“We are very much aware this is costing taxpayers a significant amount of money,” the school district's assistant superintendent of finance, Aaron Osborne, told NBC News.Teachers are adjusting by unscrewing light bulbs at the end of the day and throwing some breakers not connected to vital parts of the school.The problem with new parts is that this has all been in the middle of the pandemic and a huge chip shortage, so the parts have been back-ordered and delayed several times.A lesson in proper smart building designEven if you aren't in charge of the lighting design of a giant building, there's a valuable lesson here for anyone getting involved with smart home/building technology: make technology an addition to your setup, not a dependency.You still need to install physical light switches in every room, but as a bonus, you can pick light switches that are also controllable via some kind of network."