By Ron Stimac, Johnson Controls
It’s coming. A little too slowly for some. But it’s definitely coming.
In a few short weeks, the hour that every school kid in the nation fervently prays for will finally arrive. The moment when school bells ring one last time and the curtain drops on the 2008-2009 academic year. Another nine months of multiplication tables, book reports, essay questions and cafeteria food draws to a close – and a long, lazy summer of swimming pools, sandlot baseball and sleepovers begins.
In at least one city in America, the start of this summer break also marks the end of a truly remarkable year – a year in which local school officials took another bold step into a cleaner, brighter and more sustainable future for every kid in a classroom and every taxpayer in the district. That city is Wyandotte, Michigan.
Located in metro Detroit, Wyandotte Public Schools does the best it can to serve about 4,700 students on a budget that is, to put it politely, “constrained.” As I’m sure you’ve noticed, things have been tough in Detroit and pretty much all of Michigan for awhile now. That’s why what schools officials are doing in Wyandotte is so smart.
For more than a decade, Johnson Controls has worked with Wyandotte Public Schools to help make the high school, middle school and six elementary schools more energy efficient and more comfortable for kids, teachers and staff.
We’ve replaced old boilers, lighting fixtures that contained PCBs, and leaky doors and windows with new high-efficiency ones. As a result of the improvements, all 11 Wyandotte school buildings have earned ENERGY STAR® certification, making the district the first in the entire state to accomplish that.
Performance contracts have been used to fund all of the improvements, meaning the upgrades pay for themselves with the money they save on utility bills and operations – more than $6.9 million over 15 years.
But it’s the latest project that may have the biggest impact on the school system, the kids and the community. In 2008, we installed solar photovoltaic (or PV) panels on the roof of Wilson Middle School. We worked with the municipal utility in Wyandotte and the State of Michigan to get grants that paid about half the cost of the solar system.
The 10 kilowatt system will convert the free rays of the sun into electricity to help power the school. But more important is the impact the panels are having on students – particularly the kids in the 8th grade class who have taken ownership of the solar system. They have an entire curriculum about solar energy and a website that tracks the amount of energy the panels are producing. (Check out videos about the system.)
These students are learning about the impact their energy use is having on the environment, how to use less through energy efficiency, and how renewable sources like the sun can meet the energy needs of the future.
You know why that’s important? Because these kids are someday going to be the adults who solve our energy and climate problems. And it’s our responsibility – our solemn duty – to prepare them today to be the energy engineers and the solar technicians and the smart energy consumers of tomorrow.
When the school bells ring again next fall, that’s what they’ll be doing in Wyandotte. Don’t you wonder why every school in America won’t be doing the same?
Efficiency now. It’s never been more important.
