Pennwood Middle School Achieves LEED Gold Certification

     Pennsbury School District is pleased to announce that the environmentally-friendly ren­o­va­tion of Pennwood Middle School employed numer­ous sus­tain­able plan­ning, design, and con­struc­tion com­po­nents to achieve LEED Gold cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. By seek­ing the LEED Certification, the District earned a $2M grant toward the project from the State Department of Community and Economic devel­op­ment secured by D’Huy Engineering.  This grant amount is the high­est avail­able and was the result of a com­pet­i­tive appli­ca­tion process to the state.  The school’s ren­o­va­tion, designed and engi­neered by Remington & Vernick Engineers, with con­struc­tion man­age­ment pro­vid­ed by D’Huy Engineering, began in 2016 and was com­plet­ed under bud­get and in time for school to open in August 2018. Thanks to the extent of the green aspects of this $44 mil­lion ren­o­va­tion, the project achieved LEED Gold cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Built in 1951 as the first high school in Pennsbury, Pennwood is con­sid­ered some­thing of a local land­mark with count­less com­mu­ni­ty ties over the years.

     The Pennwood Middle School project con­sist­ed of a full ren­o­va­tion to the exist­ing 190,000 square foot school and a class­room addi­tion of 8,000 square feet. LEED Gold Certification was achieved by com­ply­ing with the fol­low­ing US Green Building Council (USGBC) requirements:

• Reused 95% of the exist­ing struc­tur­al ele­ments of the building.
• The build­ing is in a neigh­bor­hood where stu­dents can walk or bike to school.  Bike racks, show­ers, and chang­ing rooms were pro­vid­ed to reduce car­bon footprint.
• Improvements to the building’s enve­lope, win­dows, roof­ing, and light­ing con­trols, as well as installing a new high-efficiency, fully-controllable HVAC sys­tem, have reduced the ener­gy usage, result­ing in an ener­gy sav­ings, improved indoor air qual­i­ty, light­ing and acoustics and an over­all enhance­ment of the teach­ing space.
• Parking is pro­vid­ed for low emit­ting & fuel-efficient vehicles.
• Low flow toi­lets, auto­mat­ic faucets, and water effi­cient land­scap­ing allow for more than a 20% reduc­tion in water usage.
• School-owned audi­to­ri­um, gym­na­si­um, cafe­te­ria, class­rooms, play­ing fields and joint park­ing are shared with the sur­round­ing community.
• 25% of the total build­ing mate­ri­als were local­ly sourced and 26% were man­u­fac­tured using recy­cled materials.
• There is a reduc­tion of volatile organ­ic com­pounds in sealants and glues through the use of water sol­u­ble prod­ucts to reduce off-gassing.
• Onsite recy­cling efforts helped the project team divert 95% of con­struc­tion waste away from land­fills and into recy­cling centers.

Ceremony and Walk-Through for Community Stakeholders

     Pennwood Principal Derek Majikas and Assistant Principal Ryan Kennedy wel­come the pub­lic to a spe­cial cer­e­mo­ny and walk-through on the after­noon of Wednesday, December 11^th from 4:30 – 6:00 p.m. All are wel­come to attend and tour the newly-renovated school.