Green Schools
School buildings have a huge impact on our communities. Children spend a significant percentage of their waking hours within classroom walls and on school grounds. School properties create large footprints on our land. And school location decisions profoundly influence development patterns in surrounding areas.
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Durant Middle School, Raleigh, NC
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“Green schools” are constructed according to green development principles, which can include utilizing natural daylighting, building with nontoxic and energy-efficient materials, and conserving water and green space. The design of a school has a tremendous impact on our children’s well-being, and we’re learning more and more that details other than books, teachers and parents can help improve a child’s performance. As one study concluded:
“Controlling for other influences, we found that students with the most daylighting in their classrooms progressed 20% faster on math tests and 26% faster on reading test in one year than those with the least. Similarly, students with the largest window areas were found to progress 15% faster in math and 23% faster in reading than those with the least.”(1)
Green schools have two other major positive effects: they are less expensive to maintain in the long-term through reduced energy costs and water consumption, and they protect natural resources through innovative, low-impact building construction.
Upstate Forever’s Green Schools Initiative
Currently, the Greenville County School District is undertaking one of the largest school construction projects in the United States—the building and renovation of 70 schools and centers at a cost of nearly $1 billion. It is truly a historic opportunity to provide long-lasting benefits to generations of future students but also serve as a model for school construction projects throughout the country.
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Riverside High School, Greer, SC (artist’s rendering) |
In March, 2001, Upstate Forever presented its “Green Schools for Greenville” proposal to Institutional Resources (the firm supervising the project) and the School Board, urging the Board to require that green development principles be applied to the project and that green development principles be applied to the project and that LEED certification be applied to each building. The Board later approved spending $2 million to include “green thinking” in the project, and Institutional Resources convened a team of green architects, designers, and consultants to develop green schools design guidelines and an evaluation checklist. While the green elements on the extensive checklist are not required, each new or renovated school should incorporate as many as possible.
Disappointingly, the District declined to follow Upstate Forever’s recommendation to hire an expert to oversee compliance with the green checklist. To date, project managers unfamiliar with green building techniques have incorporated few green elements into the building projects.
One school in the building program, however, stands out for its multiplicity of green details: the new Riverside High School in Greer has a highly-reflective roof, is using low-emission adhesives and paints, and is lit by the sun in 90% of regularly occupied spaces. Riverside is the only K-12 school building in the state to be registered with LEED.
Upstate Forever believes that all future school projects in the Upstate can and should incorporate green design and construction principles. We can have it all: healthy and pleasant schools that boost student performance and save money without excessively sacrificing precious natural resources.
Additional resources & information:
Notes:
1 Heschong Mahone Group, “Daylighting in Schools: An Investigation
into the Relationship Between Daylighting and Human Performance,” 1999.
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