Page 26 - School Planning & Management, April 2017

HOW HEALTHY SCHOOLS SAVE MONEY
absent teacher or student.
Per Jeff May in his book, My Office
is Killing Me, “One indoor air quality professional estimates that the annual cost of an employee is about 100 times greater than the energy cost to keep a building heated, cooled and ventilated for that one person. If an employer saves an energy cost of $1 a day by reducing the ventilation in a building, and an employee who is paid $100 a day misses a day of work because of illness, the employer’s net loss is $99 (the salary is paid to the employee even if he or she is out sick).”
The Environmental Protection Agen- cy (EPA) cites increases in Average Daily Attendance (ADA) as a main benefit to schools with better indoor air quality: “The majority of a school’s operating budget is directly dependent on ADA, so even a small increase can significantly boost the operating budget.”
Evidence shows a clear association between IAQ and respiratory ills, in- cluding asthma. Per the CDC, asthma is a leading cause of school absenteeism.
Per the Connecticut Foundation for Environmentally Safe Schools: “Lock- port Township High School in Lock- port, Ill., reported a three percent in- crease in the average daily attendance after the first year of implementing an Indoor Air Quality Management Plan.”
“Schools in Syracuse, N.Y., docu- mented gains in attendance of 11.7 percent, which yielded added state funding of $2,512,250.00 the first year after using a cleaning for health re- gime. The school district’s use of high- efficiency filter backpack vacuuming, systematic disinfecting of desks and surfaces were among the measures used in the program.”
Per the EPA: “Evidence continues to mount demonstrating that indoor air
quality, or IAQ, directly impacts student academic performance and health.”
“In one study, students in class- rooms with higher outdoor air ventila- tion rates scored 14 to 15 percent higher on standardized test scores than children in classrooms with lower outdoor air ventilation rates.”
“Studies demonstrate that improved IAQ increases productivity and improves the performance of mental tasks, such as improved concentration and recall in both adults and children.”
>> William J. Fisk, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, estimated fiscal gains of better indoor air quality amounted to savings “of $6 to $14 billion from reduced respiratory disease; $2 to $4 billion from reduced allergies and asthma; $15 to $40 billion from reduced symptoms of sick building syndrome; and $20 to $200 billion from direct improvements in worker performance...” and that “potential financial benefits of improving indoor environments exceed costs by factors of 9 and 14.”
REDUCING INDOOR CHEMICAL EXPOSURE
While exposure to outdoor air pollution can make you sick, exposure to indoor pollution is often worse, as studies show we spend most of our time indoors. Wayne R. Ott, Depart- ment of Statistics, Stanford University, found that U.S. “per- sons ... spend only about two percent of their time outdoors, six percent of their time in transit, and 92 percent of their time indoors,” concluding: “We are basically an indoor species.”
In addition, classrooms have dense — no reference to intelligence — populations. Per C. Kenneth Tanner, writing for ASBO’s School Business Affairs: “Classroom density may be a more important planning consideration than size. The lower middle range for human social distance is seven feet — not met in most classrooms containing
20 to 25 students.”
Plus, each of the 20 to 26 people in a “dense” classroom
26 SCHOOL PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / APRIL 2017
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