Bright bulbs

 Gangs of students prowl the hallways. Teachers pull down window shades. Custodians use computers to keep an eye on everything.

Are these schools in trouble?

No, they’re saving lots of money.

“Last year our district saved enough to pay two teacher’s salaries,” said Anne Sullivan, principal of Susan Lindgren Intermediate School in St. Louis Park.

In St. Paul, schools saved $1 million last year; almost $2 million over three years. Indeed, Minnesota has a growing number of school districts in the “millionaires club.” Even small rural districts such as Cambridge-Isanti are hitting the half-million mark.
And it’s being done with some old-fashioned advice in a new-fangled package.

Called Schools for Energy Efficiency or SEE, the new approach is a motivational and educational package that changes how a school building works, right down to the teachers, staff and children who occupy it. Basically: Shut off the lights, close the door, turn down the heat.

Simple as it sounds, it’s working very well. The program’s 14 school districts have saved $9.5 million since 2002. And, by keeping an estimated 422,530 tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of the air, Minnesota has become a darling of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has been busy awarding state schools energy-saving citations.

“Minnesota schools have more Energy Star leaders than any other state in the country,” said Audrie Washington, with the EPA in Chicago. She credits SEE for much of that.

Since saving energy isn’t exactly an electrifying notion that spurs action, the concept has to be entertaining to motivate. That’s where SEE excels.

Fourth-graders at North Park Elementary School in Fridley yelled and clapped with excitement when SEE’s costumed character “Energy Hog” entered their assembly last month. The porcine “biker dude,” decked out in leather and chains, appeared with teachers in a skit about saving energy. Hands flew up when students were asked which teacher in the skit was making better choices — turning off the water, shutting down the computer — and wasn’t on the Hog’s side.

Correct answers were rewarded with toy energy-saving light bulbs, and students jostled out revved up and ready to save energy — and money.

In other schools, gangs of children armed with sticky notes and pencils patrol their school looking for energy violations. Called SEE Squads, they leave little “tickets” in the form of sticky-note reminders with “Oops” or “Wow, thanks for saving energy,” depending on what they see.

Three times a day, the SEE Squad at Susan Lindgren School fans out checking classrooms, offices, even the teachers lounge. On a recent drill, the squad wound through the halls happily slapping yellow “Wow” notes on empty rooms where they found the lights off and doors closed. (Closed doors save energy, explained 10-year-old Ivy Kaplan. The hallways aren’t heated.) But Michael Berg’s brightly lit, empty office was tagged with a tell-tale blue “Oops” slip just as the offender came around the corner. The social worker laughed at being caught.

“Thanks for reminding me,” he told the beaming children.

Teachers do their part too. They give up little classroom refrigerators or heating devices. They pull up classroom shades in the day to make use of natural daylight, and down at night to retain energy.

But better behaviors are only half of the energy savings equation. Buildings have to work better too.

It’s lots of little changes that add up, said Steve George, energy coordinator at Burnsville Schools.

“If we have computers go into sleep mode after 10 minutes, we save $30 per year per monitor,” George said. “With some 3,000 to 4,000 monitors in the district, you can see the tremendous savings.”

In St. Paul, the thermostat is tuned down overnight and kept at 68 to 72 degrees during school hours.

“Some schools used to run as high as 82 degrees and for 16 to 20 hours a day,” said Jim Giebel, the district’s energy efficiency coordinator.

There was some fuss at first with the change, Giebel said, but students were educated about dressing for the weather. They got used to it, he added. His next goal: to make improvements in high schools by starting a good-natured “energy war” to see which schools can cut back the most on energy use.

More money for other needs

Changes in building operations and occupant behavior can reap a 10 to 20 percent drop in energy costs almost immediately, said mechanical engineer Joe Hallberg, president of Hallberg Engineering in White Bear Lake and the brains behind the SEE program. Actually, he prefers the term “cost avoidance.”

“It’s not new money out there to be grabbed,” explained energy specialist Margaret Bishop of Bishop Engineering. The company acts as a monitor for many schools, including SEE-program schools, tracking energy bills to ensure that the reductions are real. If expenses are avoided, that leaves more money in the budget for programs, books and supplies, she said.

But administering energy-savings programs does have a cost.

 The St. Cloud school district signed on with SEE in 2003 and spends $28,000 on a yearly contract for the program plus $8,000 annually for incentives, according to district spokeswoman Marjorie Hawkins. But in that time the district reduced its energy costs by more than $1 million. 

SEE isn’t the only way to beat the energy monster in schools. Some districts upgrade facilities with better heating equipment, lighting or new windows. Minneapolis, for example, has been working to make sure boilers and air conditioning equipment is tuned and working efficiently, said Dan Hambrock, the district’s facilities director. Now, impressed with numbers being racked up by other districts, Minneapolis is ready to try changing the behaviors in the district’s 66 school buildings, Hambrock said. He expects they’ll launch SEE district-wide early next year.

Meanwhile, the energy-miser ways practiced by students at school are going home.

Program officials say students are telling their parents and siblings to shut off the lights, turn off the water and unplug the Xbox. It’s old-fashioned advice that will serve them in the years to come.

They know that the future doesn’t belong to the Energy Hog.

Karen Youso • 612-673-4407