Goodbye to those microwave

ovens and coffee pots in the classroom. And, by the way, turn out the

lights when you leave the classroom, the Fayette County school system

is saying to staff.

That and other energy conservation

measures could save the financially-strapped system more than $300,000

a year, according to Mike Satterfield, facilities director, who spoke

at a called work session of the Fayette County Board of Education on Monday

night.

With a utility budget of $3.2

million a year, Satterfield said that if an energy consciousness is developed

within the system and energy consumption is reduced, the system should

be able to save at least 10 percent of that budget. The members of the

school board were very receptive to Satterfield's presentation and

would love to have an extra $321,000, but one question kept popping up:

Who would oversee the project?

The answer Satterfield gave

was several people within Facilities Services. Though their main jobs

were to complete maintenance work orders throughout the school system,

some of them would take evening shifts and make sure that custodians at

the schools are shutting off all the lights and that schools are doing

all they can to conserve energy. A reward system will be established for

the school that does the best job and may be instrumental in changing

the behavior of both student and teacher.

Many of the guidelines in the

Energy Management Plan are common sense guidelines that many people use

in their own home, including using daylight instead of electricity where

applicable, turning off lights when a room is not occupied and turning

computers off when not in use for long periods of time.

Other guidelines involve things

that both Satterfield and construction supervisor Klaus Darnell saw in

their travels to local schools while drafting the plan. It seems numerous

classrooms in the county schools have mini-refrigerators, coffee makers,

toaster ovens and microwaves. Satterfield is hoping the board will approve

the plan at their next meeting, which will call for the removal of all

of these unnecessary items.

It will take a long time to

change the mindset of the entire school system, but according to Satterfield,

it will be worth it. He hopes to one day have the entire school system

on the computerized energy management system.

Currently, only a third of

the schools in the system are on the system. If and when all the schools

are on a computerized system, Satterfield estimates that every school

will run a couple thousand dollars a month less. The cost of putting the

rest of the schools on the computerized system will cost under $2 million.

The Energy Management Plan

will be voted on at the next meeting of the Fayette County Board of Education

on Monday, Oct. 20.