U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm made a trip to Reidsville Senior High School in Rockingham County this week to announce a grant awarded to two North Carolina school districts to make their buildings more energy efficient.
Hoke County Schools and Rockingham County Schools will each receive $300,000 to use toward energy audits and repairs. Rockingham County Schools will move onto a second phase of the Renew America’s Schools grant program and receive an additional $7.5 million dollars to make facility upgrades.
Reidsville Senior High School is one of 12 schools in Rockingham County that will benefit.
“In the hallways where we had the actual announcement, it's not air conditioned,” said Rockingham County Schools’ energy specialist Gene Kelley.
The school was built in 1960. About 20 of the cooling units on the school’s rooftop are nearly 30 years old and approaching expiration. Part of the school is heated by a boiler system that runs on natural gas. Some of the windows are the original single pane glass and others have thin plexiglass panes.
“We could probably spend half of the money of the grant right there [on window replacements],” Kelley said.
Rockingham County Schools was selected for the Renew America’s Schools grant based primarily on need. The grant program began in 2023 with federal funding from the $1 trillion infrastructure law that Congress passed in 2021.
This program is the first time that the U.S. Department of Energy has been able to fund K-12 schools directly, said Andrea Swiatocha, who helps administer the program.
“We are so thrilled that we have this funding,” Swiatocha said. “We know the need is greater than the funding we have, but we're excited to do really great and important work with the funding that we do have.”
Many students across North Carolina attend schools that are more than 50 years old. In rural areas that have a smaller local tax base, it can be difficult to raise local funding for construction and repairs through tax bond referendums voted on in county elections.
As school buildings age, so does their energy infrastructure, and that can drive up maintenance costs and utility bills.
Rockingham County Schools’ energy specialist Gene Kelley said the school system spends about $3 million on energy costs each year, even after a recent round of upgrades. He is hoping to decrease that by about 15% by making improvements at twelve schools.
The district will work with one of its HVAC providers, Johnson Controls, Inc., to determine how it can make the most cost effective upgrades to save energy and lower school utility bills.
Plus, Kelley said the grant provides an opportunity to involve high school students who are interested in HVAC or engineering careers in the upgrades through job shadowing.
“We want students to be engaged in this process of this grant implementation, so from conception to implementation with energy conservation measures to be put in place,” Kelley said.
Hoke County Schools plans to use its $300,000 in funding toward planned upgrades the district has estimated could cost $5 million. About half the schools in the district were built before 1979 and are in need of boiler replacements and HVAC upgrades.
“The $300,000, I would say, is a stepping stone for us, because that provides us with $300,000 that we don't have to use out of our maintenance funds in order for repairs or replacements,” said Hoke County Schools Assistant Superintendent of Operations Chad Hunt.
Kelley acknowledged that while Rockingham County’s grant might sound like a large amount in comparison, it’s still not enough to meet all of the district’s facility needs.
“We need three times that amount, four times that amount, to make a decent difference,” Kelley said. “I'm not even going to say it’s a huge difference, but we're just very glad that we are able to get what we can.”
