I got a wonderful email this week from Shelly Yarbrough, member of the Val Verde Unified School District in Riverside County, California. Shelly wrote to me about a huge solar project that the Irvine Unified School District are just about to approve. On Tuesday, they are scheduled to approve a plan to install solar energy on each of its 21 campuses!! This is the most comprehensive solar program rollout for a school district in the country, and will be one of the largest solar installations of any school system in the country.

The system will be built at no cost to the taxpayers, and will reduce Irvine’s power bill for its school by 20 percent right away — a savings of $17 million over 20 years.

As a ten year school board member in Riverside County, Shelly is even more excited about the educational component of this new solar energy system. The school district may be installing the solar panels on the roofs, but the district is taking solar into the classroom as well, with a full complement of courses that will take advantage of all the information this system provides and that really excites us here at MuseGreen as we really truly believe that teaching our kids the right thing to do is of the utmost importance.

“That to me means math, physics, computers, technology, business, finance and even art. I think the resources they are devoting to this is also unprecedented. I just returned from a state-wide educational conference in San Diego, and lots of people were talking about the the Irvine plan and how it happened, and how they want to do that kind of thing in their school district as well.”

The people responsible for the Irving project also undertook a big project near where Shelly lives in in Riverside County, which turned out really well because lots of kids from the local schools are now learning about solar in the local libraries.

So, what a great story and one that I simply could not pass up! The decisions made next Tuesday could change the ways school boards run their schools, and change the way schools teach our children. Not just in California but throughout the country.

Thanks, Shelly!