Conserving to Learn

In most years, nearly all public school students in the country would be returning to class from their Christmas vacations this week. But in this winter of the energy crisis, pupils in Delaware, Maine, Maryland and New Jersey will stay home until next Monday. Preppies at Exeter in New Hampshire and students at Harvard and Radcliffe are getting an extra week off, and Princetonians will not return to the campus until Jan. 21--if then; they are to call in for instructions beginning Jan. 16. Meanwhile, all these schools can scrimp on fuel by keeping classrooms empty and unheated longer than usual.

Extended vacations are only one way in which the nation's educators are struggling to conserve scarce and ever-more-expensive fuel. Schools rank relatively low in the national priorities for heating oil and gasoline. So they must husband every ounce if they are to get through the academic year (180 days in most public systems) with their programs reasonably fulfilled. For some, that entails closing in the chill of winter and making up the lost time during the spring and early summer vacation periods. New York City is looking at several contingency plans, including one calling for four-day weekends whenever a holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday, as do Lincoln's Birthday and the Nov. 5 general election. Other districts, like Kansas City, Mo., are shutting down several elementary schools and consolidating them with others. If the Idaho State Board of Education approves a petition of the Payette schools this month, Payette children will go to an eight-hour, four-day week every week.

Such changes have drawn mixed reactions; not all parents are happy to have their children home out of school. Parents in Connecticut jammed a public meeting and shouted down a state-wide plan to extend the Christmas vacation to a month starting Dec. 14. In Texas, a proposed temporary cut of one hour in the school day was defeated by public protest.

There are other easier, less abrasive, ways to save. Schools all over the country have set their thermostats as low as 66DEG in classrooms and 60DEG in gyms, halls and dormitories at night. Many have sealed off unused spaces and consolidated activities. Such modest conservation steps are saving New York City's schools 500,000 gal. of fuel oil every month. Other simple steps achieve more savings: as many as 78 fluorescent tubes have been removed from some large halls at Georgetown University without dropping lighting levels below acceptable minimums. Windows and the tops of elevator shafts are being weather-stripped at Harvard.

Cost Headache. Buses are a major concern for most districts. Fulton County (Atlanta) plans to eliminate 10% to 15% of its 5,000 school-bus stops, making children walk up to half a mile to catch their buses. Like many systems, Penn Hills, Pa., has eliminated all activity trips and is jamming athletic teams into one bus, though they once commanded two. In Philadelphia, buses that carried student fans to sports events have been eliminated. But many Pennsylvania districts are retaining late buses for students who stay for extracurricular activities. One high school principal reasons: "If you eliminate the bus, you'll have 50 mothers driving to school to pick up their children."

Even when heating oil and gasoline are available, they have become a cost headache for districts that typically must pay about two-thirds more than they had budgeted for gasoline. "Socalled fixed costs just aren't fixed anymore," says Frank Harlacher of the National School Boards Association. That is one of the problems to be taken up when some 300 members of the association gather in Washington, D.C., week after next. Their meeting will be a two-day crash course in the educators' most compelling new subject: the economics of doing without.

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