A YES Vote for Portland Schools is a Vote for a Cleaner Environment

With ballots arriving this past weekend I want to encourage all OLCV members and Portland residents who care about the environment to vote YES for Portland Schools. I especially encourage you to vote yes on 26-121, the new school facilities bond measure.

While we continue to fight for passage of HB 2960 in the Oregon legislature, which will upgrade the quality and energy efficiency of public schools across Oregon, Portland residents can take matters in their own hands and vote YES for Portland schools.

A yes vote is a vote for cleaner air, lower greenhouse gas emissions and healthier kids.

To fully grasp how out of date our public school heating systems are you really need to check out this video:

These world war II era boilers use 3000 gallons of oil every ten days! I’ll let you do the math for a full school year. Measure 26-121 will finally be replace these out of date boilers with cleaner natural gas heating systems.

Making matters worse, Portland schools still use old heating radiator units that sit directly underneath single paned windows. These windows are so leaky that they leave some areas of the school buildings so hot that people wear tank tops and keep windows open, even during the winter. At the same time, other rooms in the same buildings are so cold that people need to wear coats.

This inefficiency drives up energy bills, increases the cost of running our schools and increases greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Yes for Schools campaign, Portland built one new school in the last 15 years - Rosa Parks elementary – and it was so much more energy efficient than the school it replaced that it cut the energy bill in half! Measure 26-121 will replace these old leaky windows with modern energy efficient windows.

Finally, studies have shown that energy efficient schools greatly improve student performance. It shouldn't come as any surprise that our kids achieve more at school when they have more consistent temperatures, improved ventilation and indoor air quality.

For these reasons, I hope Portlanders will remember to return their ballots and vote yes for Portland schools. A yes vote is vote for a healthier, cleaner Portland.