Great Seneca Creek officially goes ‘green’

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Great Seneca Creek officially goes ‘green’

O’Malley tours school and touts environmentally friendly initiatives

by Melissa A. Chadwick | Staff Writer

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Jeffrey Porter⁄Special to the Gazette

Gov. Martin O’Malley tries out a ‘‘clicker” used to answer questions projected on a screen from a laptop during a visit with a kindergarten class at Great Seneca Creek Elementary last week.

Between viewing the motion-activated sinks and sloping ceilings to let in more light, Gov. Martin O’Malley paused Wednesday to recognize Great Seneca Creek Elementary School as the state’s first certified ‘‘green” public school.

Later this month, the school, which opened to students in August just off Mateny Road in Germantown, will receive its official certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

The school is currently certified ‘‘silver,” but the is appealing that level of certification for ‘‘gold” which is more stringent, said Caitlin Bennett, spokeswoman for the U.S. Green Building Council.

Great Seneca Creek is also the county school system’s pilot site for the cutting-edge educational technology.

O’Malley (D) toured the school with state Comptroller Peter Franchot, Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, County Executive Isiah Leggett and other county and state officials.

‘‘This gives you an appreciation for what’s possible,” O’Malley said.

O’Malley, who stopped to chat with students in the lunchroom, noted that the General Assembly approved legislation to create the Maryland Green Building Council, which would recommend and expand ‘‘green” construction in new state buildings. He is expected to sign the legislation into law on April 24.

Montgomery County required all new county buildings to be green in November.

‘‘Great Seneca Creek Elementary brings together our state’s shared commitment to improving public education and improving our environment at the same time,” O’Malley said.

Weast, who thanked O’Malley for the state’s $400 million school construction budget — $52.3 million of which will go to Montgomery County — said Great Seneca Creek is a model for future school building projects.

‘‘There’s this theory that it takes so many acres to build a school,” Weast said. ‘‘We’re building on sites where we can maintain the environment better. We’ve got to look at flexibility.”

The tour paused briefly in a kindergarten class taught by Jennifer Armstrong, who demonstrated the school’s interactive technology, wireless networks and digital projectors.

O’Malley sat cross-legged with students on a rainbow-colored carpet, while officials and press looked on. He used a high-tech clicker to register his answers to several environmentally themed questions geared to Armstrong’s kindergarten students.

But one of the answers in a multiple-choice question about what students at the school do to save the environment stumped O’Malley.

Just what, exactly, is a dual-flush toilet, he asked.

Students Brian Zimmermann and Brandon Cox collaborated on the answer: Users push one of two buttons — based on what’s in the bowl — and an appropriate amount of water is dispensed to empty the toilet.

Then it was O’Malley’s face that flushed.