02 May Green Progress, Plans Ideas for AISD
Yesterday I attended the AISD Facilities Master Plan (FMP) input session and the greenies were out in full force! While approximately 700 comments have been made so far on the FMP, the host said they had NEVER received so many great ideas in one hour! There were many intelligent suggestions about energy efficiency, water conservation, solar installations, trees, eco-audits, and more!
Some good news to share about accomplishments and suggestions that were made:
** The District will soon be posting/hiring a Sustainability Manager that will work in Facilities/Physical Plant, under Juan Nunez. While this is not the same as a Chief Sustainability Officer, it is a CRITICAL area to have someone directly accountable for upgrading the sustainability of the buildings in the district. AISD manages 131 facilities (average age 40+ years) with over 12 million square feet of permanent building space and nearly another 1 million square feet of temporary building space. On top of that there are hundreds of playgrounds, stadiums, tracks, ball fields, and parking lots.
Gina LaMotte of EcoRise Youth Innovations proposed engaging students on every campus in supervised eco-audits and developing 3-5 year sustainability plans for each. While a district-wide coordinator will be helpful, one participant suggested designating a faculty sustainability coordinator on each campus that works with the campus green team and records progress that can contribute to a District-wide report card.
** With the cooperation of the City of Austin, AISD hired a Forester to oversee the trees and they have plans to plant upwards of 50 trees at all the schools that have room for them. On Monday of this week a new collaboration with the City of Austin was approved that would help cover the cost of trees and initial irrigation system at 20-25 schools and then the schools would be responsible for the watering and ongoing maintenance.
I suggested, and Karen Hadden reinforce the suggestion that AISD incorporate fruit and nut-bearing trees on campuses. Tom "Smitty" Smith gave them info for Camille Paremesan to find out more about our changing climate's impact on which tree and plant species will be considered well-adapted for our region.
** All AISD campuses are serviced by single stream recycling (started in Jan 2011), and all of the elementary schools and some middle schools have composting. This has already resulted in 10 million pounds of materials being diverted from the landfill.
While AISD has embraced the City of Austin's goal of achieving Zero Waste by 2040, they were also encouraged to adopt their own Zero Waste goal.
** AISD has committed to achieving at least 2-star ratings in the Austin Energy Green Building Program but has gone beyond that in several cases, including one 5-star school five 4-star, and 10 3-stars. They are also moving to embrace LEED ratings.
Karen Hadden held up a picture of the largest Net Zero Energy middle school in Irving, Texas that really sets the bar for what is possible with a public school. Audience members pointed out that while well-designed buildings are valuable, making sure the teachers, staff, students and parents know how to interact with the building makes a big difference as well. First, it would be helpful to make the green features more visible so people know what is there. In addition, well-developed green curricula from EcoRise Youth Innovations, Keep Austin Beautiful, National Wildlife Federation and USGBC's Green School program are already developed and ready for deployment if some financial support could be allocated to pay for a series of professional development and educational workshops. In that vain we found out that there is a "green housekeeping" pilot in 20-25% of facilities. Lucia Athens pointed out that the Office of Sustainability, in just one year, increased their K-12 Bright Green Futures grants programs from $9,000 to $60,000 by raising money from different enterprise departments and that even more might be possible with external fund raising. It was also suggested that there might be even more possibilities in partnering with the City's new Office of Innovation. 
** Implementing Summer Energy Efficiency programs have saved the district nearly half a million dollars! AISD is about to start spending the $20 million in bond money ($10M for energy efficiency upgrades – systemic repairs- replacing old HVAC, electric panels with high efficiency and remote controls and other efficiency upgrades, will hit every campus. There is also a large chunk for solar).
I made a suggestion that they leverage the $20M in bond money that they are about to spend by tracking the savings that result from those efforts and re-investing the savings into further conservation efforts at all campuses. The problem is that the district is facing a $30M funding gap between income and expenses and they are going in the hole to keep salaries up and not cut services. There were still a LOT of audience members who echoed the idea of reinvesting the savings.
** In the category of transportation, AISD started purchasing lower emission school buses with bond money that passed in 2004. They also have 6 propane buses and one plug-in hybrid bus purchased with a grant from the city of Austin. Modern GPS systems on the newer buses allows the district to monitor for speed, and idling and identify route efficiencies. The district also has a no idling policy for ALL vehicles, including parents, in front of schools.
I suggested that they do an inventory of all the campuses and see which ones lack signage to indicate that idling is not allowed (they are not at my son's school) and get them installed on both sides of the campus, post haste. I know I'll be calling folks at Gullett to get more information the anti-idling pledge that the kids get their parents to sign and return each year.
** The District does not have a green house gas inventory nor do they have their own carbon reduction goals or Climate Action Plan.
It was suggested to them that Lucia Athens and her staff in the City of Austin's Office of Sustainability could be of assistance to them in measuring, benchmarking and setting targets.
** Some other green initatives to note are the Green Campuses, Schoolyard gardens, the BOWWOW (Bike on Wednesday, Walk on Wednesday) program, and all the well-thought out ideas laid out in the AISD Best Practices Sustainability Guide, produced by the dedicated Environmental Stewardship Action Committee.
More broadly there is a need to educate School Board members, parents and all stakeholders about what a green school is and the many reasons it's a good idea to pursue and support. An idea was brought forth to organize competitions around conservation and allow some of the rewards to go back into clubs.
There will be 2-3 more public meetings PLUS the public can submit comments and suggestions on their website http://www.austinisd.org/fmp/comments and/or take the FMP survey.
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