Kenny Luna may have some help in his quest to get CFLs into the hands of students across the country: nine schools in Southern California. The schools are part of the Alliance to Save Energy's Green Schools program; elementary and high schools in the Alta Loma, Hesperia, and San Bernardino Unified School Districts are all participating

The schools provide students and their families a means to exchange incandescent bulbs with more energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly CFLs. Students sign pledges vowing to replace their old bulbs with CFLs, supplied by Southern California Edison, and document the wattage of the bulbs they replaced. Bulbs were exchanged at school, during PTO events, parent events, and other school-community activities.

The program set a goal for the 2006-2007 school year: to replace 4,000 bulbs in the homes of district families, but that goal was too conservative. The program replaced over 8,000 bulbs in the fall semester alone. In fact, the program has been so successful that twenty more schools were added for the second semester, and the program expects to easily make their three-year goal of replacing 12,000 bulbs in less than a year.

Think of it this way: in just these nine schools, students have already saved their families a collective $40,000 in energy costs, and about three million kWh over the life of the bulbs. The program anticipates a one-year savings of over $700,000 for student families.

Kenny Luna is the Pied Piper of light bulbs. CFL bulbs, specifically, and he's working his tail off to see to it that every kid in America gets one in their home. Luna is a middle school science teacher from North Babylon, New York, who was so moved by Hurricane Katrina, its devastating aftermath, and connection to global warming, that he decided he had to do something, anything, to fight climate change. "I was so passionate after watching Katrina, and I was just tired of watching people do nothing. Someone had to do something," Luna said in a phone interview from his home.

That something was CFL light bulbs. He began with his school PTO, with the idea of giving students CFL bulbs, which use 66% less energy than regular incandescents. His students became involved. They wrote to Oprah. They talked to retailers. They held a press conference. The community became involved. Mr. Luna's Bright Idea was born. "We realize that we need to do something about global warming. Unfortunately, a lot of people think, for some reason, that it's not going to affect our kids," Luna said, "I think they think it's going to affect kids five thousand years from now, and unfortunately, that's not the case."

Home Depot eventually donated one CFL to every kid in his district, North Babylon, and Luna and his crew had a community Lighting Ceremony, complete with live band, magician, and refreshments, to hand out the bulbs. "That night alone, we probably gave out over 2,000 light bulbs," Luna said. "That's a lot of light bulbs."

Mr. Luna's Bright Idea is expanding. Districts across the country have contacted Luna about bringing the Bright Idea to their schools. Although details are not finalized, Luna has been in talks with a number of high-volume retailers, working on a a way to make this happen as early as next fall. He's starting a non-profit, Mr. Luna's Bright Idea LTD, that will work with kids and the environment, which already has an impressive group of people expressing interest in its board of directors, namely Treehugger.com founder Graham Hill, Princeton scientist Michael Oppenheimer, teacher and president-elect of the California Science Teachers Association Susan Pritchard, Brown University scientist Steven Hamburg, and Janet Myerson, a school board member with extensive experience with the New York State PTA. The non-profit will give grants to schools and teachers to implement their own light bulb programs and scholarships to students going into environmentally-focused fields. And although Luna knows that giving away 53 millions bulbs may be unrealistic, that's not stopping him from coming as close as he can. All this, from one teacher working one light bulb at a time.