Tag: resolution

  • Your district’s 2025 resolution: Extreme weather resiliency

    Your district’s 2025 resolution: Extreme weather resiliency

    As extreme weather becomes more intense and more frequent, school districts are increasingly adding resilient solutions to their facilities. Achieving resiliency can look very different depending on regional needs, and choosing the right projects for your building portfolio can be challenging. One key element to resiliency includes strengthening your facilities wherever possible. But with budgets tighter than ever, knowing where to begin is not always straightforward. 

    A robust approach is to apply the principles of the hierarchy of needs to resiliency. Explore more about this concept in the Extreme Weather Prep Fact Sheet. Ranking projects this way establishes levels of risk and benefit for each school district and makes it easier to adjust to unique climates and circumstances. 

    The extreme weather hierarchy of needs

    Level 1: Updating outdated equipment

    Outdated equipment is often the weakest link, breaking first when systems are stressed. If your district is seriously behind in infrastructure updates, you are not alone. The Government Accountability Office reports that more than half of the public school districts in the U.S. need to update or replace building systems.  

    Systems like HVAC, electricity, plumbing and water are foundational to everything schools do. Old systems can be glitchy and fail to reboot after unplanned outages due to extreme weather. While other updates may seem more attractive, repairing and updating these systems should be the top priority. Without them, other updates may even be a waste of money if you can’t keep schools open due to unsafe conditions. 

    Level 2: Securing your building envelope

    Water is the enemy of every building and older buildings, including many school facilities, are particularly vulnerable to its destructive nature. A small amount of water can quickly become a big problem and persist for a long time. In addition to the initial damage, humidity and mold can cause significant long-term health issues. 

    We also know students and staff perform better, attend more consistently and enjoy a higher quality of life when they’re not continuously exposed to hazardous air quality conditions. Science Direct published a case study in which 82% of study participants reported that their health improved after moving from a moisture-damaged school facility to a new, cleaner environment. Measurable pulmonary function returned to normal after just a few months.

    Remediating water and mold damage is an important starting point when completing that maintenance to-do list. Going a step further and ensuring it doesn’t happen again is the power move to keep buildings in shape for years to come. Ensure that your roofs, windows and doors are doing their job to keep your facilities safe and weather-tight. Maintain them well and, when needed, replace them. Investment in these critical items is a much better use of funds than continuously repairing them in hopes they’ll hold when the next extreme weather event comes along… and then repairing them when they fail yet again.  

    Level 3: Using renewable energy for stability

    The best way to avoid power outages is to implement onsite power generation – often in the form of a renewable energy microgrid system. For districts that have already updated their outdated equipment and secured all their building envelopes, renewable energy is the ultimate upgrade to equip your district to withstand extreme climate events or seasons.

    Protecting your buildings from energy outages that hit your surrounding community makes your district a literal powerhouse. With a microgrid, your own on-site power generation can keep the lights on and climate controls working. Your building can serve as a safe space for providing shelter, distributing resources and educating children. 

    Even if you’re not able to reach the gold standard of a fully functioning microgrid, adding renewable energy to your infrastructure portfolio is a win-win for all stakeholders. Take a look at Onsted Community Schools, MI, which used renewable solar energy to unlock funding for other projects that positively impact learning outcomes. The on-site availability of this modern technology provides excellent, hands-on learning opportunities for students. 

    Plus, renewable energy, like solar power, can reduce a significant line item in your budget – utility costs. According to Stanford University, educational institutions account for approximately 11% of energy consumption by buildings in the United States. They state, “Taking advantage of all viable space for solar panels could allow schools to meet up to 75 percent of their electricity needs and reduce the education sector’s carbon footprint by as much as 28 percent.”

    Starting where you are

    As we tell students, ‘the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,’ and so does the journey toward making K12 schools energy-efficient and resilient. It’s unrealistic to think that every district will be covered with solar arrays powering microgrids tomorrow. But each step in this extreme weather hierarchy of needs has value. It’s okay to start small! Every system update, new roof and window replacement is a step in the right direction. 

    At Energy Systems Group, modernizing school facilities is our highest priority. We partner with K12 districts to conduct severe weather audits, develop prioritized recommendations and provide project management and execution. 

    Discover practical solutions to boost your district’s resilience and efficiency with our Extreme Weather Prep Fact Sheet. 

    Source link

  • Denied vote on pro-BDS resolution, MLA members protest

    Denied vote on pro-BDS resolution, MLA members protest

    A “die-in” protest at the MLA annual convention before Saturday’s Delegate Assembly meeting.

    As the Modern Language Association Delegate Assembly was beginning its meeting Saturday in New Orleans, audience members stood inside the hotel ballroom and chanted, “The more they try to silence us the louder we will be!” a video posted online shows. 

    The protesters, who made up a large number of the meeting’s attendees, read out a resolution endorsing the international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israeli policy—the very resolution that the MLA’s elected Executive Council had blocked from going to the Delegate Assembly and the association’s full membership for a vote. Then the demonstrators walked out of the meeting. 

    It was one of multiple protests at this weekend’s annual MLA conference aimed at the Executive Council’s fall decision to reject the resolution without letting members vote on it.

    That resolution—like one that American Historical Association conference attendees overwhelmingly passed Jan. 5—also would have accused Israel of “scholasticide,” or the intentional eradication of an education system. But the AHA resolution didn’t endorse the BDS movement.  

    The demonstrations at the two conventions are the latest examples of scholarly associations and their members debating whether they should say anything as an organization about the ongoing war in Gaza at a time when politicians and people both inside and outside academe are criticizing scholars and institutions for expressing opinions on current events.  

    Anthony Alessandrini, an English professor at the City University of New York’s Kingsborough Community College, said he led a call and response demonstration. A few shouts of “Shame!” rang out.

    “Sometimes, this is what democracy looks like!” the demonstrators chanted in unison during the call and response. They raised hands or fists in the air, and some held signs that Alessandrini said bore the names of Palestinian academics killed in Gaza since October 2023. Protesters held a large banner that read, “MLA is Complicit in Genocide.”

    As they were walking out of the ballroom, protesters chanted “Free free Palestine!” and “You don’t have quorum!”—the minimum required numbers of attendees to conduct official business at a meeting. However, the MLA said quorum was maintained and the meeting continued.  

    The MLA Executive Council, an elected body, released a lengthy statement last month explaining its October decision to shoot down the resolution. The Council said it was concerned about “substantial” revenue loss if members endorsed the BDS movement, saying legal restrictions in many states on partnering with BDS-supporting organizations would end the MLA’s ability to contract with numerous colleges and universities and their libraries. It added that “some private institutions and major library consortia” also have such prohibitions.

    “Fully two-thirds of the operating budget of the MLA comes from sales of resources to universities and libraries, including the MLA International Bibliography,” the Council said.

    Dana Williams, president of the Executive Council and a professor of African-American literature at Howard University, told Inside Higher Ed Saturday that “the primary reason” for the council’s decision “was fiduciary.” But she also mentioned concerns about dividing the membership over endorsing the BDS movement, noting that “collegiality was one of many things that we were considering.”

    The Council’s statement in December suggested MLA members consider something short of endorsing the BDS movement. “Could not a motion calling for a statement protesting scholasticide in Gaza, while not focusing on BDS, be a powerful expression of solidarity?” it said.

    The fallout from the Executive Council’s decision included the resignation of two of its roughly 15 members, who were nearing the end of their terms. One was Esther Allen, a professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and Baruch College.

    “The really don’t feel comfortable with any kind of member activism, they really don’t want it at all on any subject,” Allen told Inside Higher Ed.

    Williams said she supports members’ right to protest. “The association is the membership, we want to reiterate,” she said. What the members who walked out missed “was the one-hour open discussion [during the meeting] that … was really fruitful, thoughtful engagement with those delegates who were present that will inform the actions of the council going forward,” she added. The MLA didn’t provide a remote option for watching the meeting.

    The Council continues to believe that rejecting the resolution “was the right decision that would allow the association to continue to do its really important work to serve the members,” she said. “We had the benefit of a council that is bold enough and courageous enough to make very hard decisions.”

    MLA Members for Justice in Palestine is circulating a pledge for members to promise not to renew their memberships in protest. Alessandrini noted some other scholarly groups have endorsed the BDS movement.

    “My sort of forecast is a lot of people are going to move from organizations like the MLA and, I would add, the AHA [American Historical Association] if they don’t sort of endorse the will of the members—and towards the many organizations that have in fact taken the right stand,” he said. 

    Source link