Prairie Trails School: A Model of Sustainability
By Lyndl Schuster and Ron RichardsonAs communities everywhere adopt strategies to create a more sustainable world, local school districts have an important role to play in making lasting systemic change.
For more than a decade, River Trails SD 26 (RTSD) has embraced this challenge on multiple fronts: through its approach to teaching and learning; through its facilities; and through its engagement with the larger community. RTSD is committed to leading the way in promoting environmental sustainability within its community by inspiring students and staff to protect the environment and be responsible global citizens. Its vision includes these goals:
- Empower students and the community to understand their natural world and their impact on it.
- Provide opportunities for students to make connections between the science they learn and the science they experience in their natural environment.
- Create opportunities for the community and school to understand how people, energy, and the environment are dynamically interrelated.
- Promote the health and well-being of students, staff, and community.
- Instill a sense of respect and ownership of one’s environment that fosters advocacy and activism.
A Net-Zero School
RTSD’s latest and most ambitious achievement is the opening of Prairie Trails School, a facility for its youngest learners that embodies the district’s wholistic commitment to sustainability. When RTSD needed a dedicated school for its growing enrollment of PK and Kindergarten students, district leaders decided to repurpose an outmoded 1960s-era facility that it had been privately leasing.
Rather than commissioning a conventional renovation, the district decided to go “all-in” and create a school that would be a model of sustainable design, providing a healthy indoor/outdoor learning environment for children as well as meaningful lessons for the whole community. A key decision was to make Prairie Trails a net-zero energy facility meaning that the building would use a total amount of energy annually that is equal to or less than the renewable energy created on-site.
Today, Prairie Trails School, which opened in the Fall of 2022, is Mount Prospect’s first net-zero energy facility. It’s also the nation’s first net-zero energy renovated school that meets the PHIUS+ Source Zero standard for using 40-60% less energy than conventional buildings.
The renovation of Prairie Trails, led by FGM Architects, incorporated state-of-the-art sustainable ideas, materials, and technologies. It focused on creating a building that supports the health and well-being of students and staff and is both energy efficient and eco-friendly.
The central conviction that informed the transformation of Prairie Trails School is that providing a healthy learning environment is as important as a school’s curriculum. Key components of this include acoustics, ventilation and thermal comfort, and healthy outdoor learning.
Acoustics
Ensuring appropriate noise levels and listening conditions in schools is essential to supporting teachers’ ability to deliver instruction effectively so that students can clearly and easily hear and understand what is being said. Children under age 15 are more sensitive to difficult listening conditions because they are still developing mature language skills, and compared with adults, children have more difficulty with complex listening tasks.
After Prairie Trails School opened, the district commissioned an acoustic study to determine how the new VRF system performed and found that the old unit ventilator system was four times louder than the new VRF system at the school.
Ventilation and Thermal Comfort
A variety of mechanical systems were analyzed in terms of cost, student and staff health, and energy efficiency. Improving Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) can positively affect cognitive function outcomes, such as decision-making, attention, concentration, and memory. The term IEQ encompasses a wider range of factors, including contaminants found in air, dust, and water. Adverse effects have been reported for elevated CO2 levels in classrooms, including increased student absence. Lower ventilation rates have been linked to more missed school days caused by respiratory infections.
Healthy Outdoor Learning
For children, the playground is often their favorite place at school. It’s also a vital space for meaningful learning as well as social/emotional development. RTSD commissioned Terra Engineers and Natural Playgrounds to create a natural playground that promotes cognitive, emotional, and physical growth while supporting the school’s integrated curriculum. For example, the kindergarten curriculum includes important STEAM units. On the playground, students learn about plants, animals, weather, and how it all impacts the world.
Activity spaces on the natural playground include a gazebo and adjacent amphitheater seating; raised garden beds, a maze, a pollinator garden and benches scattered along the edges of the play area. Undulating earth mounds provide opportunities for climbing, rolling, and exploring different heights. Other features such as climbing walls, stepping challenges, slides, and caves are built into the topography, helping children build skills in unexpected ways.
A variety of sensory experiences are also on hand, such as a mud kitchen and sand pit (touch); plants and shrubs (smell): musical instruments (hearing); and varied textured ground surfaces (sight). Prairie Trails’ natural playground was built using the earth that was displaced for stormwater detention and includes equipment made up of natural materials.
Water Usage
The difference between this building’s water usage in 2009 (before its transformation) and 2022 is stark. In 2009, Prairie Trails’ monthly water usage was approximately 705 gallons per occupant with an occupancy of 175 people. In 2022, monthly water usage was approximately five gallons per occupant with an occupancy of 225 people. The reasons for this significant reduction in water consumption? The installation of low-flow plumbing fixtures and the removal of the hot water boiler system.
Community Impact
An important goal in the creation of Prairie Trails School was to have a positive impact on the larger community, including students in its other schools. Because today’s children will feel the future consequences of climate change, they need to learn and understand how innovative sustainability strategies — such as those implemented at Prairie Trails School — can help them develop environmentally sound life habits and spaces.
While Prairie Trails School serves PK and Kindergarten students, it also acts as a learning hub for the district’s older students. The school features interactive displays to teach students about the building’s features. One display shows the layers of insulation the building utilizes, while another showcases the efficiencies of the VRF system as opposed to the old boilers and unit ventilators. As part of the middle school curriculum on energy usage, the environment, and sustainability students take a field trip to Prairie Trails and learn about the building’s features. Students apply this knowledge when designing their own energy-efficient homes as an end-of-trimester project.
Costs and Savings
Construction costs for the transformation of Prairie Trails School were $10.7 million. To offset costs, RTSD received a $2 million grant from the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation as part of its Net Zero Energy Building program and financed the rest through its capital budget. The return on RTSD’s investment will be realized over the long term. District leaders estimate that $32,000 in gas and electricity costs will be saved annually from its new electric variable refrigerant flow (VRF) system with heat recovery and solar rooftop panels.
RTSD has energy dashboards on its district website that provide real-time data on the savings resulting from the energy efficiency of Prairie Trails School. In addition to daily, monthly, and lifetime metrics on energy system performance, the environmental savings to date (as of late January 2023) include 424,000 pounds of CO2 emissions — the equivalent of planting 3,203 trees.
A Community Achievement
River Trails SD 26 has received awards and recognition for its pioneering investment in Prairie Trails School. In 2021, Prairie Trails School received the U.S. Department of Energy 2021 Building Envelope Campaign Award and was recognized by the U.S. Department of Energy for its participation in the “Better Buildings” initiative. Prairie Trails Schools also received the TRANE Reducing the Energy Intensity of the World Award, and the 2022 Merit Award from the Illinois Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ILASLA) for its natural playground.
Prairie Trails School is an achievement shared by district leadership, including its Board of Education. As Frank Fiarito, current board member and former board president, says, “Empowering students to be stewards to their environment…is one of our pathways to life-ready students; what better way to demonstrate this than renovating a building to have net-zero energy consumption.”
At present, RTSD is applying similar carbon reduction and energy savings strategies to two other schools in the district. District leaders believe that energy-efficient school design will be common in the future.
Meanwhile, Prairie Trails School will continue its mission of preparing PK and Kindergarten students for school success and a lifelong love of learning. This includes ongoing education for children, teachers, staff, families, and the larger community about how one school can contribute to sustainability for future generations.
Lyndl Schuster, Ed.D., is the Assistant Superintendent for Business Services/ CSBO for River Trails School District. Ron Richardson is a Vice President and Director of the PK-12 Practice for FGM Architects. Resources associated with this article can be accessed can be accessed here.