In the Upper Merion, Council Rock, and West Chester Area districts, students and faculty have gotten involved as well. West Chester's Henderson High saved $45,000 on electricity this year by taking simple steps. Computer monitors and chargers were turned off or disconnected when not in use. On Fridays, every other light in the hallways were off. Administrators plan to save several hundred thousand dollars by replicating that model in other schools.
In the Council Rock and Great Valley districts, student/faculty "Green Teams" achieved similar results. The savings, Council Rock Superintendent Mark Klein said, "goes into education and into saving tax dollars."
School districts have the same deadline as the state legislature for fashioning their budgets - June 30 - and often are left scrambling when education aid proposed by Gov. Rendell is cut by lawmakers.
This year is an exception, at least for some districts. Basic education funding, the state's main subsidy for schools, got $105 million less than Rendell proposed, leaving suburban districts collectively about $7 million short. Some other programs were cut as well.
But the legislature also reduced from 72 percent to 17.7 percent an expected increase in district payments toward school pensions. As a result, the cut in expected basic education funding was offset fully or in part by the lower pension cost.
The Norristown Area School District, for example, received $303,000 more than expected. "That's huge - it's a pleasant surprise," said business manager Anne Marie Rohricht.
Contact staff writer Dan Hardy at 610-313-8134 or dhardy@phillynews.com.
