Many public school districts are relying on prototype schools and site adapted drawings to rapidly and economically deliver new schools. This practice raises questions about how sustainable features are incorporated into the original prototypes, and how prototypes can be cost-effectively adapted to enhance their sustainability and pursue LEED certification. Two speakers, a school district Capital Projects Director and an architect/LEED AP will discuss their experience with this issue.

Rio Rancho Public Schools has built 4 prototype elementary schools in the past 5 years. An initial prototype elementary school was constructed in 2004, along with a site-adapted clone school. While these two schools have many responsible design features, neither school was designed to achieve LEED certification or produce energy or water savings.

In 2007, the prototype was adapted to create 2 additional elementary schools, intended to achieve LEED Silver certification and improve building performance and comfort. Due to the schedule and contract constraints associated with prototype adaptations, changes made to achieve these new goals needed to be extremely simple to implement. Design changes included  upgrades to mechanical systems; use of waterless urinals, dual flush toilets, and other water conserving fixtures; changes to material selections to incorporate more recycled, regional, and low-emitting materials; and changes to the building envelope to improve thermal performance. Both new schools were completed under budget and opened in Fall 2008.

The greening of existing, built prototypes provides a unique opportunity for a true apples-to-apples comparison of cost and performance. An independent cost/benefit study compared construction and operational costs of the 2 original prototypes to construction costs and projected operational costs of the two LEED-registered prototypes. This study was the subject of a Master’s thesis and vetted by national USGBC, and found that the green features added a maximum of 1.3% to the project cost, with an estimated payback period of 2 years due to energy and water savings.

The schools are currently under USGBC review and expected to achieve LEED Silver certification. Rio Rancho Public Schools is currently collecting information on operating costs, absenteeism, test scores, and teacher retention at all 4 schools as part of a long-term study of the benefits of green schools.

The session will include details about:
- Benefits and constraints of the prototype process for green schools
- Specific design modifications made to increase the sustainability of the LEED-registered prototypes, and their costs
- The results of the cost-benefit study
- Operating results and lessons learned from the first year of operation
- The data collection process for the long term benefit study

Presenters:
Julie Walleisa, AIA, LEED AP - Dekker/Perich/Sabatini
Martin Montano - Rio Rancho Public Schools

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Growing Green Schools Utilizing GSCN Design Essentials

Jim McGrath, President of the Green Charter Schools Network will share research on the growth of Green Schools across America and the state of Colorado. Colorado Green School experts will share how they have created a comprehensive Green School by incorporating the Green School Design Essentials. Information will be shared on developing a Green School Chapter in Colorado as Colorado is emerging as a national leader and innovator in the sustainable Green School Movement. USGBC will be partnering with the Green Charter Schools Network when they host the 1st Green Schools National Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 23-25, 2010.

Presenter:
Jim McGrath, President of the Green Charter Schools Network

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The Need for New Directions in Energy Management in Schools

School Districts today and into the next several years are facing significant declines in revenue from local, state and federal sources.  This reduction of funding significantly affects the operation of schools as well as the provision of educational programs in the classroom including activities for all students, K12.  Districts are now forced to find new methodologies to reduce budgets and cut costs as well as programs including extra-curricular activities.

Coupled with this major concern with declining funds, districts are now and will continue to experience increasing costs in the provision of needed energy operations including heating, air conditioning, ventilation, and utilities essential for the operation of the school facilities of the district.

These increasing costs will magnify the budget stress on school buildings which, on average, according to the Department of Energy and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) are 42 years old and, typically,  waste 30% of the energy they consume.

This session defines and will demonstrate new technology systems that can be deployed to identify (a) current energy usage in a school facility and establish an energy management plan for each school and for the district which results in the utilization of a server hosted software tool application that measures energy usage and shows trends for the usage and (b) subsequently, provides a server hosted software tool application that monitors energy usage from near real time to hourly, daily, weekly and monthly with automated alerts that enable building operators to focus on problems that can be readily fixed resulting in significant savings.

Presenters:
Michael Duff, President, ENthEnergy, LLC.
Bob Read, President, ReadWare, Inc.
Richard Robinson, Marketing Consultant