If someone were to ask Brent Mosier about the heating system at the local school one of his kids attends, he would use adjectives like “dirty,” “old,” “nasty” and “expensive” to describe it. Several windows won’t open because they’ve been sealed shut with lead paint. Insulation wasn’t even part of the original construction plan when the school was built back in 1923.

Mosier Community School needed work. It was anything but energy efficient. But, an $830,000 federal grant the school received from the U.S. Department of Energy is about to change things.

“Everyone who has been involved in this project is really excited about it,” Mosier said, anticipating the bulk of the work to take place in the summer of 2025. “The teachers and the students and everyone has known there’s a need for quite a while, but there just hasn’t been the funding.”

A public charter school serving grades pre-K through 8, Mosier Community School serves a rural community in the Columbia River Gorge of about 500 people. There isn’t a single stop light in Mosier, and there’s just one restaurant. 

The school, which enrolls about 190 students, is more than a collection of classrooms. It’s home to the city’s only public playground. It serves as a community evacuation center — needed previously during a train accident and potentially in the future for wildfire safety. Because it occupies multiple roles, the school needed to shore up its resiliency.. 

Foster figured the Renew America’s Schools Program could help in both respects. It’s a grant initiative funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that aims to improve energy management and create healthier learning environments for schools across the country.

“What we’re focused on is essentially projects that combine the benefits of energy efficiency and renewables with student and teacher health,” he said. “The thing that we’ve got on hand first is a new HVAC. Our school, like others, has a fuel oil boiler and it’s considered the largest stationary source of pollution in our town.”

That heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system will include high-efficiency heat pumps that run on electricity instead of fuel oil. The entire system will be powered by a new rooftop solar array The entire roof cavity of the school will be insulated for the first time, original windows will be replaced, and four electric car chargers will be installed on campus for teachers and the public. 

The school spends about $30,000 on heating oil every year alone. The solar installation is expected to offset that cost almost entirely.

Beyond savings and addressing long-overdue needs, Foster’s favorite part of this initiative is that the project will involve student participation.  

“One of the cool things is we’re integrating the project with pre-apprenticeship training for at-risk kids in the community,” Foster said, explaining the budding partnership with Comunidades. “They’re going to be pulling kids from high school every step of the way to expose them to the project and potential clean energy jobs. And, the kids get paid to take part in it.”

Foster said there’s no telling the impact an experience like that can have for the community’s at-risk youth, who often have to pass on unpaid opportunities because they need to get to a part-time job in the afternoon that gives them a paycheck. 

“This is a first-of-its-kind program for any of us, so we’re developing it as we go,” he said. “But this is a way for them to get paid and get an apprenticeship.”