Manassas Park Elementary goes green

Everything at the new Manassas Park Elementary School — from a 75,000-gallon cistern that collects rainwater to natural lighting to the non-toxic adhesive used to glue down floor tiles — is designed to be environmentally friendly.

The cistern collects rain water to be used for irrigation and for toilets. Light tubes leading from the roof to classrooms make use of natural lighting.

“Every drop of water that falls on this campus doesn’t go into the Chesapeake Bay. It goes in a big cistern and we pump it back up and use it,” said Manassas Park Schools Superintendent Thomas DeBolt. “On a sunny day, we don’t even need the lights.”

The new school, scheduled to open April 24, holds a gold “LEED” or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, meaning the building meets high environmental standards.
Engineers estimate the building it will use 50 percent less energy than a standard building of similar size.

The flooring at the school’s entrances are made of recycled airplane tires and a terrace playground on the second floor is made of shredded auto tires bonded together with a non-toxic adhesive, DeBolt said.

Green lights on the thermostats let people inside the building know that the temperature outside is perfect for open windows, and motion sensors turn classroom lights on and off automatically.

A geothermal heating and cooling system of 220 underground wells beneath a 5-acre playfield maintains a water temperature of about 55 degrees.

Water at 55 degrees is optimal for heating and cooling.

“We’re bringing water in at the perfect temperature to make it warm or cold,” DeBolt said. “It’s the most practical and least expensive way to heat and cool a building.”

LEED certification is not an easy thing to achieve, Debolt said. Architects and engineers have to build with the certification in mind.

“You’ve got to design it with certain wholesome materials, a lot of recycled stuff and the things you engineer into it ... like geo-thermal cooling,” DeBolt said.

The roughly $33 million it cost to build the school was comparable to what it would cost to build a conventional building of similar size, DeBolt said.

“We think — on this building — it was a wash,” DeBolt said.

Large picture windows overlook the forested Camp Carondelet, a Civil War encampment site for a Louisiana regiment.

Hallway seating at the windows and wireless access throughout the school will allow students to learn in places other than the classroom.

Landscaping on the school grounds with mosses, slow-growing grasses and native plants will echo the flora of the camp.

Inside the building, the hallways are randomly lined with planks of cherry, ash, maple, red oak and white oak to mimic the native, hardwood trees of Northern Virginia.

Some of the polished concrete flooring is stained with silhouettes of leaves from the native trees along with the tracks of raccoons, turkeys, deer other animals native to the commonwealth.
The interior accents are designed to raise environmental awareness, DeBolt said.

“What we’re teaching the kids is that we’re all part of this big thing called earth and we’ve got to take care of the earth,” DeBolt said. “We’re trying to connect the people on the inside with the outside. You get the feeling that this is a place that making you sensitive to nature.”

The school consists of three connected “houses” to hold 825 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders, DeBolt said.

Pupils are divided between the three-story houses with 18 teachers in each. “It’s like three schools in this big school,” DeBolt said.

The design allows parents to get to know the teachers better, DeBolt said.

“You don’t want a kid or a family to feel like they’re going to a university,” he said.

Every classroom in the school will be named after a native Virginia plant or animal.

Common areas in the school include a high-school sized basketball court and a stage that can seat 220 young musicians.

“Everyone in this school is in the band. Everyone learns to play a musical instrument. Everyone gets a musical instrument,” DeBolt said.

Students, teachers and staff from the Manassas Park school system will help with the move into the new school April 24.

DeBolt said they’ll station 500 people at the old Manassas Park Elementary School on Tremont Street and another 500 at the new school across town on Brandon Street.

The group at the old school will load buses with school stuff and the group at the new school will unload them, DeBolt said.

The all-day endeavor is a money-saving effort. “There’s no point in paying $40,000 for a moving company,” DeBolt said.

Manassas Bureau Chief Keith Walker can be reached at 703-369-6751.