The state recently awarded $20.9 million for school facility energy-cost savings improvements to 40 school districts, and the Eatonville, Steilacoom and Sumner school districts were local recipients. To qualify, districts conducted audits of their schools that identified projects that would yield energy-cost savings while responding to facility needs. In most cases, state money is augmented with local dollars and funds from local utility providers.
The state recently awarded $20.9 million for school facility energy-cost savings improvements to 40 school districts, and the Eatonville, Steilacoom and Sumner school districts were local recipients. To qualify, districts conducted audits of their schools that identified projects that would yield energy-cost savings while responding to facility needs. In most cases, state money is augmented with local dollars and funds from local utility providers.
IN BRIEF
TACOMA
The North Franklin School District will receive $465,800 from the state to upgrade heating and cooling systems at several of its schools and its administrative offices.
The state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction announced this week that 28 districts will receive almost $20 million to modernize their facilities.
"We are seeing projects that replace old heating systems with newer, more energy-efficient systems," state Superintendent Randy Dorn said. "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."
Wilson High School opened in the fall of 1958, and the old sections are a crazy quilt of patches and fixes. The Tacoma School District estimates it would take $40 million to complete its reconstruction. What the school hopes to gain, should Tacoma voters approve a $500 million bond request Feb. 12, is equity for the entire campus, and equity with the district’s other comprehensive high schools. The bond would rebuild or remodel 14 Tacoma schools, half of them built in the 1920s or earlier.
Municipal bonds finance three-quarters of all infrastructure investment in the U.S.: the building of schools, drinking water facilities, hospitals, roads, bridges, as well as energy generation, transmission and distribution projects — the very infrastructure we depend on to maintain our quality of life and promote local commerce and job creation.
BELLINGHAM - Rebuilding Sehome High School and closing Larrabee Elementary are two of the recommendations a Bellingham School District task force has passed along to the superintendent.
The facilities planning task force is made of up more than 30 people from the community and schools who were asked to come up with recommendations for district buildings over the next decade. The group shared its ideas at public meetings in December and incorporated community feedback.
The recommendations cost about $157 million, which could be paid for by a bond voters would have to approve.
OLYMPIA -- Several Tri-City leaders traveled to the state capitol Tuesday to tell lawmakers that forcing utilities to meet renewable energy targets is driving up the cost of electricity and harming local businesses, schools and the poor.
"What's happening is utilities are having to purchase credits they can't even use to the tune of millions and millions of dollars," Sen. Sharon Brown, R-Kennewick, told the Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee.
"What my bill proposes to do is (let us) buy the credits when we need them," she said.
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