Photo courtesy of DTK Austin.
The Texas School for the Deaf is the grand prize winner in the Global Green USA Green School Makeover Competition.
As part of the grand prize, the school will receive a ‘green makeover’ worth $130,000, according to the non-profit Global Green, which educates and raises funds for environmental initiatives.
The grand prize winner and four runners-up were selected by a panel of judges out of a pool of more than 200 public, private, and charter K-12 schools that submitted proposals for green renovations.
In announcing the results of the competition, Matt Petersen, president and CEO of Global Green, said, “Green schools improve student performance, increase average daily attendance, and reduce operating costs, energy, and water consumption.
“We are deeply excited to be able to bring those benefits to the students and teachers at the extraordinary Texas School for the Deaf.”
The school is the oldest continually operating, publicly funded school in Texas. Since 1857, over 10,000 students from grades K-12 have walked its halls.
Claire Bugen, the school’s superintendent said, “Unlike other public schools, we live on this campus 24 hours a day and we generate a lot of waste. This prize will help use take our fledgling recycling efforts to the next level and install some important tools – like automatic faucets – to help us become more sustainable.”
Actually, the school will do a lot more than just revamp its recycling and faucets. The school plans to make energy efficiency upgrades, implement large-scale water conservation initiatives, reduce paper waste, and provide education for the school community on recycling.
As part of its energy upgrades, the school plans to retrofit light fixtures to allow for energy efficient bulbs, as well as to install motion-activated lights to conserve energy.
“Cost savings from the energy efficient upgrades will be reinvested back into the school’s educational programs,” said Global Green.
Also, besides reducing water loss through hands-free faucets in bathrooms, the school plans to make the most use of Mother Nature’s water supply by collecting rainwater in barrels to be used for watering the school grounds.
Right now, the school also says that it spends about $20,000 every year in bottled water, but with the new money it will be “switching to reusable bottles and installing a tap filtration system” which will allow money to be saved and “put back into education.”
Another cost-cutting and waste reduction measure that the school is planning to implement will be the installation of hands-free hand dryers in the bathrooms to reduce paper towel use. The school expects that this will have the double benefit of reducing supply costs and saving materials from going into landfills.
The school also says that it will use part of the money to “install recycling bins near trashcans across campus to make recycling easier and encourage recycling campus-wide,” adding that the goal will be to “educate the school community on recycling and spread the habit to home life.”
Global Green says the money from the grand prize will be given in two parts – the school will receive $65,000 for renovations and “an additional $65,000 worth of technical assistance.”
The four runner-up schools, which will each receive $2,500 toward sustainability upgrades, are:
- Garlough Environmental School (St. Paul, Minn.)
- The Garlough school which serves grades K – 4, emphasizes an environmental studies program with math, science, and technology. The school plans to use the prize money to both create a teaching space for its multicultural nature class, and to install a chicken coop to compliment an already existing organic garden bed.
- Zimmerman School House/Abi’s Place (Coral Springs, Fla.)
- The Zimmerman School serves children ages three –to –12 years old that have mental and physical disabilities. The school plans to use the prize money to install eco-friendly flooring, as well as purchase non-toxic paint and cleaning products.
- Samuel Powel Elementary School (Philadelphia, Pa.)
- This traditional elementary school plans to use the prize money to accomplish two environmental goals. The school plans to plant an organic vegetable garden to teach students about agriculture, nutrition, and ecology. It also plans to create an infrastructure to redirect storm water into rain gardens filled with native plants to provide the students with an added framework for learning math, biology, ecology, and physics.
- Heritage Middle School (Berwyn, Ill.)
- This traditional middle school plans to use the prize money to install a dishwasher and replace disposable products in the cafeteria with reusable ones (i.e., silverware, trays, and carts).
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