As the Cardinal School District nears the beginning of the 2024-25 year, the former middle school building is waiting for a lighting upgrade. Through a $250,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Development’s Energy Efficiency Program for Ohio Communities, the district will begin installing LED lighting throughout the building in the next few weeks.
“As a district we are excited and it is another thing to upgrade our building,” Treasurer Terry Armstrong told The Weekly Villager on July 31. “It is a beautiful building. It is something to add to the building that did not have to come from district taxpayers that we were able to with a grant and something we would have done at some point but financially it would have been a while before we could have done it without this grant.”
According to Armstrong, the district is currently taking bids for the project but expects the installation to last up to take three months. He added that the costs of the project will not exceed the total amount of the grant.
“A lot of things you do at a school creates a legacy cost so if you add something your energy costs go up so if you have air conditioning, your energy costs will go up,” he noted. “This will actually be a legacy decrease cost and it is always a good thing if you can do that and not spend the district’s money doing it.”
With the high school already having LED lighting, Armstrong said the school district wanted to install LED lighting in the former middle school building for a long time but lacked the necessary funds to complete this project. Cardinal was one of three school districts that received the lighting grant along with the Miami Valley School District and the Mad River Local School District.
With the addition of LED lighting in the building, Armstrong said that the school district expects to save $17,262.00 annually in energy costs, which also amounts to an annual utility savings of 41.05%, and a five-year forecasted savings approximately $83,610.00. He noted that the district expects to use the entirety of the grant to fund the lighting project.
Armstrong credited the Village of Middlefield for writing a recommendation letter that the district used with its application.
“You had to get the support of your local community and they wrote a nice letter for us and we submitted that with our grant application and we were very fortunate to be on the short list of schools that got it,” he added.
The district delayed taking bids because of the other changes that occurred earlier in the summer, including the closing of Jordak Elementary School.
Due to low enrollment numbers, the school district decided to close Jordak Elementary school and move the classes to the building formerly known as the middle school. When the school year begins, the middle school building will hold grades K-6 and the high school will combine with the middle school, teaching grades 7-12. As preparations were made to transfer teachers to the new building, several rooms needed to be repurposed. With the closing of Jordak Elementary school, Armstrong acknowledged that the district expects to see its savings increase by having one less school building’s maintenance costs to worry about.
Armstrong said that despite the change in venue, the timing was purely coincidental in terms of Cardinal applying for the lighting grant.
“The merging of the buildings did not drive our decision,” he said. “It was having the available grant funds to do it, something that most districts have done; all of the new buildings are built with LED lighting. Really, getting the ability to pay for it with a grant is why we are doing it. I don’t think it would have mattered if we were moving kids into that building as part of the merger.”
In addition to the savings made by transitioning to LED lighting, Armstrong also said that having LED lighting would create a better overall atmosphere.
“I feel they are brighter,” he said. “I did not get any complaints about the existing lighting and doing an upgrade. With the opportunity do it without district funds, that was the gamechanger for us moving forward and doing it now.”
