Good Shepherd’s Green Building Salvo Just Latest in Centuries-Old Sectarian Battle
Good Shepherd’s Center for Creative Learning
It wasn’t but two weeks ago that Ursuline unveiled their shiny new Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded science complex, which was unveiled 13 days ago as the first LEED Gold school building in the Southwest, a claim that was later retracted when the school learned of a LEED Gold facility at a school in New Mexico. But that still made them the first in Texas, which isn’t to shabby.
Not to be outdone by the all-girls Catholic high school, Good Shepherd Episcopal School just announced it’s own LEED Gold building which, according to the press release just sent by the school, is a first for a Texas elementary school. GSES’s Center for Creative Learning, which has been around at least since I toured the school in September or so but just received the certification, boasts natural lighting, clean air processing, recycled building materials, and energy conservation measures.
Now, it could be mere coincidence that the schools happened to brandish their green building chops just two weeks apart, or that a green building zeitgeist has finally taken hold. Perhaps. Or maybe this is merely a continuation of the sectarian squabble started by King Henry VIII when he broke off from the Roman Catholic Church in 1538. This is shaping up to be significantly less bloody than other Catholic-Protestant conflicts like, say, the Thirty Years’ War, but just the same, this could just be the beginning of an arms race for environmental street cred. Will Jesuit install a sod roof? Will ESD respond with a greywater recycling system? Will Ursuline unveil a new line of 100-percent hemp uniforms?
