North Greene sees movement on solar project

By Editor | April 23, 2024 |

By Carmen Ensinger

It has been well over a year since the North Greene School District signed a contract with Future Green Energy Consortium to install solar panels at the Jr./Sr. High School in White Hall and it looks like there might soon be some action taken on the project.
“Future Greene contacted us saying they were needing all the specifications on the roof,” Superintendent Jackie Kuchy said after the April board meeting. “Apparently, they need this information before construction begins.”
Kuchy became concerned about the status of the project after she succeeded former Superintendent Mark Scott.
“I was just concerned why it had been so long and the project had not moved forward,” Kuchy said. “I found out that they were under new management on the development side of it so the contact that we were working with had changed to someone new.”
Kuchy was put in contact with a new contact from Future Greene and they began looking at the design portion and working with the district architect to ensure that it was still a feasible project for the district to undertake.
Future Green Energy Consortium is a not-for-profit initiative of the Illinois Association of School Administrators, the Illinois Association of School Boards, and the Illinois Association of School Business Officials.
These organizations have joined together to provide their members with renewable electric power solutions that have a lower cost and are environmentally responsible.
The consortium was created after Illinois deregulated and passed the Future Energy Jobs Act (FEJA). The number one priority of the organization is to advocate for Illinois school districts.
Their goal is to ensure school districts go to the front of the line to receive the lowest supply rates in the industry and get the benefits of government incentive programs.
“The reason they gave us for not starting the project sooner is that they were waiting to see if more school districts were going to come on board with solar,” Kuchy said. “In an effort to keep costs down, they want to have all the contracts in place with the other districts because apparently they get a better deal with materials the more they buy. At least that is what we were told.”
In other action, the board approved moving Kyla Williams into the new position of Grants Coordinator. Currently, Williamson is the Elementary School Secretary. She will now be working out of the North Greene Unit Office in the newly created position in the district.
As grant coordinator, Williamson will help to seek out grant opportunities for the district, help collect the data needed for those grants, manage the budget, work with the district treasurer to make sure the district is in compliance as far as the accounting aspect goes and do all of the compliance reporting.
Kuchy explained the need for the position.
“We get so much funding from State and Federal sources that I feel we need to be efficient with how we are allocating that money and this position is going to facilitate that,” she said. “She will also probably help with some of the food service and transportation responsibilities too out of this office, which she already does in her current position as secretary at the grade school.”
Kuchy explained that those tasks were handled by the former secretary, Becky Gilmore, whom Williamson replaced and they felt it just made sense to let Williamson keep those duties with this new position and perform them from the Unit Office.
The district is looking for cooks for the upcoming school year. The district gave notice to Arbor Food Service that their services would not be required next year to provide food services to the district.
The district went to a food service last year, trying out Organic Life. They didn’t work out so this year they opted to go with Arbor Foods. The main complaint this year was, basically, the portions were too small.
Originally, the board went with a food service to give students more variety. Plus, the food service took the management of the kitchen out of the hands of the district, meaning the employees, and their benefits were on the food management company, not the district.
It was a test that failed, so the board voted last month to go back to self-operation of its own kitchen and will therefore be hiring its own cooks and be back to purchasing its own food as well as serving it to the students.
In other action, the board hired:
■ Amy Bauer – Junior High Math.
■ Jennifer Haschmeyer – Kindergarten.
■ Lauren Brown – Fourth Grade.
■ Megan Seely – Cheerleading.