SCHOOL SAVINGS SPROUT FROM GLOBAL GREEN

NEW ORLEANS CITY BUSINESS. MARCH 3, 2008. By Stephen Maloney

A.P. Tureaud Elementary School on Pauger Street is a whole lot greener today even without a new coat of paint.

Santa Monica, Calif.-based Global Green U.S.A. designated Tureaud as its first Green Seed School in June and immediately went to work on the 69-year-old Seventh Ward building.

The International School of Louisiana and Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School have also been named Green Seed schools. Program director Beth Galante said more schools will be added as work progresses.

Each school will receive up to $75,000 from a $2-million grant Global Green obtained from the Bush-Clinton Katrina Relief Fund in September 2006.

After a detailed audit of Tureaud’s energy consumption and a campus inspection, Galante’s team of workers began the “green changes.”

The school improvements cost $68,612 and are expected to save the school $26,438 per year in energy costs, so the green investment will recoup in about 2.5 years, program assistant Linda Morgano said.

Most changes reversed years of deferred maintenance and poorly planned lighting schemes, Galante said.

“We’re finding the same issues at all the schools,” she said. “The main thing we’re seeing is an incredible overuse of lighting.”

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