Harford County Public Schools was honored at a recent reception with The 2017 Maryland Green Registry Leadership Award. This award is presented each year to five organizations that have shown a strong commitment to sustainable practices, measurable results, and continual improvement.
The winners represent a variety of facility types and sizes, but all have several key factors in common that contribute to their success: an organization-wide commitment to environmental performance, annual environmental goals and measurement of results. The school systems Resource Conservation Program has reduced their energy consumption by 11,629,620 Kwh resulting in an annual energy savings of $800,000. The school system has received over 2.8 million dollars in BGE incentives to facilitate over 238 energy efficiency projects stretching the school systems budget.
HCPS is only the second public school system to receive this recognition the statewide program. Maryland Department of the Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles presented the award at the “Gathering of the Greens” event in Annapolis. The evening networking event was held in partnership with Annapolis Green and the US Green Building Council Maryland on June 14, 2017 at the Governor Calvert House.
That’s awesome that HCPS is so green that they win some award from somewhere. How about creating a quiet, award winning academic environment?
Can you imagine the amount of paperwork and staff time that went into the submittal package for this meaningless “award”.
The greatest green sustainable action every HCPschool could undertake is to stop using voluminous curriculum packets. The amount of worksheets/handouts/extraneous papers is unconscionable. It’s so nice to recycle paper in the schools. Outside of the facilities, at the end of the school year, what an environmental mess. Another green solution would be for the school district to update the internet/intranet speed so students can use tech devices without waiting a full class period to log on.