CARIBOU, Maine — Whether Viking Maroon or Eagle Orange, RSU 39 is overall a pretty green place to learn these days, and initiative taken by faculty, staff and students have gone a long way to ensure that green programs have taken root throughout the school system.
The buildings themselves have gotten considerably greener in the past few years through energy audits and the resulting facility upgrades to decrease energy consumption. Energy bills are down considerably and savings yielded from these projects have just started to trickle in with annual savings estimated at $230,000 at the Caribou High School and $43,000 at the Limestone Community School.
Why the savings at CHS is considerably larger than the savings at LCS is due almost entirely to the installation of a new woodchip boiler at the Caribou school — a project driven primarily by cost savings and spurred along by the stimulus the switch would provide to the local economy coupled with the environmental benefits that come with efficiently burning one of the county’s most abundant resources.
The RSU 39 school board has recently signed an agreement with Train — the company that orchestrated the boiler replacement at CHS — to similarly install wood chip boilers at the Limestone school. Cost savings for the Limestone project is projected to be around $142,000 annually.
With the school system leading by example in highlighting the economic incentives for going green, a surprising group has taken the practicality of conservation upon themselves to enforce school-wide.
Coming up with their own proposal for the feasibility of the program, the Hilltop Green Team is responsible for the implementation (and program enforcement) of reusable silverware and systematic recycling in the school’s cafeteria.
By overseeing that their fellow students don’t accidentally throw away the reusable utensils, program-inception students of Mary McLauchlan’s 2009 second-grade class at Hilltop predicted that they would save the school thousands of dollars by switching from disposable plastic forks and spoons to reusable utensils. The program was later implemented at the Teague Park Elementary school by their very own Green Teem.
“They take it very serious and have stepped up with enthusiasm and vigor,” said RSU 39 Superintendent Frank McElwain, “Even as 6- and 7-year-olds, they’re learning that they can take action and change something around them — this is much bigger than just forks,” he added.
But the Hilltop and Teague Park lunch rooms aren’t the only area schools reaping green-movement rewards.
Students of the Limestone Community School share food services with their educational neighbor Maine School of Science and Mathematics — their cafeteria serves up food for all of Limestone’s students and every so often, meals include freshly picked herbs and lettuce grown right around the school’s corner at MSSM’s Lab 14.
The first produce harvest occurred in January and yielded what was most likely the freshest lettuce in all The County, grown hydroponically (and to organic standards) in an indoor greenhouse designed by MSSM students to create temperatures and humidity conducive to proper growth. And if that’s not green enough, heat is supplemented by do-it-yourself solar panels designed by MSSM math teacher and Lab 14 overseer Luke Shorty with help from a friend downstate.
The math and science applications afforded through Lab 14’s hydroponics are not only a fun way to reinforce lab skills and creative problem solving students are so vigorously taught, they’re also learning conservation principles, the size of their environmental footprint and a little bit on how to turn their thumbs green.
Whether it’s through reducing building-wide energy consumption, reducing waste by reusing utensils or recycling worm-casings for use as hydroponic fertilizer, things are certainly looking greener in eastern central Aroostook County; with the cost savings afforded to schools through the adoption of greener practices, there’s a chance that the values of conservation and environmental stewardship will reverberate throughout the larger community.
