I’ve recently heard a lot about transforming buildings (including schools) to make them more ‘green.’ Being the optimist that I am, I was all for this transformation. I quickly absorbed the advantages that the green schools, in particular, could have on the environment, energy costs, as well as student achievement. Why wouldn’t we be for them? Well that was before I looked at the actualities of the matter and read the article titled, Green Schools Don’t Make the Grade by Todd Myers. (Hence why I said ‘I was all for them.’)
Congress has considered funding the Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act. This Act would provide $20 billion dollars to build public schools that meet environmental standards. This is a great amount of money for a project that Congress doesn’t even know will work yet. Like I said I’m an optimist, so I at first was for the passing of this Act. However, the results of schools that meet the standards of this act have not been exactly what Congress had suspected.
Let me first mention what people are saying could be advantages of these green schools.
Advocates for green schools argue that the place in which learning occurs (schools) impact what they learn. And because of this, more schools need to become green.
Recent studies have shown that the average school in America was built at least 50 years ago causing students and faculty to suffer from poor indoor air quality, inadequate lighting and ineffective heating and cooling (Van Roekel, 2009). These same schools require about $17 billion dollars a year to upkeep their existing structures.
In an article by Dennis Van Roekel, the advantages of green schools are listed as, they can protect the environment, improve the health of students and educators, raise academic performance, reduce absenteeism and save a substantial amount of money over the years. He also states that upgrading schools can create new jobs.
When I first read that green school could improve absenteeism, I was curious to find out how this could happen. I discovered that studies have shown that students taught in classrooms with better air quality can reduce outbreaks of asthma by almost 40%. Asthma is the number one cause of absences from schools than any other chronic illness (Van Van Roekel, 2009).
My first argument to this is that the University of Michigan Health System states that Asthma is the most common chronic illness for children to have. So of course it causes the most absences in schools, because so many students actually have the illness. Absences caused from cerebral palsy and sickle cell anemia (both chronic illnesses) are of course less common, because not as many children have these illnesses. Turning schools into green schools does not cure students from having Asthma.
My second argument with green schools is that if may save on energy costs, but how much more expenses need to be added for reasons other than energy. Van Roekel states “Green schools can also be a powerful engine for creating new jobs” (2009). A recent NEA analysis suggests that investing $20 billion over a five-year period for repair and maintenance of school facilities would support 50,000 jobs per year.” I realize that many people are out of work at this moment in time, but does it make sense to spend an extra $20 billion dollars in five years in order to repair the schools’ facilities. To me this means, that they know a lot of technical issues are going to occur with these schools and we already have to set aside an extremely high amount of money for this issue.
Todd Myers also has arguments with the concept of green schools in America. He states that green schools in Washington failed to perform as expected. In those schools, none of the green schools were the most energy-efficient (especially not 30% less as what was projected). He also states that some of the green schools were at least 25% higher than the most efficient non-green school in the same district.
The schools also failed to reduce absenteeism and economic costs.
Lastly, Myers argues that the standards of the green school are often contradictory. He states that the increasing the amount of windows for more sunlight will also increase energy costs by letting in cold air in the winter and warm air in the summer. Not only this, but when school recirculate air more frequently to ‘improve health’ of the students and faculty, which means running heating and air conditioning systems more frequently, thus increasing energy use!
The results are clear that (at least in Washington) the green school that Congress could be funding to build, are not performing as they were projected to do. So should this act be funded? I don’t believe so anymore.
References:
Children with Chronic Conditions: Your Child: University of Michigan Health System. (n.d.). University of Michigan Health System. Retrieved June 25, 2010, from http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/chronic.htm
Green Schools Initiative. (n.d.). Green Schools Initiative : Index. Retrieved June 25, 2010, from http://www.greenschools.net/display.php?modin=52&uid=172
Myers, T. (2008). Green Schools Don’t Make the Grade Publications National Center for Policy Analysis NCPA. Free-Market Public Policy National Center for Policy Analysis NCPA. Retrieved June 25, 2010, from http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba622
Van Roekel, D. (2009). NEA - President's Viewpoint - The Need for Green Schools. NEA - NEA Home. Retrieved June 25, 2010, from http://www.nea.org/home/30576
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