State-of-the-Art Technology and Energy-Saving Building Design are Hallmarks of Great Seneca Creek Elementary School


The new Great Seneca Creek Elementary School is the first K-12 public school in Maryland to be registered as a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) school. LEED is a rating system of the U.S. Building Council that provides a national standard for energy-saving building design. The school also is the first in Montgomery County Public Schools to have “intelligent classrooms” with complete wireless capability.

State-of-the-Art Technology

The campus will be the first in the county to have complete wireless capability. Classrooms will have LCD projectors suspended from ceilings, and teachers will work with Tablet PCs and digital document cameras for instruction. If a teacher wishes to give a quiz, for example, students will have access to computerized pads on which to record their answers, and teachers will know instantaneously how students did individually and as a class.

Great Seneca Creek also will have a computer lab with 30 Dell desktop computers. Teachers will wear lapel microphones so their voices can be amplified. All computers in the school will be equipped with flat-panel LCD monitors.

Green School Design

The list of the school’s energy-saving “Green School” features is impressive. Among them are large windows for abundant natural lighting; a white-colored reflective roof, which helps reduce the air conditioning load of the building; and restrooms equipped with waterless urinals and faucets with sensors.

The building will be heated and cooled via a geothermal system with 128 pipes buried more than 500 feet beneath the athletic fields. The constant ground temperature of 58–60 degrees will help save energy costs by moderating extremes of cold in the winter and heat in the summer.

Other highlights include more bike racks and a carpooling parking space for teachers. The materials, paints, and finishes used will limit the emission of toxic chemicals and fumes. Most products used in construction are recycled materials. The building’s exterior includes self-sustaining elements, such as areas of grass that will not have to be mowed and vegetation that doesn’t have to be watered.

Great Seneca Creek Elementary School is one of five new school facilities opening for the 2006-2007 school year. Little Bennett Elementary School also is a Green School, similar in design to Great Seneca Creek. Other new schools are Roscoe R. Nix and Sargent Shriver elementary schools and Clarksburg High School.