School Uplift Program At LMES - Energy Star
The School Uplift Program is a strategic energy-efficiency initiative for K–12 schools across the Tennessee Valley region. At LaGrange-Moscow Elementary, Gifted Program students are serving as the school’s Energy Team, leading awareness campaigns and hands-on activities to promote smarter energy use.
To launch the program, students recently conducted an energy audit of LMES alongside Mr. Mike Kee, FCPS Director of Operations, TVA representative Cole Robins, and Principal Mrs. Arcinko Smith. The information gathered will guide their efforts throughout the year.
Planned activities include installing educational signage, hosting energy scavenger hunts, organizing “Energy Days,” and distributing energy-efficient lightbulbs. Schools that successfully complete the program are guaranteed $10,000 in the spring to invest in projects such as STEM equipment, outdoor classrooms, and playground improvements. In addition, the LMES Energy Team will apply for further grants to support both educational initiatives and energy-saving projects.
This initiative is part of the Fayette County Public Schools Gifted Program, providing advanced learning opportunities that challenge and inspire students through innovation, creativity, and hands-on exploration.
Our Gifted Class is excited to participate in the Carl Perkins Festival of Trees in Somerville, TN, where we'll be creating an informative Christmas tree centered on the theme of energy conservation! This special tree will serve as both a festive holiday display and an educational tool to share important conservation messages with our community.
Students are designing and decorating the tree with adorable plush Newton mascots, the friendly face of energy conservation from our TVA School Uplift Program work. The tree will also feature energy-efficient LED bulbs, demonstrating how simple choices like switching to LED lighting can significantly reduce energy consumption while still creating beautiful, bright displays.
Throughout the tree, we'll incorporate informative elements that teach visitors about practical ways to conserve energy at home and in their daily lives. This creative approach allows us to spread awareness about sustainability and environmental responsibility during the holiday season when energy usage typically increases.
The Carl Perkins Festival of Trees provides a wonderful opportunity for our students to extend their conservation message beyond our school and into the broader community. By combining holiday cheer with education, we hope to inspire festival attendees to think about their own energy usage and consider small changes that can make a big impact on our environment!
Our Gifted group is proud to be participating in the TVA School Uplift Program, working to make a positive impact on energy conservation at Lagrange Moscow Elementary School! Students took on the important role of energy ambassadors by creating and delivering an educational presentation to every classroom in our school.
During these presentations, students explained the goals of the TVA School Uplift Program and shared practical ways that students and teachers can help conserve energy throughout the school day. We emphasized how small actions by everyone can add up to make a big difference in reducing energy consumption and helping our environment.
To support ongoing conservation efforts, we left each classroom with helpful resources including a shutdown procedure checklist to ensure lights, computers, and other equipment are properly turned off at the end of the day. We also provided each class with a Newton mascot to serve as a friendly reminder of our energy-saving mission, along with colorful posters and stickers to keep energy conservation top of mind.
Through this initiative, our students are learning leadership skills, practicing public speaking, and making a real difference in our school community. We're excited to see how our collective efforts will reduce energy usage at Lagrange Moscow Elementary and contribute to a more sustainable future!
Our Gifted Class is excited to participate in the Carl Perkins Festival of Trees in Somerville, TN, where we'll be creating an informative Christmas tree centered on the theme of energy conservation! This special tree will serve as both a festive holiday display and an educational tool to share important conservation messages with our community.
Students are designing and decorating the tree with adorable plush Newton mascots, the friendly face of energy conservation from our TVA School Uplift Program work. The tree will also feature energy-efficient LED bulbs, demonstrating how simple choices like switching to LED lighting can significantly reduce energy consumption while still creating beautiful, bright displays.
Throughout the tree, we'll incorporate informative elements that teach visitors about practical ways to conserve energy at home and in their daily lives. This creative approach allows us to spread awareness about sustainability and environmental responsibility during the holiday season when energy usage typically increases.
The Carl Perkins Festival of Trees provides a wonderful opportunity for our students to extend their conservation message beyond our school and into the broader community. By combining holiday cheer with education, we hope to inspire festival attendees to think about their own energy usage and consider small changes that can make a big impact on our environment!
Students took to the halls to personally invite their fellow classmates and teachers to Watt's the Deal Family Night, spreading the word about this exciting TVA-sponsored program. Armed with flyers and invitations, they enthusiastically shared details about the event and the free giveaways attendees can look forward to, including LED light bulbs and Energy Savings Kits courtesy of TVA. The energy and excitement were contagious as students became the ultimate ambassadors for the night, building buzz and encouraging everyone to come out and learn more about energy efficiency. 
Students proudly took center stage to present the three potential scopes for the LEG Grant Award of $10,000, explaining each option to their peers — playground improvements featuring new basketball and soccer goals, a full LED fluorescent bulb replacement paired with an energy-efficient outdoor water fountain, or enhancing the STEM program with a solar telescope and digital microscopes for every classroom. A school-wide vote was then held for students in grades 3–5, giving every child a real voice in how the grant money could be used, with the playground upgrade earning the top vote and the LED changeover coming in as a very close second. We were incredibly proud to see students genuinely wrestle with their decision, many recognizing that choosing the LED replacement could save the school money on utility bills each year — money that could be reinvested into future improvements — a testament to the fact that the energy education lessons we worked so hard to deliver throughout the year truly made a lasting impression on our students!
We had SO many people come to our Family Night — parents, friends, other students, and even our superintendent, Dr. McPherson showed up and that was really cool! We gave a big presentation to everyone about all the things we have been doing this year in the Uplift program, and the best part was that we weren't even that nervous! At the beginning of the year, getting up in front of people — especially adults — was really scary, but we have done so much public speaking now that we have gotten really good at it!
After our presentation, we took everyone around to different stations where we got to show off our projects, explain what we have learned, and show everyone what is inside the Energy Savings Kits and how everything works. We also told them how much money they could save just by switching to LED light bulbs, and a lot of the parents didn't know that before so they thought that was really interesting!
We also had all the kids sign up for a chance to win a Newton Mascot — we have about 20 to give away and we are going to pull the winners next week, so everybody was really excited about that! The parents were super impressed with everything we presented and they really loved the giveaways. It felt really good to show everyone how much we have learned this year and we are so proud of everything our group has done!
We are SO close to the finish line, and things are getting really exciting as we wrap up our year in the TVA School Uplift Program! In March, we had a super special guest at our Team meeting — Moscow's very own Mayor Kris Tims came to talk with us about starting a real school garden, and we are pumped because this is something WE came up with after everything we learned this year! We showed him where our garden could go, and he had the best idea — the air conditioner units nearby release condensation that can actually water our garden for FREE, which means we save money on our water bill and our utility bills too! We also got to give Mayor Tims 12 water-saving kits and 12 boxes of LED light bulbs to share with the Aldermen, city employees, and our two city police officers at City Hall. We still have some left over from our Festival of Trees and Family Night giveaways, so we are going to hide them as prizes for the ADULTS at the City Easter Egg Hunt in April — how cool is that?! Then, once we get the official word on our LEG grant, we are throwing an end-of-project celebration where we will FINALLY draw the names of our Newton mascot winners who signed up at Family Night. What an amazing year it has been — we can't wait to see how it all ends!
This week, students from LaGrange-Moscow Elementary School are doing something truly special. Our gifted program's Energy Ambassadors personally delivered LED light bulbs and Home Energy Kits to Mayor Kris Tims at Moscow City Hall — and those energy-saving goodies are going straight into Easter eggs for this Saturday's community egg hunt!
These young leaders have spent the year learning how to conserve energy, reduce waste, and take care of their community — and now they're sharing that work with their neighbors in the most fun way possible.
Come celebrate with us! 
This Saturday 
8:00 – 11:00 AM 
Moscow City Hall 
FREE and open to everyone!
Bring the kids, bring the family, and help us celebrate a community that learns and grows together — one egg at a time.
Our students visited Hardeman Fayette Utilities to personally thank Mrs. Jan Ward for her kindness and support throughout our TVA School Uplift Energy Conservation Project. Each month, Mrs. Ward made sure our school received our gas utility bills — and that steady stream of data was essential. Without it, our students couldn't track our school's gas usage, analyze our energy habits, or meet the requirements of the program.
The students also had the wonderful opportunity to visit with Mr. Clay Joyner and share all about their project this year — from conducting energy audits in their classrooms, to their field trip to Chickasaw Electric, to delivering LED bulbs and Home Energy Kits to Mayor Kris Tims at City Hall for the community Easter egg hunt. It was a chance for our young Energy Ambassadors to shine, share their learning, and connect with community leaders who invest in our school.
It's the kind of behind-the-scenes support that doesn't always get recognized — but our students knew exactly who to thank.
Mrs. Ward and Mr. Joyner, on behalf of our Energy Ambassadors, our school, and our entire community — thank you! Your partnership helped make this project a success and showed our kids what it looks like when a community truly works together.
The LMES Energy Team recently completed a school-wide light bulb count — going room by room, hallway by hallway, to determine exactly how many fluorescent bulbs our building uses. Their final tally? 2,000 bulbs. Thanks to our continued partnership with TVA, LMES will receive all 2,000 replacement LED bulbs completely free of charge. This upgrade will brighten our school, reduce energy consumption, and stretch every dollar further — a real-world result made possible by students who took their role as Energy Ambassadors seriously from day one. We are so proud of this team! 
LaGrange-Moscow Elementary Earns $25,000 TVA School Uplift Award!
We are incredibly proud to announce that LaGrange-Moscow Elementary School has been recognized as one of the top 10 performing schools out of 121 participating schools in the TVA School Uplift Energy Ambassadors Program, and with that honor came a very big reward!
While all participating schools were guaranteed a $10,000 grant, our students' outstanding performance earned LMES an extraordinary $25,000 award. This recognition was based on exceptional engagement, data collection, community involvement, outreach, and the quality of experiences that taught others how to save energy.
On May 8th, our four young Energy Ambassadors were celebrated at a special check presentation attended not only by the students, faculty and staff of LMES and Deputy Superintendent Eddie Keel, but also by an impressive group of distinguished community leaders and supporters, including:
- Warren Speakman, Chairman of the Fayette County School Board
- Kris Tims, Mayor of Moscow
- Loyd Muncy, Director of Chickasaw Electric Cooperative
- Andrea Kee, Chickasaw Electric Cooperative, who assisted our students with electricity usage, cost, and data
- Clay Joyner, Director of Hardeman Fayette Utility District
- Jan Ward, who assisted our students with gas usage, cost, and data
Having so many community leaders show up for these students sent them a powerful message — that people beyond their families believe in them and that they truly did make a difference in their school and our community. These kids are so deserving of every moment of recognition, and the memory of yesterday will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
Once all of the grant funds have been put to work, we plan to have a plaque permanently installed in the school honoring everything these young Energy Ambassadors were able to achieve — a lasting reminder to future students of what is possible through hard work, dedication, and a community that believes in them.
Don't miss us on Live at 9 on Channel 3, May 20th at 9:00 a.m.!
Congratulations to our incredible Energy Ambassadors and thank you to everyone who made this journey possible!