By Heather Chapman
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A sustainability initiative saved Fayette County Public Schools some $700,000 dollars over the past year on its utility bills. That's the news delivered to the School Board Monday night by a consultant working on a district-wide energy-saving project.
"We've certainly got the ball rolling on understanding what schools need a lot of help and where we can identify some quick savings with utility rates or natural gas rates or rebates from doing renovations. But otherwise, once we start figuring out what we need to do in each of the buildings, it's going to be a little bit harder of a course to climb," says FCPS energy manager Britney Thompson.
Thompson says the next task is to look at each school in the district to see where energy and money can be saved. Henry Clay High School and Rosa Parks Elementary served as pilot schools in the sustainability project.
Also of note at last night's meeting: Two new school board members made their debut. Doug Barnett, who beat incumbent Kirk Tinsley in November, says he has an innovative idea for future board meetings.
"Well, I thought that it'd be a great idea to move some of our planning meetings to the schools, because I thought that it would increase parental involvement, maybe improve morale at the schools between teachers and students," says Barnett. "They'd get a chance to say that, hey, the board actually comes in, they actually do care about us."
Daryl Love, who was appointed to replace Becky Sagan when she moved out of district, says he wants to focus on getting top-notch teachers:
"One of the things that I'm thinking about is talent, and making sure that we have some of the best teachers that are able to really connect with our students," says Love. "We have to have kids that really realize that their teachers are caring, and that there's a partnership between teachers, parents and administrators as well."
The school board will meet for their monthly action meeting at 6 p.m. January 24th.