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by Barbara Crane
The San Francisco Unified School District (SDUSD), like the city itself, has a history of concern for the environment. Since the 1980s, the district’s curriculum has included visits to the Environmental Science Center where kindergartners through fifth graders study ecosystem interdependence, rocks and minerals, or water and energy conservation in Fort Funston’s seaside marine and sand dune habitat.
Founded in 1851, San Francisco Unified School District educates approximately 55,000 of San Francisco’s pre-school, elementary, middle and high school students at 34 preschools, 102 K-12 schools, 8 county/court schools, and 9 charter schools.
To reduce the use of harmful chemicals and greenhouse gases, the district initiated an integrated pest management (IPM) program in the 1990s and incorporated clean diesel mandates into school bus contracts several years ago. Early in this decade, the district rolled out a $50 million building retrofit program that included the installation of energy management systems and fluorescent lighting.
By establishing the position of Director of Sustainability last year, the SFUSD took another big step forward in greening the district. Nik Kaestner, the district’s first director of sustainability, says, “My hiring means we can coordinate activities and funnel assistance to existing district and site-based initiatives.” His vision goes beyond protecting the environment to encompass the United Nation’s definition of sustainability: “Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”
“It’s all-encompassing—healthy foods and green schoolyards to green cleaners and indoor air quality to energy efficiency,” Kaestner says. “We’re looking at what we do to ensure we tread lightly on the planet, not just for the planet’s sake, but for our own.”
Recent Sustainability Efforts
Kaestner has visited nearly three-quarters of the district’s 119 K-12 schools to understand each school’s needs and to enlist a contact person at every site. Site tours have given him a picture of what each school is doing to promote sustainability. He is currently drafting a district sustainability policy and compiling a list of building-focused sustainability projects that can be addressed in the next school bond.
With the exception of adding a new wing at Lincoln High School, which will exceed California energy requirements by 22 percent when completed later this year, the district is focusing on modernizing existing schools to achieve energy efficiencies rather than constructing new buildings. Kaestner has found that recalibrating controls on heating systems and sealing buildings by weather stripping are the most common needs.
“The district gets a subsidized energy rate, which makes it harder to justify expenditures for energy improvement,” he says. “It forces us to get creative. We’re exploring ways to get solar photovoltaic and solar heating into our schools cost effectively.”
The use of green cleaning products is a recent initiative undertaken by the district’s custodial department. “About 45 schools—those with the highest asthma rates—will switch to green cleaners before the end of the year,” Kaestner says. “They cost a little more upfront, because they require a new cleaning process. Once people are trained, the per-use cost is the same, and they reduce water and chemical use.”
The SFUSD Information Technology (IT) Department is also doing its part towards establishing sustainable practices. The department recently completed work on a virtual server farm that will replace 60 physical servers spread throughout the district with only 9 machines located in a dedicated server room. The change has resulted in an 85 percent reduction in energy use. The new server system is the basis for other efficient technologies the district hopes to pilot in coming years, including thin client desktops that dramatically reduce the energy needed by desktop machines.
City Assists with District’s Sustainability Programs
As Kaestner visits schools, he finds that school gardens have generated the most excitement in terms of sustainability. “Gardens have an important role to play. They are a connection to nature and food production and show young people that learning takes place outside traditional classrooms,” he says.
In its efforts to establish school gardens, as well as promote all its green initiatives, the district substantially increases its resources by working closely with city, county, regional and business sustainability programs. School gardens, for example, were given a major boost when the voters in the City of San Francisco authorized a $295 million school bond in 2003 and a $405 million school bond in 2006. Although the majority of the bond money was earmarked for ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance, $150,000 was allocated to all K-5 schools to green their schoolyards.
The San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance (SFGSA), a coalition of Bay Area civic organizations, schools and government agencies, has taken the lead in both including schoolyard greening into the bond program and by working with elementary schools to plan, promote and sustain schoolyard gardens.
“We meet with parents, teachers and children at the schools and explain the concept of a green schoolyard,” says Arden Bucklin-Sporer, executive director of the SFGSA. “If they want to proceed, they meet with a master planning strategist and come up with a plan for how their school should look.” The bond money pays for design and construction of the schoolyard transformation. Many schools are removing asphalt and building gardens, or outdoor classrooms or other alternatives for learning and play.
The Alliance also helps schools find garden coordinators as a way to sustain the school garden. Garden coordinators model how to use a garden as a learning environment and are funded by individual schools, PTAs or grants. A collaboration between SFGSA, Friends of the Urban Forest, and the school district has had success with a website-based campaign to enlist parents and friends as garden supporters. For example, through the “2012 by 2012” campaign, aimed at planting 2,012 trees by the year 2012, “Rosa Parks Elementary School raised $5,000 within a week,” Bucklin-Sporer says. “About half of it came from a lot of $10 donations.”
Food to Flowers! is a city sponsored program that benefits the SFUSD. Food to Flowers!, administered by San Francisco’s Department of Environment, makes the district the first in the nation to compost lunchtime leftovers. “Anything that originally came from a plant or animal, including food scraps, milk cartons, paper cups, chicken bones and dirty napkins can be composted,” says Tamar Hurwitz, the department’s environmental education manager.
“We begin with a school assembly in which we teach students interrelated ecological concepts and inspire them to take action,” Hurwitz says. Teachers receive standards based lesson plans, which emphasize protecting nature and animals’ habitats—concepts young children can relate to. Older students are urged to join school environmental clubs. “There’s a real opportunity for empowerment in this program,” Hurwitz says. The city’s waste hauler, Recology, recycles food waste into high grade compost sold to local farms and wineries. Follow-up assessments show that schools diverted at least 50 percent of their food waste after the program launched.
Looking ahead, Kaestner is eager to institutionalize sustainability. “Being the only sustainability professional in the district is actually a bonus. I have to work with other departments to get the job done. In the process, I get to educate others about environmentally-friendly behavior.” This will become especially important as Kaestner tackles his next big projects: developing a rainwater catchment program, implementing a green purchasing policy, and incorporating environmental education into the curriculum and into staff training.
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