StarkX Energy Edge Podcast

StarkX Energy Edge Podcast 003
Built Environment in K12 Schools
Hosts: Steve Smith – EVP Sales, Marketing &
Jill Szpylman – VP Marketing & Communications
Guests: Jeffrey Day – K-12 Strategy Expert
[Introduction] On this episode of the StarkX Energy Edge, we’re focusing on the built environment in K-12 education with Jeffrey Day, K-12 strategy leader.
[Steve Smith] Welcome to the StarkX Energy Edge, where today we’re exploring the future of the built environment in education. I’m your host, Steve Smith.
This is my co-host, Jill Spillman.
[Jill Szpylman] Hi.
[SS] Across the United States and especially throughout the Northeast, school districts are entering a critical moment of transformation.
Nearly half of all school buildings in America are more than 50 years old, and many are operating with outdated infrastructure, aging mechanical systems, and disconnected technologies that no longer support the needs of modern learning. At the same time, expectations for school facilities have never been higher. Communities are asking schools to provide safe, healthy, comfortable, energy-efficient environments that support student engagement, academic performance, and long-term sustainability.
[JS] These challenges are driving a new era of K-12 building modernization, one that goes far beyond renovation. Today’s districts are rethinking how schools are designed, powered, protected, and equipped for the future. So let’s explore the major trends shaping the K-12 transformation from energy infrastructure and smart building technology to protective systems, modern learning environments, and the funding strategies that make it all possible.
Let’s get started.
[SS] We’re here with Jeff Day, one of our K-12 strategic and solutions experts on the K-12 area. Jeff, welcome to the podcast.
[Jeff Day] Hey, thank you very much for having me today. I really appreciate you having me in.
[JS] As mentioned earlier, more than half of the school buildings in the United States are over 50 years old. With that kind of aging infrastructure, what kinds of challenges are school districts facing today?
[JD] Yeah, Jill, that’s a great question. And when you take a look at it, I always bring it back to what impact does that really have on the students and what does that really mean to the educational staff? The buildings, as you mentioned, were not originally built to deal with the problems that the schools are facing today, really, let’s face it. And what are those problems? What do we hear as feedback? So from our perspective, again, it’s about creating a healthy, safe learning environment.
And these buildings typically are not air conditioned. When you take a look at it from a COVID-19 perspective, the ventilation and filtration levels are certainly not at the levels that they needed for that whole experience. So today, the challenge is how do we bring those buildings up to date and how can we make the learning experience for students far better than it was yesterday?
[JS] So smart schools is a buzzword, right? That can hold many different meanings. Why do school districts need integrated technology and facility partners like us to help maintain and modernize those buildings?
[JD] That is also a great question. I think as we begin to take a look at what does it take to solve those problems that we articulated, many of the districts that we come in contact with, they have not only old, say, energy management systems and old equipment and electrical infrastructure, but they’re also disparate. Oftentimes, we may come across systems that each building may have a different control system on it.
And if you think about that in your own life, if you had to, say, have like three email inboxes or you had to have three of anything, it’s extremely difficult. And again, if you look at the challenges that these school districts are facing, they’ve got facilities directors who a lot of the great knowledge base is retiring and they’re bringing forward a number of people that obviously are still learning. And if you add to the complication of the mechanical systems, the pressures that are being put upon them, if you then make the tools that they use complicated too, it just adds to the problem.
So what we’ve seen as the right solution there is to, just as you mentioned, begin to consolidate those systems into a single system, a very powerful system that’s extremely well-supported and that we wanna make sure that any of the data that those systems produce is able to flow freely between other smart systems that the schools have invested in. We’ll talk a little bit more about that as we go.
[SS] You know, Jeff, one of the things we know in the built environment is energy costs are getting extreme, right?
[JD] Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
[SS] And it’s interesting is unlike a business or maybe even a hospital that’s run by a board and everything, you know, K to 12, their eye is on the students, their comfort, safety, all of that. But energy efficiency still can play a pivotal role. I’ve heard you talk about how schools can use energy efficiency to actually pay for critical capital projects in their district.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
[JD] Yeah, the team that I work with, we work with energy performance contracting or ESCO work is the acronym for it. And what we’re looking for there is to say what in this building is not as efficient as it should be. So oftentimes that’s lighting, converting to LED lights.
It’s the energy management system updates there. It’s mechanical equipment updates and also building envelope. Those are the big ones.
And what we can do is generate a project that’s very, very similar to a traditional capital project for a school district, but it has a twist. So by quantifying those energy savings and also cost avoidance savings that we can find things like in the future, you may have to update your equipment or you may have to update your energy management system. We can quantify all of that.
And again, it goes right to the state education department for approval. But we use those funds to really help a school district meet their goals. And sometimes those goals are, I would like to have my energy management system updated.
Sometimes it is, I have aged equipment that is failing me. And sometimes we can even help indirectly. So one of the things that we’ve done is actually helped school districts with air conditioning.
So you wouldn’t think of that traditionally as something that would be an energy efficient measure, right? You’re actually creating more energy usage. You know, it’s part of the state’s electrification effort, but you’re right. One of the things that school districts right now being faced with as really an unfunded mandate is to bring the climate control down or bringing the temperature down to either between 82 and 88 degrees.
And there’s certainly regulations around that the state has released recently. But the cost of adding air conditioning is enormous. As we talked about, as Jill mentioned, those buildings in many cases are old and they were never designed for that.
So, the mechanical updates that have to happen are enormous. So what we’ve been doing is really trying to make the school districts, what I’m going to say, air conditioning ready to the best of our ability. And that starts with saying, how do we take the electrical consumption down to its lowest possible rate so that as the school district does have to add electrical load, like for, say, air conditioning, that at the very least, they’re only adding infrastructure for what they need, not any more than that.
[JS] So, you know, you talk a lot about the different challenges that K-12 districts are facing. You know, energy efficiency is one. It’s a small part of it. It’s how we can maybe pay for some of these major capital investments. However, you know, security safety has to be high up on their list. So how have expectations around safety evolved over the years?
[JD] Yeah, that’s a great question. So it’s interesting, you know, kind of looking back on my career when we first got involved with security and safety systems with our team. It was interesting. In those early days, we’re going to talk like pre-Columbine.
That’s how far back we go with this whole thing. Security systems were really thought of as almost, well, like too much for a school district, you know, because schools, let’s face it, they’re designed to be an open environment, a friendly environment, open to the public. But as soon as those tragic events began occurring, you know, it was obviously now the time to secure those vulnerable places.
And where it began really was securing the perimeter. So I would say in the early days, it was all about making sure that you could control who entered the building. And then very rapidly, it became controlling an entryway for those people to come in and get vetted.
Because again, those older buildings that we talked about, many of them did not have a logical place for people to even come in. You know, it was just, if there was a doorway, people were flooding in. So, step one of that whole thing was securing the perimeter and having a logical place to bring people in.
So, you’ve seen a lot of effort around that over the last few years. But the evolution seems to be, number one, making the building locked all the time. It was not that long ago that we even were scheduling, you know, when the buses came, you’d unlock the doors.
And, you know, after hours, the doors would unlock. You know, really at this point, for the most part, the buildings are secured and people are buzzed through, if you will, to be vetted. What we’ve seen happening, though, is that there’s been a lot more work of late on the interior of the building.
And all of the research that we’ve read is that no one in one of these tragic, tragic situations has ever been hurt behind a locked door. So the real effort is to get behind a locked door. And one other thing that we’ve talked about amongst our group is that when someone is faced with a real challenge, well, maybe put it this way, when someone is faced with a terrible threat, your fine motor skills leave you.
That’s really the issue. So if ever there’s a situation where your lockdown solution or your ability to get behind a locked door is challenged because, you know, you are in a, I’m going to say, a degraded mode, it’s just natural, it’s human, right? We have to have the systems be very simple and be very reliable. So what we’ve really focused on is A, making it so that the primary initiation for lockdown is very simple.
It’s lift a cover, press a button, and then the automated systems take over from there. What we’ve also found is, again, that with that concept of getting behind a locked door and having that really be the best approach. We’ve started to really do projects that are heavily around interior card access.
So, we’re doing a lot of school districts now where the classroom doors are actually access controlled. And it does a lot of great things. Number one, it makes sure that in the event of an emergency, we can make sure those doors are locked and people can get safe.
But there’s also added benefits outside of the emergency side. Like, for example, it eliminates that whole situation with a master key getting loose and who can have access to
what key. So, there’s, what you find is that there’s auxiliary benefits that are real important too for just the day-to-day operation of the school.
But, and that’s on the access control side and the lockdown side. What we’ve seen on the video surveillance side is that, again, in the early days, it was very much exterior of the building, especially in elementary schools. It was about making sure a child doesn’t, you know, get lost or something.
And in the high schools and middle schools is all about really interior focus because in those schools, you had situations where there might be a fight or there might be a medical emergency or something like that. What we’re seeing now is that the cameras in particular are, you can’t get enough cameras, it seems like. And, you know, you’re on video for the moment you enter the parking lot to the moment you exit the parking lot, really.
And that’s a good thing because really that is a great deterrent for problems. And the schools really use that not only to, you know, make sure that their students are safe, but we’ve also found that it’s helped them a lot with their insurance and all that. If there’s a slip and fall issue or something, you know, that it’s managed correctly.
[JS] So what I really like about what you’re saying is, yes, you’re there to prevent the major catastrophic events that we hope never happen. But really these tools and these technologies are really meant to help with everyday activities too, right? You mentioned slip and fall, you mentioned medical emergencies. You know, the other day, my son, I got a notification on my phone that the school was in lockdown because of a medical emergency.
So, these types of notifications go beyond, you know, the unthinkable.
[JD] It’s true. It’s true. And, you know, and honestly, that’s a wonderful observation because, you know, one of the other pieces of the puzzle, especially with the lockdown, has to do with the enunciation of that, right? So, one of the other big pieces is, can we, you know, how do we tie into a public address system and digital signage and all of that?
And to your point, one of the wonderful things about that I found is that if we do use the public address system for things like bell schedule and announcements, but we also use it for a critical event like lockdown, you’re using it all the time, just like you mentioned. They’re wonderful active systems that get exercised multiple times every day. So, you have a high degree of confidence that they will work when they need to work on the worst day.
[SS] They should become part of the day-to-day at the school. Absolutely.
[JD] Absolutely.
[SS] Yeah, but playing that critical role.
[JD] Yeah, 100%.
[SS] Jeff, great description of how the schools are using technology. How are districts using this technology, such as video analytics or integrated communication systems to enhance the situational awareness and just overall awareness within the environment?
[JD] Yeah, that’s a great topic. Obviously, the rise of analytics, we see it in our own life.
It’s become very, very approachable for all of us. And the same is true with, certainly on video. That’s one of the places you see it happening very rapidly.
And it wasn’t that long ago that we had kind of basic analytics, things like, did a vehicle go the wrong way? Or did a person enter a playground that shouldn’t? They were kind of very rudimentary. And quite frankly, in those early days, even though the systems had them, they weren’t used that much. And the reason was, is that it was difficult to set them up or to calibrate them and that sort of thing.
So, although they existed, I felt like it was still kind of early in the life cycle for analytics. What you’re starting to see now is that with the rise of AI and the rest, those analytics are now just sort of happening automatically. So, it’s finally gotten, I think, past that early adoptions phase to where it’s really starting to get some great value.
And some of the systems that we’ve been involved with, they’re actually really doing some creative things with it. So, for example, we now can understand if it’s a school bus and what school the school bus is with and what street did it turn on. You can do all kinds of incredible things and you can start to ask the system things like, show me all students who are using their phones in the hallway. Because right now that’s an issue, right? I can’t imagine being poor kids in high school. I feel bad for them right now. Yeah, yeah.
But-
[JS] They’re not supposed to have them.
[JD] I know they’re not supposed to have them. Yeah. Or we even challenged it a little bit to say, show me all students who are vaping. And now it’s not perfect. Once in a while you get someone who might’ve been bringing something to their mouth like a candy bar or something that kind of looks like a vape pen.
So, it’s not perfect. But it certainly goes a long way to eliminate the time that’s necessary for searching through your video. Because again, earlier we talked about the rise in the number of cameras, so now there’s a massive amount of data coming at you. And the challenge for the school district and the professionals who are using it is how do you pair through that data rapidly to get exactly what you need very, very quickly. And that’s really what the analytics are there to do.
And there’s another caveat that goes along with at least K through 12 in New York State. And that is that we cannot use the facial recognition feature. That’s not legal and appropriate, which is fine. But we can do things they call pattern matching. So we can say, show me all people who are wearing a black shirt and maybe khaki pants or something that were outside walking in this area and circle of zone. And what it does is it rapidly takes you to that finding.
[SS] Yeah, so rather than the investigation requiring or any type of research all hours and hours, the analytics really helps.
[JD] Yeah, a hundred percent.
[SS] We talk about that a lot with other areas of our business and the built environment too.
So, it’s interesting to see how it plays there. So, one of the other things we talk about and have talked about in other episodes of the podcast is integrating all this technology, right? So, when it comes to security and protective systems, why is it important to, and why are school districts seeing the benefit of integrating the technology rather than it operating standalone?
[JD] Yeah, that’s a great point. And I think, and that’s a tough one because you invest as a district, you invest in all these technology systems.
And oftentimes those come across multiple capital projects or multiple smart bond projects or pick your funding mechanism. The point of the matter is, is that they’re coming at the district’s disparate. It’s what they can afford at the time.
And what you really would love to have is to extract the greatest value out of all that data that these systems are generating, right? And then you also have to balance, you want them to be very, very reliable once it’s all done. So you have to, I think, start with a great roadmap that talks about what systems am I gonna choose and how are we gonna tie these together in a reliable way? And really, quite frankly, you’re talking about with security anyway, you’re talking about, I hate to say it, the lives of children and the lives of teachers and administrators. This is serious stuff.
So what you can’t get tempted into is a bunch of disparate systems that have, what I’m gonna say, not ruggedized connection points that are vulnerable to say if one system gets upgraded to a firmware version and it’s not compatible now with the other system, you could find yourself in a position to where two data systems now don’t talk on the most important day when they need to. So what we’ve really promoted is the idea that you need to have an integrator that understands all these different systems or even better yet, if you can get them under one integrated platform, better still, you know? And so what we’ve tried to do is to say, okay, for the core functionality and by the core functionality in security systems, I’m talking lockdown. That’s the one that has the biggest life safety piece around it.
We wanna make sure that that component is as ruggedized as we can come up with. So our team came up with a concept of saying, we’re gonna create basically a panel or a nucleus in every single building that is responsible for the physical lockdown button and the calling of the authorities. And that’s gonna be super ruggedized.
And then what we’re gonna do is within that environment, we’re gonna create an ability for everything to flow in and out of that panel or that nucleus. So the ability to have the announcement go over the PA system, the ability to have the doors locked, you know, the ability for digital signage to trigger, blue lights to trigger. And what we did is we tried to create it, again, an open environment.
So you do have the ability over time to take advantage of the best-in-class systems as they evolve and become available, but yet keep it in a construct that’s safe and reliable.
[JS] That’s great. What an exciting topic today, right? I mean, it’s across the country, and we focus today on New York state, but school districts across the country are facing this pivotal moment, you know, aging infrastructure, rising safety expectations, evolving learning models. They’re all converging and reshaping how we look at education.
Modernizing school buildings is no longer just about updating equipment or, you know, renovating aging infrastructures. It’s about creating environments that support student success, number one. It’s protecting our communities, and it’s really operating efficiently, you know, and when we can do that, we can adapt to the needs of the future.
So, thanks for listening in, and we’ll catch you on the next episode. Thanks, Jeff, for joining us today.
[JD] Great seeing you guys. Great, thanks.
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