By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The drilling at Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart did not bother the students there one bit.
”It’s exciting,” said Headmaster Olen Kalkus as a drill burrowed into the ground directly in front of a school that is going green to save on its energy costs.
As part of a $11 million renovation, the Catholic all-boys school decided to install a geothermal system to heat and cool its classrooms and offices. The academy also is planning to install solar panels, although that will be in a separate project.
”We felt very strongly as we were building something for the future, this was an important part of it,” said Chris Schade, chairman of the school’s Board of Trustees and former executive at NRG Energy Inc.
The system will consist of 40 geo-thermal wells down some 450 feet into the ground, according to the school. A mix of water and anti-freeze circulates through a network of underground pipes and draws heat from inside the earth; the fluid then goes through a pumping system that extracts the heat from the water and brings warm air into classrooms. To cool the building, the system works in reverse. The drilling for the geothermal system started in the summer and continued into the start of the school year.
”The boys, they don’t mind. It doesn’t bother them,” Mr. Kalkus said of the noise from the construction.
Aside from the financial benefits of switching to geo-thermal, the academy also is using the renovation as a teachable moment for its science classes.
”We’re looking at the geothermal fields, which are going to supply the what?” science teacher Kathy Humora asks her class of fifth-graders on a Wednesday morning.
”The heat for our school,” answered one boy.
Ms. Humora said that having the 40 geo-thermal wells outside her classroom window help as learning tool.
”They’re studying this in terms of making science connections,” she said. “I will take every opportunity that I can to use what’s on the campus or in the lives to help them relate to science.”
Once the system gets up and running, the school will have a dashboard that pupils or teachers can look at to learn how many wells are being used and how much energy is being saved.
”The goal with all of the green parts of this project . . . is to while we’re doing construction, make it part of the educational program. And then even after the renovation to make sure that we continue to make it a part of the education,” Mr. Kalkus said.
Princeton Academy, located on the Great Road, serves about 220 pupils whose parents pay annual tuition that starts at $23,000 a year for junior kindergarten and then increases for higher grades. The school goes up to the eighth grade.
The main school building, a former convent, was built in 1960; the school library occupies what used to be a chapel. The bulk of the project is due to be completed by next summer, with other work completed in the fall. The renovation will allow the academy to grow its enrollment.
”The facility is 50 years old. So you need to update the facility,” Mr. Schade said. “We understand that we’re competing for students.”
An anonymous donor gave the school real estate on Long Island that the academy was able to sell for $5 million to put toward the renovation, Mr. Schade said.
”Once we secured the gift, we started the planning process to the budgeting (and) all of the logistical planning to get to here,” he said.

