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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to asbo international's school business insider. I'm your host, john brucato. Each week on School Business Insider, I sit down with school business officials and industry experts from around the world to share their stories and explore the topics that matter most to you. Find out what it means to be a school business official and get your insider pass on all things school business. Hello everyone, and welcome back to School Business Insider. Today's episode sits at the intersection of school operations, sustainability and student learning. I am joined today by Dawn Johnson, director of Customer Engagement at Aptera Energy Services, to talk about how energy projects can be much more than infrastructure upgrades. They can become powerful opportunities for steam learning, community engagement, and long term operational impact. We'll explore how Opterra partners with school districts across the country, how clean energy initiatives can turn campuses into living laboratories, and what school business officials and boards should be thinking about as they evaluate their own energy programs. Dawn, welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to have you.
- [01:18]
B
Thank you, John. Happy to be here.
- [01:21]
A
Absolutely. So let's jump into just learning a little bit more about your role at Opterra and what does it really mean to be a director of Customer Engagement and how do you support education partners through the energy work in schools?
- [01:32]
B
That's a great question. It isn't a traditional role. It's not really off the shelf, and it's probably the reason why I absolutely love this job. It really is the combination of technical information and expertise and educational expertise and combines both of my educational learning paths. So I'm super excited. The role really looks at the energy and infrastructure projects that would be going on at your school and really ties them back to classroom teaching and really back to positively impacting the students in those classrooms. So we really kind of look very. Those projects will look very different depending upon whether it's the district or even the individual school. And when we go to create these, we co create them. We work with the superintendent, we work with curriculum and instruction, principals, teachers, even community. The community will come in and community businesses if the district already has an existing partner. And we'll all work together to kind of co create a program that helps the district meet their current goals. And really and truthfully, we work with the districts over multiple years and so those goals will change year by year. So we have the opportunity to go back in and reassess what are we working on, what do we want to focus on this year. It's a true partnership and it really is more impactful that way for everybody.
- [03:09]
A
That's Great. So it sounds like you have just long term partnerships with school districts. You're not just kind of coming in and doing a couple things and jumping out. It sounds like this is a multi year engagement. Tell me how it kind of evolves from year one over the course of just, you know, their programming and the engagement you kind of talked about already.
- [03:28]
B
It does. And the partnership approach has really worked well for us and for our school district partners, because from the time that you start to do an energy project, it'll take about a year for that project to be in development and then it'll start construction and you're talking maybe two years. Well, as we all know, education changes and it changes rather quickly. And so the same things that we were talking about when we were starting development of the project may not be the same things that three years down the road when we're working together. Split still matter. And case in point was Covid. We were working with a lot of schools in 2020 when Covid hit and schools were thrust into this environment that they had not been in before. And we were really able to pivot and work with our districts. And we put a lot of lessons online for our districts to work with and look at and do different lessons that we. That they could use asynchronously or synchronously depending upon how they were working at the time. We even worked with Hayward Unified School District in California, and they had a teacher on special assignment who was working with one of my team members and she said, I want to put kits into the hands of every single one of our students. And so we put together hundreds of kits for, for those students. And then they had a line where kids would come through and their families would come through. They distributed them in several different ways throughout their community to get to those kids so that those kids could actually be doing hands on learning, even though we were all at home and not able to be together and not able to have those materials. So that teacher actually won a community award for that work that she did. And truly it was just inspirational, the fact that she thought, hey, let's have this happen. We have this community and an industry partner. Let's make it happen for those kids. And they did.
- [05:30]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about what makes school districts unique in your experience. So, you know, energy contracts are really important for districts in terms of energy savings becoming more efficient. But I think what is great about it is now is there's so many educational components to it, and it, it kind of bridges the gap between technical and just theoretical. And there's an opportunity for learning. So I mean, I'm sure you may do this kind of stuff in other sectors in the private sector, and I'm sure there's an appetite to learn a little bit more about what a solar panel does rather than just sticking on a roof. But tell me, what makes school districts a little bit more unique compared to maybe your standard private sector client?
- [06:10]
B
You're absolutely correct that there is kind of that opportunity to connect both of those worlds. The thing I love about school districts is that they're a naturally collaborative people. They are already working in groups to try and find ways to work with students. They're grouping their students together. Teachers are just collaborative folks. And so it's nothing for them to say, oh, a new person to collaborate with, let's bring them into the fold and everybody work together. I think what I love about the work that we do is that traditionally in schools, a teacher has to go out and find a partner and they have to work very hard to make that relationship, to make those connections, to find what's working. And that's a lot of work. And our teachers already have a lot of work to do. And so as a company, if we can come in and, and really be that connector and be that bridge where they know, oh, we have an industry partner, I don't have to do all of this additional work. I just have to reach out or I have to come to this meeting that they're going to have, or I have to get this training or these materials or whatever the case may be. It takes some time and it gives time back to the teacher where they can focus on the things that they need to do. Because we're in an industry partner, they're for the district and we're working with all of the schools and we can work with all of the teachers. And it really is just a win win for everybody. But I love the fact that it takes some of that onus off of the teacher so that they can go back and do the things that they love and the things that they do so well already.
- [07:53]
A
And I have to imagine that approach probably allows for a greater appetite from teachers to kind of bring you guys in the classroom and integrate you into the curriculum. Because, you know, teachers are taxed enough with just so many things, whether it's, you know, state assessments and making sure that they're, they're getting throughout their lesson plans, adding just something else in. I would assume there would be some kind of hesitancy. But the way you're approaching. It leads me to believe that maybe those barriers to entry are much lower because Optera is able to kind of do some of the heavy lifting and be really like, to your point, a collaborator. Not just kind of, hey, let's talk about energy and monopolize a classroom. This kind of seems to be integrated a little bit more. Can you. Can you talk to me a little bit more? More about that?
- [08:35]
B
It works really well when the district allows teachers to opt in versus telling the teachers mandatorily, everybody is going to attend this training, you know, regardless of the lesson or the materials that you can get. If it's not your cup of tea, that's okay. And so our most successful programs are the ones where the teachers want to participate. They want to have this additional training, and it's not required of them because then they come in with such fervor and they're so excited and they are so invested in bringing back these resources to the students that it's not just another thing that sits on the shelf and gathers dust. I know I was a classroom teacher at a high school, and you can just go into any room within that the teachers are holding information and you can see boxes of things that have dust on them. It was a great idea, but nobody had the time to do it. Where we really try to, because my team consists of informal and formal educators with their backgrounds, is that they understand that. And so we really have the teacher come in and be the student student so that they can think about and see where are the thing. Where are issues going to come up? Where are their students going to have the most impact? Where can I put this into my existing year with my lesson plans and how is it best going to make an impact for the students? So we provide that time. And really the district does. The district says, hey, you can come in. You get this many hours with these teachers, and they are given that time then to figure out how it's going to work instead of having to do it after hours and on the weekends, which they're already doing, which. And so for me, that's the best part of all of this. It's that collaboration. It's the fact that they have this industry partner and we're providing them the time to add it into their existing work.
- [10:48]
A
That's great. And one of the more interesting parts is you talked to it a little bit already about how you're making the. These energy projects become opportunities for steam learning. You talked about the kits with the school in California over Covid. Tell me about Some other opportunities you've been able to take advantage of to really kind of bridge the gap between an energy project and making it an opportunity for steam learning in the classroom.
- [11:16]
B
I am really fortunate because I work for a company that nearly two decades ago saw the opportunity to connect kind of that, that energy, that operations, that building resiliency and hand in hand, tie it back to what our. What their number one mission is in schools, which is really impacting and educating our students. So my team is able to come in and really look at the community that they're in. We work with a lot of rural and underrepresented communities, and when I talk to some of these students, some of them have never left their community. And so it's a really unique perspective. We can bring, you know, a handful of different opportunities that really opens up areas that they may not come in contact with before. And I'll tell you, we worked with a school district and did a summer of STEM program. It was brought forth by a team member of mine, Brianna Lewis, and she was working collaboratively with them. And it costs a lot to send students over the summer to any one of the camps or learning experiences that exist out there today. And not all of our community members have those kinds of resources. So at this district, we were able to bring in the summer of STEM program, and it lasted throughout the summer. And we did a couple of things. So we trained. We provided all of the materials to the district. The we trained up a whole host of educators that were going to work with the students over the summer. And then we came back and kind of saw how they were working over the summer. This was a free to any student that registered and was participated. And that was great because those students, it really was able to bring in students who may not always think, oh, I'm great at math or I'm great at science, but they could come in because there was this whole opportunity for them to be creative and kind of have that artistic and design side. One of the activities that they did was make marker robots. And so it created all of these designs, but they had to wire up the robot at the same time. And they designed the robot to look like a robot, even though it was really a cup with markers on. Just is able to bring in students where and meet them where they're at and what their experiences are and really kind of show them, you know what, hey, you just did science and how exciting and fun that can be all along. But the second piece that was for us, really something that we hadn't really intended was, we forget the fact that in some of our communities, there's food insecurity during the summer. And so when you create this free program, the students are learning, and they're learning in a really creative and amazing way about science and math and art and, you know, technology and all of the things that go along with this and engineering, design portions. But then you get to feed them breakfast, and they get to have lunch, and they get to have this community of people that have come together and are super excited to learn and be part of this all day. And it helps the parents, too. You know, what a great opportunity for these parents to be able to see. And when we talked to some of the parents, that was for them, the best part is that they had a safe place that their kids were going and learning and getting all of these extra things for the summer. And guess what? Also takes away from some of that summer drain where they come back and have forgotten some of those things so that they learned in the year previous. So great opportunity all the way around.
- [15:25]
A
So to be able to not only just bridge the learning opportunities, but really, it sounds like get a community together and offer opportunities to students that they otherwise wouldn't have. Seems to be pretty novel and unique. I mean, you're not just an energy company kind of getting into a classroom teaching. It sounds like you're really building some bridges between the school, the community, and what Opterra is doing. Are you getting a lot of positive feedback from the schools and from the families? Just maybe they didn't anticipate the level of involvement that Opterra was planning on having. This seems like a incredible opportunity, especially with the food insecurity and the rural communities. I mean, what is the kind of sentiment in the districts and in the communities that you're having such an impact on?
- [16:08]
B
I always tell people that we have the best job in the entire company, because you are exactly correct. We don't have people looking at us and saying, no, we don't want that. No, we're not interested in that. Our schools really, you know, they are in most cases, very underfunded. So when they have the opportunity to have these resources built into this energy program, it really pays dividends for them. And so we do get a lot of really positive feedback for the programs that we have. You know, over the summer, not only have we, with some of our customers, do we do the summer of STEM program, but we also have internships. And it's been probably about 10 or 11 years ago, we started really overhauling our internship program. And we have since opened it up to high school students because we saw a real need that not all high school students have the opportunities given to them to be able to participate in internships. And internships are a great way to really verify whether or not this is a job that you want to go into, whether you're going to onto post secondary education or you're going straight into a career, it just really helps you figure out is this the pathway that I want to go on. And so we have had some students this past summer that were from a rural school district in Illinois. And we were interviewing one of those students afterwards for another program. And that was one of the big takeaways that they had, is that being in a rural community, they didn't always have those opportunities to go out and have an internship. Our internship can be hybrid, where the students are actually participating in the construction program on their school site. And it can. We also have an online program where the students can participate as a cohort with students from across the country. And they are working towards getting a certification in a number of different certification programs that are out there from our industry. And it's those types of impacts that when you then come back and these students either talk to the school board as part of the program, finishing up their capstone project and kind of showcasing the work that they have learned over the summer, and when we are able to go back and have those conversations with the school districts themselves and the school boards, these are really the super positive impacts. Sure, they're creating resiliency, they're upgrading their buildings, they're, you know, repurposing areas of their school that were built decades ago that are. Are not quite the type of space that we need for the type of learning that we're doing today. We're able to go in and do all of those things, create resiliency for the schools that are in areas that need it, but that human impact and being able to help the students within their community have paid internships, get additional resources, work with that food insecurity. It. It is really a positive impact that we see from our customers along the way.
- [19:55]
A
Well, it sounds like you are, in a sense, maybe influencing students in their careers and they're in their, you know, lifelong choices in terms of what they want to do in the world. I mean, is that. Are you seeing that in these communities where maybe otherwise they wouldn't have been exposed to a STEAM or a STEM kind of environment, but because of these energy projects and the influence that you're having on these Districts, you may be kind of steering these kids in a new direction to kind of follow suit in the same industry.
- [20:25]
B
At the end of the internship, we have a survey that we provide to the students, and that is exactly one of the questions. And in some cases, yes, these students have seen and are thinking about changing their career trajectory. In other cases, it's a paid internship. And the students were really looking for the exposure, something to build their resume, but they were still on the same trajectory that they had initially set out upon. I think wholeheartedly what they say is that the money really wasn't the deciding factor for them. It was the experience. It was being able to work in a cohort, work with other students, gain other perspectives, which for me was really eye opening for myself and for our organization to really see the impact that we're having with these students. In a couple of cases, we have actually changed the trajectory of students career outcomes, which, you know, is a. Is a real positive. We do need great people working in this industry. We're like a lot of the industries right now where we have a lot of people retiring and we're losing a lot of knowledge along the way. But I will tell you one thing. When I work with these students in this internship, I have real hope for the future. These are some really bright students, and they just continue to brighten my day. I know Katie Malthrop runs our internship program for the last two years. She works with me and my team, and she stays connected to these kids. She's made such a. A connection with them that they are reaching out to her consistently. We even had one of our students reach back out for this past summer and say, hey, I want to come talk to the interns so I can tell them what I learned and what I know and how they should kind of approach this if they want to get the most out of it. That's some of the highest value you can kind of get from this is when your kids are coming back. And like, I want to share what I learned. So, you know, for me, it's one of my favorite parts of the job.
- [22:36]
A
That's incredible. I mean, just to kind of see it full circle from them being in high school to internship, to really wanting to kind of do the same thing and follow that same kind of work. So, you know, you work across different regions of the country. You know, we talked about kind of like the impact you've had in rural schools and rural regions. But tell me a little more. How, how do energy needs and priorities really differ based based on geography Climate and local regulation, like, what are you seeing you're having to do to kind of shift and move and meet maybe some competing priorities and different needs based on where you are in the country?
- [23:13]
B
Yeah, it is interesting because a lot of the themes are the same when we talk to our schools. Their daughter having to do a lot of things that are unfunded. So money is always an opportunity. I think one of the great parts about the energy and infrastructure projects that they can do is that that can lead to savings that they had. What they normally would have been paying to the utility company can now come back and sit within their funds, and then they can redistribute those in ways that can impact our students. The other thing that I'm really seeing right now is our schools, our public schools are competing against charter schools and private schools, and they're losing the funding associated with those students as they go to these other opportunities. And so some of our districts are saying, you know, how can we compete? What can we do? And so some of these infrastructure upgrades can really repurpose old classrooms that were utilized for. For coursework that we don't currently have in schools right now. And we can repurpose it into something else that is of higher value to that district and will hopefully bring students back to the district. Then it's offering additional programming, enhancing programming that they have. Really, you know, what can we do to kind of support them, keeping their pipeline of students engaged? I know one of our communities was going to change their school to a STEM school, and there was a lot of pushback within the community. And so we helped host a STEM event at the school and invited the community to that STEM event. And what we found is that we were able to have a lot of the materials translated into the native language of a lot of the folks that were going to visit the STEM event and really have that engagement so that those families and that community could kind of see what is having a STEM school actually mean. What's that going to look like? And so it was a lot of hands on, a lot of engagement for the students, and then really kind of help that district go out to the community as they were having those conversations, sharing those materials, helping them create materials that were going to go out into the community because it's in our best interest. A lot of these STEM skills that students learn are transferable to just about any job that we have. This ability to problem solve, to think about and look at problems in a different manner. Those are all STEM skills that we can transfer to any of the work that we do.
- [26:09]
A
And then what about the kind of topics that are kind of cropping up now these days? I mean, when you. When you look at energy projects in. In priorities that districts are looking at now versus maybe 10, 15 or 20 years ago, what are you seeing has changed in. In recent history in terms of what districts are focusing on in terms of their energy needs?
- [26:30]
B
You know, when you look at a lot of the district personnel that we work with, they come from the world of academia and they've moved up. You know, they oftentimes started out as a classroom teacher and have worked their way up and got and received additional education along the way. A lot of them are, you know, holding high levels of educational doctorates, but they're being faced with things that they didn't always study in school, especially with the technologies that they're being asked to look at in working on their buildings today. So some of those things we're looking at, especially in areas of the country that are having kind of these grid challenges, a lot of power shutdowns or environmental impacts that they're having, Whether it be from fire, smoke, mudslides, inclement weather that is happening on the regular, they're needing to have constant energy in order to maintain their buildings in a safe space for not only their students, but for the community, community as well. So we're looking at batteries, micro grids. A lot of safety conservation measures came out of this, especially in Covid. We were looking at how do you have multi layers of filtration for our H vac systems and then just improved improvements that have happened not only with H vac heating, ventilation and air conditioning technologies, but also in the renewables world. You know, how can we actually see that they have the resiliency of when the grid is down, that you actually are able to generate your own electricity? And really kind of looking at those unique ways that in whatever area of the country that you're in, how does that look and what can that look like for you?
- [28:39]
A
Yeah, I wanted to ask you, are batteries becoming more and more prevalent in solar projects? So, for instance, you know, my district, we're in the middle of a solar project right now, but the savings that we reap are feeding back to the grid. So, you know, if the power is cut out, you know, we have generators, but we're not on battery that has energy produced and stored from our solar. Are you seeing projects now incorporate more battery technology to be, you know, really isolated, off the grid if they needed to be?
- [29:09]
B
Oh, yes, Battery energy storage. Right now is paramount. Kind of when a lot of our districts are looking at that full resiliency play, you know, being able to back that up with the storage that they have. So yes, we're seeing it, although it's kind of a mixed bag, because community by community, you have to really look and say, what is their legislation on having those batteries? There are different types and different styles, and it is not as widely used or looked at depending upon the community that you're in or the area of the country that you're in.
- [29:53]
A
And I have to imagine it probably requires a pretty sizable footprint too, depending on the size of your needs. I know that one of the deciding factors, not only was it cost, but just the square footage needed to kind of put those battery banks in. We just didn't have the. The square footage. Has that been a. A challenge too when, when kind of trying to assess the feasibility of battery storage as well?
- [30:15]
B
Footprint is always a challenge when you're especially dealing with school districts, because anything that isn't, you know, going towards the, the student learning atmosphere and environment is, is. Is heavily looked at. So absolutely, there's a lot of things coming out now, though, that are helping reduce that footprint. And I can only imagine that as we continue to see this technology evolve, like everything, it will continue to get, you know, smaller, better, more efficient over time. So. Oh yeah. One of the things too, that, that I'm really kind of seeing in the industry is that our utility rates change so drastically, we're not really seeing them decrease. We're seeing them increase over time. And so with our districts really being strapped for funds nowadays, being able to plan for what their energy budget will be and knowing what that will be year over year is really helpful to our school districts in their planning, just their planning for how are they going to continue to fund their buildings. You know, one of the things that we're also seeing is that in some areas of the country, we're watching our student enrollment decrease. And so how do you still maintain those great community schools but. But operate them more efficiently in the long run?
- [31:49]
A
So if you could recommend one first step for a school administrator or a board of education to take when really exploring their energy program potential, what would that be?
- [31:58]
B
Yeah, so our company will come in and do an energy audit, and there are lots of companies like ours that will do the same thing. What that audit will do is it's not. It doesn't dive deep into everything, but it kind of looks surface level. Okay, what have you got? And does there feasibly look like there's a project that can happen here, you know, it's going to look at all of those big ticket energy items, from lighting to heating and air conditioning to your building itself. In some cases you can look at the plumbing as well and those types of fixtures and see really what is the overall footprint of your building and feasibly what does it look like you could save from doing a project and what have you already done to kind of incorporate that into the pieces here. And then if you are really based on that footprint, then you're really going to want to pick a partner. Because once you start to really dive into working together to decide what are your big goals, what are the big things that you want to look at, then you're going to want to be with somebody in lockstep, working together. I think the great part about our industry is that a lot of our school districts already have existing partners. They have architects and engineers in the community that have been working with them for a short time or for years. The best part about working with the, with an energy services company is that you can still incorporate those people into this work and have kind of that community involvement and the local sourcing of people within your project. So you're keeping some of that money right in your community, which is always important to some of our communities.
- [33:57]
A
Absolutely. And I mean we kind of established this earlier that this is not just kind of a one and done thing. I mean, not only is your involvement in the education steam and curriculum a multi year event, but improving the energy footprint and what districts can do to become more sustainable and efficient is a multi year venture as well. So with that being said, how can districts avoid viewing energy work as kind of that one and done rather than a long term strategy?
- [34:24]
B
Yeah, that's a great question. And really I see it done a multitude of different ways. We do have a couple of our developers that really go into it, planning for that long term time frame, looking to kind of phase projects along the way strictly too, because our schools have students running around, you know, 180 days of the year and some of the work that's being done isn't really conducive to being done while those students are in class. It can be loud, it has a lot of technical parts that go along with it, a lot of people engaged. And so sometimes you're doing a lot of this work during the summer, you know, during our eight weeks during the summer, if it can't be cordoned off from the area where students are. And so it lends itself to being phased so that you get, you have eight weeks of work and then you have some things that you can do development wise, or work that can be done in some of the buildings while students are there, but then you can work on it again the next summer. We have a lot of customers who do multiple phases of work. It also is helpful too, when you have a partner in your energy portfolio that can really also, as new things come come up, or as you're looking to repurpose parts of your building and building new pieces of your buildings, really to kind of work together in concert and be able to say, hey, looking at our controls, looking at our roof, looking at the potential of new renewables or battery energy storage, you can work together then to really enhance what that project will look like. You can. Energy companies tend to look at your building a little bit differently. They're like, how do we reduce the, the amount of energy used before you look at adding generation? You know, there's a, there's a multitude of ways to look at it. Legislation also is a huge driver. You know, a lot of states will have incentives, utility companies will have incentives to be able to go out and do certain efficiency work. And we, we tend to see that as drivers as well. Whenever our schools can get money to offset part of that is good for our communities, it's good for our taxpayers, it's great for everybody. So that's also a huge driver.
- [36:57]
A
When you, when you look at where the industry is headed with energy and the technology evolving and how district priorities are evolving just as well, what excites you most about where school energy partnerships are headed in the next few years?
- [37:10]
B
What I see as the exciting part right now is that our schools are really in a mode to be creative and really look at education and their buildings and the way that they're tackling the challenges of education and learning. Looking at our students and the way our students learn so differently and being able to have a partner that can then look at your energy resources, be helping with those building upgrades, but then also parlay those building upgrades into that educational partnership and what that will look like, whether it be careers, you know, in that we don't know are coming in the industry, you know, we have the advance of artificial intelligence, we have the data centers that are powering all of that AI work. We are looking at really kind of a change in what our students, what jobs will be available for our students, and then being able to partner with industry to say, what kind of skills are you looking for? What are the kind of kids that, that you are going to need to kind of fill some of these roles along the way. It's just an exciting time between technology and education and kind of what education will look like for our students in the future is, it's, it's exciting.
- [38:45]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Well, dawn, thank you so much for coming on School Business Insider today and sharing all the wonderful work that you're doing with schools. It's really encouraging and exciting, and I wish you all the best moving forward.
- [38:57]
B
Thank you so much.
- [39:01]
A
Thank you for tuning in to School Business Insider. Make sure to check back each week for your favorite topics on school business.