Sparks Fly Over Solar Panels at School Board Meeting

Tuesday night's meeting of the Culver City Unified School District Board of Education was mostly routine until a presentation of upcoming capital projects sparked a lot of questions about the time-sensitive issue of installing solar panels on three CCUSD schools.

After several presentations honoring students with American Citizenship Awards, and recognition of Culver City High School's Academy of Visual and Performing Arts as part of Arts Education Month, the board was given a presentation of several capital improvement projects by Ali Delawalla, the district's Assistant Superintendent for Business Services.

Included in the presentation was an update on plans for renovating the athletic fields at Culver City High School. However, what sparked the most interest was the update on the potential installation of solar panels on the rooves of Culver City High School, Middle School and Farragut Elementary School.

The project, approved by the board at the February 14 meeting, involves applying to the California Solar Initiative for rebates that will make the panels affordable, plus add revenue to the district's general fund and create significant cost savings by generating the electricity for the three schools involved.

Because the rebates funds are limited, the application to the CSI must be made before the funds are allocated elsewhere, making the issue somewhat time-sensitive. Board member Katherine Paspalis asked Delawalla why the delay?

"This is the third or fourth meeting [since the board directed the district to make the application]," Paspalis said. "Why isn't it completed?"

Delawalla said that according to his conversations with Southern California Edison, the vendor for the panels makes the application for the rebates through Edison, rather than directly to the CSI, and that to get a vendor, the district had to assemble a complete Request For Proposals.

Several board members then questioned Delawalla about the process, citing earlier information from Todd Johnson, head of the board's environmental sustainability committee, that the application could be made directly to the CSI without an RFP to lock in the rebates.

Neither Johnson, who was present, nor Delawalla explained why there was the discrepancy about the process, even though several board members pressed Delawalla on the issue.

"It's a legal document," Delawalla told the board about the RFP. "We wanted to make sure the document is complete and addressed every possible scenario."

After board member Karlo Silberger expressed his frustration and asked why there was a difference between Johnson's and Delawalla's information, Interim Superintendent Patricia Jaffe broke in.

"Ali Delawalla works on this every single day," she said in Delawalla's defense. "This is a project we are all interested in. So, it's not like he's saying we don't want solar. It might be we don't want to buy these panels."

Delawalla said that he would have the RFP ready by "the end of next week." He mentioned an upcoming meeting with Southern California Edison and was urged by the board to have Johnson accompany him to that meeting to iron out the procedural questions.

In other business, the board heard from Silberger about a sub-committee meeting in which members of the public were invited to suggest ideas to help the district in the face of a potential 10 percent cut in funding. Silberger and fellow board member Patricia Siever said that the meeting was helpful and that the next step would be to look at what ideas will realize what savings.