The Knoxville School Board seemed to indicate at their meeting Monday night that they were changing their plans on solar energy.
District 202 Superintendent Steve Wilder presented a cost analysis of what bonding for the purchase and installation of both artificial turf and solar panels would do to the tax rate.
Every school district in the area that has pursued solar panels has gone the route of a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), which sees solar panels installed on school grounds at no cost to the district and a reduced kilowatt per hour rate is paid to the solar panel company.
“If we know tonight that’s great. If we want to wait on it a little bit longer and come back to it on the 11th at the very latest [or] at the latest the February board meeting. We can do that but I would say at that time we really need to know for sure so we can either move forward with the design or shift gears and go back to the firms or any other firms for a PPA. ”
School board members indicated that because of the high cost to enter into the solar energy game, they were more inclined to enter a PPA despite the district seeing more utility savings in owning the panels.
If the district was to pursue both solar panels and artificial turf the estimates were the district pursing a bond somewhere between 3 and 5 million dollars, depending on the size of the solar array.
The District 202 board also approved the school calendar for the 2020/2021 school year.
Superintendent Steve Wilder presented the calendar committee’s work to the board which would see students entering the classrooms for the first time on August 19th and a final day is May 25th.
Wilder also presented the board with a possible alteration to the calendar which the board will mull over for the next month and consider at the February board meeting.
“The only thing different are planned one-hour late starts for faculty meetings, department meetings, grade level meetings on almost every first Friday of the month.”
Wilder said that because the one-hour late start may put a strain on parents, the district could provide childcare. Wilder suggested that some student groups could provide that as part of their services to the community.
“So one of the things that we would do, if the board is open to that, is seeing if we can fill schedules with groups or even employees to watch kids for that hour so that they’re there. Parents can drop them off at the regular time but staff still has some time to work.”
Wilder also said that the Knox County YMCA, which has a Knoxville location on school grounds, could provide that service.
