White River School District Receives Nearly $1 Million Energy Grant

Editor's Note: The following press release was issued by the White River School District this week.

The White River School District will receive a $959,281 Energy Grant from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. White River is one of 28 districts that were collectively awarded $20 million for school facility energy efficiency improvements, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction announced this week. Read more.

The award is part of a $40 million commitment by the state Legislature to help schools produce long-term energy and operational savings, improve the indoor environmental qualities of schools and help stimulate construction-industry jobs in the state.

“We’re pleased with the ways districts are becoming more energy efficient,” said Randy Dorn, state superintendent in a press release to the district. “We are seeing projects that replace old heating systems with newer, more energy-efficient sys- tems. Some districts are replacing old fluorescent lighting fixtures for which bulbs are no longer being made. Students and staff will benefit from a better indoor environment.”

To qualify for the funds, school districts conducted an investment-grade audit of their school facilities to identify projects that would yield energy savings and be most beneficial overall. Districts used performance contracting, in which the contractor guarantees the energy savings, as well as the traditional method of hiring a designer to design and a contractor to build. All of the projects are required to measure and verify the energy savings.

The $40 million was appropriated through Senate Bill 5127. Together with funds remaining from a prior appropriation, nearly $41 million in grant requests were awarded during the past year. In May 2012, 14 districts received a total of $5.9 million, and in December 2012, 21 districts received a total of $14.9 million.

White River will use $450,000 from its Capital Fund for the projects to bring the total to $1.4 million.

District Business Manager Mona Moan said the timing for the grant is perfect. The district recently finished up a facilities audit pointing out work needing to be done on the district buildings.

“Money has been pretty tight and we haven’t been able to do the things we’ve wanted to do,” Moan said.

Primarily interior and exterior lighting at the 10-year-old White River High School, Glacier Middle School and Foothills Elementary School, as well as work at WRHS gymnasium, a boiler and control upgrades at GMS and control upgrades at Foothills.

“One of these buildings had a DOS operating system, that’s how old it was,” Moan said.

Foothills Elementary School was built in 1987, while Glacier Middle School is a hodgepodge of buildings from the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘90s.

OSPI notes long-term operational savings for the districts and stimulating construction-industry jobs in heating, ventila- tion, building system controls, lighting, windows and other building systems are two of the grant goals.

District officials applied for the grant in the fall, partnering with Schneider Electric of Seattle, who will be performing the work and following up to make sure the district gets the savings anticipated from the upgrades.

“We are guaranteed a certain amount of savings with these upgrades,” Moan said.

As part of the grant, OSPI will assign a project manager to oversee the work.
In all, 54 school districts applied for grant funding for school infrastructure and building system improvements exceeding $84.3 million in total project costs.