Join Illinois Green Alliance for a tour of Skokie School District 68's new Early Childhood
Center — an 18,000-square-foot facility commissioned by the Board of Education to bring state-
of-the-art pre-K education to the Skokie community.

Located next to Old Orchard Junior High School, the ECC adds to District 68's growing portfolio
of buildings heated and cooled entirely by all-electric ground-source heat pumps. Twenty
geothermal wells sit beneath the lawn behind the building, sized with enough capacity to
gradually bring the junior high onto the same system down the road. The new systems also run
quieter than typical packaged unit ventilators — a real difference in an early childhood learning
environment.

Other sustainable attributes include a 60 kW rooftop solar array, still to be installed, and a partial
mass timber structure. Beyond its lower embodied carbon impact, the exposed timber works
alongside abundant daylighting and woodland design themes to apply biophilic design principles
shown to support learning outcomes.

A combination of state, federal, and utility grants and programs made much of this work
possible. Along with a walkthrough of the completed project, the district superintendent and
representatives of the design team will lead an informed discussion of the building's
performance and the avenues that remain for further decarbonization and climate resilience.

Learning Objectives

• Apply fossil fuel-free heating and cooling systems in educational environments.
• Evaluate coordination challenges among architects, structural engineers, and MEP
  engineers to optimize the benefits of exposed mass-timber structures.
• Assess the feasibility of deploying geothermal wells and compatible building systems.
• Apply strategies to translate sustainability goals from the strategic level into project-level
  implementation.