How Solar and Energy Savings Paid for Teacher Raises in Batesville

First published March 26, 2021.

The Batesville School District in Arkansas paid for teacher raises by cutting its energy bills. After a 2017 energy audit, the district installed more than 1,400 solar panels and upgraded lighting, heating, cooling and windows across its schools. Within about three years a $250,000 budget deficit had turned into a $1.8 million surplus, and much of the savings went into teacher pay. Raises averaged roughly $2,000 to $3,000 per teacher, not the $15,000 for every teacher that went viral online; the project's contractor says some individual increases reached up to $15,000.

Here is how the plan worked, what the numbers really show, and what other schools can learn from it.

A district with a budget problem

Batesville is a small city in north-central Arkansas. Its school district, with Batesville High School and five other schools, serves about 3,200 students. Like many rural districts, it struggled to keep teachers: salaries were lower than in larger districts nearby, and staff were leaving for better-paid jobs or taking second jobs to make ends meet.

At the same time, the district was spending more than $600,000 a year on utilities and running a deficit of around $250,000. Superintendent Michael Hester and his team needed a way to free up money without cutting classroom spending.

What the district actually changed

The turning point was an energy audit carried out in 2017 by Entegrity, an energy-efficiency company based in Little Rock. It found that the buildings were wasting a great deal of energy and proposed a package of improvements, financed through a $5.4 million bond:

• Solar power: more than 1,400 solar panels in a field next to the high school.
• Lighting: replacing old fixtures with efficient LED lighting.
• Heating and cooling: new HVAC systems and smart thermostats.
• Building envelope and water: new windows and more efficient water fixtures.

This detail matters. Solar panels made the headlines, but the efficiency work, using less energy in the first place, was a large part of the savings. The audit projected that the package would save the district about $2.4 million over 20 years, and Entegrity puts annual savings at roughly $362,000.

How the savings became pay raises

Once the bills fell, the district chose to direct the money to staff. Megan Renihan, the district's communications coordinator, told EcoWatch that the reason was simple: "In order to attract and retain our staff, we wanted to increase the pay."

Turning a deficit into a surplus allowed the district to raise its salary schedule. According to reporting by ClimateWire, republished by Canary Media in October 2020, raises averaged about $2,000 to $3,000, and Hester said Batesville was now "in the top quartile in the state" for teacher pay. That made it easier to attract and keep teachers.

Teacher Jeanne Roepcke summed up the surprise many staff felt: "The sun is going to be shining anyway, so why not cash in on that?"

Fact-checking the viral version

The story spread widely in 2021 with headlines claiming the school raised every teacher's salary by $15,000 thanks to solar panels alone. That overstates it in two ways:

• The size of the raises. The average was in the low thousands of dollars. Entegrity's own account says increases went up to $15,000, which describes the largest individual changes, not a uniform raise.
• The source of the savings. Solar was one part of a wider energy-efficiency programme. Lighting, HVAC and building upgrades contributed a great deal.

Some versions also suggested the panels make the district money by selling power. There is some truth in that: local TV reporting said surplus output becomes a credit with the electric company, and CBS News said the district sells electricity back to the grid. Still, most of the gain came from much lower bills; the district said its monthly electricity bill fell from about $17,000 to about $4,000.

None of this takes away from the achievement. A small, rural district fixed its budget and paid its teachers more by spending money on its buildings.

A model other districts copied

Batesville's results got noticed. By October 2020, at least 20 school districts in the region had followed a similar approach. Across the United States, schools are well suited to this kind of project: they have large roofs and grounds, they use most of their power during daylight hours, and their energy bills come straight out of education budgets.

Since then, US federal policy has also made school solar easier to fund. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 allowed tax-exempt bodies such as school districts to receive clean-energy tax credits as direct payments, although later changes in federal law have narrowed or ended some of those incentives, so districts need to check the rules that apply now.

For context, renewable sources supplied about 9 percent of total US energy consumption in 2023, according to the US Energy Information Administration, and a larger share of electricity generation. Their costs have fallen steeply over the past decade, which is what makes projects like Batesville's pay for themselves.

How a school can assess a similar proposal

For school boards, parents and teachers thinking about a similar plan, a few questions help separate a good deal from a risky one:

• Start with an audit. Efficiency upgrades are usually the cheapest savings, and they reduce how much solar capacity you need.
• Compare full costs with avoided bills. Include financing, maintenance, inverter replacement and how future electricity tariffs might change.
• Read projections carefully. A 20-year saving is an estimate, not money in the bank, and annual savings are not the same as the system's output.
• Decide in advance where savings go. Batesville's clear commitment to teacher pay is what turned an infrastructure project into an education story.
• Use it in the classroom. Generation data and energy bills make excellent real-world material for maths and science lessons.

Sources: Canary Media (ClimateWire/E&E News), October 2020; Entegrity: Batesville School District project; IFLScience; Announce.today; US Energy Information Administration: Renewable energy explained; EcoWatch; Scripps/WTVR, January 2021.