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Students learned that turning off
lights and installing weather stripping saves money; having saved thousands of
dollars
Kids Learn to Conserve
Published in the Asbury Park Press 05/26/05
By Naomi Mueller
Toms River Bureau |
They seem like simple lessons: Turn the lights off when you leave a room.
Don't leave the window open while the air conditioning is on. And replace
broken thermostats.
But for the Brick Township School District, those
lessons followed by the students and staff in seven of its schools saved
thousands of dollars. |
STAFF PHOTO: STEVE SCHOLFIELD
Children from the Brick Primary Learning Center sing an Arbor Day song at
the Lake Riviera Middle School, Brick, as part of the Green Schools Program,
which taught students to save energy. |
The savings were the result of the
district's participation — the first in the state — in the Green Schools
Program, a nationwide initiative designed to help schools reduce their
energy costs while helping to make students and staff aware of how they use
and waste energy.
Working with administrators, teachers and custodians,
the students studied the way their school building uses energy, then
pondered how some of that energy can be conserved.
"What you have done has made a difference to the whole
Earth," Janet Castellini of Global Learning, which brought the program to
the Brick schools, told the students Wednesday at the Lake Riviera Middle
School. "You know why that is? Because we all breathe the same air."
Global Learning Executive Director Jeff Brown said each
building saved between $400 and $11,000, and the amount each school saved
will be returned to it at the end of the school year. However, Brown said
the results are preliminary; he would not say exactly how much had been
saved.
In a culminating event Wednesday, representatives from
six of the seven schools gathered at Lake Riviera School and presented a
summary of the things they learned and the ways their team helped the
district save money.
For example, Lauren Korndoerfer, a sixth-grader at Lake
Riviera Middle School, said pupils at her school wrote letters to the
school's teachers, reminding them to recycle and save energy. Kelsey
Gilligan, another sixth-grader at Lake Riviera, said her class compared
compact fluorescent light bulbs to incandescent ones and learned that the
fluorescent ones are more energy-efficient.
Veterans Memorial Elementary School fifth-grader
Jessica Terry said she and her classmates used posters to remind pupils and
staff to turn their computer monitors off at the end of the day and to
unplug appliances when they are not being used.
The reason these things are important is "because it
saves our environment," said Raquel Beato, a fifth-grader at Veterans
Memorial Elementary School.
Other recommendations to encourage energy conservation
were turning off lights in vending machines, putting outside lights on
timers, encouraging teachers to turn off the lights in the faculty room when
the room is unoccupied and reporting drafts to the maintenance department,
which installs weather stripping.
"They are real simple things that in a big building can
really make a difference," said Assistant Schools Superintendent Walter
Hyrcenko. "It helps everyone learn the importance of conservation, not only
in school, but at home."
Other local schools in the program are the Brick
Primary Learning Center, Herbertsville Elementary School, Veterans Memorial
Middle School, and Brick Township and Brick Township Memorial high schools.
Brown said Brick is the first school district in New
Jersey to participate in the Green Schools Program, which is funded through
a grant from the state Board of Public Utilities and New Jersey Natural Gas.
Program Helps Schools to Bring in
the Green > |
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