Talawanda High School (THS), the Talwanda School District's newest building, will also be the district's greenest building.
"Our new high school will be a LEED-certified school," Holli Morrish, Talawanda's coordinator of community development, said. "We hope to achieve LEED gold status."
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification provides third party verification of environmentally-friendly measures as defined by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Gold level certification is the second-highest award for green school buildings. At this time, only one school building in Ohio has achieved gold certification and no other high school has reached that level, according to Thomas Klak, professor of geography at Miami University.
"There are many design features which make our new high school a green school," Morrish said.
Those design features include geothermal wells for heating and cooling and a conservation-conscious plumbing system. The building is a north-south facing building and the windows are designed to capture the best natural light as the sun moves throughout the day. A light-sensitive electrical system will provide only as much electric light as needed, Moorish said.
Klak is involved in the Erik Sustainability Initiative, an initiative to restore an ecological habitat on the non-built portion of the new high school land located south of Oxford near Indian Trace apartments.
The land restoration adds to the LEED points earned by the school.
"The school itself sits on about 50 acres of built land, including the building, parking lots and sports fields," Klak said. "There's about 100 acres of other land that will be used for agriculture and different types of naturalized habitats."
Plans are in place to restore some of the acreage, previously used as farmland, to sustain a prairie, forest and wetlands. The restoration process will involve the creation of the prairie, improved levies to control water levels, restoration of a stream corridor and removal of non-native plants, Klak said. The naturalized area will be used for ecology and other science-related classes. Part of the land will be used for agricultural education, with plans for a greenhouse that will be used by both the Butler Tech Future Farmers of America program and the Talawanda district, Klak said.
Community collaboration will play a key role in the use of the new high school land, according to Klak.
Enjoy what you're reading?
Signup for our newsletter
"It's going to be a place that the school district wants the community to use," he said.
According to Morrish, plans for the indoor and outdoor aspects of THS's LEED certification began two years ago with a community meeting that involved educators, officials, community members and architects from SHP Leading Designs, the architectural company building the new school.
"It was a really interesting experience for me," she said. "SHP helped assess the goals of the community with the new school."
Klak said the building of a greener school is in line with the community's interests.
"There was strong sentiment in Oxford to go for the gold level, which was higher than what most districts would (be) going for," Klak said.
By cutting reliance on non-sustainable energy, Klak said, the green school will cut long-term costs. He said the district chose the geothermal heating system over other sustainable systems because it was the most cost effective.
"It has the quickest payback," he said. "The architect said the combination of the new high school's energy saving initiatives actually reduces energy consumption by about half in comparison with the Bogan Elementary School, which was built in the early 2000s."
Klak said the Erik Sustainability Initiative has several opportunities for Miami students to get involved in plans for ecological renovation and recommends contacting THS teacher Jeff Winslow to get involved.
Read More
How one professor and her classes are preserving Oxford’s Black history
By Sean Scott | March 20, 2024Jazma Sutton, an assistant professor of history, teaches The Black Midwest (HST 350Q) and Black Women in America (HST 450D) classes. In both courses, she has students working with the Smith Library of Regional History and Miami’s archives to document and preserve Black history in Oxford.
Miami faculty members recount Freedom Summer in new documentary
By Luke Macy | February 25, 2022After seven years of work, “Training for Freedom,” a documentary highlighting Oxford’s involvement in the Freedom Summer of 1964, premiered on PBS Western Reserve on Valentine’s Day.
“Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic”: History in the making
By Alice Momany | August 29, 2021In March 2020, Miami University’s archives launched “Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic,” a collection focused on life during the COVID-19 pandemic.