TRAVERSE CITY — After a push to consider more sustainable energy options for Central Grade School, the district recommends sticking with natural gas.
The Traverse City Area Public Schools Board of Education voted unanimously Monday to approve administration’s recommendations to install building-wide air conditioning and install boilers and other equipment used across the district in Central Grade School after an energy evaluation determined more sustainable systems were more expensive or not possible.
Three board members, Josey Ballenger, Beth Pack and Ty Schmidt, were not in attendance.
Christine Thomas-Hill, assistant superintendent of finance and operations, said that the board asked administration to explore “all options” for providing electrical heat to the school. The district has made energy efficiency and sustainability a focus in recent years and the Sustainability Committee’s 1.0 Action Plan for 2026 will be discussed at the Feb. 9 meeting.
Board members voted for the recommendations after learning that the school site wasn’t large enough for geothermal and a hybrid system is currently more expensive.
“I think the board in general has a strong desire to continue exploring energy efficiency in our district, including throughout the process of the Central Grade reconstruction,” President Scott Newman-Bale said.
Prior to the vote, Thomas-Hill said the timeline for the Central Grade School project was at a “critical spot” and said they needed a decision on the recommendation to move forward, “otherwise, we won’t be able to fit it on time and it will delay construction.”
Newman-Bale said it “wasn’t ideal” to have only four of the seven board members present to discuss the issue but “we have to start somewhere.”
The $55 million Central Grade School renovations currently include other upgrades that will make the building more efficient.
The plans are expected to make the exterior of the building more energy efficient by reducing the perimeter by 15 percent while reducing the square footage by about 10,000 square feet (from 139,590 to 129,485 square feet). Around 28 percent of the exterior walls will be replaced to make them “super insulated,” according to John Dancer, principal architect and vice president at Cornerstone Architects, said.
The renovation also includes plans to replace the roof system and install new energy efficient windows on the historic facade.
Energy evaluation
Diekema Hamann Architecture + Engineering of Grand Rapids handled the energy evaluation to explore electrification options, Thomas-Hill said. Air conditioning was recommended to help mitigate high temperatures and humidity on the third floor and in the Lars Hockstad Auditorium.
Thomas-Hill said the administration did look at the cost of limiting the floors with air conditioning but “it didn’t make sense to just do a couple of floors.”
“We obviously can control exactly what we’re using and when. And we have a lot of zones that are identified in the project,” she said.
The firm estimates the yearly costs to run between $20,000 and $40,000.
The administration recommended installing boilers and equipment similar to the rest of the district for consistency purposes and to avoid additional general fund expenditures after a lengthy investigation into other options.
The firm looked at geothermal and determined it would cost around $1 million and require around 100 standard boreholes with 20-foot spacing around the property, which the site can’t accommodate.
Dancer said he spoke to other experts but determined the school wasn’t a good site for geothermal, “and there honestly just isn’t enough physical space.”
A heat pump chiller system was also considered, a hybrid heating/cooling system, that was recommended by Trane. It has two sets of pipes that allow the system to switch from providing cold water to hot water for climate control.
There would be additional costs for the pipe system and cost around an additional $225,000.
“So, at a $225,000 premium, that’s a 112-year payback on equipment that will likely only last 30 to 40,” Thomas-Hill said.
The heat pumps get less efficient as the temperature drops and “at some point we’ll have to call on … the boilers to run because it will get to a temperature where it simply can’t keep up,” Thomas-Hill said.
To make the hybrid system cheaper than the current natural gas boiler system one of two things would need to happen: Either the electrical rate would need to fall below 4.3 cents per kilowatt (it is currently around 7.4 cents per kilowatt) or the natural gas rate would need to go up to 68 cents per therm, up from about 40 cents, Gabe Alvey, vice president education and life sciences at Diekema Hamann Architecture + Engineering, said.
His firm estimated that the district would pay around $25,000 using boiler heat per year with the current rate of $4.1 per one thousand cubic feet of natural gas (the state average is $11.1 per one thousand cubic feet).
If the gas rate matches the state average, switching to electric above 50 degree temperatures could save $2,000 a year, Alvey said. And switching between the two utilities to optimize the cost savings would require a trained staff member to monitor the weather and run the calculations, he said.
“The only thing we’ve evaluated here right now is cost savings. There’s also an environmental impact savings that we ought to at least consider because that’s really why we’ve been pushed towards electrification of the system,” Trustee Scott Hardy said.
Thomas-Hill encouraged the Board to discuss amongst itself what its sustainability and carbon-reduction goals are. She said she would like to have a conversation about the district’s carbon footprint.
“If the board could give us some guidance on what the goal is and how much they’re willing to spend in general funds, we have options we can recommend,” she said.