The Turlock Unified School District recently received the federal government’s Energy Star award for 14 school sites throughout the district.

The Energy Star program recognizes school sites throughout the country that rank in the top 25 percent for energy efficiency.

“Our energy conservation efforts are saving taxpayer dollars while also helping protect our local environment,” TUSD Superintendent Sonny Da Marto stated in a press release.

According to Da Marto the district has had an energy cost avoidance of $811,716 between April 2009 and November 2010.

“Our students, staff and teachers embrace the energy conservation program at our campus,” said Brown Elementary School Principal Jeff Persons. Brown received one of the Energy Star awards.

Andy Walker, TUSD energy conservation manager, applauded the efforts of everyone in the district. “Each of us can make a difference through energy conservation, because people use energy, school sites don’t. Our students are learning too, what it means to preserve precious natural resources,” he said.

Walker, who is also a history teacher at Pitman High, along with district officials looked at myriad of ways to help reduce energy usage in the district.

Ed Felt, assistant superintendent of Business Services, gave the credit to Walker and the teachers and staff throughout the district.

“It was really Andy’s positive attitude and education that mainly helped us reduce our energy usage. We have a lot of light switches and over 700 teachers so it also took cooperative, understanding effort from everyone. We really just realized we had some energy inefficiencies and we worked hard to correct them through evaluating patterns of usage,” Felt said.

To contact Jonathan McCorkell, e-mail jmccorkell@turlockjournal.com or call 634-9141 ext 2015.