Members of the Department of Facilities Management and other staff involved in all aspects of school construction and maintenance will meet as a team with experts from the “green” building and high performance design industry to focus on environmental issues and energy conservation in school design and construction.

The meeting will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, July 15 and 16, from 8:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. at Linden Farm in Dickerson, Maryland.

The pilot project of the team will be a design for Northwest Elementary School #7 in Germantown, scheduled to open in 2006, using environmentally sensitive and energy efficient construction guidelines. The design will serve as a model and prototype for future school construction. The meeting is being held at the earliest stages of building design, allowing for full integration of environmental issues into the process.

One of the project team’s goals is to design and build a school that can be registered as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) school. The LEED rating system for buildings, established by the U.S. Green Building Council, awards points based on the degree to which the building is environmentally friendly. Currently, only one school building in the country has been rated a LEED Gold Medal school.

For more information, contact Anja Caldwell, project manager at the MCPS Green Schools Office, at 301-279-3475.