The Greening of American Schools: If it ain't broke, don't fix it

Part 3 in a series

Every school in every school district must balance the daily challenges of running at their programs with the needs of maintaining their largest physical asset, the school building. This issue is easy to ignore month after month, year after year. School districts often defer maintenance for decades, cutting costs from their facility budgets to allow for other important programs. Unfortunately as we look at making our schools more sustainable we need to take a serious look at how we maintain our facilities.

In sustainable design we are always trying to create a smaller footprint or impact. One way of achieving this is to use existing whenever possible before providing new. This is the argument to keep the car you have for a few more years, rather than running out and buying a brand new hybrid or high efficiency vehicle. Why is your old car more sustainable? Because you are not creating demand for the production of new steel, rubber or plastic parts. Instead you are using parts that had been previously produced for their complete useful life. You should still buy the hybrid car in the future, just wait until your current vehicle has met its maker.

When it comes to buildings that is an even more potent argument. Buildings are huge physical assets made up of many parts. We can't just tear a building down and ship it to the local trash dump. The land that a building occupies is scared and needs time to be repaired. Our existing building stock in many cases occupies prime locations forcing communities to use areas that were not previously considered for development. As a society we need to take better care of our existing buildings, especially our schools for as long as possible.

The challenge to maintain our school facilities falls to our administrators and boards of education. Administrators face a difficult question each year. They must balance a budget that pays for not only teachers, but transportation, food service, facilities, maintenance and other major expenses. Often school budgets are dominated by capital expenses even over the cost of staff. Any good school board member will tell you that it is much easier to defer maintenance costs than to trim staff or scale back programs that have a tangible impact on our children.


Realistically our school buildings also have a tangible impact. Schools that are not maintained typically have poorer air quality, lighting and acoustics. Operating in classrooms which are cold, dark or loud can have a severely negative effect on student learning, absenteeism and general heath. These buildings are often more expense to operate and wind up taking dollars from programs anyway.

In some cases districts get surprised by their facilities. After years of not maintaining their building stock it starts to fail. Roofs leak, pipes burst, boilers burn out. When these issues occur schools are forced to syphon off significant funds from other programs to cover the costs if they haven't maintained proper facility budgets. These are drastic measures that can often be avoided with an appropriate maintenance program.

So how do we get this done?


First thing is first. Stop differing maintenance. Do not allow your schools or districts to put off the regular steps of checking filters and pumps, cleaning, inspecting or exercising equipment. Require your school boards to produce regular reports of the state of your school district's physical plant.

Next, put together a long term maintenance plan. Look ahead 30 years. What do you expect will fail? What can be maintained? What should be replaced now? What can wait? Will there be a day when some or all of your buildings are obsolete and need to be taken off line, converted or demolished? By planning far ahead you can assess the real costs of maintenance and spread out the financial responsibility over decades rather than needing it all at once.


Plan to upgrade incrementally. As equipment fails or comes to the end of its useful life replace it with higher efficiency equipment. For example when it comes time to re-roof a building examine the insulation and membrane. Can you improve the efficiency of the building by upgrading the roof? Look into ways of making your systems more efficient, but don't take action until the the old systems need to be repaired or replaced.


If you think about maintaining school buildings the same way you consider maintaining your car (changing the oil, rotating the tires, regular service etc) we will all be able to maintain our school buildings and use less resources to provide a safe comfortable education for our children.