Green Leaders
Feb 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Mike Kennedy
The seeds they planted years ago in support of environmentally friendly education facilities are beginning to blossom.
When the Montgomery County government mandated silver LEED standards for the county's public facilities in 2006, officials came to Caldwell with concerns.
“They said, ‘Can we do this?’” Caldwell recalls. “And we could tell them, ‘We already did.’”
Another catalyst spurring the green movement forward is the Ohio School Facilities Commission's decision to incorporate LEED standards into the state's school construction guidelines. All new construction or major renovation projects in Ohio's public schools must seek at least a silver LEED rating.
“That's a minimum of 250 schools in the next few years,” Gutter says.
At the higher-education level, the growing commitment to green in 2007 was exemplified by the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.
As of January, the leaders of more than 470 schools had signed the commitment, which calls for each institution to develop a plan for becoming climate-neutral within two years. Among the steps the commitment encourages are constructing new campus facilities to achieve at least a silver LEED rating and adopting a policy to purchase Energy Star-certified products when possible.
“While we understand that there might be short-term challenges associated with this effort,” the commitment states, “we believe that there will be great short-, medium-, and long-term economic, health, social and environmental benefits, including achieving energy independence for the U.S. as quickly as possible.”
Hippie dream
The genesis for the Poudre (Colo.) District's embrace of sustainable design, jokes Bill Franzen, the district's executive director of operation services, was “a bunch of old hippies in a position of authority.”
As these school officials began talking in 1999 about the next generation of Poudre schools, their ideas about environmentalism, enhanced by the college-town atmosphere of Fort Collins, the home of Colorado State University, and inspired by the beauty of the nearby Rocky Mountains, resulted in a guide for sustainable design.
The guidelines listed 11 features that should be present in a sustainably designed school: sustainable site planning and landscape design; use of renewable energy sources; high-quality and energy-efficient lighting; an energy-efficient building shell; energy-efficient HVAC systems; environmentally preferable building materials; water conservation; recycling and waste management; construction-waste reduction and recycling; commissioning; and eco-education.
Poudre officials felt confident that the process they established was resulting in green school facilities. They decided to seek validation of their efforts by submitting Fossil Ridge High School, which was completed in 2004, for LEED certification.
“We had an intuitive sense that it was environmentally responsible and energy-efficient,” says Franzen. “LEED certification reinforced our belief that we were on the right track.”
The facility received a silver rating under LEED for New Construction. The school uses 60 percent less energy than a comparable high school in the district — saving $104,000 a year. Low-flow faucets and toilets, a water pond for irrigation, and an artificial surface on the athletic field help the school save $11,500 a year on its water bill. Franzen says that Fossil Ridge probably would have received a gold rating had the new LEED for Schools ratings been used.
Poudre also has built four elementary schools using a prototype design based on the district's sustainable guidelines. The last of those, Bethke Elementary, is scheduled to open later this year, and Poudre is seeking LEED certification for the project. Franzen says the LEED certification (he expects Bethke to earn a gold rating) will serve as evidence that “we have been doing the right thing.”
Caldwell, a native of Germany, envisions a time when green features now routinely used in European facilities — wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, waterless urinals, dual-flush toilets — become an expected and accepted part of U.S. school buildings.
“In 10 years, people will be amazed that we ever flushed our toilets with fresh water,” says Caldwell. “Green roofs will be commonplace. There will be no incandescent light bulbs. They'll be obsolete, like an old vinyl record.”
As sustainable design becomes common, the USGBC plans to push for even greater inclusion of green strategies in schools and other facilities.
“We're headed in a direction where what we call green now will be called standard,” says USGBC's Gutter. “The momentum is there. We have to continue to raise the bar.”
Sustaining the sustainability
In the Poudre district, they are not only trying to raise the bar, but also trying to make sure future district leaders keep raising it higher.
Poudre leaders have put together a Sustainability Management System (SMS) that will enable the school system to incorporate sustainable design and operations into the policy and practices of the district.
Franzen says part of the impetus for creating the sustainability management system was that many of those involved as the green school movement began were approaching retirement age. Poudre district leaders want to make sure their ideas and philosophies outlast their tenure in the district.
