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School Board President Laura Chardiet prepares to flick switch. Colleague Kathy Paspalis is over her left shoulder. Mike Reynolds is over her right shoulder. Photos, Geoff Maleman.
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Shea Cunningham is expressively demonstrative with students.
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Undeniably, here are signs of our times.
When you are saving millions of dollars and planting thousands of trees in a single swoop, there had better be a celebration – and so a magnificent ritual – instructive to students, enlightening for adults – was staged this morning on the crowded playground of Farragut Elementary.
It was an impressive 35-minute salute by the School District to the environment, a rudimentary, chillingly thrilling lesson in green power and sensitivity to the planet for the mainly young, hopefully impressionable, audience.
At precisely 9:43, before hundreds of contented, proud Farragut students, many sporting smartly drawn green signs, and dozens of grinning parents, School Board President Laura Chardiet flicked the switch on the School District’s new $3.8 million photovoltaic power system.
Supt. David LaRose, typically, was at his oratorical best, Culver City High School ASB President Nick Gutman was precisely in step as a symbol of the generation that next inherits the earth, Ms. Chardiet and Vice Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells tried to suffuse their appreciative audience with more useful energy than is contained in the sparkling new system.
The Marquee Mavens
But the blue-ribbon performers on this cool morning for cool people, straight from the heavens, were the co-chairs of the District’s Environmental Sustainability Committee, Shea Cunningham and Todd Johnson.
Suppose, for a moment, that the crowd of hundreds had filed listlessly onto the Farragut playground, shoes dragging behind them.
Mr. Johnson and Ms. Cunningham shlepped a sky-wide supply of passion and enthusiasm for the new project, sufficient to supply every child, woman and man on the grounds – plus every New Yorker and his 13 nearest relatives.
If the switch, heaven forbid, had failed, Ms. Cunningham and Mr. Johnson, who brought enough passion to sponsor next year’s Super Bowl, could have brightly
illuminated the grounds themselves at high midnight.
No one had to ask why they are captaining the remarkably busy and productive Environmental Sustainability Committee.
Mr. Johnson and Ms. Cunningham told their listeners that the new system will provide 750kW of energy, which, in modern mathematical terms, equals planting almost 5,000 trees every year (4,956 for the curmudgeons who count) at a whopping savings of $8.5 million.
“The District has made environmental sustainability a focus across various subjects,” said spokesperson Geoff Maleman. “The goal is to introduce the topic to students learning about English composition, math, statistics and art.
“This system is part of the District’s ongoing infrastructure improvements. It has been installed along with a variety of curriculum improvements designed to teach students about climate change, alternative energy and how solar energy generation works.”
A Single Goal
Mr. LaRose, the sophisticated Head cheerleader for the School District, made painstakingly certain that the carefully carved object of the project – benefitting the students – remained in the center seat of every participant’s mind.
He steadfastly rejected the notion of bringing up the subject more than six times.
One of those was when he lavishly commended the School District’s Secretary of the Treasury, Mike Reynolds.
Said Mr. LaRose: “I have worked in a couple of other places in a couple of different states. I have worked with a number of business offices, CFOs and financial advisors. They’d all come to the meetings, as leaders should, with the bottom line in mind. Mike does the same thing. Only what Mike does that is different is, his bottom line is ‘How is this going to impact children?’ To have a financial officer who comes with those lenses, and actually weeps at student presentations at School Board meetings, we have a man with an incredible financial mind, but a heart for kids.”
