By Geoffrey P. Hunt
OSRAM SYLVANIA Services, Inc.
 Pick up any newsletter these days or scan the television talk shows and it is hard to miss the latest trend: a renewed national and local debate on our public education preferences. Improving education has become a bipartisan priority, with state governors, big city mayors, local officials, congressional leaders as well as the Clinton-Gore administration all trying to clamber aboard a bulging bandwagon.
But the common perception of crisis has yet to result in common ground. Debate has been far reaching, from curriculum reform to teacher qualifications, to student achievement testing and other initiatives, such as class size and facilities upgrades.
Associates of the Alliance to Save Energy are in a position to add significant value to the national debate. Many Alliance members are manufacturers, designers or deliverers of building systems or system components that not only provide energy efficiency, but concurrently deliver improved functional use, better physical access, enhanced security, improved ergonomics and personal productivity. Tangible examples are energy saving systems that provide cleaner indoor air, improved temperature and humidity regulation, less noise and better task, ambient and security lighting.
All of these features can be conveniently grouped into attributes describing a "high performance building". This is critical to the education debate, because the space in which learning takes place is a key determinant as to the quality of the learning experience and the level of actual achievement. Sustained student achievement and faculty productivity is impossible in substandard facilities. If our goal is high performance learners, let us give our children the best possible chance.
As I see it, the necessary pre-requisites for K-12 student achievement can be broadly classified into three key categories:
- Teacher quality and teaching methods,
- Students’ motivation and readiness for learning, and
- Physical space that is inviting, secure, and comfortable where quality learning can take place without undue stress on the school budget.
Our local and national policymakers need to understand that taxpayers’ money spent on the first two items will be sub-optimal, poorly leveraged or simply wasted if number three is ignored.
The Alliance to Save Energy recently adopted a resolution supporting efficiency in school construction and promoting wise energy use. It is a good start. We need powerful and pragmatic solutions with regard to design standards for new schools or for retrofitting and renovating existing ones. Integrated building system design methods, incorporating significant energy savings that provide tangible "dividends" to help finance new construction or remodeling projects will be key in advancing the national education agenda and achieving measurable and sustainable results.
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