The state legislature is telling us that solar power is in vogue. We can chalk this up to Schwarzenegger’s laudable move to have energy companies pay solar panel owners who produce surplus instead of offering them obscure credits toward their bills that then don’t roll over.

With this little gem in the squalor we know as California’s education budget, it seems schools of all kinds, including De Anza College, could do a little more than just eye the bandwagon as it passes by, shiny and solar-powered. Maybe we should hop on.

If you pay attention to local political propaganda, you probably saw support signs for some obscure thing called Measure B. It’s a local high school measure that gives local schools money to modernize their grounds. Despite the perverse reality that most schools are cutting classes and slashing sections just like De Anza is, the money given to construct solar panels on school grounds marks a severe contrast to the lack of funds to pay teachers and professors statewide.

That might seem odd, but the districts came up with a brilliant solution: they’re using the greater part of the $198 million to install canopies of solar panels in their parking lots.

Sound ridiculous? Have yourself a look on De Anza grounds. We have a few of these carports, too. Unfortunately, ours aren’t nearly as extensive as Measure B made possible for local high schools, probably because, as usual, we would run into a funding issue if we tried to expand them.

On the other hand, the new solar panels are going to save high schools roughly a million bucks a year.

Savings that substantial could do a lot to ease our seven million dollar budget deficit.

De Anza wouldn’t be the first college to do this. Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. teamed up with Honeywell International, which is installing the solar panels on Lewis and Clark property and then selling the energy to the college for 20 years, saving the college roughly $20,000 in energy costs.

Colorado State University researchers are developing a manufacturing method that would make solar panel production much cheaper by essentially coating ordinary window glass so it can produce electricity.

Though the production of these innovative solar panels is to stay firmly planted in northern Colorado, cheaper solar panels mean that solar power is becoming a much more viable option for institutions with budget problems.

It boils down to this: installing the large numbers of solar panels we would need to power our school is expensive.

But once we have part of the parking lot covered, we use the energy savings to pay off the materials, the surplus to build more solar panels, and so on, until we can use these excess funds to bring back some of the classes and departments cut due to budget problems.

Just because the money we raise has to go to solar panels doesn’t mean what we save can’t go toward academics.

Meanwhile, prime spots on the parking lot (staff spaces, for example) get shade during the day and drivers won’t have to waste energy necessary to air condition their cars, and vendors at the flea market can dispose of those bulky tents because their stalls are already shielded from sun and rain.