Larry Schoff is the national K-12 school sector coordinator for Rebuild America, a U.S. Department of Education program and an APPA strategic alliance partner. He is a member of APPA's K-12 Task Force and can be reached at lschoff@bellatlantic.com.
Our K-12 schools are facing some hard facts of life and difficult choices as we move into the 21st century. After decades of tight budgets and deferred maintenance, the need to repair and upgrade deteriorating and inadequate K-12 school buildings is painfully obvious all across the United States. At the same time, enrollment numbers continue to increase. The school-age population, which has grown steadily since 1990, is expected to continue to grow for the next decade. Changing times require new and more complex instructional programs, adding building, repair, and renovation needs in our schools. Federal mandates require schools to address issues such as indoor air quality, lead, disability and accessibility, radon, and asbestos exposure.
A 1995 GAO report (U.S. General Accounting Office) estimates that about $112 billion (1994-95 dollars) is needed to repair or upgrade school buildings to good overall condition and to comply with federal mandates. About one-third of the 10,000 schools surveyed for the report needed extensive repair or replacement of one or more buildings; 60 percent of schools, many in otherwise adequate condition, reported at least one major building feature, such as heating, ventilation, or plumbing, in disrepair. In over half the surveyed schools (58 percent) at least one aspect of environmental quality, such as ventilation, heating, or lighting, was unsatisfactory. Based on these facts, the rebuilding of our nation's schools is a wise economic and political reality.
School boards and principals are well aware of leaky roofs and equipment breakdowns, but other priorities are often attended to first. Today these are normally corrected when failure occurs and has a direct impact on the instructional programs. Federal mandates must be met, and it seems right for educational programs and staff salaries to claim precedence over physical facilities. Moreover, in most K-12 schools, there is no professional, full-time facilities manager to study the school's needs, understand the state of the art in energy efficiency, and plan for improvements. To the principals and superintendents who manage the facilities along with all their educational, administrative, and public relations duties, maintenance may be just one more budget line item to compete with many others.
Despite obstacles and tight budgets, school officials and communities have begun to recognize new costs and potential benefits that give the school's balance sheet a whole new look. The condition of our school facilities has a direct and lasting effect on the quality of education for students. Buildings in disrepair, poor lighting, and other problems take a heavy toll on the learning environment, the ability of teachers to teach, and the ability of students to learn. The costs of unhealthy or uncomfortable conditions in school buildings may be seen in poor attitude, morale, and performance. One study showed that students assigned to schools in poor condition can be expected to fall 5.5 percentage points below those in schools in fair condition, and 11 percentage points below those in buildings in excellent condition.
The downward spiral of deferred maintenance is becoming financially intolerable, as buildings deteriorate more quickly and equipment requires more frequent and expensive repairs. The feasibility and fundamental benefits of investing especially in energy efficiency are being proven in facilities nationwide. In the struggle to control operating costs and use existing resources, facility managers and school administrators are undertaking renovation projects to use existing facilities to gain in economy of operation and energy efficiency, while potentially cutting energy costs, controlling maintenance costs, and providing better learning environments.
Some of the money to pay for renovations, improvements, and new school buildings is coming not out of operating funds or traditional funding sources, but from the "energy equity" in the schools themselves. About $2 billion in energy equity or 25 percent of the energy consumed in K-12 school annually is escaping out the school's front door, floating out the windows, or rising from the roof. Energy equity can be captured by improving or replacing the school's energy-consuming and building envelope systems providing a healthier, more comfortable, high-quality learning environment.
Rebuilding Our Schools Through Rebuild America
The U.S. Department of Energy developed the Rebuild America program to assist communities in reducing energy consumption in existing facilities based on community needs. Rebuild America was created to help communities reduce energy use in existing commercial, institutional, and multifamily buildings. This program resulted from one of the goals of the President's 1992 Climate Change Action Plan, reduce energy consumption and air pollutants. Assisting communities to use existing resources (buildings) through renovation and/or retrofitting resulting in reduced energy consumption and air pollution is the goal of the program. Rebuild America achieves this goal through the forming of community partnerships and the supporting of these partnerships.
Rebuild America lets partnerships choose the best ways to improve their communities and then supports them with a national network of technical and business experts, resource materials, and access to innovative solutions. The Rebuild America program is divided into six sectors to better serve the needs of the community: state government, local government, public and assisted housing, colleges and universities, commercial, and K-12 schools.
At the foundation of the program is the consensus held by Rebuild America partners and DOE that increasing the energy efficiency of buildings is a win-win opportunity for our communities and the nation. The community partnerships in Rebuild America may draw together representatives of local or state government, economic development organizations, private businesses, utilities, schools, and nonprofit organizations, along with technical experts, individual community leaders, and consultants. Each partnership is a unique combination of members that reflects the community's goals, needs, and priorities; the only requirement is that each partnership include at least one member be a champion "spark plug" for Rebuild America.
Rebuild America partners join the program because they can see that energy efficiency projects will benefit their communities. These projects can help achieve community goals whether they focus strictly on improving schools and lowering energy costs or they target economic growth and job creation, urban revitalization, lowering housing costs, or improving environmental quality. Rebuild America offers the resources, tailored to each community's needs, to ensure that their projects will succeed.
Why Schools Join Rebuild America
Is Rebuild America like all other government programs? That tells us what to do and how to do it and when? The answer is "NO." Rebuild America is based on the needs of the community and the partnerships that it forms or develops bottom up, not top down. K-12 schools are now beginning to figure more prominently in Rebuild America, as partnerships focus on the needs of schools in their communities and realize the benefits that the program can offer. Many of the current Rebuild partnerships are planning school projects, and several partnerships have already committed or completed renovations. Current Rebuild school projects span the nation from Alaska to Connecticut, from Hawaii to New Jersey, and to Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, the District of Columbia, Arkansas, Kansas, and elsewhere. In 1999, Rebuild America is placing new emphasis on the K-12 schools sector and on ensuring that the program's resources and services are finely tuned to the needs of the schools. This emphasis will take many forms. One of the key activities will be to provide information to all decision makers involved with school operations about Rebuild America and the benefits it has to the schools and for the decision makers. This will be accomplished through publication of articles and news about Rebuild in appropriate publications, and the development of easy-to- understand documents on the what, where, why, and how of Rebuild America.
In addition to the general information about the K-12 Rebuild program, assistance will be provided to both Department of Energy Rebuild regional support offices and Rebuild State Representatives on K-12 information as it is identified. In addition, guidance on financing strategies, sample procurement and contract documents, topic-specific workshops, and customized on-site assistance are offered to help partnerships realize the most positive outcomes possible from their action plans.
Schools will find that Rebuild America can assist in providing information and technical advise to overcome obstacles that have stood in the way of maintaining and improving school buildings. The program offers technical expertise from the four National Laboratories and other sources, assistance identifying financing options, and the synergy of partnering with other community organizations with like goals. Participants also find themselves the beneficiaries of the domino effect when projects share the ways and means of their successes with others.
Rebuild America is one of the many existing Department of Energy Programs intended to improve the teaching and learning environment in our U.S. schools. The other programs are: Clean Cities, President's Million Solar Roofs Initiative, the State Energy Program, and Energy Star (a joint DOE/EPA program). The coordination of these programs with other state and local energy programs and the need to address policy issues will be accomplished under an umbrella known as Energy $mart $chools.
Program Elements
Getting started with Rebuild America is simple in fact, the program is user friendly. DOE requires submission of only a simple one-page form to become a candidate for partnership. One city official said of Rebuild America, "This is the easiest government program I've ever been associated with." The form and more information about the program can be found on the Internet at http://www.eren.doe.gov/buildings/rebuild.
In joining the Rebuild America program, the community partner agrees to 1) lead in the development of a community partnership, 2) develop and provide to DOE a multiyear action plan within one year of the date of the signed agreement, and 3) promote its participation in the Rebuild America program.
DOE, being part of every Rebuild Partnership, agrees to 1) assign a program representative to assist the partner in the development and implementation of its community energy efficiency program, 2) recognize the partner as an active participant in the Rebuild America program, 3) promote partner activities at state and local levels, 4) promote exchanges of information and provide guidance information, workbooks, and reference contacts, and 5) sponsor workshops on applicable energy efficiency and renewable energy topics. The program representative helps coordinate Rebuild's assistance to the partnership, and an array of products and services is available to guide partners in developing the partnership and action plan and throughout the building renovation phase.
Rebuild America's assistance is designed to give partnerships every possible advantage:
After the community partnership has been formed and the Rebuild application approved, the next action to be accomplished is developing an action plan, which is the business plan for the community partnership. Every partnership's action plan will be different, but all plans should include information concerning five areas:
The action plan states specific energy efficiency goals and describes the organizations that will act to meet those goals. It includes a description of proposed energy efficiency measures, a strategy to carry them out, and their expected costs and savings. It also describes the technical assistance desired from the Department of Energy. Virtually all renovation or retrofit projects designed to capture a school's energy equity will begin with two actions: an energy audit of school facilities to determine the most effective ways to save energy and money, and the school board or other funding authority establishing a policy that allows all cost savings (energy equity) from the energy efficiency project to be used to pay for the project itself and for other facility improvements.
Developing a prioritized list of improvements will help determine the best use of the captured energy equity; it is recommended that both large and small payback projects be accomplished at the same time. If this does not occur, then some projects with the largest benefit, but the smallest payback time, may not be accomplished. The more improvements accomplished to the energy and associated building systems now, will free up more energy equity for the future, to accomplish routine maintenance and repair. After the action plan has been completed and approved and all policies required are in place, projects identified and designed and funding sources determined, the next action is the accomplishment of the projects. This can be accomplished by several means: In house forces, normal contracts, or by performance contracts. The choice is up to the school division and the type of project accomplished.
The final action but a continuous one is the monitoring and reporting of the results of the project. Is the energy consumption anticipated to be reduced actually occur? What improvements can be made to the project? All this information will be shared with other partnerships around the country for use in development of projects and their action plans.
Rebuild America Partnerships Involving Schools The following partnership overviews are examples of successful programs involving schools.
REBUILD DC PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Partnership Overview: Rebuild DC Public Schools has committed to retrofitting schools and addressing energy and operations inefficiencies within the entire District of Columbia Public School (DCPS) system. The partnership also actively promotes energy, water, and operational efficiency in all sectors of the system to achieve a 20 percent increase in efficiency of the DCPS $32 million Energy and Operations budget by the year 2003. Through the Rebuild DC Public Schools partnership, DCPS hopes to set national standards for energy efficiency, attraction of additional capital and project partners, and environmental stabilization measures. The Rebuild America program will be supporting the Army Corps of Engineers, who has been hired by the District Superintendent, to implement capital and facility improvement projects.
Name of School/District: District of Columbia Public School System School Commitment: 16 million square feet (146 buildings)
REBUILD HAWAII SCHOOLS
Partnership Overview: The State Department of Education, Operations & Maintenance Section, submitted its Department of Education "Rebuild School Action Program" plan to conserve energy through energy savings performance contracting to improve buildings and facilities of over 250 schools in the Hawaii Department of Education educational system. Phase I of their Rebuild School Action Program will focus on initiating and implementing a performance contract for schools on the Island of Oahu. Three "pilot" schools have been selected, and the total projected energy savings for these schools is 3,923,160 kWh and the total projected energy cost savings is calculated at $625,000. Phase II will build off of the experience and results from Phase I and concentrate on the nine outer island schools. The projected energy savings is 12 million kWh with a projected energy cost savings of $1.9 million.
Name of school/district:
Island of Oahu School District (3 schools)
Lunalilo Elementary School (Grades 1-6)
Koko Head Elementary School (Grades 1-6)
Roosevelt High School (Grades 9-12) School Commitment: 272,826 square feet
REBUILD IDAHO
Partnership Overview: The goal of the Rebuild Idaho partnership is to promote and support cost-effective conservation and the utilization of renewable resources by providing information, technical assistance, and limited financial support to their energy consumers, producers, and policy makers. Through Rebuild America, they will develop community partnerships based on a common need for increased building efficiencies and reduced resources, which in turn will enable them to become more actively involved in facilitating energy and resource savings throughout the states commercial sector. To facilitate these initiatives, they are incorporating a Resource Conservation Manager, or RCM, for each community. The RCM's purpose is to track the energy use and waste production and identify processes to reduce each. The savings gained from these operations adjustments can be distributed between ongoing building maintenance, new equipment, or additional staff. Rebuild Idaho's Action Plan targets ten school buildings for energy savings retrofits over the next five years. Each year, two schools will be selected for a full audit, including DOE2 simulation, building envelope analysis, lighting audit, equipment monitoring, and data-logging. After completion of the building audit, recommendations for each school will be designed to meet target energy savings goals and incorporating life cycle costing analysis. For their first year project, Rebuild Idaho is planning to install gas boilers with heat pumps in Taylorview Junior High and electric and gas boilers in Skyline High School.
Name of Schools/district: Idaho Falls Schools District (10 buildings)
Skyline High School
Idaho Falls High School
Eagle Rock Jr. High
Taylorview Jr. High
A.H. Bush Elementary
Dora Erickson Elementary
Edgemont Elementary
Emerson Elementary
Linden Park Elementary
Westside Elementary
School Commitment: 341,267 square feet (First Year Project)
825,343 total square feet
Conclusion
Rebuild America presents new opportunities for schools to repair and upgrade their facilities by using the energy equity that can be captured by improving energy efficiency. Energy efficiency can play an important role in providing high-quality learning environments, lowering operational costs, and maintaining the fiscal ability to respond to facility needs.
Rebuild America has grown to more than 200 community partnerships in 40 states, providing national expertise in energy efficiency and facility operations to address the needs of communities in upgrading their buildings. Improved quality and efficiency of facilities and operations will result in energy-smart schools that will provide comfortable and healthy environments into the 21st century for teachers to teach and children to learn.