
OUTLOOK business and finance
The costs of running schools and universities continue their steady upward climb. In 1991-92, the nation's public school expenditures were $293 billion, or $6,969 per student. By 2003-04, the amount had risen to $415.5 billion, or $8,561 per student. In “Projections of Education Statistics to 2016,” the federal government projects that by 2016-17, public school expenditures will be between $565 billion and $618 billion. That translates to between $10,598 per student and $11,599 per student.
Making sure there is enough money to pay their staffs and maintain facilities is a perennial battle for administrators. There never seems to be enough money to accomplish the educational objectives, and what is a suitable budget one year can become a nightmare the next because of economic conditions or the whims of legislators. When legislatures or other funding sources tighten the purse strings, administrators can have a hard time sorting through the priorities delivering high-quality education.
In Nevada, superintendents are trying to figure out how to absorb a mid-year 4.5 percent cut to their 2007-08 state funding. At first, schools were spared from the state's cuts, but Gov. Jim Gibbons determined that the size of Nevada's financial shortfall — $440 million over two years — forced him to include school districts in the budget rollbacks.
Administrators say the cuts could lead to layoffs and program cuts. Walt Rulffes, superintendent of the Clark County district, Nevada's largest with more than 300,000 students, says that because the cuts are coming halfway through the school year, they will have to be twice as severe.
For some struggling school systems, the situation has become so dire that government intervention becomes necessary. In Washington, D.C., schools are suffering from declining enrollment, aging facilities in disrepair and poor student achievement.
Mayor Adrian Fenty has persuaded the City Council to give him greater authority over the school system, and Fenty hired Michelle Rhee to the new position of school chancellor. In 2008, she is expected to begin overhauling the school system's central administrative staff; the city council has given her the power to fire non-union employees without cause. Rhee also is moving forward with an unpopular plan to close more than 20 of the district's under-capacity schools.
In Los Angeles, the city's mayor also is pushing forward with efforts to take some control of schools in the Los Angeles Unified District. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's efforts to assume control of the district's operations has been thwarted in the courts, but he has formed a partnership with a non-profit group that will take control of several struggling city schools and provide them with extra support and resources.
The difficulties encountered running a school system have made the job of superintendent a difficult one to fill in some districts, despite the high salary in most large systems. A report issued earlier this year by the American Association of School Administrators, “The State of the American School Superintendency: A Mid-Decade Study,” found that 60 percent of superintendents found their job “very stressful.”
“These are the highest stress levels in any AASA state of the superintendency study, as superintendents face the pressure of meeting increasing expectations with dwindling resources,” the AASA says. Still, the report noted, 9 out of 10 superintendents say they find their work rewarding and believe they have made the right career choice.
OUTLOOK energy
Higher energy prices and a weak U.S. dollar may combine to ruin utility spending forecasts for schools and universities in 2008. Education institutions that have taken steps to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels to heat and light their facilities, and power their buses and other vehicles will be in a better position to keep their school systems operating smoothly without busting their budgets.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy's EnergySmart Schools program, schools can cut their energy costs by 5 to 20 percent by improving operations and maintenance. Lighting, which represents from 25 to 40 percent of a typical school's energy costs, is one area where energy-saving steps can make a significant difference in utility bills.
The use of daylighting strategies to reduce dependency on electric lights has become more accepted in recent years at schools and universities. Accelerating that acceptance were studies that have indicated that students perform better in classrooms with ample amounts of natural light.
Properly designed clerestory windows, roof monitors and lightshelves allow daylight to be dispersed uniformly and prevent glare. Baffles can further diffuse daylight in a space.
To further reduce the use of artificial lights, schools can use sensors that adjust lighting levels depending on the availability of natural light or whether anyone is using a particular space. Timers also can be installed to automatically control lights.
Compact fluorescent and smaller-diameter fluorescent tubes provide more light with less energy than incandescent bulbs or wider fluorescent tubes.
Reducing the use of electric lights also means less heat is generated. Another way schools can prevent unwanted heat from entering a facility is installing cool roofs, which typically are made of light-colored, reflective materials that turn away sun rays.
Alternative energy sources can help schools acquire the power they need at lower costs. Some education institutions use wind turbines to harness energy and use it to power their facilities. The federal government's goal is for wind power to provide 20 percent of the nation's electricity by 2030.
The Department of Energy's Wind Powering America program works with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to bring wind power to schools, especially in rural areas. Schools in 23 states have school wind projects.
In addition to the energy savings, wind power projects can be used to educate students about how energy is produced.
Solar power is another way schools can acquire energy more efficiently. Photovoltaic cells atop school roofs can be used to capture sun rays and convert them to energy. In Florida, the SunSmart Schools program provided photovoltaic systems to 17 schools and colleges in 2006-07. In California, Pacific Gas & Electric's Solar Schools program provides photovoltaic panels to up to 40 schools a year so they can cut electricity costs and teach students about solar energy.
Some schools have been able to lessen their reliance on fossil fuels for their energy needs by installing geothermal heating and cooling systems, which take advantage of the constant temperature of the earth. In the summer, heat pumps remove heat from a building and store it in the ground; in the winter, the system pumps heat from the ground back into the building.
Systems such as a geothermal heat pump can be expensive, and schools may not have the finances to pay for such a large upfront cost — even though administrators know they can save money in the long run with a more efficient system.
For many schools and universities, the solution is a performance contract. An energy company agrees to pay the initial costs of installing more energy-efficient equipment in an education facility. The school or university agrees to repay the cost of the new system out of the savings generated by the more efficient system.
The rising cost of fuel hits school district transportation budgets especially hard, so administrators should be open to alternatives that will enable them to run their fleets more efficiently. Several districts around the country are experimenting with electric-hybrid school buses.
The Austin (Texas) district began using a plug-in hybrid school bus in November — the first district in Texas to buy such a bus. The district estimates that with an electric drive and a diesel engine, the bus will get about 12 miles a gallon, compared with about 6 miles a gallon for a typical diesel-powered bus. Battery packs that provide the electric power to the bus are recharged overnight.
Kennedy, staff writer, can be reached at mkennedy@asumag.com.
