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A distinct lack of white this winter has helped keep Dedham Public Schools’ utility budget in the black, but Business Affairs Administrator Michael LaFrancesca still predicts red ink by the end of the fiscal year.
“We have been fortunate,” LaFrancesca said at a School Committee meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 18. “This week has been cold but, knock on wood, it hasn’t been the same pattern as last year.”
The school district has gone through half of fiscal 2012, and the utility budget is currently $22,000 below last year’s midpoint figure, according to LaFrancesca.
However, as a result of increased fuel costs and the higher costs of heating the larger Avery School building, set to be complete and in use by April, LaFrancesca predicts the heating budget to be about $37,000 higher than was budgeted.
School Committee member Susan Butler Walko asked why electricity costs were so high at the new Dedham Middle School, opened in 2006.
“I thought it was a green building,” Butler Walko said, referring the to building’s energy efficient construction.
Electricity costs at the building have been $113,000 in the first half of the year, and costs are projected to go over budget by about $26,000, according to a mid-year fiscal report. Overall, electricity is projected to come in $20,000 under budget.
“It’s a big building and there’s a lot of technology that runs through that building,” LaFrancesca said of the middle school.
The first two years the building was in operation, electricity costs were higher, according to LaFracesca. That turned around once the school’s 125 solar panels came online. LaFrancesca hopes the 525 solar panels at the high school have a similar effect this year, the first that they will have been operational for the whole year.
The new Avery School on Pottery Lane was also built with heat efficiency in mind, but at 61,000 square feet, it is about 50 percent larger than the current Avery School building on High Street. That means it will cost more to heat, LaFrancesca said.
Staff writer Dave Eisenstadter can be reached at 781-433-8336 or deisenstadter@wickedlocal.com.
A distinct lack of white this winter has helped keep Dedham Public Schools’ utility budget in the black, but Business Affairs Administrator Michael LaFrancesca still predicts red ink by the end of the fiscal year.
“We have been fortunate,” LaFrancesca said at a School Committee meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 18. “This week has been cold but, knock on wood, it hasn’t been the same pattern as last year.”
The school district has gone through half of fiscal 2012, and the utility budget is currently $22,000 below last year’s midpoint figure, according to LaFrancesca.
However, as a result of increased fuel costs and the higher costs of heating the larger Avery School building, set to be complete and in use by April, LaFrancesca predicts the heating budget to be about $37,000 higher than was budgeted.
School Committee member Susan Butler Walko asked why electricity costs were so high at the new Dedham Middle School, opened in 2006.
“I thought it was a green building,” Butler Walko said, referring the to building’s energy efficient construction.
Electricity costs at the building have been $113,000 in the first half of the year, and costs are projected to go over budget by about $26,000, according to a mid-year fiscal report. Overall, electricity is projected to come in $20,000 under budget.
“It’s a big building and there’s a lot of technology that runs through that building,” LaFrancesca said of the middle school.
The first two years the building was in operation, electricity costs were higher, according to LaFracesca. That turned around once the school’s 125 solar panels came online. LaFrancesca hopes the 525 solar panels at the high school have a similar effect this year, the first that they will have been operational for the whole year.
The new Avery School on Pottery Lane was also built with heat efficiency in mind, but at 61,000 square feet, it is about 50 percent larger than the current Avery School building on High Street. That means it will cost more to heat, LaFrancesca said.
Staff writer Dave Eisenstadter can be reached at 781-433-8336 or deisenstadter@wickedlocal.com.
