Now that we are three days into the new school year, I thought I should follow back up from my previous post about my daughter’s new school. As I mentioned before, we were excited for the school year to start because she would be attending a new school that was constructed to meet the criteria for LEED certification and CHPS verification. I was anxious to see what the building would look like and what sustainable features it would include.

Here are a few interesting things I have learned on my little tour of the school. There are touch-screen panels placed throughout the school that students can touch to learn about energy consumption in kid-friendly terms. 

For example, if you click on “electricity usage”, a meter appears rating the school’s electricity usage using happy to sad faces. It also compares the school’s usage to items that kids can relate to. The day we were at the school it had already used as much electricity in just one month as three houses would. It also explains how the solar panels on the school work by showing a short animated video on how the school gets power from the sun and when the sun goes away it gets power from the electric poles. I asked if the school had green roofs and to my surprise they don’t, they have white roofs which we were told are better at keeping the building cooler.  Of course I have heard of green roofs but I was not familiar with white roofs so I yet again used Google and came across a very interesting blog that I would like to share that explains more about white roofs and some studies that were done on it, please visit http://bit.ly/d7jJAU to read more on the subject.

Of course the school was packed with parents and kids when I visited so unfortunately, my tour had to be cut short, but I am looking forward to learning more as the school year progresses.

DM