Great use of energy
Fifth-grader studies heating, cooling, lighting at her school
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Ten-year-old Kyra Fiber, a fifth-grader at Lake Avenue Elementary School, is working on a project to survey energy use in the school and save the district money.
She became interested in the idea last spring after studying energy in the Saratoga Scholars program for gifted students. A tour around the school’s exterior led her to request a close look inside as well.
She met with Lake Avenue Principal Barbara Messier and the school’s heating/ventilation/ air-conditioning custodians before laying out her plan.
“Energy is costing us a lot of money,” Kyra said. “Besides that, the temperature and the lighting are different on every floor and in lots of the classrooms. I want tomake the school more comfortable for everyone, and I want to make the energy less expensive.”
Kyra said her teachers and her friends have experienced cold classrooms in the winter and overwhelming heat in the summer.
“I keep a sweatshirt in my locker for when it’s cold,” she said.
She described the summer temperature indoors as 103 degrees on one occasion, and 107 degrees on another. For two years in a row, she’s been in the hottest classroom.
“It’s so hot, my friends fan themselves,” she said, waving a hand to demonstrate. “My classmate Eric brought in a desk fan, and that became a new trend. It was the craze to have a desk fan— for a while, we had eight.”
Teachers sometimes bring in air conditioners as well, Kyra said. Also, classes often are held in the cooler basement and the library.
“Some people get pretty desperate,” she said.
To help with this desperation, Kyra and her father, Larry, a software consultant, collaborated on a survey sheet for teachers and another one for students.
Kyra did not survey the kindergarteners or the firstgraders; she thought they weren’t quite old enough to understand her project. Everyone else answered questions on how comfortable the classroom heat and lights are.
When the surveys are completed, Kyra will collect them and input the data into an Excel spreadsheet. She then plans tomeet with Messier and brainstorm. Kyra might present before the Board of Education.
She already has some ideas based on her examination of the school, which included a tour of the basement and its six energy-efficient furnaces.
“I’d like the teachers to be able to control the temperature in each classroom,” Kyra said. “Then people would bemore comfortable and happier, and they’d have a better experience at Lake Ave.”
She is also eyeing the girls’ gym, which faces south. She’d like to reduce the number of hanging lamps in the gym by having windows installed near the ceiling to let in sunlight.
“The windows seem to me to be a low-hanging-fruit idea,” Larry Fiber said. “They’d be an easy place to start.”
Larry and his wife, Jill, a homemaker, are used to their daughter’s projects. They said Kyra, who claims one space in the house as the art room, has been focused on her creative interests since she was very young. At 4, she wrote a lit- tle book called “The Strawberry and the Egg.”
“They were best friends,” Kyra said, giggling.
Jill Fiber said her daughter studies asmuch as possible, always learning something new, such as the violin. Kyra has written a piece of music for the school orchestra.
Larry calls his daughter “industrious.”
“We are all supportive of anything she does,” Jill said. “She’s anxious to learn and to use what she’s learned.”
Kyra’s 11-year-old brother, Riley, puts his own creativity to use in science and technology, and he loves playing computer games, his parents said.
His sister is already reaping some of the fruits of her labor. She’s gotten very familiar with her school.
“It’s kind of cool knowing where all the classrooms are and knowing all the new teachers,” she said.
Faced with the question “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Fiber thought for amoment, then smiled.
“I want to study dogs,” she said.
The family’s Rhodesian Ridgeback, Scout, thumped his tail approvingly.