The Dallas Academy EarthX winning team. (Photo courtesy of Delene Ephraim.)

One hundred students with learning differences from Dallas Academy created a carbon-positive model home that won the top award at the EarthX exposition in April.

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The team from Dallas Academy — a private school serving students with dyslexia, dysgraphia, autism and ADHD — beat out other public and private high schools across the city for the award.

Students spent a semester working on the model home, which is fully operational with smart glass windows, a ducted HVAC system with thermo electric coolers, solar panels, wind turbines, a green roof, solar tubes and geothermal floors.

Senior James King inspired the project after building a smaller model home two years ago. But the student team had trouble constructing the home without welding, cutting through wood or using new material. Instead, they used repurposed aluminum structures to frame the house.

“I’m so very proud of our students because they gave everything they had and spent cumulatively thousands of hours from early in the morning to late in the evening,” science teacher Darren Carollo said.