Berkeley, Calif. -- American education is literally in decay. Schools built in the 1950s for baby boomers are cracking, peeling, even collapsing just as we're experiencing a boomlet of school-age children and demands for smaller schools and class sizes. Designing classrooms to incorporate new technologies can also be costly.

California, where I live, will add 80,000 children to its schools during the coming year, and the state has passed legislation mandating smaller classrooms. Estimates to fulfill our statewide construction needs run as high as $40 billion.

Nationally, the GAO estimates that $112 billion is needed to modernize existing schools. According to one expert on the issue, new school construction could easily push the total construction figure to more than $200 billion.

President Clinton proposed federal funding for school construction in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1994, but Republican opponents defeated the initiative. After taking a public beating on the issue, Republicans now have their own proposal, which will offer the states $2.5 billion. The President's new proposal would cost the federal government $5 billion but leverage that amount to $20 billion by giving tax credits to people who invest in school bonds. Both proposals will be debated as part of the high-profile tax bill this fall.

At the state level, changing voter demographics-- only one out of four voters has children -- have made school funding more difficult. School bonds have failed in several states in recent years, especially in the 13 (including California) that require supermajorities.

In this crunch between competing needs and brokendown buildings, many kids end up in decayed facilities or in portable classrooms on former playgrounds. Peter Schrag of the Sacramento Bee describes the portables as "more like migrant camps row after row of drab wooden boxes of uncertain safety." The children's health and education often suffer.

While businesses have long studied the effects of building environments on worker productivity and health, researchers have only recently turned their attention to schoolchildren, a more physically vulnerable population. For example, in studies of portable classrooms in California, which are used by some 2 million of the state's students, researchers have found carcinogenic air pollutants like formaldehyde and benzene at levels as much as five times those considered safe. However, because these classrooms are both relatively inexpensive and can be transported to where the needs are greatest, the state legislature mandated that 30 percent of new construction be in portables.

Parents are understandably upset by the condition of their children's schools and frustrated by the lack of dollars available to improve them. They naturally want healthier, safer classrooms conducive to learning.

According to an innovative group of architects and engineers, they can have them. Using significant advances in building materials, methods, and new design approaches, they've constructed buildings that are durable, safe, and less expensive to maintain than traditional schools. They are often called green schools because they are designed based on principles of resource efficiency and environmental sustainability.

Green schools run the gamut. At the most basic level, student "energy monitors" achieve savings by turning off lights and computers or by suggesting low-cost im- provements like pipe insulation or improved ventilation. They calculate BTUs saved and levels of carbon dioxide prevented from entering the atmosphere.

At their most advanced, green schools are designed to take advantage of natural drainage, sun orientation, and vegetation. They use locally produced and recycled building materials, natural lighting, and advanced computer systems to both model and monitor the building's resource usage. Students in these schools become active learners by studying, maintaining, and even designing their schools' environmental features.

While parents have been quick to embrace green schools, few political leaders have. That may change, considering that green schools present them with an opportunity to combine two of the voters' top concerns -- education and the environment -- in creative, win-win solutions.

How Do You Want to Spend It?

Typically, a school's operating costs are its biggest expense after salaries. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that schools could save a quarter of their nearly $6 billion in operating costs each year by greening themselves. That's $1.5 billion that would be available for smaller classes, better teachers, or after-school programs.

Gary Bailey, whose North Carolina firm, Innovation Design, is a national leader in creating green schools, thinks that estimate is far too conservative.

"Most schools were built in the 1950s when energy was cheap, a penny a kilowatt," he observes. "Those energy- inefficient buildings are now consuming enormous amounts of the schools' total cost. Districts are borrowing money just to operate the old buildings. People are saying, 'This is crazy; we can't build new schools because it costs so much to operate the old ones.' "

Bailey invites me to do a little math. "The typical school runs around 100,000 BTUs per square foot," he says. "Our buildings run 30,000 to 45,000 BTUs. For an average middle school, that translates into $100,000 a year in savings." Using the Department of Energy's BTU figures, the yearly aggregate savings might be as high as $4 billion.

Savings in one area often compound in another. For instance, schools that reduce their reliance on electric light generate less heat, which translates into lower air conditioning costs. Also, Bailey's total savings figures do not factor in coming new opportunities for schools to cut energy costs -- through new hyper-fuel-efficient buses, for instance. Under utility deregulation, schools could even become net generators of energy, selling their excess electricity back to the grid. Nor do Bailey's figures reflect reduced environmental costs that are off the school budget, such as lower carbon dioxide levels and smaller landfill loads (through use of recycled construction materials).

Certain aspects of green design do cost more up-front, such as low-emission windows, solar panels, and baffles to capture and diffuse natural light. However, in schools featuring the integrated design approach, long-term savings offset these initial costs. And Innovative Design says its buildings have all come in near or below the costs bid under traditional construction guidelines.

Healthier, Higher-Achieving Students

A handful of studies have begun to show that financial savings are not the most significant advantage of green schools.

Almost all these schools utilize natural light, both for illumination and climate control. Teachers who work in so-called "day-lit" schools report that they and their students have more energy. One such school is North Carolina's Durant Middle School. Principal Tom Benton told CNN that, "Lightness in the building encourages a sense of well-being. ... Our attendance rate is higher than traditional schools. On normal school days, we run about 98 percent."

One of Durant's students put it this way: "With sky-lights, the room doesn't seem as boxed in, so it's easier to concentrate."

While factors such as a "sense of well-being" or "concentration" can be hard to pin down statistically, test scores are another matter.

A comprehensive peer-reviewed study completed this summer, involving whole districts in California, Washington, and Colorado, compared day-lit schools to ones with conventional lighting. Students in the most day-lit classrooms in the same schools outperformed students in the least day-lit classrooms by remarkable rates 20 percent in math and 26 percent in reading.

An earlier Canadian study concluded that, over two years, students in day-lit schools actually grew 2 centimeters more, on average, than those in conventionally lit buildings. They had nine times fewer cavities, presumably due to an increased intake of Vitamin D from the sunlight. And their attendance increased an average of three to four days a year.

Moreover, the most advanced green schools provide a built-in curriculum on energy, physics, math, economics, and ecology. And by rallying students, staff, parents, and the broader community around a common ethic, green schools can generate the type of social energy that reformers say is the key to turning poor schools around.

The Sticking Point

Why wouldn't school districts choose to build schools that save money, are healthier, turn out more productive students, and make parents happier? The simplest answer is that old saw: "We've never done it that way before." Architects don't want to take the time to learn new methods. School boards are dubious about the promised savings down the road.

That attitude is starting to change. Bailey told me about a recent city council meeting he attended in Chapel Hill, N.C. The council, responding to expressions of parental satisfaction and the cost savings from their new green schools, was liberally passing the praise to the local school board. "The board members were beaming, appreciating the accolades," Bailey says. "Normally, they get all kinds of grief."

For the faint of heart, advocates of green schools might also turn for inspiration to that bastion of shaggy tree-huggers, the U.S. Navy.

Under the direction of Terrence Emmons, chief architect at the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, the Navy has become one of the country's leading practitioners of green design. Emmons' unit manages 200 military bases the size of small cities and spends $3 billion to $4 billion a year on construction. With the help of Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute and other leaders in the field, the Navy has adopted an integrated, environmentally sustainable design approach to all of its projects.

"Integrated design is absolutely key to making it work without increasing cost," says Emmons. "One federal project I observed broke the building into individual systems and each expert 'greened' in isolation. A year later, it was 50 percent above cost. So they went about cutting and eventually got rid of everything worth having."

By contrast, architects and engineers who set out by viewing a building, its landscape, and functions as a whole might arrive at the cost-saving idea of having solar collectors serve double duty as sound barriers. Or they might translate marginally higher up-front costs such as natural lighting into significantly reduced over-all costs.

The Navy's integrated design approach also dovetails nicely with a principle advanced by advocates of Third Way politics: performance-based rather than process-based government. Under traditional government procurement methods, it can take years to get approval to use innovative, locally produced, or recycled materials. Under the Navy's new, flexible set of performance-based guidelines, reports Emmons, contractors are encouraged to use better, environmentally friendly, and cheaper materials and processes that meet the necessary performance standards.

Next Steps

Emmons and Bailey both believe the government can do more to encourage green building, especially by following the Navy's example and adopting flexible, performance- based guidelines. One Department of Energy official, Greg Kats, calls our failure to do so the biggest lost opportunity in our economy.

The Department of Energy is promoting green schools through its EnergySmart Schools program. Some states -- Washington is a leader-- have green requirements or low-cost loans and grants for environmentally sustainable building. The Alliance to Save Energy is working with congressional Democrats and Republicans to ensure that, whatever the final federal school construction legislation, it will encourage energy-efficient practices. Architects like Bailey and their professional associations are also devoting increased attention to educating the public about green building. Bailey, who has laid down 13 key components to sustainable school design finds that it's not a hard sell.

"It's real money," he says. "I recently visited Clark County, Nev., the fastest growing school district in the country. They are planning 80 new schools. I told the superintendent about our experiences in North Carolina and Texas. I showed him how, for an investment of $200,000 to develop prototypes, he could save millions. He was initially reluctant. But he left convinced."

Kerry Tremain is a senior consulting editor for Blueprint magazine.