Two seats out of five (three-year terms)
The School Committee is a legislative body comprised of 5 members elected during town elections in March and who serve 3-year terms. In addition to supporting the core values, vision and mission of the Wellesley Public Schools, the Committee’s responsibilities are to:
Question 1. As you know, Town Meeting passed the Select Board’s Resolution to Address the Impact of Climate Change in 2020. How do you envision this resolution being carried out by the School Committee during your term? What additional actions will you champion to ensure that the Town meets its goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Neal Glick-
Job 1 for the School Committee is the education of our children, the next generation of citizen leaders on a host of issues, including, of course, climate change. To accomplish that goal, our curriculum needs to give our kids the tools necessary to effectively address climate change. This requires a strong foundation in math, science, design and government. While K-12 education cannot produce full-blown climate experts – college and graduate study will be necessary for that – it can give students the ability to analyze the relevant data, separate politicized chatter from fact, and think critically about what that data indicates and the array of solutions that are required. They also need to fully understand the way our system of local, state and federal government works in order to implement solutions in a realistic manner.
Sustainability can be taught in a variety of ways, and WPS needs to focus on all of them. These include the science of climate study and the math necessary to support it, the fundamentals of design of buildings and urban areas that can lead to a more sustainable world, and the necessary grasp of civics to bring the solutions forward in a political context. Sustainability can not be put into a silo. It is far more than transportation and power generation, although it certainly includes that. It must also include management of stormwater and clean water resources, open space, brownfields redevelopment and clean air. All of this can be introduced to our children in their K-12 journey. Some of the specifics of this educational effort will be addressed in my response to Question 3. However, in general my background and decades of experience in architecture and urban planning, environmental law, historic preservation, open space preservation and solar power production position me very well to push our schools into incorporating 21st century sustainability solutions into a variety of portions of the curriculum.
At the same time, our children must not be terrified into inaction. They must not be scared into thinking that they have no future or that they and their children will inevitably live in a dystopian scenario. We must encourage them to be leaders and problem solvers, not victims.
Finally, the School Committee should be open to and creatively seek out opportunities to work with other Town boards and commissions on addressing sustainability.
Christina Horner -
I applaud the joint work completed so far together between Wellesley Public Schools (WPS), the School Committee (SC), and Sustainable Wellesley. These include, for instance, the construction of both new elementary schools with state of the art electric HVAC systems, waste diversion activities and the efforts to encourage more students to take the bus, walk or cycle to get to school. I envision that WPS and the SC must continue to place sustainability questions at the core of our budgeting and planning process.
It is critical to find ways to allow all educators and students to engage with the climate resolution, the school buildings, and incorporate our town’s commitments by developing sustainability literacy. This means making sure we not only work on increasing our knowledge and skills, but we use that knowledge and skill to continuously take meaningful action to make meaningful change.
Catherine Mirick -
As a School Committee member, my primary focus is always on what’s best for the kids, and there is no doubt that addressing climate change is high on the list. I see the School Committee focus being in three main categories - buildings, supporting curriculum, and engaging students.
We are in a multiyear project of building the Hunnewell and Hardy schools. As the liaison for the Hunnewell project, I have pushed the importance of our sustainability goals for these schools throughout the project. The construction of these two schools is the first example of the Town’s Sustainable Building Guidelines at work. These net-zero ready buildings have advanced, high performance enclosures & systems. They use passive house strategies, have all electric heating and cooling systems and use plug load controls to minimize energy use. Both schools qualify for LEED certification. I worked hand in hand with the Municipal Light Board to partner so that both buildings will have solar arrays on their rooftops.
On the curriculum front, it’s crucial that WPS teaches students to be aware of their environment, the climate, and how their actions affect it - in both good & bad ways. We have great resources in town. The school department uses some of them now, but I think we can do more. Classes work with the NRC’s Environmental Educator on a variety of local Wellesley issues, but that could be expanded. Some of our students also work on climate projects as part of their 8th grade Civics unit. Just last week I had the opportunity to talk with 8th graders about current town issues. They will now pick an issue that interests them, and advocate for a solution. It’s important for our students to know that they have a voice and they can make change.
Thirdly, climate action is seen outside the classroom as well. I worked with the high school Climate Action Club & the MLP researching the possibility of putting solar panels over the high school parking lot. Wellesley Green Schools is active in all of our schools. Our latest initiative is an anti-idling campaign that we’re planning for April - again working across town departments - schools, police, select board, and parent volunteers. It will take all of us to meet the town’s climate action goals and I am excited to help the schools do their part.
Question 2. Thankfully, the School Committee has been engaged in the town’s sustainable mobility plan; looking into electric busing, aiming for free busing to get more cars off the road; participating in safe routes to schools, etc. As transportation emissions make up nearly 32% of our emissions, what do you suggest as next steps moving forward?
Neal Glick-
We all would like to see fully electric, yellow school buses working as mini-Ubers to pick up our kids at or near or their homes and deliver them to the front door of their schools and back home. What I have learned after decades of experience in relevant disciplines affecting transportation and its impact on the environment is that the only “free lunch” in mobility management is the use of shoe leather and people-powered transport such as bicycles or scooters. That is why I walk to work, have done so for most of my career and my young son and I ride bikes to school in most kinds of weather, up through Christmas vacation and from March to the end of the school year. Everything else has significant trade-offs, involving money as well as environmental impact.
WPS has looked into the conversion of its school bus fleet to EVs, and has concluded that, at present, it is not economically feasible. That may well change over time, and we can explore ways to make such a shift more affordable. That could involve sharing costs for necessary power infrastructure with neighboring communities.
In the meantime, we can focus on things that we, as a School Committee and a Town can do in the near term. The key is managing the flow of single-kid car transport and streamlining the “car line.” First and foremost, we need to encourage our kids to walk or roll to school. We are blessed with neighborhood elementary schools which are walkable for many students. At Sprague, my child’s school, there is a “walk or roll to school day” every month. It should be every week with encouragement for this action every day if possible. This is good for the kids and good for the environment. Similarly, we can work to create some close-by, but still “remote” drop off areas where cars can quickly and efficiently drop off and pick up without snaking through car lines at the school’s front door and idling. Child safety must, of course, be designed into any such system. We can encourage carpooling for driving kids to school. This can also apply to high school students who drive to school. Parking on Town streets for students should be limited to cars with two or more students. Encouraging such a program needs to be part of the sustainability curriculum mentioned earlier. Designing any new school construction needs to take this approach into account.
Christina Horner -
Taking the initial first step in exploring the possibility of electric buses is an important first step. This is relatively new technology and there is so much to learn as we determine next steps. I would encourage us to learn from the varied approaches of other communities that have taken steps beyond exploration. For instance, Beverly has entirely electrified their school bus fleet. Boston has taken a more conservative approach, and has just welcomed their first electric buses to their streets. Today in the US only about 1% of the nation's 480,000 school buses are electric. While this is a small number, I am confident that these numbers will grow.
In Wellesley, I understand that a comprehensive review of electric buses was run by Assistant Superintendent Mahr. I do understand that the current cost of electronic buses is roughly 2 1/2 times the cost of traditional buses. However, as the technology progresses, I anticipate that these costs will decrease just as they have for electric cars. I understand that every major bus manufacturer now offers an electric model and many plan to increase their production this year.
I suggest that WPS continue to monitor ebus costs and that we prioritize a transition to leasing electric buses (perhaps for only a portion of our fleet at first). Our goal should be to convert the entire fleet to electricity and a timeline should be established to accomplish this goal. An additional investment will be to install bus charging stations. These costs and costs of training must also be factored into the overall cost analysis. FInancing and grants could be sought to support the transition. We might elicit help in the planning process. Similar to the planning done in Beverly, we might consider engaging an electric transportation financing startup such as Highland Electric Fleets.
Electrification of our bus fleet will have a profound impact on the health of our children and staff and on emissions in our community. If all of the nation's school buses ran on electricity, the impact on emissions would be immense and would remove 5.3 million tons of greenhouse gasses from the air.
Catherine Mirick -
I’ve mentioned at a couple School Committee meetings lately that I’m putting on my “Climate Action” hat when making comments or asking questions about budget, curriculum, etc. I am the School Committee representative on both the Mobility Committee and the Climate Action Committee and am committed to this work.
As a member of the mobility committee I engaged with consultants as we finalized the Sustainable Mobility Plan. We walked through town together and identified trails, paths, & routes that kids could use to get to school. Throughout the plan we highlighted ways that schools can engage.
Safe Routes to School (SRTS) is a national program that works to increase safe biking and walking among students. Working with Colette Aufranc, Select Board Member, we have completed the enrollment of all our schools, K-8 in the program so that students across town are engaged. We have promoted monthly walk to school days, as well as having bike safety assemblies at several schools. There’s even a bike train that kids ride to Hardy most mornings! We’ve also partnered with SRTS to create Walkshed maps, looking for the safest route for students to get to school, and done a walk audit to identify small fixes, like crosswalks and curb cuts, that could improve safety. Moving forward, I’m working on getting the High school involved and thinking about applying for SRTS grants to fix some of the issues that have been identified while at the same time continuing to encourage kids to take a morning walk.
We know that getting more kids on to buses is crucial to reduce greenhouse gasses. The big question is how we do that. Wellesley right now is engaging in a pilot program of sorts - all our Hunnewell students are being provided with free busing to their swing space schools. Despite trepidation among many parents at the beginning it is going wonderfully. Kids and adults love it, and in fact have asked if busing can continue when they move back into the new Hunnewell. I see this as proof of concept that we can get kids on buses. The last two years we have used part of the budget to offset busing fees - in FY23 reducing the fee to $500, and in FY24 reducing it to $400.
This is still a lot of money for many families - especially those that know they wouldn’t be able to use it every day, so we are working to reduce the cost to zero. I’m advocating that we should do that next year, so that when both Hardy and Hunnewell open in the fall of 2024, busing is free. This is a time when many families will be figuring out a new way to get to school, and an ideal time to start new climate smart habits.
Electric buses have been in the news a lot this year and would be a wonderful change. I am confident that we will get there, but not right away. I’ve attended EPA webinars and discussions about electric buses over the last year. We had a presentation at School Committee in December regarding them and identifying the difficulties we face since we lease our buses, rather than owning them. Changing procurement laws at the state level could make it more feasible, and so we continue to look at that. Regardless of the lease or own issue, electric buses - even with assistance of federal funding - are much more expensive than current buses and according to area districts that have them not as reliable as one would want. As with any technology, I’m sure both of those will improve rapidly and open the door for WPS to move in that direction.
Question 3. A new report by Undaunted K12 and the Rocky Mountain institute finds that HVAC systems are a cornerstone of healthy and comfortable schools that support student well-being and academic performance. School leaders have a generational opportunity to choose all-electric, high-performance HVAC systems thanks to new funding opportunities, most notably, the Inflation Reduction Act. Now that Wellesley has two new schools underway that will be healthier for the students, faculty and the planet, how do you plan to proactively move toward all-electric HVAC for the remaining students and adults in the other school buildings?
Neal Glick-
The School Committee needs to work closely with the Permanent Building Committee and the Select Board on this issue. Healthy schools make for healthy kids and faculty. Proper HVAC is important for learning.
We learned during the pandemic that hermetically sealed schools can be problematic. When schools are designed from scratch or for rehab, we have to ensure that windows can be opened. COVID 19 may not be the last pandemic that we face. We simply have to allow for fresh, outside air in our schools and proper air filtration through the HVAC system. This can be an important part of any rehab in our remaining buildings.
Other design features that should be explored are the maximization of natural light through windows, skylights and solar orientation. The use of sustainable materials that also offer heating and cooling advantages must also be considered.
If electric, high-performance HVAC systems are funded by the federal government pursuant to the Inflation Reduction Act, then that funding source should be explored for retrofitting our older school buildings. It will be important to verify that the performance needs of our school buildings, especially the larger ones, can be met with this technology as it exists at present. If capital funding for on-site solar panels can also be provided under the IRA, then that fuel source should be explored. That could result in substantial savings.
As noted above, sustainability in engineering and design can be a powerful component in our educational curriculum. Learning about HVAC systems and other sustainable design features in our own WPS buildings is a tremendous way to teach our students that building systems are more than just turning on a wall switch or setting a thermostat. Similarly, tracing funding subsidies for sustainable improvements can also provide lessons in how government works, the establishment of policies and the true costs of such improvements. That will help our future leaders graduating from WPS to evaluate how best to champion and implement the policies that they desire, as well as the importance of proper analysis of any environmental policy.
Christina Horner -
With the leadership of sustainability director Wellesley has proven that all-electric, net-zero buildings are technically viable and not overly expensive. We must continue to invest in clean buildings and prioritize future upgrades by analyzing the return on investment towards our budget and sustainability goals. We must continue to responsibly update our infrastructure in line with our Climate Action Plan in order to be successful in addressing climate change. We must continue to take advantage of all financial incentives, both private and government in order to accomplish the sustainable goals laid out in the resolution.
Catherine Mirick -
When the new Hardy & Hunnewell schools were in the beginnings of design stage, one of the requirements of the new buildings was that they would have an Energy Performance (pEUI) of 25-30. This is multiples lower than the current buildings and would require careful planning and construction to make it happen. The School Committee, and the Town, are committed to Sustainable building. As part of the design process, we went on a deep dive into HVAC systems for these new schools. We knew we wanted to go all electric to reduce greenhouse gasses, but had to do the math to convince Town Meeting that it was economically worth the slightly higher initial investment, and it was. It was worth it both in cost and to achieve our pEUI goals.
As systems reach the end of their useful lives I will continue to advocate that any replacements be energy efficient, all-electric equipment. In the meantime, our Facilities Management Department does a masterful job of annual upkeep on all the systems across town buildings so that even those that are using fossil fuels do so more efficiently.
In addition to our building systems, schools are in a multiyear project to replace all our lights with LEDs; our HVAC systems all have MERV 13 filtering, and we use green cleaning products for the safety of students, staff, and the environment. I am committed to continuing to move all Wellesley school buildings towards, clean, efficient operation.
The School Committee is a legislative body comprised of 5 members elected during town elections in March and who serve 3-year terms. In addition to supporting the core values, vision and mission of the Wellesley Public Schools, the Committee’s responsibilities are to:
- Develop and manage school policies
- Support the allocation of resources by overseeing budget & facilities
- Hire and review superintendent of schools
- Advocate for the school district
Question 1. As you know, Town Meeting passed the Select Board’s Resolution to Address the Impact of Climate Change in 2020. How do you envision this resolution being carried out by the School Committee during your term? What additional actions will you champion to ensure that the Town meets its goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Neal Glick-
Job 1 for the School Committee is the education of our children, the next generation of citizen leaders on a host of issues, including, of course, climate change. To accomplish that goal, our curriculum needs to give our kids the tools necessary to effectively address climate change. This requires a strong foundation in math, science, design and government. While K-12 education cannot produce full-blown climate experts – college and graduate study will be necessary for that – it can give students the ability to analyze the relevant data, separate politicized chatter from fact, and think critically about what that data indicates and the array of solutions that are required. They also need to fully understand the way our system of local, state and federal government works in order to implement solutions in a realistic manner.
Sustainability can be taught in a variety of ways, and WPS needs to focus on all of them. These include the science of climate study and the math necessary to support it, the fundamentals of design of buildings and urban areas that can lead to a more sustainable world, and the necessary grasp of civics to bring the solutions forward in a political context. Sustainability can not be put into a silo. It is far more than transportation and power generation, although it certainly includes that. It must also include management of stormwater and clean water resources, open space, brownfields redevelopment and clean air. All of this can be introduced to our children in their K-12 journey. Some of the specifics of this educational effort will be addressed in my response to Question 3. However, in general my background and decades of experience in architecture and urban planning, environmental law, historic preservation, open space preservation and solar power production position me very well to push our schools into incorporating 21st century sustainability solutions into a variety of portions of the curriculum.
At the same time, our children must not be terrified into inaction. They must not be scared into thinking that they have no future or that they and their children will inevitably live in a dystopian scenario. We must encourage them to be leaders and problem solvers, not victims.
Finally, the School Committee should be open to and creatively seek out opportunities to work with other Town boards and commissions on addressing sustainability.
Christina Horner -
I applaud the joint work completed so far together between Wellesley Public Schools (WPS), the School Committee (SC), and Sustainable Wellesley. These include, for instance, the construction of both new elementary schools with state of the art electric HVAC systems, waste diversion activities and the efforts to encourage more students to take the bus, walk or cycle to get to school. I envision that WPS and the SC must continue to place sustainability questions at the core of our budgeting and planning process.
It is critical to find ways to allow all educators and students to engage with the climate resolution, the school buildings, and incorporate our town’s commitments by developing sustainability literacy. This means making sure we not only work on increasing our knowledge and skills, but we use that knowledge and skill to continuously take meaningful action to make meaningful change.
Catherine Mirick -
As a School Committee member, my primary focus is always on what’s best for the kids, and there is no doubt that addressing climate change is high on the list. I see the School Committee focus being in three main categories - buildings, supporting curriculum, and engaging students.
We are in a multiyear project of building the Hunnewell and Hardy schools. As the liaison for the Hunnewell project, I have pushed the importance of our sustainability goals for these schools throughout the project. The construction of these two schools is the first example of the Town’s Sustainable Building Guidelines at work. These net-zero ready buildings have advanced, high performance enclosures & systems. They use passive house strategies, have all electric heating and cooling systems and use plug load controls to minimize energy use. Both schools qualify for LEED certification. I worked hand in hand with the Municipal Light Board to partner so that both buildings will have solar arrays on their rooftops.
On the curriculum front, it’s crucial that WPS teaches students to be aware of their environment, the climate, and how their actions affect it - in both good & bad ways. We have great resources in town. The school department uses some of them now, but I think we can do more. Classes work with the NRC’s Environmental Educator on a variety of local Wellesley issues, but that could be expanded. Some of our students also work on climate projects as part of their 8th grade Civics unit. Just last week I had the opportunity to talk with 8th graders about current town issues. They will now pick an issue that interests them, and advocate for a solution. It’s important for our students to know that they have a voice and they can make change.
Thirdly, climate action is seen outside the classroom as well. I worked with the high school Climate Action Club & the MLP researching the possibility of putting solar panels over the high school parking lot. Wellesley Green Schools is active in all of our schools. Our latest initiative is an anti-idling campaign that we’re planning for April - again working across town departments - schools, police, select board, and parent volunteers. It will take all of us to meet the town’s climate action goals and I am excited to help the schools do their part.
Question 2. Thankfully, the School Committee has been engaged in the town’s sustainable mobility plan; looking into electric busing, aiming for free busing to get more cars off the road; participating in safe routes to schools, etc. As transportation emissions make up nearly 32% of our emissions, what do you suggest as next steps moving forward?
Neal Glick-
We all would like to see fully electric, yellow school buses working as mini-Ubers to pick up our kids at or near or their homes and deliver them to the front door of their schools and back home. What I have learned after decades of experience in relevant disciplines affecting transportation and its impact on the environment is that the only “free lunch” in mobility management is the use of shoe leather and people-powered transport such as bicycles or scooters. That is why I walk to work, have done so for most of my career and my young son and I ride bikes to school in most kinds of weather, up through Christmas vacation and from March to the end of the school year. Everything else has significant trade-offs, involving money as well as environmental impact.
WPS has looked into the conversion of its school bus fleet to EVs, and has concluded that, at present, it is not economically feasible. That may well change over time, and we can explore ways to make such a shift more affordable. That could involve sharing costs for necessary power infrastructure with neighboring communities.
In the meantime, we can focus on things that we, as a School Committee and a Town can do in the near term. The key is managing the flow of single-kid car transport and streamlining the “car line.” First and foremost, we need to encourage our kids to walk or roll to school. We are blessed with neighborhood elementary schools which are walkable for many students. At Sprague, my child’s school, there is a “walk or roll to school day” every month. It should be every week with encouragement for this action every day if possible. This is good for the kids and good for the environment. Similarly, we can work to create some close-by, but still “remote” drop off areas where cars can quickly and efficiently drop off and pick up without snaking through car lines at the school’s front door and idling. Child safety must, of course, be designed into any such system. We can encourage carpooling for driving kids to school. This can also apply to high school students who drive to school. Parking on Town streets for students should be limited to cars with two or more students. Encouraging such a program needs to be part of the sustainability curriculum mentioned earlier. Designing any new school construction needs to take this approach into account.
Christina Horner -
Taking the initial first step in exploring the possibility of electric buses is an important first step. This is relatively new technology and there is so much to learn as we determine next steps. I would encourage us to learn from the varied approaches of other communities that have taken steps beyond exploration. For instance, Beverly has entirely electrified their school bus fleet. Boston has taken a more conservative approach, and has just welcomed their first electric buses to their streets. Today in the US only about 1% of the nation's 480,000 school buses are electric. While this is a small number, I am confident that these numbers will grow.
In Wellesley, I understand that a comprehensive review of electric buses was run by Assistant Superintendent Mahr. I do understand that the current cost of electronic buses is roughly 2 1/2 times the cost of traditional buses. However, as the technology progresses, I anticipate that these costs will decrease just as they have for electric cars. I understand that every major bus manufacturer now offers an electric model and many plan to increase their production this year.
I suggest that WPS continue to monitor ebus costs and that we prioritize a transition to leasing electric buses (perhaps for only a portion of our fleet at first). Our goal should be to convert the entire fleet to electricity and a timeline should be established to accomplish this goal. An additional investment will be to install bus charging stations. These costs and costs of training must also be factored into the overall cost analysis. FInancing and grants could be sought to support the transition. We might elicit help in the planning process. Similar to the planning done in Beverly, we might consider engaging an electric transportation financing startup such as Highland Electric Fleets.
Electrification of our bus fleet will have a profound impact on the health of our children and staff and on emissions in our community. If all of the nation's school buses ran on electricity, the impact on emissions would be immense and would remove 5.3 million tons of greenhouse gasses from the air.
Catherine Mirick -
I’ve mentioned at a couple School Committee meetings lately that I’m putting on my “Climate Action” hat when making comments or asking questions about budget, curriculum, etc. I am the School Committee representative on both the Mobility Committee and the Climate Action Committee and am committed to this work.
As a member of the mobility committee I engaged with consultants as we finalized the Sustainable Mobility Plan. We walked through town together and identified trails, paths, & routes that kids could use to get to school. Throughout the plan we highlighted ways that schools can engage.
Safe Routes to School (SRTS) is a national program that works to increase safe biking and walking among students. Working with Colette Aufranc, Select Board Member, we have completed the enrollment of all our schools, K-8 in the program so that students across town are engaged. We have promoted monthly walk to school days, as well as having bike safety assemblies at several schools. There’s even a bike train that kids ride to Hardy most mornings! We’ve also partnered with SRTS to create Walkshed maps, looking for the safest route for students to get to school, and done a walk audit to identify small fixes, like crosswalks and curb cuts, that could improve safety. Moving forward, I’m working on getting the High school involved and thinking about applying for SRTS grants to fix some of the issues that have been identified while at the same time continuing to encourage kids to take a morning walk.
We know that getting more kids on to buses is crucial to reduce greenhouse gasses. The big question is how we do that. Wellesley right now is engaging in a pilot program of sorts - all our Hunnewell students are being provided with free busing to their swing space schools. Despite trepidation among many parents at the beginning it is going wonderfully. Kids and adults love it, and in fact have asked if busing can continue when they move back into the new Hunnewell. I see this as proof of concept that we can get kids on buses. The last two years we have used part of the budget to offset busing fees - in FY23 reducing the fee to $500, and in FY24 reducing it to $400.
This is still a lot of money for many families - especially those that know they wouldn’t be able to use it every day, so we are working to reduce the cost to zero. I’m advocating that we should do that next year, so that when both Hardy and Hunnewell open in the fall of 2024, busing is free. This is a time when many families will be figuring out a new way to get to school, and an ideal time to start new climate smart habits.
Electric buses have been in the news a lot this year and would be a wonderful change. I am confident that we will get there, but not right away. I’ve attended EPA webinars and discussions about electric buses over the last year. We had a presentation at School Committee in December regarding them and identifying the difficulties we face since we lease our buses, rather than owning them. Changing procurement laws at the state level could make it more feasible, and so we continue to look at that. Regardless of the lease or own issue, electric buses - even with assistance of federal funding - are much more expensive than current buses and according to area districts that have them not as reliable as one would want. As with any technology, I’m sure both of those will improve rapidly and open the door for WPS to move in that direction.
Question 3. A new report by Undaunted K12 and the Rocky Mountain institute finds that HVAC systems are a cornerstone of healthy and comfortable schools that support student well-being and academic performance. School leaders have a generational opportunity to choose all-electric, high-performance HVAC systems thanks to new funding opportunities, most notably, the Inflation Reduction Act. Now that Wellesley has two new schools underway that will be healthier for the students, faculty and the planet, how do you plan to proactively move toward all-electric HVAC for the remaining students and adults in the other school buildings?
Neal Glick-
The School Committee needs to work closely with the Permanent Building Committee and the Select Board on this issue. Healthy schools make for healthy kids and faculty. Proper HVAC is important for learning.
We learned during the pandemic that hermetically sealed schools can be problematic. When schools are designed from scratch or for rehab, we have to ensure that windows can be opened. COVID 19 may not be the last pandemic that we face. We simply have to allow for fresh, outside air in our schools and proper air filtration through the HVAC system. This can be an important part of any rehab in our remaining buildings.
Other design features that should be explored are the maximization of natural light through windows, skylights and solar orientation. The use of sustainable materials that also offer heating and cooling advantages must also be considered.
If electric, high-performance HVAC systems are funded by the federal government pursuant to the Inflation Reduction Act, then that funding source should be explored for retrofitting our older school buildings. It will be important to verify that the performance needs of our school buildings, especially the larger ones, can be met with this technology as it exists at present. If capital funding for on-site solar panels can also be provided under the IRA, then that fuel source should be explored. That could result in substantial savings.
As noted above, sustainability in engineering and design can be a powerful component in our educational curriculum. Learning about HVAC systems and other sustainable design features in our own WPS buildings is a tremendous way to teach our students that building systems are more than just turning on a wall switch or setting a thermostat. Similarly, tracing funding subsidies for sustainable improvements can also provide lessons in how government works, the establishment of policies and the true costs of such improvements. That will help our future leaders graduating from WPS to evaluate how best to champion and implement the policies that they desire, as well as the importance of proper analysis of any environmental policy.
Christina Horner -
With the leadership of sustainability director Wellesley has proven that all-electric, net-zero buildings are technically viable and not overly expensive. We must continue to invest in clean buildings and prioritize future upgrades by analyzing the return on investment towards our budget and sustainability goals. We must continue to responsibly update our infrastructure in line with our Climate Action Plan in order to be successful in addressing climate change. We must continue to take advantage of all financial incentives, both private and government in order to accomplish the sustainable goals laid out in the resolution.
Catherine Mirick -
When the new Hardy & Hunnewell schools were in the beginnings of design stage, one of the requirements of the new buildings was that they would have an Energy Performance (pEUI) of 25-30. This is multiples lower than the current buildings and would require careful planning and construction to make it happen. The School Committee, and the Town, are committed to Sustainable building. As part of the design process, we went on a deep dive into HVAC systems for these new schools. We knew we wanted to go all electric to reduce greenhouse gasses, but had to do the math to convince Town Meeting that it was economically worth the slightly higher initial investment, and it was. It was worth it both in cost and to achieve our pEUI goals.
As systems reach the end of their useful lives I will continue to advocate that any replacements be energy efficient, all-electric equipment. In the meantime, our Facilities Management Department does a masterful job of annual upkeep on all the systems across town buildings so that even those that are using fossil fuels do so more efficiently.
In addition to our building systems, schools are in a multiyear project to replace all our lights with LEDs; our HVAC systems all have MERV 13 filtering, and we use green cleaning products for the safety of students, staff, and the environment. I am committed to continuing to move all Wellesley school buildings towards, clean, efficient operation.