It’s a typical below-freezing Maine winter day, and as you drive by the neighborhood school, you notice a door propped open, or windows in the second floor raised to let in the fresh air. Balancing heat and humidity in a building – especially an older one – with a couple hundred children in it, who at times are running around a gym, or eating plates of steaming spaghetti, isn’t easy. But as a taxpayer, knowing what it costs to heat that building each winter, the scene can drive you to distraction.

Before you fire off a letter to the school board about the wasteful ways of children, and how you had to stoke the stove in the one-room school of your childhood, take heart – schools, and other public buildings, are being managed in a much more energy-efficient manner.

The $39 million K-12 school being built in Thorndike in western Waldo County by SAD 3 will be heated with a boiler that burns wood chips (with an oil back-up system). After the school opens and has operated for a few winters, it will be interesting to compare its heating bills to comparable but older schools, heated by fossil fuel-burning systems. During the planning process for the new building, members of SAD 3’s building committee and school board repeatedly asserted themselves with the architect, insisting not only that “green” building materials be used, but that the structure would be well-insulated and use less electricity than its predecessor.

In the Camden-Rockport area, the Five Town Community School District and SAD 28 are fortunate to have Keith Rose as maintenance director. Mr. Rose, who formerly worked in the alternative energy industry, has introduced a number of energy-saving ideas at the sprawling Camden Hills Regional High School in Rockport. Among them are reducing temperatures in classrooms to 68 degrees, and in hallways to 60 degrees. Mr. Rose also retrofitted fluorescent lighting fixtures, removing one bulb from each pair, and adding more reflection so the same amount of illumination is produced. Hallway lights are now set on motion detectors, so when classes are in session, every other light fixture turns off if no one walks through a corridor for two minutes.

The expanded Rockport Elementary School, on which Mr. Rose is giving design input, will rely on a geothermal well. The technology takes advantage of the fact that five-feet below the surface of the ground, the Earth maintains a temperature of about 50 degrees. During the winter, when the air in the well column is warmer than outside air temperatures, heat is transferred upward. When the weather turns hot, the well column can be used to cool the building.

Other new schools, and recently renovated schools, also are turning to these technological upgrades, which translate into lower heating and lighting bills. It’s enough to warm the heart of even the most curmudgeonly taxpayer.