Cutting the energy use by schools

This might work in the lower grades, but in high schools, it would be a disaster for the majority of kids and teachers. I teach 12th grade English. Most of my students work after school. Would they all have to give up their jobs? It's not as if they're working for their cars; these days they have to help out with household expenses. Most of the teachres have second jobs, too. What would they do? Here in Miami, it would be really hard to reduce the air conditioning to reduce electric bills. Most of the schools are official hurricane shelters, and there are no windows. When we have a power outage, it becomes unbearable very quickly. They tried cutting off the A/C on the weekends, but it increased the electricity usage because it was so hot and airless by Monday morning. What they have done is go back to the bargaining table, because the Board voted to rescind the raises we negotiated to start today! There will also be fewer bus routes, and kids who are bused all over the county to participate in magnet programs will have to find their own transportation. Unfortunately, there's not a good mass transit system here. I'd love to leave the car home and use a bus, but I can't get to my school from my house! We need to find some answers! The system has stopped supplying things like photocopy paper, computer cartridges, markers and even chalk! Whatever we use has to be provided by us, and paid for by us. :( This is not a Miami problem. It's happening all over the country. What can we do?

You could probably get the same energy savings if the schools made the staff turn off all the lights and computers when they left for the nights and weekends. Besides, many peoples budgets would be under greater strain, because they would have to pay for someone to mind their children on that day off when the adults are still working.

I remember that when I was in school, we had to turn the fans and lights off during breaktime. We were also encouraged with car pooling. We did not try going to class for four days but we did apply DST (daylight savings time). For a time it worked out okay but we went back to normal.

Our school system was considering the idea of an abbreviated school week at the end of last school year in order be able to run the buses only four days instead of five, but I haven't heard anything more about it. I don't know if thev parents rioted because of having to find childcare for that extra day, or what. I think it is a creative idea to save the school some money. It could work.

Its a good idea at least for school districts and parents to think about. There is already talk about reducing the work week to 4 days, it would be consistent to have the school days the same way. One problem that may arise is if the 4 day workweek does not get accepted overall, but the 4 day school week does. People would have to arrange childcare for the off day the kids get but the parents do not. Still even with this, Bob, the arguments are the same as the 4 day work week. 20% less fuel consumed, less days to heat and cool the building. Less startup time and less shutdown time for the week overall (8 total on a 4 day, 10 total in a normal week). Its possible the budgets would be lower saving money, or it could remain the same and that funding might be a reinvestment in the school system. Just a random thought.

I think children who live locally should walk to school. It keeps them healthy and prevents pollution. There are too many parents who take their kids to school by car when they only live round the corner. Also, I worked in a school that left its computers on all day and night and even though the monitors had power-saving mode, I always felt it better that they turned them off when not in use after school hours. These are just a couple of small things we can do to cut energy use.

I just wrote a HUGE response to have my computer to freeze up!! Here goes the post again! My husband and I had this exact discussion the other day. I believe it would make several parents mad at the education system. Kids are already tired by 2:00. I couldn't imaging giving them an Algebra test at 3:00. Our bodies have been programmed that 3:00 is the end of the school day. Also, what would we do with after school activities? Practices would have to run until 6:00 every night or later. Ball games would also have to start later to give teams time to travel. That would mean that the kids would be even more tired the day after that game. (Middle schools play during the week. Basketball and baseball plays all the time.) Now am I saying that I completely disagree with the idea? Not at all! I would love to work a few more hours Monday through Thursday in order to have Friday off. I would even do professional development on those days rather than having to miss actual school days for it. I also agree that it would save a lot of money. We run around 20 buses per school in my system. There are 7 schools. That's a lot of diesel that we are buying. About the taxes... I'm not really sure if it would lower the taxes paid. I'm sure in some areas it would. I know that my system really needs that money for other areas. We need to get rid of some portable classrooms. We also need to update some really old technology. They could also give us teachers some money for our classrooms rather than us buying so much every year.