MEDORA
Inside and outside Medora Community Schools, it will soon be a little brighter.
The board of trustees recently approved the hiring of B and H Electric of Seymour to convert the lighting at the school to LED. That excludes the cafeteria and gymnasium and the superintendent’s office, which already have been switched over.
“This will be our last phase to get every light in the building LED,” Superintendent Roger Bane said during a recent school board meeting.
B and H Electric had the lowest quote at $42,567.34, which was the total after rebates. The other quotes were $46,834.92 from Hawkins Bailey Warehouse Inc. of Bedford and $57,852 from Premium Quality Lighting Inc. of Bloomington.
Bane said the money will come from the rainy day fund.
“Rainy day fund money came from money that was left over out of our capital projects,” he said.
All expenses for Indiana school corporations are now categorized into two funds — education and operations. Capital projects now fall under the operations fund.
“At the end of each year, we would take that money and put it into a rainy day fund in case we needed it, so this falls in line with a capital project, so that’s the reason I’m requesting we take that out of the rainy day fund,” Bane said.
Switching to LED lighting will help the school corporation save a lot of money.
“It’s estimated this will save us about $10,000 a year in electrical costs,” Bane said. “It will be about a four-year payback, and then we’ll be saving money.”
The board unanimously approved the project. Bane said the work will be done in the summer.
A couple of maintenance projects also were approved.
Pardieck’s Inc. of Seymour will put a new bypass in the water softener at the school for $2,597.
“We had a problem with our water softener right before Christmas, which led to our dishwasher not working because the water was hard, and we had a mess,” Bane said. “Well, they came in and replaced all of the valves they could replace on the water softener, upgraded the computer part of it, but we had one valve we could not switch over because there wasn’t a bypass to bypass the water softener.”
That led to the need for a new bypass.
“That will help us in further maintenance of the water softener, too,” Bane said.
Also, a compressor will be fixed on one of the air conditioning units over the science classroom. Dunlap General and Mechanical Contractors of Columbus will fix that for $9,490.
“It’s hot in there some days. It’s cold in there some days,” Bane said.
Science teacher Ashley Shoemaker said most days, it’s hot.
“It is appreciated,” she said to the board for approving the project.
The money for both maintenance projects also will come out of the rainy day fund.