David Hanning, principal of Athens High School, will retire at the end the school year and take up the position of superintendent of Federal Hocking Local Schools.
Hanning will be taking the place of the current superintendent of FHLS, George Wood, who is retiring after spending over 20 years with the district. Hanning has served as principal of AHS since 2013.
“I do want to publicly thank Dave for his years of service for Athens, and congratulate him,” ACSD Superintendent Tom Gibbs said at the board of education meeting on Thursday. “That’s quite a step up professionally, (and) I’m looking forward to having him as more of a colleague in the field.”
ACSD nursing staff were nominated for Everyday Hero Awards by Diana Stock, ACSD school outreach caseworker for Athens County Children Services. Mandy Wright, supervisor of the school outreach caseworkers, said the award is meant to celebrate people who go above and beyond for children in their community, and to prevent child abuse and neglect.
“(They were nominated) because of their dedication and tireless work to support the staff, students and families of our school community,” Wright said. “They have moved Athens City School District into addressing critical health and wellness issues, and expanded the reach of the health curriculum and staff trainings.”
Mike Dingeldein, director of architecture and planning at Community Design Alliance also gave a presentation on sustainable building design to the ACSD board of education. CDA is the design firm partnering with Schorr Architects for the district’s building construction project.
Dingeldein presented an array of sustainable building strategies and techniques that the district could employ within the new buildings at the locations of East Elementary, Morrison-Gordon Elementary and Athens High School.
Dingeldein also spoke about the process of building certification with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED.
LEED is an ecology-oriented building certification program that is used to measure how sustainable a building is. Buildings are awarded points for using sustainable construction and design practices, such as using geothermal heating in place of an electric water heater. A building can be considered simply certified, or earn LEED Silver, Gold or Platinum certification based on how many points are earned. The Ohio Facilities Construction Commission, which oversees Ohio’s comprehensive public K-12 construction and renovation program, requires new school buildings to be built to LEED Silver standard.
LEED released the fourth version of its certification guide, which is much more sustainable than the first three, Dingeldein said. For instance, three gallon per flush toilets, which once earned points in the first version of the certification guide, would not even meet LEED standards today.
“Buildings that I certified as (LEED) Silver in 2004 may not even make it,” Dingeldein said. “Buildings that I certified as (LEED) Gold in 2004 may only be silver or just (LEED) certified. (It) is a broad, continuous improvement.”
The ACSD board of education also approved a contract with Plug Smart, an energy services company based in Columbus, to retrofit the former Chauncey Elementary School building with LED lighting. Currently, obsolete lighting accounts for about 25 percent of all energy use in the building, Gibbs said. The LED lighting could potentially cut that number by half.
