LYNNWOOD—Representative Rick Larsen (WA-02) met with Edmonds School District Superintendent Dr. Rebecca Miner, and other ESD staff, on Monday, May 20, for a tour of Lynnwood’s Meadowdale High School where he discussed a recent earmark request of $2.2 million to replace florescent bulbs with LED lighting at three schools.

The three schools—Meadowdale High School, Edmonds-Woodway High School, and Meadowdale Middle School—are currently equipped with nearly 2,000 florescent lights each, costing a range of $800,000 to $1 million per school to replace. The recently requested $2.2 million of federal dollars will combine with the school district’s own earmark dollars in bonds but the federal grant could stretch these funds to replace twice as many sites, Will Thompson, Design and Construction Manager for Edmond’s School District’s Capitol Projects Department, informed the Lynnwood Times.

The $2.2 million Larsen’s office is pursuing is part of the annual appropriation process. Larsen’s earmark request for the Edmonds School District will be considered by House appropriators for inclusion in the Fiscal Year 2025 spending package. Larsen recently secured a total of $19,326,729 for fifteen local projects in the Fiscal Year 2024 spending package that local elected officials and community leaders identified as critical to their communities.

Meadowdale’s LED retrofitting project ended up at the top of that list of FY2025 local projects, Larsen said, for its focus on a greener environment and improving education.

“LED lighting is much more efficient, it’s better on the eyes, it’s better for students, administration and the faculty here, and it will improve the learning environment” said Rep. Larsen.

Larsen added he’s particularly excited about the retrofitting and lighting that will be done in the school’s library, as a fan of libraries himself.

Making the swap to LED will both benefit the environment as well as the student learning experience, the school district says.

LED lighting has been proven to lower stress and anxiety levels because of its ability to mimic the mood effects and circadian impact of natural light. With lower stress levels comes higher concentration and with higher concentration comes higher graduation rates, Superintendent Miner explained.

As far as the environment, LED lights are simply more energy efficient, produce zero toxic elements, require less light fixtures, and have a longer life span.

“We really couldn’t be more excited for this project as we think about its possibilities to improve the classroom-built environment for our students. Of course that’s the number one priority for us, to have our students in the very best possible learning environments,” said Superintendent Rebecca Miner. “Lighting is critical, there’s lots of research on lighting and the ways it impacts our students, and we think this could tremendously help them, and their learning, and their ability to concentrate and focus here at our school. Additionally, we’re excited about the energy savings this will bring to us and our whole community.”

On March 25, 2022, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee signed the Clean Buildings expansion bill into law which applied to 20,000 square feet buildings or larger, including multifamily housing buildings. As part of the first phase of that law buildings were required to implement an energy management plan and operations and maintenance program. It was then when the Edmonds School District began assessing where its schools could improve, or replace, its existing infrastructure.

Taine Wilton, Director of Capital Projects for the Edmonds School District, led the grant-writing efforts in April and, in a surprisingly quick turnaround, the grant was approved just a month later in May.

The school district is still awaiting final processing from the federal government before it hires an engineer to do its preliminary planning for the project. Once the design has been finalized, the project should take about a year to complete but as of right now the calendar date for a construction date is contingent on the federal government’s timeline.

The project will completely gut out the existing florescent lighting systems in all three schools, the parts of which will be properly recycled and disposed of. The new LED lighting systems will have dimming and color changing capabilities and will be on a shut-off timer to conserve energy with motion-activation when needed.

The Snohomish County Publics Utility District has partnered with the Edmonds School District on this project as part of its Key Accounts Program – which aims to foster important relationships with school districts, hospitals, and other large, important, critical customers.

Doug O’Donnell, PUD Account Manager, informed the Lynnwood Times the PUD’s interest is energy efficiency – in order to stretch the available power that they have in order to control rates.

“If we use what we have wisely, we can keep rates down as opposed to wasting and needing to go out to the market and build new generation sources, transmission lines, distribution lines and such,” said O’Donnell.

To work efficiently with school districts, the Snohomish County PUD was able to offer the ESD financial incentive for its LED retrofitting project by calculating the savings from its new LED lights and offering a one-time payment, based on those new rates, to help with the initial project costs.

During Monday’s tour Rep. Larsen was led around Meadowdale High School by Superintendent Miner and accompanied by members of the ESD Capital Projects Department, visiting the gymnasium, cafeteria, great hall, library and select classrooms.

Earlier in the day, and prior to Larsen’s tour of Meadowdale, he visited the Asian Service Center in Edmonds to learn more about the services the nonprofit organization provides to the Asian and other underserved communities in Snohomish County.