Giving Compass' Take:

• Discovery schools are leading the way toward net-zero energy buildings in which they make as much energy as they use. Students can learn about how this process works and build an understanding of clean energy practices by looking right at their school's energy consumption.

• Will this trend pick up and extend to more public schools? Or will schools at least start to pick up more energy-saving practices and use them for learning?  

• Read about the relationship between the push for clean energy and energy poverty. 

Dressed in pastel pink and green for an early spring day, second-grader Katherine Cribbs was learning about energy on a virtual field trip – to her own school.

Katherine Cribbs, a second-grader at Discovery Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia, explores the online “energy dashboard” that tracks her school’s energy consumption and production.

In addition to this virtual tour, Discovery’s dashboard displays, in real time, the school’s energy generation. And in colorful bar graphs and pie charts, it tracks energy use – broken down by lighting, plug load, kitchen and HVAC. The tally reveals that Discovery generates more energy through its solar array than it uses over the course of the year.

Buildings that make at least as much energy as they use are called “net-zero” (and “net positive” if they make more than they need). Nationwide, K-12 schools are leading a fledgling “net-zero” building boom that has grown from a few proof-of-concept structures a decade ago to hundreds of buildings completed or under construction.

But the K-12 schools leading the net-zero charge are uncovering major educational benefits as well.

“Everywhere you walk through this building, you can learn from it.” said Discovery’s principal, Erin Russo. While Discovery’s second-graders scoured their school for light and heat energy, a group of third-graders huddled around a table to brainstorm fraction “story problems” using the school’s energy data, pulling their numerators and denominators from the dashboard.

Starting in 2019, the plan is for all Discovery students to do sustainability audits, not just the Eco-Action club. Each grade level will use their audits to identify problems and issues they can confront with collaborative mastery projects using the problem-solving steps of “design thinking.”

Read the full article about net-zero energy school buildings by Chris Berdik at The Hechinger Report