“There is a nationwide effort, not only in Arizona, to build or retrofit schools to be more energy efficient,” Morton said.

Fifty percent of school buildings in this country need renovation, with 70 percent built before 1970, according to the Council of Educational Facility Planners International. The 118,000 public and private K-12 schools in the nation are spending 25 to 30 percent more than they need to on annual energy costs, about $6 billion a year.

That money could be used to hire 30,000 new teachers or purchase 40 million new textbooks each year.

The second highest cost of a school, outside of salaries, is energy. “And in Arizona, with our extreme heat, and the factor that Lela Alston is a year round school, our baseline had to be higher than the standards,” Morton continued.

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