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'Green' schools a thing of the future?

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The schools of Beaufort County's future could operate with dramatically lower utility costs and offer a healthier, more comfortable environment for students and faculty that can improve learning.

Schools built with green goals in mind experienced an average of 33 percent lower utility costs with an up-front premium of only 1.65 percent above regular construction costs, according to a study of 30 green schools across the country.

Impressive facts like that flew from the podium one after another at a joint committee meeting of the Beaufort County Council and Beaufort County Board of Education on Monday, where Joel McKellar, a research assistant with the Charleston architecture firm LS3P and chairman of the Lowcountry branch of the U.S. Green Building Council, briefed the committee on the benefits of building green schools.

The topic is particularly relevant because the school district has a five-year facilities plan calling for more than a quarter billion dollars in new schools and major renovations. As part of that plan, school officials put a bond referendum before county voters in April, who narrowly authorized borrowing $162.7 million.

To date, North Charleston Elementary School is the only school in the state to obtain the green building council's increasingly popular Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

County planning director Tony Criscitiello, whose department arranged McKellar's presentation, said the county's comprehensive plan will include a chapter entirely about sustainability.

The document is meant to guide county development for the next 10 years.

"This is part and parcel to that endeavor," Criscitiello told the committee.

Sustainability is sort of a new catchphrase among planners that encompasses environmentalism, but not at the expense of practicality and bottom lines.

McKellar told the committee that environmental factors usually aren't front and center when builders go green, that it's the ancillary benefits "beyond saving the Earth" that win them over. He couldn't repress a short chuckle at the absurdity of the statement before continuing with his presentation.

Chris Poe, the school district's executive director of planning and design, said at three schools under construction, it's too late to seek certification from the green building council.

But for referendum projects in the design phase, "It's certainly a goal, if the budget allows," Poe said.

Monday's presentation was informational only.

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