The $787 billion economic stimulus package contains billions of dollars to help make school buildings more energy efficient--upgrades that could save individual schools thousands of dollars in operating expenses.

The candy machine at Henry Sibley High School in Minnesota knows when students are roaming the halls and automatically powers down when they've gone home. The basketball court still shines, but under the glow of fluorescent tubes that suck up a fraction of the juice the old lights used.

Thanks to such measures, energy costs across the school district in this Twin Cities suburb already are down by nearly a third. Officials want to trim the expenses even more, but that will require investing in upgrades.

The federal economic stimulus dollars could be just what they need. Some of the billions of dollars trickling down from Washington will be used to make public buildings more energy efficient. School officials hope long-term savings can sprout from those one-time upgrades--the types of projects that get shoved aside when budgets are squeezed and tax levies fail.

"The money we spend on electric, water, gas, and oil--those dollars compete with dollars for textbooks and teachers," said Jay Haugen, superintendent of Independent School District 197, which serves West St. Paul, Mendota Heights, and Eagan, Minn..

The economic stimulus package contains $6.3 billion for state and local governments to make energy usage more efficient, including in public buildings. Schools are eligible for some of that money--in addition to a $22 billion zero-interest bond program for school construction projects created in the recovery package. Nationwide, there are roughly 80,000 public school buildings.

State governments know how much money they'll receive, but details about how the money will get from Washington to local school systems are still being worked out. Schools in many states will have to compete with other public buildings for energy dollars, and in most cases, projects will require local matching funds.