Energy & Sustainability

The largest utility costs for the school district include expenses for purchased electricity and natural gas, comprising roughly 70% of our utility budget. These areas therefore have the greatest potential for saving the district money. Efforts to reduce our energy use, and thereby reduce our energy costs, cover maintenance of existing equipment, replacement of old equipment with newer, more efficient models, monitoring energy use and educating our community around their behavioral impacts to energy use.

Now our second most costly utility, behind only electricity, water is a rapidly growing expense for the district. While trends in water use across the district have stayed relatively flat, multiple year increases in rates are causing our team to look more closely on how we use this precious resource. This includes our technical guidelines, which require Environmental Protection Agency WaterSense® labeled, low-flow fixtures for all new installations and end-of-life replacements. We have also reduced our area of irrigated turf by installing synthetic turf fields at several of our facilities, drastically reducing the amount of water required for those spaces. Finally, we have a Water Resource Specialist role in the district, focused entirely on managing our irrigation systems and identifying areas for further conversion to water wise landscapes.

Often the first target of sustainability efforts, reducing the amount of waste that goes to the landfill is a well-established practice at Five Star Schools. Recycling programs at the school level have been in place for many years throughout the district, although we only began tracking diversion data in 2016. Waste diversion through warehouse operations is also highly efficient with multiple waste diversion streams including commingled recycling, book and furniture auctioning, metals recycling and hazardous waste management. Additional efforts growing around the district are focused on getting composting programs into our schools and working with Nutrition Services to reduce food waste.

Fuel efficiency in both our bus fleet and maintenance vehicle fleet are an important component of sustainability. These sources are a large contributor to our greenhouse gas inventory, and represent a significant cost as well. Through intelligent contract negotiation, our maintenance vehicle fleet is almost entirely on lease agreements that allow us to ensure we have the most up-to-date vehicles to maintain our facilities while providing improved fuel efficiency. In our bus fleet, movement toward more propane buses allows for lower costs while reducing our environmental impact from vehicle emissions.

Student and community engagement on sustainability efforts is not new to Five Star Schools. Multiple green teams or environmental clubs currently exist working on topics such as recycling, composting, community service projects, school gardens, energy challenges and environmental education. Several schools, through student-led teams, earned recognition in past years through the National Wildlife Federation’s Eco-Schools program, participated in activities with Eco-Cycle, and participated in activities hosted by a variety of local and regional groups focused on environmental education and sustainability activities.