Dear DK8 Families,

 

We are excited to announce that our Solar Panel has been installed! For those of you that have not yet seen it, it’s located on the south side of the upper school building and trailers, adjacent to the soccer field.

 

We wanted to take the opportunity to share a bit about our new Solar Panel. In 2021, DK8 applied for a grant, administered by NC GreenPower*. The grant offered a 5-kilowatt solar array equipped with a weather station, data monitoring equipment, a STEM curriculum developed for our students, and teacher training workshops. Through the grant, students would also have the ability to learn about clean energy through a hands-on STEM curriculum tailored by grade level. And as a bonus, our school could realize an energy savings of $800 / year.

 

We are thrilled to share that Davidson K-8 was selected as one of only 15 schools in the state chosen to receive the grant in 2021 and only the 3rd in CMS since the program’s inception in 2015. In order to fully benefit from this grant, our school needed to privately raise $12,000 as required by the NC GreenPower Solar + Schools Grant Program. We successfully reached our fundraising goal for the NC GreenPower Solar+ Schools grant program with the generous support of Trane Technologies, our Champion Sponsor, based here in Davidson. And it’s extra special, as we have several DK8 parents at our school employed by Trane Technologies. We would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our DK8 families that contributed to this effort. Thanks to the generosity of Trane Technologies and DK8 families, we now have an educational solar photovoltaic (PV) system with 12 solar panels installed right on our DK8 campus and we did not have to allocate any PTO funds to support this effort.

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We will be hosting a ribbon-cutting ceremony this spring, stay tuned for more details. We hope to begin incorporating the stem curriculum in the 2023-24 school year.

 

We’re beyond grateful to Trane Technologies and NC GreenPower for their efforts in supporting DK8 and taking a step toward reducing negative impacts on the environment, working to provide a cleaner, greener future for our school and our Davidson community, and helping to educate our DK8 students about clean energy – how it works and its impact. For more information on NC GreenPower and the Solar+ Schools program, visit www.ncgreenpower.org.

 

For more information about Trane Technologies and their Sustainable Futures program, visit Corporate Citizenship | Trane

Technologies.

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