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Solar Savings: Deals net local schools green energy, learning tools
Caption: Project Manager Rick Vilello talks about the 2152 individual solar panels on the roof of Bald Eagle Area High School and Wingate Elementary Schools combined October 11, 2011. CDT/Nabil K. Mark
PUBLISHED IN THE CENTRE DAILY TIMES
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2011
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BY ED MAHON
WINGATE — At one Bald Eagle Area School District building, solar panels cover more than half the roof. That’s equal to about two-and-a-half football fields— end zones included.
“It’s funny to think, Bald Eagle Area, in the middle of Centre County, one of the most rural school districts — and this is one of the most high-tech buildings in Pennsylvania,” district construction manager Rick Vilello said while standing atop the roof on a foggy day recently.
Lots of districts have tried to lower their energy bills — from building biomass boilers
to turning off teachers’ coffee pots in classrooms. But Bald Eagle Area and Bellefonte Area school districts have taken an unusual approach through a private partnership:
Solar panels provide about half the energy for the Bald Eagle Area middle and high school building, as well as the connected Wingate Elementary School. In the neighboring Bellefonte Area School District, two elementary schools — Pleasant Gap and Marion-Walker — and the high school have solar energy systems, too.
So far the savings from solar energy are modest — about $12,000 at Bald Eagle Area, and less than that in Bellefonte, based on an analysis of data provided by the districts.
But leaders there say the panels didn’t cost the districts or local taxpayers any money, serve as an education tool for students, provide certainty for future budgets, and could become bigger cost savers in future years.
“Really it was just an opportunity that came up during the renovation,” said Dan Fisher, superintendent for Bald Eagle Area, which has nearly finished a $26 million construction project at Wingate Elementary School and the middle and high school building. “And everything fit together.”
But not many Pennsylvania school districts are in a position to imitate Bellefonte and Bald Eagle Area.
“Solar, right now, is not attractive,” Damion Spahr, vice president of business development for the Harris-burg- based Reynolds Construction Management company, told Philipsburg-Osceola Area school board members during a meeting this month.
Two main barriers exist for schools. Federal and solar energy grants have diminished. And the market for solar renewable energy credits — which provide revenue for owners of solar panels — has plunged by about 90 percent since last year.
Carlisle Area School District leaders, for instance, told community members that their $2.35 million investment in a solar system would pay for itself within four years. But in today’s market, the system is bringing in less money than expected. As a result, the payback is looking closer to 10 years.
In Bald Eagle Area and Bellefonte, a partnership with a private finance and investment company, Smart Energy Capital, let the district avoid those barriers. They also aren’t affected by the downturn in the solar renewable energy credit market.
Both school districts don’t own the panels, didn’t pay to have them installed and aren’t responsible for maintaining them.
Instead, Smart Energy paid for the solar panels with help from about $2.2 million in state grants. The private company then installed the solar panels on district roofs.
“In essence, what we’re doing is leasing our roof space,” said Ken Bean, director of fiscal affairs for the Bellefonte Area School District.
Philipsburg-Osceola students real-world compost lessons
Caption: Ed Holmes, right, talks with students about composting and recycling. Philipsburg-Osceola Elementary School second graders took a tour of the State College Borough composting facility, September 20, 2011. CDT/Nabil K. Mark
BY ED MAHON
PUBLISHED IN THE CENTRE DAILY TIMES
SEPTEMBER 21, 2011
FERGUSON TOWNSHIP — A few of the 7-year-olds pulled their shirts to their noses, and one raised his hand.
“Why does it smell so bad?” Brian Wallace asked his tour guide.
Ed Holmes pointed to a pile of dirt and debris at the four-acre compost facility.
“Because the greens that are in that pile up there are starting to rot,” Holmes, the public services manager for State College, told about 25 students from Philipsburg Elementary School. “So we have to get them mixed in with the browns, so they don’t smell anymore.”
The students have been trying to create their own compost system as part of a partnership with CarbonEARTH, which teams Penn State graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics with elementary and middle school science teachers in Philipsburg-Osceola and Harrisburg.
Read more: Philipsburg-Osceola students get real-world compost lesson.
Philipsburg-Osceola students get new looks during first day
Music teacher Valerie Stiner teaches the students the macarena dance during an all-school assembly at North Lincoln Hill Elementary. Wednesday, August 31, 2011 is the first day of school for the Philipsburg-Osceola School District. CDT/Nabil K. Mark
PUBLISHED IN THE CENTRE DAILY TIMES
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2011
BY ED MAHON
CHESTER HILL, Clearfield County — More than 300 fifth-and-sixth-grade students would be streaming into the auditorium within the next 10 minutes, and Valerie Stiner and Sarah Sarvey had work to do.
The two teachers — one in her 30th year with the district, the other in her first— reviewed how to do the “Chicken Dance,” wondered whether you should hop to the right or to the left during the “Macarena,” and made plans for the future.
“The next time we do one of these big assemblies, we’re going to do the electric slide,” Stiner said to Sarvey shortly before the 7:45 morning announcement at North Lincoln Hill Elementary School.
The duo’s job was to welcome fifth-and-sixth-grade students to North Lincoln Hill — which, like other elementary schools in the district, began its first day with a new setup.
In past years, the district had three kindergarten through sixth-grade elementary schools. But now Osceola Mills and Philipsburg elementary schools each have kindergarten through fourth-grade students and North Lincoln has fifth-and sixth-grades. The move is one step in a multiyear plan at Philipsburg- Osceola to close the junior high school building and convert the North Lincoln Hill building into a fifth-through eighth-grade middle school.
On Wednesday, it meant more new faces for fifth-and sixth-grade students than in the previous year.
“Nervous,” is how 10- year-old Lydia Ralston described how she felt about the first day. Last year, she attended fourth grade at Osceola Mills.
Read more: Philipsburg-Osceola students get new looks during first day.
With construction complete, new State College Area elementary schools to open
Caption: People tour the main cooridor of the school. Mt. Nittany Elementary School is complete and will be open for the first day of school. CDT/Nabil K. Mark August 23, 2011
PUBLISHED IN THE CENTRE DAILY TIMES
TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2011
BY ED MAHON
The three Wolf sisters took an early tour of the new Mount Nittany Elementary School building earlier last week. They had rave reviews.
“It’s very roomy,” said 12-year-old Madelyn.
“A lot of sunlight,” said 9-year-old Lydia. “It’s awesome,” said her twin, Audrey. The State College Area School District spent about $16 million to construct the school and another $16 million on renovations and additions to Ferguson Township Elementary School.
Both are scheduled to welcome students today for the first day of school. And both have significant differences from other district construction projects.
Their multi-purpose rooms — which function as cafeterias, gyms and auditoriums — are larger than those in any of the district’s other elementary schools. They are the sixth and seventh district buildings that will have air conditioning. And they are the first district buildings designed to earn LEED certification for being environmentally friendly.
“How are we looking on that?” board member Jim Leous asked at a meeting last week.
“We’re in great shape,” responded Ed Poprik, the district’s physical plant director who’s overseen the two projects. “We are in really great shape. …That’ll flesh out during the commissioning process. But we all believe we’ll be LEED gold certified.”
LEED, short for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, ranks buildings based on energy savings, water efficiency, carbon dioxide emissions and other environmental categories.
Schools that receive higher than LEED silver certification are eligible for more reimbursement from the state. In State College’s case, Poprik said it’s likely the district will qualify for 10 percent general reimbursement for construction costs. With LEED silver certification, the reimbursement works out to an extra 10 percent of that total general reimbursement — so 10 percent of 10 percent.
“That wasn’t the driving factor,” said Poprik. “The board’s primary interest was environmental stewardship and long-term operating costs. … Over the life of the building, all of these things … will pay for themselves.”
Read more: With construction complete, new State College Area elementary schools to open.
Workers finding a future in gas drilling
PLEASANT GAP, Pa. — This time last year, Eric Klinger, 19, made his living delivering pizzas. His friend, Matt Bartholomew, 20, worked in a factory that manufactured pharmaceutical products.
Now, after a six-month course, they work for Halliburton, driving trucks, hauling supplies and doing some manual labor at natural gas drilling sites. They both started at salaries of between $45,000 and $55,000 a year — higher than the wages of most Pennsylvanians, according to U.S. census data.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Mr. Klinger said with a laugh.
Added Mr. Bartholomew: “The company that we’re in with, they’re saying 30 to 40 years they’ll be here. So it should be a reliable job.”
Mr. Klinger and Mr. Bartholomew are two of the thousands of workers hoping to make careers out of Marcellus Shale gas drilling. More than 70 percent of the people working at Marcellus Shale drilling sites come from out of state, according to a November report by Tracy Brundage, managing director of Workforce Development and Continuing Education at Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport.
Educators such as Larry Michael at Penn College and Todd Taylor at Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology are working to change that.
They’ve adjusted their curriculums and added new courses, trying to provide the training that people will need to get jobs related directly and indirectly to gas drilling.
“This is something we’re really jumping into,” said Mr. Taylor, director of secondary education at CPI. “They’re long-term jobs, well-paying jobs, family sustaining jobs. Hopefully, [they’ll] replace a lot of the jobs that have been lost in the manufacturing area.”
Read more at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website : Workers find a future in gas drilling.
Read more at the Centre Daily Times website (The CDT’s version is longer): Workers finding a future in gas drilling.
Sidebars from charter school series
The Centre Daily Times’ charter school series had lots of sidebars.
Here’s a few of them:
Making the grade? Part 6: Need for high school debated
Wonderland Charter School teacher Addie Rockwell works with kindergarten students. The region’s charter schools have cautiously considered expansions, fearing growth could tarnish their small school charm. CDT PHOTO/NABIL K. MARK
PUBLISHED IN THE CENTRE DAILY TIMES
FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2011
BY ED MAHON
Rachel Eirmann didn’t want to leave Centre Learning Community Charter School.
“I will REALLY miss my friends next year (we are all going to different high schools), but I will keep in touch with them,” Eirmann, from Pleasant Gap, wrote in a goodbye message posted on the school’s blog.
“I already have half of their phone numbers. … I will be calling them so that my group of friends and I don’t split up. I will miss CLC so much … it was the best school ever!”
To be clear, lots of students in district-run schools say they love their schools, too. But the appreciation that students like Eirmann have for Centre Learning Community Charter or other schools often leads to a question from parents: Why doesn’t Centre County have a charter school for high school students?
Although about half of the state’s charter schools serve students in grades nine or beyond, none of the county’s four charters go beyond eighth grade.
“High school is a totally different ball game,” said Levent Kaya, CEO of Young Scholars of Central
Pennsylvania Charter School.
There are several logistical challenges to opening a high school charter. It would have to attract teachers qualified to teach, say, high school physics; compete with the comprehensive
programs of district-run schools such as State College, which offers classes from engineering to Latin as well as its own alternative education program; and otherwise wade into uncharted territory.
“We’ve surveyed the parents on a regular basis to ask what they think. And there’s always a couple who want us to add kindergarten. And there’s always a couple who want us to add high school,” said Carolyn Maroncelli, CEO Nittany Valley Charter School, which has 48 students in first through eighth grades. “In general, I’m very leery about getting bigger, because what we do best is be small.”
Read more: Need for high school debated.
Making the grade? Part 5: Parents of charter school students praise alternatives to districts
Teacher Mark Toci shows Veronika Vovchenko, center, and other students how to work on a bike chain while teaching a unit on building a recumbent bicycle. Centre Learning Community Charter School is located at 2643 W. College Ave. in State College. CDT/Nabil K. Mark
PUBLISHED IN THE CENTRE DAILY TIMES
THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2011
BY ED MAHON
The bullying started after elementary school for Davia Dorman. Her mother, Laura Dorman, worked with school leaders to address the issues, and said the teacher went above and beyond the call of duty to try to help. But still the bullying continued.
“She was really overwhelmed and intimidated,” Laura Dorman said.
So Dorman pulled her daughter out of the Penns Valley Area School District and started looking at alternatives.
In interviews, parents and children offer a variety of reasons for leaving Centre County’s district-run schools — which perform above average or better on state tests — for charter schools.
Some leave because they have specific problems with a school. Others are drawn to the charter schools because of what they offer academically, whether it is more foreign languages, a laptop for every student or a smaller community.
Geography can play a role, too. In 2003, when the Penns Valley Area school board considered closing Miles Township Elementary School, some parents said they’d send their children to Sugar Valley Rural Charter School if the school closed.
“I feel that every parent, every student, has a plan in mind,” said Jeanne Knouse, a State College administrator who acts as a liaison between the district and local charter schools. “I think each charter school has something different and has something we don’t, just as we have something that they don’t.”
Read more: Parents of charter school students praise alternatives to districts.
Making the grade? Part 4: The value of testing
PUBLISHED IN THE CENTRE DAILY TIMES
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2011
BY ED MAHON
During the past decade, Penns Valley Area School District has increased its scores on state standardized tests — so much so that former Gov. Ed Rendell honored Penns Valley as one of the 50 most improved districts in the state in August 2009.
Last year, 11th-grade students at Penns Valley ranked in the top 15 percent of the state in both reading and math.
But success, as measured by No Child Left Behind, hasn’t prevented students from leaving for charter schools.
The number of Penns Valley students opting for charter schools has increased during the past decade, and depending on the figures you use, has increased slightly or stayed flat for the past three years.
Between 5 and 6 percent of students in the district attend charter schools, a higher percentage than in any other Centre County district. Earlier this year, 83 Penns Valley students were enrolled in a charter school.
Of those, 21 attended Sugar Valley Rural Charter School, where 11th-grade math and reading scores rank in the bottom 10 percent of the state.
Twenty-six attended Pennsylvania Cyber Charter, an Internet school where 11th-grade math scores are in the bottom 15 percent of the state.
“It is frustrating,” Penns Valley Superintendent Brian Griffith said. “It’s frustrating when charter schools are underperforming local school districts and local school districts and local taxpayers are still required to pay the bill.”
The debate over who does a better job of educating students — charter schools or public school districts — has escalated in recent months.
Proposals to offer vouchers for private schools, to reform the charter school system, and a decision to stop reimbursing districts for a share of their charter school costs has prompted leaders of local school districts to fight back.
“Did you know that your public schools largely perform better in math and reading than charter and cyber schools?” the announcer intones during an advertisement the local districts helped pay to create. “There are many questions about charter and cyber schools that you probably never knew to ask.”
The question of which type of school does a better job, however, varies from school to school and parent to parent.
Read more: The value of testing.
Sixth grader Natalie Healy writes in her journal about a book she is reading. Nittany Valley Charter School is located at 1612 Norma St. in State College. CDT/Nabil K. Mark
Making the grade? Part 2: Charter schools’ influence unclear
PUBLISHED IN THE CENTRE DAILY TIMES
MONDAY, JULY 18, 2011
BY ED MAHON
Katrina Shawley considered dropping out of Bald Eagle Area High School.
“I was frustrated with the style of learning,” the 16-year-old said.
She opted to instead enroll in the district’s cyber program. She spent the past year as a 10th-grader working online, either at home or in a small classroom across the street from the high school.
“Just our little group — there’s no drama or anything,” Shawley said. “It’s pretty cool.”
That option didn’t exist five years ago.
Officials in Bald Eagle Area, like those in Bellefonte, Philipsburg- Osceola and Penns Valley area school districts, have in recent years created online programs largely in an effort to lure students back from cyber charters, or prevent students like Shawley from dropping out. State College will launch a cyber program this fall. “What we always say is we take it as a compliment that districts see the success we’re having … in that format,” said Joe Lyons, executive director of communications at Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School.
Educators at traditional public schools have debated, and continue to debate, the effectiveness of cyber charter programs. But it’s clear that competition has led districts to change the way they teach some students.
What’s less clear is whether brick-and-mortar charter schools have spurred the same sort of innovation.
That was one of the goals of the state law passed in 1997 that authorized creation of charter schools: To provide a place where new ideas could be tried and innovation could flourish to the benefit of all.
But it’s not easy for those innovations to spread in districts where leaders have little or no interaction with their charter school peers.
“There’s no collaboration at all. … If I saw a neighboring charter
school administrator, I wouldn’t know them,” said Penns Valley Superintendent Brian Griffith, “whereas I know every single superintendent in the three-county region and I can pick the phone up and call them if I wish.”
Cathy Brachbill, director of curriculum and instruction for Bellefonte schools, said: “I don’t know how they would expect us to see that innovation. Because we’re not in those buildings. We don’t see what they’re doing.”
State College Area has a more cooperative relationship with the local charter schools.
A district administrator meets with the four charter school leaders monthly. A former superintendent asked the CEO of Young Scholars Charter School for advice on how to find Chinese language teachers. Charter school eighth-graders, who will attend State College Area High School in ninth grade, schedule visits to the high school to ease the transition.
But how much the four State College charters have influenced the district-run schools is still a question mark.
“They’re truly a laboratory for innovation. We also need a feedback mechanism,” said State College school board member Jim Leous. “We can learn from each other.”
Read more online: Charter schools’ influence unclear.
Read the word document version: Charter schools’ influence unclear.
Caption: Kindergarteners Abigail Swisher and Dylan Wargo study butterflies May 18, 2011. Wonderland Charter School is located at 2112 Sandy Drive in State College. CDT/Nabil K. Mark
Ed Mahon 