Wednesday, October 15, 2003
|
Wednesday, October 15, 2003 |
|
School system looks to conserve energy and save money By MICHAEL BOYLAN Goodbye to those microwave ovens and coffee pots in the classroom. And, by the way, turn out the lights when you leave the classroom, the Fayette County school system is saying to staff. That and other energy conservation measures could save the financially-strapped system more than $300,000 a year, according to Mike Satterfield, facilities director, who spoke at a called work session of the Fayette County Board of Education on Monday night. With a utility budget of $3.2 million a year, Satterfield said that if an energy consciousness is developed within the system and energy consumption is reduced, the system should be able to save at least 10 percent of that budget. The members of the school board were very receptive to Satterfield’s presentation and would love to have an extra $321,000, but one question kept popping up: Who would oversee the project? The answer Satterfield gave was several people within Facilities Services. Though their main jobs were to complete maintenance work orders throughout the school system, some of them would take evening shifts and make sure that custodians at the schools are shutting off all the lights and that schools are doing all they can to conserve energy. A reward system will be established for the school that does the best job and may be instrumental in changing the behavior of both student and teacher. Many of the guidelines in the Energy Management Plan are common sense guidelines that many people use in their own home, including using daylight instead of electricity where applicable, turning off lights when a room is not occupied and turning computers off when not in use for long periods of time. Other guidelines involve things that both Satterfield and construction supervisor Klaus Darnell saw in their travels to local schools while drafting the plan. It seems numerous classrooms in the county schools have mini-refrigerators, coffee makers, toaster ovens and microwaves. Satterfield is hoping the board will approve the plan at their next meeting, which will call for the removal of all of these unnecessary items. It will take a long time to change the mindset of the entire school system, but according to Satterfield, it will be worth it. He hopes to one day have the entire school system on the computerized energy management system. Currently, only a third of the schools in the system are on the system. If and when all the schools are on a computerized system, Satterfield estimates that every school will run a couple thousand dollars a month less. The cost of putting the rest of the schools on the computerized system will cost under $2 million. The Energy Management Plan will be voted on at the next meeting of the Fayette County Board of Education on Monday, Oct. 20.
|
||