Every school day more than 50 million children and six million adults enter our public schools. Many of these facilities are outdated and in desperate need of repair, maintenance or reconstruction. Despite shifting demographics, school enrollment has increased for the past nineteen years while spending has remained relatively unchanged. The result has been a downward spiral in the condition of our schools and the number of children attending overcrowded, substandard facilities.
Our country now finds itself in the beginning of a school construction movement unparalleled in our history. The K-12 school market and new construction in higher education combined will exceed $83 billion in 2005, making it the largest sector in the non-residential construction industry. Aware of the need for quality facilities enlightened school districts are rethinking the way we design and construct our schools. The benefits of energy, material and resource efficient facilities that optimize student health and productivity while meeting program and budget requirements are becoming well known. Communities enjoying robust growth are examining a range of new construction options and attributes associated with high performance green schools. Communities faced with down sizing and consolidating are asking similar questions about the schools that will be retained. Yet while the growing number of successful projects and an increasing body of literature indicate the high performance green school market is enjoying steady growth it is still a relatively small part of the overall school construction market. If high performance green schools are such a good idea, why isn’t market penetration happening at a greater rate?
In his Progress Report on Sustainability in the November 2004 edition of Building Design and Construction magazine, Editor in Chief Robert Cassidy states that while school administrators and the school design and construction industry are becoming more aware of how high performance green schools can benefit their districts there are still serious doubts about whether those benefits justify the increased costs associated with design and construction. Surveys taken among the Association of School Business Officials (ASBO), the Council of Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI), and the National School Boards Association (NSBA) indicate that an increased interest and attendant confidence in the ability to successfully implement high performance green design strategies is offset by the reality of tight budgets, constraints associated with building or remodeling within the academic calendar and a host of competing priorities that vary with urban, suburban and rural school districts. In their document Building Healthy, High Performance Schools: A Review of Selected State and Local Initiatives Tobie Bernstein and Zachary Lamb of the Environmental Law Institute examine the relationship between issues that exist for school officials and decision makers who must weigh the daily demands of administering school district business while evaluating long term planning and investment options.
The topics and concerns discussed in both of these documents resonate with those expressed in the 2002 Wingspread Conference on Barriers to High Performance Schools. Chief among these are:
The belief that high performance green schools are more expensive than conventional construction. While this is generally true, it has been proven that the use of an integrated design approach and the implementation of existing design guidelines for high performance green schools can keep added cost to absolute minimums. This debate is further fueled when the discussion breaks down into the merits of price versus cost versus value. In this debate price is the total amount expended on design and construction. Costs are things such as social costs, environmental costs, impact on the community, etc. Value becomes an extremely subjective argument about what the investment in high performance green schools is worth and what should be expended to achieve the perceived value. Added to this is the comparison of first cost versus life cycle cost. The ability to computer model energy and building system performance has provided the means to optimize building design and predict performance. Increasing energy prices and general concern for future energy markets is making the life cycle cost argument inherent in integrated design approaches more attractive. The price of building system performance modeling and building commissioning to further insure the desired design and construction intent are known to be very cost effective.
The perception that the investment in high performance green schools provides only marginal returns that cannot be verified. This concern is being addressed on several fronts. As more and more independent studies are performed the argument for high performance green schools is moving from the anecdotal and speculative to the statistically significant and clinically verifiable. This is being driven by early indicators that properly designed schools, using modern analysis tools and software, can achieve predicted energy performance and attendant savings. This data is currently scarce but is the target of a CEFPI initiative to gather and post relevant school performance information. The first task is to get a larger number of schools to collect performance data in a format that is easily understood and evaluated. Landmark studies on the impact of daylight and superior environmental quality on student health and performance (Heschong-Mahone Group, 1999) are being scrutinized and evaluated. Several medical journals and peer-reviewed studies have established the connection between interior air quality and tendencies toward absenteeism and general malaise among students and building occupants alike. The latter has garnered the attention of school districts and insurance agencies alike that pay the costs associated with everything from substitute teachers to litigation resulting from sick building suits. In light of what could be very marginal or no cost increases, high performance green schools become very inexpensive insurance policies and a great source of positive public relations.
The pressure to build to meet the rate of increasing student populations and shifting demographics. Sometimes referred to as “hurry up and do it wrong” the need to provide for the continuous functioning of school facilities while conforming to academic schedules is often misunderstood as a barrier to designing and constructing high performance green schools. In reality, the tenets of high performance green design include creative ways to resolve stacking functions, the use of community facilities to temporarily or permanently meet programmatic needs, maintain superior air quality during construction and use integrated design to minimize change orders and shorten overall construction schedules. Taking an integrated approach to design can actually result in better projects built on time and on budget. As district decision-makers become more savvy about programming and writing requests for proposals and qualifications for high performance green schools and design teams become more knowledgeable, the trend toward high performance green schools will grow.
The good news in all of this is that there currently exists a variety of design guidelines and a wealth of information that can assist all stakeholders with the decision making process. The emergence of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design© (LEED) building rating system is proving to be a growing influence for market transformation and the dissemination of green building information for a variety of building types. The LEED for Schools Application Guide, based on LEED Version 2.1 for New Construction, is currently under development. Several schools have successfully been certified using LEED Version 2.1 for New Construction. Several more are currently in the certification process. The USGBC serves as the educational entity and third party verification authority that supports the implementation and review of the LEED submission process. The strength of LEED and the reason there are costs associated with it is that it provides for verification that design goals and LEED standards have been met. The LEED for Schools Application Guide is designed to make the process more easily understood and user friendly. The Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), developed originally in California, has enjoyed wide spread recognition in the school design industry and continues to grow as a market influence around the country. CHPS distilled those aspects of LEED that apply to schools and added several more that can be tailored to specific design conditions and locations. It has grown to include a Planning Guide and a well- organized support network of workshops and training. Unlike LEED, compliance is voluntary. The Sustainable Building Industry Council (SBIC) and the Department of Energy have also published very useful school design guides that are based on regions of the country - both easy to interpret and apply.
The fact that the primary authors of these documents continue to collaborate and share in the ongoing development of these guidelines with a growing number of stakeholders from different professions and interests speaks to the energy and enthusiasm in the high performance green school movement. Perhaps the greatest benefit of this collaboration is the evolution of the high performance green school as a primary element in the mission of educating our children. Much of this excitement evolves around the design and construction of K-12 facilities as teaching tools; three-dimensional text books in which children can participate and interact with the physical environment in which they spend their day. Within this movement is the emerging realization that we spend more than ninety percent of our time in the built environment yet we teach precious little about the impact of buildings and the larger built environment on our general physical, mental and emotional well being. Modern environmental education should celebrate the connections between natural ecology, building ecology and human ecology. Constructing green high performance schools that integrate the curriculum with the physical facility in ways that better educates and informs our students while providing for their optimum health and productivity may be the best reason for investing in them. After all, isn’t that what education is about? Robert J. Kobet, AIA is President of Sustainaissance International, K2Integrated Project Solutions and Chair of the USGBC LEED for Schools Application Guide Initiative.