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School Business Insider
Roadmap to Sustainable Schools: Finance, Operations & Environmental Stewardship
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- [00:01]
John Brucato
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. Hi everyone and welcome back. Today we're discussing a topic gaining momentum across school districts nationwide, sustainability in K12. My guest is Chris Wildman, Assistant Superintendent for Finance at Gray's Lake Community consolidated School District 46 in Illinois. Chris District has launched a robust sustainability program implementing composting, solar installations, paper reduction and strategic planning, while also reducing costs and engaging students and staff. Together we'll explore why these initiatives matter, how they can align with district budgets, and what SBOs need to start and scale their own efforts. Chris, welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to have you.
- [01:15]
Chris Wildman
Thank you. Glad to be here.
- [01:17]
John Brucato
So let's kick it off. Why don't you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and maybe what inspired you and your district to pursue a district wide sustainability program.
- [01:27]
Chris Wildman
I've been the business manager at Grays Lake Community consolidated School District 46. I'm just finishing my fourth year, I'm just entering my fifth year and I've been in this world for about 12 years. I when I joined Grace Lake CCSD 46, it became very apparent that there is a culture here of sustainability and so that really helped our push towards sustainability. So it was kind of born out of necessity and values as a school system, which is, I'm sure, not unlike a lot of the other people listening to this. We are dealing with aging infrastructure, right? It was in utility costs and that we also have communities that care deeply about environmental stewardship. So I think they go quite well together. So we saw sustainability not as just a green initiative, but something that's probably highly likely going to grow into a strategic planning goal at the next strategic planning that happens in the next 12 months to 12 to 24 months. And as the finance person in the district, we have to pay for it and part of long term planning. So we prioritize our projects that align with our values and our fiscal responsibility. So that's kind of part of it. It's part of the values that exist here in this district and it's also part of where we are meeting the needs of our buildings today.
- [02:55]
John Brucato
So we were talking offline a little bit before we got recording and we were talking how sustainability is Just something that maybe isn't as prevalent as other initiatives in schools. You had mentioned at Graze Lake, that it's part of the culture now. Is that from the community? Is that with the district staff itself? Where is that culture of sustainability really kind of being born from?
- [03:17]
Chris Wildman
So one of the things that we've embraced is a resource conservation committee. So we call it the RCC and it's really the engine behind some of these operational sustainability efforts. So it's a cross functional team. It includes custodians are on it, there's administrators, there's teachers. And with support from the operations and maintenance team and the business office, we're able to. And the technology department as well. The technology department is very instrumental in the rcc. The group meets regularly to identify building level opportunities to reduce waste, conserve energy and implement green practices. So they all come from board policy. So we have a resource conservation board policy and we looked at that several years ago and basically decided that a committee was the best way to go forward.
- [04:10]
John Brucato
Sure.
- [04:11]
Chris Wildman
It played a critical role in rolling out the composting. I know you've got some questions about that in trying to identify some metrics. Definitely continuing our energy use initiatives and then investigating paper reduction. So all those kind of things fall under the Resource Conservation committee umbrella. And they also enable us to, as a vehicle to be able to get people involved, talk about these issues and to bring them to the Board of Education to show them that progress over the last year.
- [04:42]
John Brucato
That's great. So the board really is invested in this sustainability movement. That's great to hear.
- [04:47]
Chris Wildman
Yes, definitely. So the resource Conservation Committee is the group of staff, but we also have a sustainability task force that was created through several board members who felt that this was something that they wanted to really push forward. So they created a sustainability task force. It was led by, as I said, a board of education member bringing together a broader group of stakeholders. It was outside members of the community who were students who'd left our school system and got onto the high school. It also enabled us to draft what we, what we determined to be our definition of sustainability. And that all came from the genesis of that was the resource Conservation Committee was something that was being done at the staff level, but the broader stakeholders in the community, with the board level involvement, it's probably highly likely going to grow into a strategic planning goal. So all these having a resource conservation committee board policy, having sustainability board policy, which is a little bit more broader, and then having that grow into a strategic planning goal, which is something I've already mentioned. That is going to highly likely be brought forward with key performance indicators and all the other good stuff that we'd expect from a good goal.
- [06:19]
John Brucato
That's great. It's impressive. So, as you mentioned, I would like to get into a couple of the initiatives specifically that you're working on. Let's start with composting. You've mentioned you've diverted 100,000 pounds of waste and you've got garbage bag use by 80%. Talk me through how this started and what was its budget impact with this whole initiative.
- [06:38]
Chris Wildman
So how did it start? It started with, believe it or not, one person who was highly motivated in our school district. That person was a program assistant, which a teacher's aide. And she. Her name is Abby Petrozynski. And she kept coming to the administration, was saying, hey, there's all these things that we should be doing. And so what happened was she became a kind of compost composting advocate, composting volunteer, and she actually went around to all the different buildings and created local advocates, each of the buildings. So they were, as I said, there was one person that started. It was started as a pilot in one elementary school building. They then went to all the other six buildings. All seven buildings are now doing fully composting. And what we mean by composting is it's not just the lunchroom. It's also the back end of the kitchen as well. And all that is being diverted into a composting avenue. There's that. There's a way that it's being diverted away from landfill. And so we. We started off by first going to weighing all our trash. So that's what we did first. We had to basically determine our baseline, which was how much we were actually putting into the trash cans. And then we implemented the actual composting, which is in a very simplistic way, it's just students diverting and putting things in the correct. In the correct trash bag.
- [08:18]
John Brucato
So putting like fruit and vegetable scraps in one bin versus meat and everything else in another.
- [08:22]
Chris Wildman
Yep. And so making sure that everything that is recyclable gets put to where it needs to be. So there's certain level of trash that will always have to be. It cannot become possible. But there's a certain high level, as well as you can tell by 80%, which is. And it's perishable. And so making sure that that ends up in the right spot. So it was really kind of transformational, I think when we saw the numbers about after starting with our baseline information and then going through a Whole year. And then actually weighing the trash and seeing how much was actually being diverted. It was actually quite astounding.
- [08:56]
John Brucato
So are you composting on site or do you have a company that's picking it up for you in composting?
- [09:01]
Chris Wildman
So we do composting in each of the lunchrooms. So each of the students is. With the help of. In the younger buildings where we have our younger students is being assisted by custodians. And then obviously, as I mentioned as well, the kitchens are doing their bit as well. In. In the production side. It's then. It's then transported to one of our buildings, which is kind of the men hub. And then it's taken away. So we actually have a specific recycling contract. So we have normal. Re. Normal trash removal and then we have recycling on top of that. It didn't cost any extra money for that, which was quite amazing to me. When we actually went out for a bid several years ago, it didn't cost any extra to actually have this additional service. I think that's one of the myths. I think that it's worth talking about that these things don't always cost money and hit the bottom line. But what it does do is a real fantastic learning opportunity for our students who can see firsthand, literally touch compost, put it in, and then know that that's going to not. You're going to be diverted away from a landfill.
- [10:14]
John Brucato
It's incredible. Now, let's talk a little bit about solar. Your district installed a PV system on four schools producing over 7.4 million kilowatt hours, saving about $679,000 in energy costs and $2.6 million incentives. That's pretty impressive. Can you tell me more about those financial and operational benefits of solar?
- [10:34]
Chris Wildman
So this is definitely one of those things that I talked about at the beginning that we. When I started at the district in 2021, there was already a culture of sustainability here. So these were already on four of our buildings back in 2019. So they were purchased and installed at four of them. The cost of the capital was funded from the savings from the electricity and the solar renewable energy Credits. They're called SRECs, which were available at the time back in 2019. Here in Illinois we have the. What's called the Illinois SHINES program, is called the adjustable block program. And that allows Illinois utilities are mandated to be able to purchase those SRECs from solar system owners to meet their what's called renewable portfolio standards. So the legislation put in place here in Illinois means that the utility companies have to purchase their electricity. We get it as credits and that was used to offset the actual purchase cost. I'm pleased to say that in November of last year we actually finished our last bond payment, our debt service debt certificate payment for these. So we fully own them ourselves, which is great.
- [11:48]
John Brucato
So now you're real true realization of savings.
- [11:52]
Chris Wildman
Yeah. So we managed to pair and align those incentives and those savings with those capital payments which was really good. I mean I can just tell you it's reduced our reliance on the grid. It's a great long term energy cost saving and it's, it was, it was at the time a predictable revenue stream that allowed us to. With those incentives to pay for the capital upfront capital costs.
- [12:17]
John Brucato
And are those panels, are they roof mounted? Do you have a solar field somewhere? Some combo?
- [12:21]
Chris Wildman
What is kind of the makeup combination? So the buildings which have enough roof space, we've, we've put, we've put solar arrays on those roofs. But where there's a little bit of extra space, you know, that wasn't being used for any, any classroom space or any, any play areas. We were able to extend and use those areas. So it really wasn't, it really was a great way for us to fully utilize our land. Which kind of comes back to again, you know, that sustainability effort that you are looking at this strategically as a way to be able to maximize your roof space. Most roof space is not used for anything.
- [12:59]
John Brucato
Right.
- [13:00]
Chris Wildman
But if you are going to use extra space by your classrooms, you want to make sure that that's not any impact on student programming.
- [13:08]
John Brucato
You mentioned you had some aging infrastructure. Did you have to worry about the age and condition of your roofs before you had to put solar panels on? Or were they all in pretty good shape and you could kind of just put those panels up, no problem.
- [13:18]
Chris Wildman
So we, we, we used the roofs which were in the best shape, which were in the, which would been repaired, replaced, renovated before. Know those, those, those solar arrays were put on. It's quite difficult to move them.
- [13:34]
John Brucato
Right.
- [13:34]
Chris Wildman
Several of you. That was quite, that was one of the reasons why several of those other buildings were not selected because they had aging roofs which were due to be repaired as part of a long range facility plan. And it just didn't make sense to, to put it on all seven buildings plus the size. I think one thing worth talking about is the size of your building actually matters. So if it's a small, a really small set of arrays, it just makes it less of a lucrative, less lucrative in terms of the SRECs in terms of those incentives, because we really want to make sure that you get 100% of the electricity coverage to be able to, number one, to offset your own electricity and number two, to make sure that you're covering your utility bills in those ashracs.
- [14:19]
John Brucato
Great. You've also focused on reducing paper use as another goal. I believe in your article you had aimed for 10% cuts. Color print down about 21.3%. It's pretty significant. What role did digital platforms like you'd mentioned, Google Classroom Play and other opportunities to maybe utilize technology rather than the traditional paper sources.
- [14:40]
Chris Wildman
So I still, I think that this is an area of our resource conservation committee initiatives and our greatest sustainability initiatives that is still very much a work in progress. And the reason I say that is because we didn't actually manage our 10%. We aimed for a 10% reduction, although it was a slight increase overall in terms of our total printing. But we did see, as you did mention, color printing did go down 21.3%. So again, this is a playbook. We took baseline data, we looked using our print management system to be able to identify what was being printed and at which building and when and where by who. So that took a little bit of time. And then we set our reduction targets. We saw reductions in some areas, we saw increases in others. So that's kind of where we're at today. The digital tools that you mentioned, so for example, Google Classroom Docs and Drive and all those things, we are going to try and push and basically try and remind those teachers, hey, if you don't need to print, you don't need to print. But as a school system, we also need to be very, very cognizant that we don't want printing to be reduced just because it's being reduced if there's a specific need for it from a student perspective. So it isn't about eliminating paper, really. It's about being intentional and reducing the waste with intentionality.
- [16:06]
John Brucato
Did you find that printing was more prevalent in elementary or secondary staff and students? Like, what was kind of the breakdown, if you can recall, like who, who was printing the most?
- [16:15]
Chris Wildman
So it was a little bit of a mixed bag. We had some buildings which were printing, some elementary buildings which were printing more than others, and we had other middle schools which were printing more than others as well. So it wasn't very, it wasn't very clear in the data that it was elementary versus middle school. Here's what we did, I think, determine that the standard of your curriculum resource is important in terms of looking at this. So if you have a curriculum resource for math and English language arts and any other ones that you have for science or social studies, if they require a lot of printing, it's going to be very hard for you to reduce printing in those classrooms.
- [16:55]
John Brucato
Sure.
- [16:55]
Chris Wildman
You have a lot of digital online publications and the ability for students to do as much as they can using their devices, whatever they may be. You might see a more of a reduction. So it really is about digging into the data and looking at almost a grade level versus building.
- [17:14]
John Brucato
Sure. Well, that's a really interesting point you make about the curriculum. So when you look at something like a reduction of paper use, are you now having to get the buy in from your directors or assistant superintendents of curriculum and other teaching staff to really prioritize a curriculum or a method of maybe teaching the curriculum that is less paper reliant?
- [17:35]
Chris Wildman
So definitely something that's been at the forefront of discussions in our most recent curriculum resource purchases. Okay, so when we are looking at these and you obviously know how expensive they are, they're not cheap. And the days of just purchasing a textbook and giving it to students just, they just, they don't exist anymore. Those days are gone. So we, what we're. What we try and do is try and make sure that the, we're supporting our teachers as best they can in terms of meeting the students where they are. So if there is very specific things which students need in terms of being able to print and have workbooks and things which are outside of the curriculum resource, that's obviously something that we don't want to curtail. But also we do want them to use as much of the tools which are available, which as you said, the digital tools in the classroom to make sure that there's that kind of blended classroom because we need our students to be prepared for future learning and all the other good things that we talk about. So it's really about a combination. It's really about meeting the students where they are, making sure that our teachers are supported in those endeavors.
- [18:45]
John Brucato
Well, I have to ask, has the initiative trickled down to the business office? Because I can tell you my business office loves paper, loves the tactile feel. It's tough to get them to move to any kind of digital platform. It's a slow and steady kind of effort, for sure.
- [19:01]
Chris Wildman
Yeah, it's. I mean, I would love to be purpose.
- [19:03]
John Brucato
Yeah.
- [19:04]
Chris Wildman
It's just difficult because in our world sometimes, you know, we, we have to, we have to have signatures and we have to have things. So yeah, I Would love to work in a world that had a fully archivable work system, that everything was electronic. I don't live in that world. We, we try and do as much as we can electronically to make sure that it's supporting all our internal controls and everything else as a leader of the business office. So yeah, it's really, that's another one as well. You know, the amount of printing that we do is much, much, much less obviously than what's happening in the buildings. But yeah, we definitely try and do that as much as we can.
- [19:43]
John Brucato
In your article you also mentioned using tools like lead checklists to kind of help you inform your decision making. How have these informed your capital improvements and budgeting decisions overall with these kind of publicly available tools?
- [19:56]
Chris Wildman
Yeah, so I think I mentioned that in the article about that one of our schools was an award winning school of several years ago. Really what this has been again this is another work in process. This is not something that I have mastered and the district has fully figured out yet. But what we're trying to do and will probably become more prevalent as I mentioned during strategic planning in the next year or two is to help guide our process and evaluate the process. So Lee checklists and arcscolar are just two of the tools that I mentioned in the article and they hopefully provide a framework for measuring performance. So just like with the two examples we've talked about, the three examples, I'm sorry, composting, have a baseline, figure out the improvement, rinse and repeat again with paper. You know, it's a little aside, it's been a little bit hit and miss. But we're trying to dig into the data and figure out there's a way. And then obviously the successes with solar, these tools are to help us prioritize the capital projects right there to help us ensure that facility upgrades are the right thing. So taking them one by one at a time. The lead checklist is, is an obvious one. If you are doing your construction, construction, the new construction is being done. Are you doing even a renovation and you're able to, to implement some of those standards. 99% of school architects will, will support that.
- [21:22]
John Brucato
Right.
- [21:22]
Chris Wildman
Because it's just best practice. The Arc Score Room is a little bit different because it aligns the efforts with promoting health, efficiency and kind of inspiring those learning environments. There's a framework to try and help you connect some of the things which are happening. So it's about, if you look on the website, it's arc gbci.org anybody who's listening, please take a Look at has lots and lots and lots of resources available for you to be able to help calibrate where your new best. Where your baseline is in your school system. And they have a thing that says load everything, scar everything, certify. So it's basically about again, starting with where you are today in your buildings, figuring out where you want to be and setting reasonable targets. So these are all just on a very high level, key performance indicators to enable us to hopefully continue the work and to figure out the next initiatives which we prioritize using those ways to determine a clear picture.
- [22:28]
John Brucato
Is arc scoro similar to lead, where when you are able to accomplish certain things, you get certified or is it more just kind of like a framework or guidelines that you.
- [22:37]
Chris Wildman
I'm not 100% certain about if it's certifiable that it may be, you know, larger school systems than mine, which had the more of a capacity to be able to look at this might. Might be a better fit to be able to kind of institutionalize this in terms of the lead checklists. You know, as I said, that help that is a directly integrating sustainability design standards, that one's more of an easy one.
- [23:01]
John Brucato
Right.
- [23:01]
Chris Wildman
The arc scorer was more of a subjective way of you to as a school system to score yourself and to really try and manage change and to. And to manage, evaluate progress and when.
- [23:15]
John Brucato
Using tools like these and if you know, becoming lead certified, is this, is this a heavy lift for you? Because I imagine that once you kind of go down this path, it would tough to. It would be tough not to do these things anymore. So do you worry about just your. Your capacity in terms of being able to manage all of this?
- [23:33]
Chris Wildman
I think that the communities where we work will determine what is most important. And if sustainability is something which is very important in your school system and it's important in your community and it's an important initiative with your board of education, it's going to have to become a cost to doing business for you.
- [23:53]
John Brucato
You right.
- [23:54]
Chris Wildman
There's not going to be a way that you can externalize those costs because it really is something that we need to all be thinking about. I think the sustainability task force alongside with the Resource Conservation Committee, both those two groups have really, really, really pushed hard to try and not think of these as extra, but to think of them as fully embedded in everything that we do every day.
- [24:21]
John Brucato
Right.
- [24:21]
Chris Wildman
And in trying to make learning opportunities for our students to try and do the best things for our communities. Because when the landfill is in the next town over and I now Know that there's hundreds of thousands of pounds less in the landfill in the town of. For me, that's real. That's a real thing that we've diverted and it's really important and it's a really great message. To be honest with you. It's a really great thing to talk about with the community. And our kids really like it. Students, like there's a. There's a lot of people who are very much in touch with this and want to be part of it so that we have a huge amount of support.
- [25:02]
John Brucato
Great. So those two groups you talked about a little bit earlier, I'd like to kind of revisit the Resource Conservation Committee and the Sustainability Task Force. Can you tell me that how did you form these groups and how do they shape decision making? Are they making recommendations to administrative staff, to the board to kind of pursue certain things? Tell me a little bit more about their, their function.
- [25:23]
Chris Wildman
So we started with the Resource Conservation Committee and that was a combination of teachers, administrators, like myself, the superintendent on it, also, also on the committee, our director of innovation who runs our technology department. I mentioned earlier that that is a key, key area. And it really was a group of people who care about sustainability. So it's not a committee where press ganging people and saying, hey, you have to be member. We want people who care about this. We wanted a mix of voices and we wanted to be able to come together to talk about energy waste and composting. And from that we have conversations about curriculum resources, not because we have educators in the room. So the Resource Conservation Committee group is really the group to vet ideas, to keep us aligned with those board policy goals and to make sure that we are keeping going with those, those initiatives. In parallel to the Resource Conservation Committee, the Sustainability Task Force is a board member led group. So that was outside stakeholders, it was members of other boards, boards of education. So we, our kids matriculate to a high school. So it was a board member of one of those, of a school system where our students go. It was the mayor, it was various other individuals, it was students and as well as it being administrators and teachers and people who just wanted to be on the task force as well. So it was a different group. This task force explored the big picture. So this is about policy level strategies to embed sustainability in the long term vision of the district. So they complement each other. The RCC is kind of doing the work and the sustainability is looking for pathways, I think is what they like to describe it as.
- [27:22]
John Brucato
Sure.
- [27:23]
Chris Wildman
So together the task force and The RCC represent a dual approach, I guess, which is operational action and community and firm strategy.
- [27:33]
John Brucato
Great. You've also referenced the circular economy to guide your work. What is the circular economy as you see it and how does that systems thinking model really translate to practical district initiatives?
- [27:45]
Chris Wildman
So I'm going to be 100% honest with you. This is not my area of expertise is the circular economy came out of the sustainability task force. So while sustainability is not currently a formal strategic plan in our district strategic plan plan, the work from the task force has created a strong foundation from that. So the circular model was something that, because I'm a member of both committees, is something that was talked about quite a lot at the sustainability taskbars and it was to remind us to think beyond one time use or linear systems. So there was lots and lots and lots of talks about the repairing furniture instead of replacing it, using reusable tools and choosing modular materials. You know, making sure that things that we purchase as part of a larger procurement policy, which is beyond the scope of the resource conservation committee, that they're just reusable. So we're either buying things which have already been recycled or we're buying something which can be recycled in the future and making sure that we're embedding a lot of that life cycle thought process in everything that we purchase. So that was a mindset to help reduce waste both at the beginning and the end of the life cycle and to really start having decisions about and conversations and further decisions that support what I call smart procurement. So really that smart procurement, if it's done well, it means that you can purchase things which are going to have a long life, are going to, number one, be a really great asset for your school system because you're not going to have to replace them in five years. They're going to be there for the next 15, 20, and then secondly, making sure that the asset management that goes with that supports that as well. So it's really about thinking from a different lens. But I said that this wasn't my area. This was brought to the committee, the Sustainability Task force, by that, by a board member.
- [29:47]
John Brucato
You know, when you say you prioritize using recycled materials and things that have maybe a longer useful life, has your procurement processes changed now to prioritize those kinds of things? If you're looking for goods and services, bids and RFPs, are you now specifying those in the scope and the requirements?
- [30:08]
Chris Wildman
Yes and no. I think that there is always going to be a cost component and following bid criteria and doing the best that we can. But I think when it comes to large purchases, I think we're trying our best. And I think it's a concerted effort from everybody to be able to do those things. I think the best answer I can give you in terms of investing in our buildings is making sure that we invest in things that we need to and not that we want to.
- [30:36]
John Brucato
Sure.
- [30:36]
Chris Wildman
Making sure that we don't have to just break down walls, we can keep the existing building envelope because it's just less of a carbon footprint to be able to do those things. And then really looking at upgrading what we have. Again, meeting the district, just like we do with our students, meeting the district where it is today, because I mentioned earlier that we do have some quite edgy infrastructure.
- [30:59]
John Brucato
Right.
- [30:59]
Chris Wildman
But making sure that we look at them as assets, not as liabilities, and making sure that when we do make those investments, we are buying things which will have a long life, will deliver on its goal, to be able to either cool our buildings, make sure they have fresh air, do all the things that in those large capital investments that we want to do, new roofs, building envelope pavements, all the things that we have to do, making sure that all those things are just done, number one, from the perspective that they're right on cost, because that's very important. Number two, making sure that they're done in a way that they're going to be last long time. Because I think if you invest in things that are going to last a long time, you're already checking that sustainability.
- [31:40]
John Brucato
Right? Right. So for school business officials that are listening to this and maybe inspired to start their own sustainability roadmap. Chris, where do they start? There's a lot that you guys are doing at your district, a lot that you've taken on, but where would you recommend someone even starting?
- [31:59]
Chris Wildman
Oh, I think. I think it's like there has to be a spark. I feel like there has to be something of getting a group of individuals together and just creating it. I think starting looking at your blood policy, I think looking at where you are, if you don't have a strategic planning goal around sustainability, that is not a reason to not do it. There has to be a reason for you to. For you to get together as a group and to be able to get everybody on board. I think engaging stakeholders is really important. I think communication is really important. And I also think just getting together and talking about these things and seeing where it goes. I mean, operationally, having a group of people together who can get a composting program initiative just get it going with it for all buildings within a year was quite amazing and I was actually amazed that it that happened and the amount of actual impact that we had on, on our landfill. So I think just getting, getting it started, getting groups of a group of individuals together and then I think getting students involved, I think that is super important because then they can see it. Not every student will have the ability to compost up home, but if they can compost their lunch, that's fantastic. If they can see a solar panel on the roof of their school when they walk in, that's fantastic. So it's, it also helps kind of build pride, you know, in your, in your community. And one of the things we didn't talk about, but we have a dashboard to be able to show our energy use, you know, what we've saved through these solar arrays and all the other good stuff. Tell the community about this. You know, use this as a way to, to build awareness about all the good things you're doing in a school system.
- [33:52]
John Brucato
Can you tell me a little bit more about that dashboard? That's, that's really interesting. So is this a publicly accessible dashboard that anyone who's interested in what you guys are doing can access or is it specific to just internal use? I'm really curious.
- [34:03]
Chris Wildman
You go to our website, we have a dashboard, we have a financial dashboard which kind of just shows a snapshot about where the district's at financially. And then we have another one which is called our sustainability dash bar and it just shows the elect the electricity that's being produced every day on those solar arrays. It's publicly available. Yeah, which is great. One of the things going back to the ARC scar and some of those things, if you have key performance indicators that are something that you want those to be on a dashboard, you want those to be available to the community. So this is a whole different rabbit hole to talk about. But energy dashboards AI all those good things which are, which are coming, which we hear all about all the time. That's the future to make sure that the community has this data at their fingertips when they want to find it.
- [34:48]
John Brucato
Yeah, yeah. What about any pitfalls to avoid? Is there anything specific to finance operations or any stakeholder buy in that you can let our listeners know not to do?
- [34:59]
Chris Wildman
I think, I don't assume everyone's on board.
- [35:04]
John Brucato
Just because you think it's a good idea doesn't mean everybody else.
- [35:06]
Chris Wildman
I mean to be totally honest with you. So not everyone thinks about all these things all the time. And some of the engagement Data that we got was quite on the, to be perfectly honest with you, was quite on the low side. When you ask questions from your staff and you get a low turnout, it means you can interpret that two ways. You can look at it as a data point that it was a really busy day and everyone was interested, or you can look at, as, you know, there's a different level of engagement. So I feel like the level of engagement is really, really, really important to get people involved. I also think as well about, I mean, I can just be totally honest with you about this one. We didn't meet our paper debt, our paper target. So making sure that you don't have a promise, you know, making sure that the, that you're, you have real smart goals which are measurable but also attainable, and be conservative, you know, don't say you're going to reduce your paper, reduce it by 50%. That's just not going to happen. Just be very, very honest and then have honest conversations with your staff and figure out ways how to move forward. Because it's really about incremental change. It's really about teaching, making sure that our students, when they leave us to go to the high school, that they have a mindset of sustainability. Because if, if they have that we've really done that job.
- [36:34]
John Brucato
Right. Right. Well said. So what do you, what excites you most about the future? You, you've been able to accomplish so much when it comes to sustainability. What, what does the future hold for, for you and your district?
- [36:46]
Chris Wildman
Oh, I think we're going to have to continue the initiatives. I think we're going to have to look at, obviously the composting is a major success.
- [36:54]
John Brucato
Yeah.
- [36:54]
Chris Wildman
One is we just got to make sure it continues. We have to make sure that we are continuing our endeavors and working with our teachers on the paper usage. We're going to continue to investigate the other buildings which don't have solar, and we're just going to keep making sure that the things that we purchase are the right things. So whether that is furniture, whether it's curriculum, whether it's curriculum resources, whether it's a new roof, just making sure that we're doing everything that we can using the best vendors that we can and trying to instill as much as those, all those different energy saving initiatives, programs are embedded in all that capital work. And then I think the final thing I would just say is just making sure that you periodically audit yourself and just take a step back and look at where you're at and then say, okay, is there something else that other school districts are doing? Because there are 851 school districts in Illinois. There's thousands of school districts in the United States. All of us are doing different things. All of us are doing great things, but we can all definitely learn from each other. So just making sure that we continue to listen to what's happening out there, what is becoming best practice, and making sure that our students, communities and staff are all involved in that.
- [38:15]
John Brucato
Well, Chris, thank you for sharing everything you're doing at your district regarding sustainability and joining me today on School Business Insider.
- [38:23]
Chris Wildman
Thank you.
- [38:25]
John Brucato
Thank you for tuning in to School Business Insider. Make sure to check back each week for your favorite topics on School Business.