OCR Text |
Show School Home 7 by Dr. Daryl J. McCarty Executive Secretary i Utah Education Association In times of grave national crisis, leaders have had little trouble arousing the American Ameri-can people to action. Until now. For many reasons, we haven't have-n't made a lot of headway in dealing with shortages of natural gas, oil and electricity. Much of the effort has been aimed at finding more of those commodities. Utah schools are taking a ' different tack. They're spreading spre-ading the message of the need to become energy tightwads. For example: Sixty fifth-grade fifth-grade teachers in the Granite School District and 18 from Iron School District have been trained to help students to assist families in the art of being parsimonious with power. pow-er. Each student is urged to visit four families. The fifth-grader fifth-grader asks the family to read a guide on saving energy, discuss it and act on the suggestions it contains. The State Energy Office was impressed enough to fund the program for another 120 teachers in Salt Lake City, Murray. Logan, Cache, and Tooele School Districts. The guide talks about ways of saving other kinds of energy ener-gy in other ways. Families that study the guide and put its principles into practice receive a window sticker which shows the world that people who live in this house are trying to do their part. But maybe there's a way to spur more Utah families into action. It's based on money. First, though, let's consider a success story from back East. A school superintendent told the people in his district's schools that they'd get 25 cents of every dollar they saved on fuel costs. They could use the funds for equipment equip-ment and supplies of their choosing. The district saved $273,000 in the first seven months. With that in mind, why not try the same thing in your home? Tell the family you'll split half the savings on heat, electricity and power bills equally. Maybe you won't save $273,000 that quickly, but it could be a valuable way to halt waste. |