The big push for energy savings in Santa Rosa City Schools isn’t faring so well.

The plan was to get teachers to turn off their computer monitors and forfeit their personal fridges, and to ask students to turn out lights and open windows instead of cranking up the AC.

Cutting usage by 10 percent would have saved $190,000 annually — $120,000 of which would go toward the reinstatement of spring sports next year.

Well the school board voted to reinstate spring sports next year despite the dismal early returns on the energy savings campaign.

Energy use district wide is down only 1 percent.

“The energy program is not, I have to be candid, generating the savings we had hoped,” said Associate Superintendent Doug Bower. “It’s disheartening, frankly.”

This comes despite a high profile push to get people to change their ways voluntarily. The district even sponsored a contest for campaign posters and handed out cash prizes.

But it’s not catching on everywhere.

Bower singled out Santa Rosa High as a campus doing something right.

“Santa Rosa High School, we know there is an active student effort there. That school is showing double digit reduction. That, to me, should be going on all over the district but it’s not,” he said.

“For the most part we are dealing with human behavior issues,” he said. “The fact is, we need to do better.”

“I can’t sit before you today and say that we are going to save that $190,000 by next spring,” Bower said.

For the months of January, February and March year over year comparing 2010 with 2009, the district office led the way with a reduction of 13.8 percent in their PG&E usage. Santa Rosa High dropped their use 12.8 percent.

Lincoln, Biella, Slater, Ridgway and child nutrition dropped their use between 6 and 9 percent.

On the flipside, some campus use shot up.

Santa Rosa Middle went up 16 percent. Santa Rosa Charter School for the Arts went up 5.7 percent.

Trustee Wally Lowry suggested a deeper look at the rise in use numbers at the three campuses that have newly installed solar panels: Carrillo, Cook and Elsie.

“There will be something coming out of that, I’m sure,” he said.