June 2008 — Features
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Green Schools : Electric Youth
Students from Montgomery County Public Schools light the way to energy efficiency.
A STUDENT COMMITTEE whose main duty is changing light bulbs may sound like the punch line to a bad joke, but as the students and faculty at Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Rockville, MD, know, changing a light bulb is no laughing matter. As part of the district's green initiative, all standard incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs must go, and careful planning must be done to ensure that not one old bulb in the district's 200 schools is left behind. Even the illuminated exit signs must be tallied. Once inventory is complete, the old bulbs will be replaced by a variety of energyefficient lighting alternatives, including individual task lamps, LED lighting, and good old-fashioned daylight.
GANG GREEN: MCPS student
teams are leaders of the district's
conservation program.
As technology expands its role in the classroom and more districts adopt year-round schedules, K-12 energy use and its affiliated costs are skyrocketing. It's a truth that weighs heavily not only on the environment, but also on a school's budget. Money that could be better spent upgrading computer hardware and software is instead needed to cover electricity costs generated by the obsolete machines the new units would replace. By focusing on the big picture and retrofitting older buildings with energy-saving substitutes, MCPS is relieving the burden of its increased technology needs while teaching its students how to become better global citizens.
But how exactly does a district get students excited about energy use? MCPS created a program called the School Eco Response Team (SERT), through which each school in the district receives personalized guidelines for energy usage and is rewarded for achieving those goals each semester. A school's goal is based on its history of energy usage; results are judged by comparing current use against the same semester from two years earlier.
The SERT program functions just like any other school club. Interested students sign up and attend regular meetings, where they decide on a course of action. They hang posters throughout their campuses encouraging energy conservation and post signs above light swit ches as a reminder that lights should be turned off when leaving a room. Armed with light meters, wattmeters, and thermometers, the students measure the amount of light emitted in a teacher's classroom, or the heat produced by an unused computer or classroom mini-fridge. In many cases, they issue "tickets" to the offending teachers.
