Apr 12, 2019 3 min read

Washington schools will be getting new lights and air-conditioning units as part of three capital improvement projects to be completed over summer break.

The first project, which Washington School District hopes to have completed by the first week in June, is the replacement of two air conditioners at the high school.

Rick Mancini, director of district operations, said the 70-ton and 90-ton units are 30 years old. Those units, he said, are used to air condition the entire building, except the third and fourth floor. The units on the third and fourth floors were replaced during the building’s 2010 renovations, Mancini said.

“How much money do we want to put into 30-year-old equipment?” Mancini said. “We’ll get more energy-efficient equipment.”

The exterior project, which will begin on the last day of school, is expected to cost the district $148,000, and will be paid through the capital projects fund.

The next project, to be worked out throughout the summer, is replacing lighting fixtures in the high school and elementary school with LED lights. Mancini said LED lighting was too expensive to invest in when the elementary school was renovated in 2012 and when the high school was renovated in 2010.

“They were thinking about switching to LED lighting, but it was still very expensive,” he said. “Back then it would have cost approximately $125 per fixture, but now it’s approximately $14 per fixture.”

He said the project will cost about $66,500 to replace about 8,000 lightbulbs in both schools. Mancini said the district will get an energy rebate of about $20,000, so the net cost will be about $46,000.

“The annual operating savings from the efficiency of the lights is expected to be about $31,000 per year,” he said.

He said the district maintenance employees will handle the project, which he hopes will be done before school resumes in the fall.

Lastly, the district wants to replace the cooling towers at Park Elementary. Mancini said that during the 2012 renovation, all of the air-conditioning units in the building were replaced, but the exterior towers, more than 20 feet high, were not replaced.

“They’re 45 years old,” he said. “They’re on their last leg. They’re two separate towers, so that if one goes down you have the other one. That’s what we’ve been doing, and that’s how we’ve gotten so many years out of them.”

The estimated cost to replace both towers is between $400,000 and $500,000, Mancini said. The district is working with an engineer on the scope of the project, which Mancini hopes will be completed over the summer.