Facing budget cuts and potential teacher layoffs, schools are starting to look for new ways to cut costs— like partnerships with Energy Education. For nine years, Texas’ Taylor Independent School District (TISD) has worked with Energy Ed to help decrease rising energy costs, saving more than $2 million, according to the district’s energy manager, Mike Janak.
“Energy Education has been around for more than 25 years and has helped numerous school districts and businesses with their energy savings,” Janak said in an interview with Taylor Daily Press. “About nine years ago, they approached the school board about signing a four-year contract with them, promising a projected savings of $100,000 a year.”
Janak continued to say that the district has exceeded its yearly projected savings every year by simply changing people’s habits—de-lamping vending machines when they are not in use, turning heating units off during the nights, weekends, holidays and summers, and cutting back on air conditioning.
TISD is now ranked in the top five among Energy Education’s 65 Texas school districts, just behind Henderson, Montgomery, Canton and Van school districts, at 35 percent in cost avoiding figures.