Despite a shortened project timeline and a busy spring semester of standardized testing and holidays, the BCPSS Green Schools Program has shown a fair bit of success in reducing overall energy use in the three school buildings where the program has been piloted. The February and March energy bills show a combined decrease of 2.7% overall (only partial data is available for April at this time), resulting in a 7.2 Kw, $1,067 savings between the three buildings.
These results in each of these facilities are the product of the ongoing efforts of teachers and students who have been actively engaging in saving energy and getting everyone in the building involved in simple actions like turning off lights and unplugging electronics when not in use.
The focus of the first few 6 weeks was placed on educating student Green Teams about the basics of energy efficiency, familiarizing them with the use of simple diagnostic tools and guiding them through the collection of energy data from various parts of their facility.
The focus after spring break shifted towards outreach and engagement of other students and all teachers and staff. Students generated recommendations to share with school administrators, and then used their creativity to craft announcements, posters, visual aids and songs (!) to spread the message of energy efficiency.
Pictures, videos and notes may be found on the websites of each school:
Curtis Bay EMS: http://curtisbay.weebly.com/data.html
Baltimore Leadership School: http://blsyw.weebly.com/learning-about-energy.html
WEB Dubois / RFL / Accelerator: http://webrfl.weebly.com/index.html