Going 'green' works for Tucson charter school budget

TUCSON - Going "green" doesn't always mean getting expensive.

When Edge High School decided to buy and take over the other half of the nondescript office building it rented in the Tucson neighborhood of Sam Hughes, it had a tight budget.

As a charter school, it is not eligible for construction money from the state School Facilities Board and must use part of the per-student payment it receives from the state to buy, build or lease space.

Architect Phil Swaim, whose firm has built expensive LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified buildings elsewhere in the state, showed the school how it could incorporate many green features into its redesign without breaking the bank.

The new campus, which opened this fall, is brighter and better insulated.

The insulation is made from recycled blue jeans, and the school's tables and chairs also contain recycled materials.

It has skylights and automatic light switches and low-flow toilets. It no longer has cold rooms and hot rooms, having upped the energy efficiency of its heating and cooling system. It has water-harvesting cisterns and native plants and trees in the parking lot.

The students notice the difference. "I was used to having a dark, kind of dungeon-like school," said 17-year old Jeremy Rains, a senior at the eight-year-old charter high school.

Swaim, who is a certified LEED architect, said schools, especially, should embrace green-building principles because they produce benefits well beyond energy savings.

"Sustainability is not just the environmental stuff, but environmental, social and economic," he said.

The building, now painted and adorned with sun shades on the windows and a sign above the entry, fits a bit more nicely into its setting across the street from Himmel Park, an oasis in a neighborhood noted for its well-kept homes. "It was ugly," Swaim said. "Some of the neighbors in Sam Hughes have come up to me and said, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you; you've finally done something about that horrendous building.'"

Math teacher Rob Pecharich, who leads a community service program in which students have painted curb addresses on 300 neighborhood homes, said many nearby residents did not realize the building was being used as a high school.

"I can't tell you the number of people who live in Sam Hughes who have asked, 'What is this building?' We didn't even have a sign," he said.

The old, stained carpet, yellowing walls and cramped halls of the squat office building, built in 1962, didn't send a great signal to the students, many of whom came to the school because they were not thriving in more traditional settings.

The first day of classes this year was a revelation, he said. "Their eyes were bulging. The school pride thing is big," he said.

"I don't want to say it's a happier place," said Principal Reese Millen, who said the teachers and students at Edge have been creating a positive environment for eight years. "The staff and the kids feel it's a more welcoming building. They're coming in with more energy. It was lovely even when the building was ugly," she said. "It's just lovelier now."

Borrowing $4.63 million to buy, renovate and furnish the 7,400-square-foot building was a big leap for the school, said Greg Hart, the board president.

Squeezing green features into that budget was difficult, he said.

"I would have loved to have put solar on the building," he said, but the money wouldn't stretch that far. "We did everything we could think of environmentally, and in terms of green, including from a psychological point of view by opening the spaces inside and making it a more friendly setting."

Office manager Karen Mejia said each meeting during construction was a balancing act between wants and realities.

"We all made a commitment from the beginning to be as green as possible. We wanted to give that message," Mejia said.