By Darien Clary��

It’s a late afternoon in May, and the Texas heat settles over the city like a heavy blanket, taxing aging HVAC systems. Inside, students collaborate on projects, teachers guide discussions, and campuses work hard to maintain the comfortable learning environments as rising temperatures place growing demands on buildings and infrastructure. The Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD) is working to ensure these environmental factors do not limit a student’s potential. Through its bond programs, the district isn’t just building classrooms, it’s creating sustainable learning environments with clean air, efficient cooling, natural light, and shaded outdoor areas so students can stay focused and ready to thrive.��

Sustainability is a driving force behind Austin ISD’s mission to prepare every student with the knowledge and skills to thrive in college, career and life. The district’s schools sit at the center of Austin’s most pressing environmental challenges, including extreme heat, air quality, equitable access to green space and the responsible use of limited public resources. Austin ISD approaches sustainability as a shared responsibility — one that supports student learning, environmental stewardship and community well-being.��

Make Sustainability a Non-Negotiable��

Too often, sustainability is approached as a “nice-to-have” instead of a fundamental part of building performance, which can make features targets for cuts with tight budgets. A solution to this can be found in Austin ISD’s Educational Specifications (Ed Specs), a board-approved document defining what every modernized campus must be. Every major construction project under the 2017 and 2022 Bond Programs must pursue Austin Energy Green Building (AEGB) and/or LEED certification. Additionally, the Ed Specs mandate 100% LED lighting with daylight sensors, energy-efficient HVAC, water-efficient fixtures, solar-ready roofs, and outdoor learning environments. When board members approved the Ed Specs, they made sustainability non-negotiable.��

Let the Community Define Sustainability��

Green building standards set the bar for resource efficiency and building performance, but sustainability is ultimately about people. Austin ISD centers a simple question: sustainable for whom? By working with the community, the district ensures every student has access to healthy, high-performing and inspiring learning environments that work for them.��

To do this, Austin ISD convenes a Campus Architectural Team (CAT) composed of teachers, parents, students and community members for every modernization project. They are co-designers, and what they know about their community shapes decisions no energy model can account for: which outdoor spaces will actually be used for learning, how a building should feel to the people spending their days inside it and what community values can be reflected in the design.��

An example of this process is designed by Perkins&Will. From the beginning, the CAT brought together staff, students, families, and alumni of the original L.C. Anderson High School, a cornerstone of East Austin’s African American community until its closure in 1971. What emerged is more than a high-performing building. Historic materials were salvaged and re-integrated, spaces like the original cafetorium were reimagined for modern learning, and the story of L.C. Anderson lives on through galleries. Paired with daylighting, efficient systems and reduced water use, the result is a school that reflects environmental responsibility and sustains cultural continuity.��

What It Looks Like in Practice��

At , designed by PBK Architects and modernized as part of the 2017 Bond Program, every dollar saved on energy is a dollar that stays focused on students, inside the classroom. Govalle now uses less energy per square foot than 95% of schools in the nation, according to data collected by the . That performance is driven by high-efficiency HVAC, a well-insulated building envelope and LED lighting paired with daylighting sensors. Heritage trees were preserved to cool the schoolyard and also help mitigate heat-island effect. Enhanced ventilation, high-efficiency air filtration, and low-emitting materials support strong indoor air quality, ensuring that efficiency gains also translate into healthier spaces.����

Govalle’s results are not isolated. Across the district, Austin ISD has avoided $15.4 million in energy costs and $6.7 million in water and wastewater costs since 2017 through sustainable design and resource conservation.��

Darien Clary is the Director of Sustainability, Energy & Environment at Austin ISD.

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CCSU’s current campus was built back in 1921, and its boiler plant was commissioned in 1923. Until very recently, boilers that dated back to the 1950s and 1960s powered the steam-heating system serving the 294-acre campus. The last upgrade was in 1967. But the area being served has tripled since the boilers were installed – from 1 million square feet of assignable space to 3 million square feet – putting a severe strain on the heating system and related infrastructure. Each winter, repairs to the system disrupted campus life and cost between $75,000 and $80,000 per episode. In the summer, a lack of air conditioning made many buildings inhospitable. The few buildings with cooling were served by satellite rotary-screw chillers that were loud enough to disrupt classes and annoy nearby residents. And with yet another 1 million square feet of assignable space expected to be built within a decade, something had to be done.

“The global vision for this project was to upgrade all of the heating and cooling for the campus and to create a new distribution network,” explains Associate Chief Administrative Officer Dan Moran, the driving force behind the project. “We were spending a couple hundred thousand dollars a year just fixing and maintaining an aging system. As important as it was to replace that system, we also wanted to look past just fixing the utility system infrastructure. We saw this as an opportunity to position the university to grow, to optimize the campus so that we could attract the kind of students and faculty that could help define our future. So we went through the campus, opened it like it had a zipper, and redid the insides. Then we zipped it up and redid the outside. We looked at every piece of green space, water, power – everything. And we used this opportunity to prepare the campus for our future.”

Formal planning began in 1990, and by 1996 CCSU had a fully developed plan to replace the outdated and inadequate utility systems. In 1998, after carefully reviewing the university’s plan, the Connecticut state legislature appropriated $200 million over a 10-year period for campuswide improvements. The budget included $40 million for a new energy center and utility distribution system.

The new expandable energy center is both powerful and attractive. Anchoring the campus renovation and blending perfectly with campus architecture, the 30,600-square-foot brick energy center has enough space to accommodate the additional equipment that will be necessary to service future buildings, as projected in the school’s master plan. But beauty and power are not the energy center’s only virtues.

The system houses steam and electricity cogeneration equipment, as well as water chillers. CCSU chose this approach for two very practical reasons: reliability and economy. If a blackout or brownout should occur, the electricity generators can power essential functions and protect equipment against uneven loads. During peak periods – when purchased energy is most expensive – the university can “peak shave,” producing its own power until the cost of purchased power decreases. A study determined that this approach would achieve significant savings.

“On top of all that, the building is extremely attractive,” says Robert Austin of DMJM+Harris, the project manager. “It’s one of the prettiest central plants that I’ve ever seen.”

The energy center was just one segment of a larger project. Major landscaping enhancements took place and power lines went underground. All utilities, including water, sewer, gas, telecommunications and electrical systems were improved.

In addition to the energy center and landscaping improvements, a 2,000-foot-long utility tunnel was built to carry steam and chilled water distribution lines through the center of campus. Buried pipes connect each building to this main conduit. As DMJM+Harris had recommended, construction was handled in a single bid package, providing significant cost savings, single-point responsibility, greater construction flexibility and enhanced coordination.

“Start with a dream. Finish with a future.” That’s a great slogan, and it serves CCSU quite well. But it also serves as an apt description of this project. Beginning with a dream of updating the infrastructure, CCSU finished with a project that adroitly prepared the campus for its future.

Arthur Schurr is a New York-based freelance writer. He can be reached at bulaas@aol.com.

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