Thinking ahead

Published 12:25 pm Monday, December 16, 2019

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District One is impacting year 2021 

LANDRUM–Spartanburg District One schools has started a new program called IMPACT 2021. IMPACT 2021 is an initiative District One administration was challenged with to determine how much excess energy and water is being used throughout the schools. 

 

IMPACT 2021was brought before the school board in August of 2018. The district formed an Energy Savings committee to analyze and determine base numbers IMPACT 2021 would be running off of. The committee was formed from representatives from every school site, operations, maintenance, communications, and was spearheaded by the district’s Director of Operational Services and Energy Conservation.

 

District One representative Sandra Wilson shared, “The Energy Conservation Committee began by analyzing the lowest annual energy costs over the last 3 years to identify a baseline. A district-wide goal of 10% energy savings was developed for each school site based on 2015-2016 data.”

 

Since August of 2018, the district has seen a rather large decrease from last year’s numbers to this year’s number. The decrease is all thanks to the schools including students, faculty and staff becoming consciously aware of simple tasks to conserve energy. For example, if no one is in the classroom, turn the lights off. 

 

Each month the IMPACT 2021 section on the district website is updated with the new statistics for the month. The numbers compare 2018 from 2019 to show the difference and how the district is saving. For 2019, the district is roughly $5,000 less than 2018. 

 

In order to get everyone in the district to participate in IMPACT 2021, the district has turned saving energy into a competition between the schools. Each month, the district looks at the numbers and determines which school has saved the most energy and water for that month.

 

For the month of December Landrum High School took the cake. Landrum was awarded the Conservation School of the Month sign to put out in front of the school as well as the winning school receives recognition on the District’s social media pages. 

 

Further information on the IMPACT 2021 initiative can be found on the District One website. Not only does the website share where the school was last with spending on water and energy to current it also provides helpful hints on how to conserve in the classroom but could also be used in homes. 

 

Landrum High School principal, Keegan Flynn smiles with the Conservation School of the Month Sign (img name Keegan)

BY Carson Parnell