Hopewell News

Educational budgets involve far more than what people might think. It is easy to imagine money being spent on classrooms, books, school supplies, cafeteria stock and transportation.
However, beyond those items is an entire world of considerations that may not immediately come to mind when thinking about dollars and education. These concerns include leaky windows, boiler systems, renovation, and building maintenance, –just to name a few.
Last week, the Hopewell School Board discussed these aspects of the city’s educational budget.
The “preliminary scope” of performance contracting was the area of discussion. The School Board made arrangements with six companies to meet this past Wednesday morning to discuss the particular needs of Hopewell’s school system infrastructure. Mr. Barksdale, a state representative in charge of performance contracting for Virginia was to oversee the entire process during the meeting to ensure Hopewell’s best interests were met.
This meeting would set into motion the process by which the city could take care of some of the infrastructure issues facing local school buildings that need attention. For instance, Carter G. Woodson needs upgrading on its air-conditioning systems, Woodlawn desperately needs new windows, and boilers need replacing at Harry James and DuPont.
Items that are old may need upkeep, and by replacing them with more efficient units, Hopewell school buildings could cut down on energy consumption. Conserving energy translates directly into saved dollars. With school budgets being dramatically slashed statewide, the saving of every possible dollar cannot be understated enough.
Right now, Hopewell spends about a million dollars a year on the energy required to operate its schools. The cost of the energy-saving upgrades, such as new boilers, windows and air-conditioning systems, is projected at approximately two million to two-and-a-half million dollars.
Looking into cost effectiveness, cities must weigh the price of upgrades versus the amount of money they will save over the course of time. Therefore, the amount of energy spent per year is compared to the life of the loan for the upgraded equipment, which is around twelve years.
Included in the equation is the amount of projected savings versus current energy expenditures. This means that the city can apply projected savings (dollars) toward the scope of the upgrade that will be underway.
Discussions favored fixed-rate instead of variable-rate loans for improvements. Further, the board favored having a single contractor servicing multiple sites versus different contractors taking care of the same site, which could potentially lead to finger pointing if problems were to arise.
The School Board noted that all six of the contract companies have already been vetted by the state, and that they are all on the state’s “approved” list. Also, it was added that the companies were conservative in their projection of energy savings (i.e. if they promised something they couldn’t deliver, they would pay for it).
The School Board will determine a priority list for each school, cataloging each school’s needs in order of necessity, essentially an “energy audit.” This will be accomplished, primarily, via a thermal imaging of each school, to see where, exactly, the energy is being lost. That will give the School Board a better idea where to focus its resources (e.g. having a great heating system means little if the school has leaky windows).
Dr. Odom said, “The reality is that if we don’t do something, we’re going to continue to have the escalating bills, plus the deterioration of the equipment.”
Another board member stated that the “equipment we have now is already beyond its life span.”
Cutting energy costs in the form of facility upgrades via performance contracting is the strategy to be employed by the Hopewell School Board to ensure that city dollars are spent wisely in a time of economic hardship.