After spending the past 13 years at the Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences, Sullivan Smith has seen the highs and lows in temperatures and lighting in the 104-year-old building where he has attended school since kindergarten.
“A lot of students could tell you of classrooms here that have often been too cold or too hot — it’s just something we’ve all had to deal with,” Smith said Thursday during an interview in the auditorium of the three-story school building. “Hopefully, that is soon going to change.”
In his senior year at Arts and Sciences, Smith joined with a handful of other students and teachers to look for ways to help upgrade the heating, cooling and lighting systems — and in the process reduce energy use and carbon emissions. After meeting with the Tennessee Valley Authority and EPB energy pros and preparing a grant application for the school, Arts and Sciences learned Thursday it was selected for a TVA School Uplift grant to pay for new LED lighting and upgraded heating and cooling systems. The school still relies upon window air conditioning units in many classrooms.
In the fourth year of the School Uplift program, TVA awarded energy improvement grants Thursday to 106 schools across the federal utility’s seven-state territory, each of which is planning upgrades or training programs to cut energy use by at least 10%. Hixson Middle School, Ivy Academy Middle School in Soddy-Daisy and Lookout Valley Middle School are also each getting $10,000 grants from TVA.
As Hamilton County’s oldest school facility, Arts and Sciences was one of three schools in the Tennessee Valley to receive the maximum $410,000 grant.
The former Wyatt Hall building on East Third Street, which houses Arts and Sciences, was designed by Reuben H. Hunt, a Chattanooga architect. It was used as a high school until 1983. The K-12 magnet school opened in 1986. Jennifer Mitchell, K-12 eLab specialist at the school, said she heard about the School Uplift program a year ago and began pursuing it to see if the aging, three-story building might qualify.
Mitchell said sometimes the aging window air conditioners are inadequate to cope with hot, sunny days, and teachers have been forced to move their classes out into hallways or the auditorium when temperatures inside the classroom soar to nearly 100 degrees.
“This should help give kids a comfort level so they are not sweating trying to get through their classes,” Mitchell said. “We’re very excited.”
When TVA announced the grant during a livestream broadcast in the school auditorium, hundreds of elementary, middle and high school students cheered the funding announcement, and the seniors took the stage for an impromptu celebratory dance.
The TVA grant will pay for materials, and Hamilton County’s school maintenance workers will install the upgrades. The upgrades should be made this summer and be in place this fall.
(READ MORE: Tennessee and Alabama lag the nation in energy efficiency)
Although Hamilton County school administrators have talked in the past about relocating Arts and Sciences into a more modern building, the TVA grant stipulates the improvements will pay off for at least the next five years at the current school location. Mitchell said the school may be housed in the oldest building, but it enjoys a central location near the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Erlanger hospital and other downtown facilities.
(READ MORE: CSAS alumni fight to save school facility)
“We can walk to places like the Hunter Museum of Art or the Creative Discovery Museum, and I think that’s a real advantage,” Mitchell said.
Arts and Sciences is founded on the liberal arts education advocated in The Paideia Proposal and, as such, sought to involve students in preparing and writing the TVA grant, Mitchell said.
“We learned a lot through this, and it was very gratifying to win this grant,” Smith said.
TVA’s nationally recognized School Uplift program has saved participating schools an average of 10% on their energy bills annually through behavioral changes alone. When combined with energy savings from grant-funded upgrades, TVA projects that this year’s participants will save an estimated 9 gigawatthours of energy, or the amount of electricity used by 1,241 homes in one year.
Arts and Sciences students and staff prepared their grant application with help from EPB Energy Pros, who conducted energy assessments of the school’s facilities. Students formed an “energy squad” and worked with EPB, TVA and Green Spaces to organize “Energy Day at CSAS,” with activities to increase student knowledge of practical energy measures and their value.
“TVA and our 153 local power company partners have worked to make a positive impact on the communities we serve, and we are especially proud of the impact of our School Uplift program since children are our most important asset,” Monika Beckner, TVA’s vice president of energy services and programs, said in an announcement Thursday. “Reducing energy costs makes more dollars available for educational purposes and improving the quality of the learning environment for both students and teachers helps give every child the opportunity to succeed.”
Even before Thursday’s grant awards, TVA had already invested $7.87 million to help 225 schools save on their energy bills. In March, TVA’s School Uplift program was named an Energy Star Partner of the Year, the highest level of EPA recognition for energy management.
Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp said he is trying to bring more modern facilities to the county’s school system, and he praised the School Uplift program as “a great example of two of our major employers (TVA and the county school system) coming together to invest in students at one of the highest performing schools in the state.”
(READ MORE: Chattanooga High has had seven sites through its history)
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6340.