 Georgina Blach Intermediate School (Blach School) in Los
Altos, California, walked into a newly remodeled, high-performance
school facility in the fall of 2002. The remodeled Blach School - a
demonstration project sponsored by Pacific Gas & Electric
Company - showed how energy- and resource-efficient technologies
could be successfully incorporated in a school renovation project.
This project is one of the first schools in California to be
designed and built to criteria developed by the nonprofit
Collaborative for High Performance Schools, Inc. (CHPS). CHPS is a
group of utility, government, and other organizations that provide
high-performance design information, services, training, and
incentives directly to California school districts and
designers.
The Blach School, part of the Los Altos School District, serves
450 students in seventh and eighth grades. In 1999, the District
began a renovation project to demolish 10,000 square feet of the
original school and expand the remaining 34,000 square foot
facility to 71,500 square feet, as well as modernize nine of the
existing buildings. The expansion involved construction of three
new classroom buildings, a performing arts building, and a
gymnasium. The modernization project included the library,
multi-purpose building, administration building, and four classroom
buildings.
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