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From Revolution to Evolution: the Greening of California’s Schools is Well Underway

by Racquel Palmese

Capturing the green schools movement in California is like trying to describe an image in a kaleidoscope. As California sells bonds to finance school construction, and billions flow in for schools under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and green building codes work their way from idea to mandate, a multitude of green school initiatives are re-starting, revving up or being planned. New schools are being built, old ones refurbished for energy efficiency and sustainability, onsite power is being installed. Alongside these projects, curriculum and student activities based on them is flowering.

There are 103 California schools and over 1,000 nationally that have either received or are working through the process to attain LEED for Schools (the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) ratings. Fifty-two California schools have been completed or are in progress that meet the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) standards. CHPS is now active in 11 states.  In addition, over 30 school districts in California have passed resolutions mandating minimum CHPS standards of sustainability for their schools.

The Money Flow is Unplugged

More than 5,000 infrastructure projects have just been restarted in California as of April 22, following the sale of $6.85 billion in bonds, including $5.2 billion in Recovery Act-backed “Build America” bonds. California is the first state to take advantage of these new bonds. Many are school construction projects that have been on hold since December, 2008 due to California budget problems. A complete list of projects will soon be available at the Department of Finance website.

A week before this announcement, Education Secretary Arne Duncan released nearly $4 billion to California, the first state to benefit from a special fund created under the economic stimulus law. It is earmarked for teacher retention, upgrading teachers’ skills, turning failing schools around, allowing more charter schools to open and other enhancements to teaching and learning. Districts can apply for these funds through the California Department of Education in an application process that will be managed by Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell. An application can be found here.

“Our goal is to get these funds out to schools as soon as possible to protect jobs and help improve student achievement,” said O’Connell. “I now urge our local education agencies to quickly apply for these monies.”

Unplugging the flow of money to schools will result in new and refurbished buildings – all of which will be mandated to incorporate levels of energy efficiency and sustainability. It will also save hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs and will allow teachers to upgrade their skills. This is good news for the increasing number of educators who see green as a way to inspire their students and who seek the skills to incorporate it into their lesson plans and activities.

Spotlight Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was the first school district in California to adopt CHPS standards. Using these guidelines, the District plans to reach a 10 percent reduction in energy and water consumption by 2012.  The New School Construction Program at LAUSD will be delivering 132 new schools by the 2012-1013 school year, the largest new school construction program ever undertaken in the US. Seventy-six of these schools have been completed.

All new LAUSD schools are designed to meet CHPS criteria. These high performance schools not only create healthy learning environments and save millions of dollars in reduced energy and water costs, they also open pathways to learning. Students learn about alternative energy from rooftop solar panels. They study biology in the organic gardens they have planted and the mathematics of energy saved using efficient lighting.

At the eight year-old Environmental Charter High School (ECHS) in Los Angeles, the school’s 450 students prepare for Earth Day activities, which include some 1,000 elementary students plus a number of middle and high schools students visiting the campus. Each ECHS grade level will teach elementary students about a specific environmental topic. Ninth graders have chosen to teach issues around global warming; tenth graders will teach topics in their Green Ambassadors program (See related article). Eleventh graders have tackled pollution – tying chemistry to industrialization in US history.

Twelfth graders find their time consumed with producing their senior theses. These are 7-10 page papers addressing a social-environmental issue that has been of concern to them during their four years at the school. Their theses will include the most important aspect of their education - the actions they took along the way to make improvements in their school and community. “It’s the culminating work of their high school experience,” explains Alison Diaz-Suffet, ECHS founder and instructional leader. 

She says that ECHS has a 10-year plan to “grow our school out to a K-12 model, which will include eight schools from kindergarten through high school. Our mission is to make sure that all students are able to be successful in college as well as be inspired along the way to find their inner passion for life and to be stewards of their environment. All students take action in their local communities and make their local communities a better place.”

Their school building, leased from an inner city local district, is being transformed. With a grant from the city, they are building an amphitheater, an outdoor classroom, using recycled concrete. They are working on  creating a seasonal stream to be used as a teaching tool. Students in the Green Ambassador’s program helped install water catchment systems to circulate rainwater back to plants they have planted around the school. “We have tons of fruit bearing plants on campus,” says Diaz-Suffet. “There are lots of different best practices that we’re implementing within our budget on campus to ensure that we are working towards being the greenest model out there. We do it to live our values and also to make sure the kids see models for appropriate behavior and learn about those models while they’re in their classrooms. Our kids constantly create new practices. 

“We get them the skills to be sustainable thinkers and problem solvers,” she adds, “so they can take action in their communities.” ECHS students take environmental science classes in their first year, learning basic ecological systems and principles. In the tenth grade, all students take the Green Ambassadors program, which takes them through a series of curriculum pieces where they first look at particular environmental issues and best practices to solve these issues. Then they implement the best practices and then train community members how to implement those best practices at their homes or schools or communities.

Kennedy Hilario is executive director of the ECHS. “Our mission is to get students into college and at the same time transform them into environmental agents,” he says. “We ground them with knowledge of the environmental issues and best practices as solutions to those issues and then they actually go out into the community to put these best practices to use. They will talk to city councils about the amount of trash in the ocean and will try to influence legislation to ban plastic or Styrofoam use. They go to colleges and they talk at green conferences to show that they are agents of change. By the time they graduate, these kids have impacted hundreds of other people in a positive way and educated them about the environmental movement.”

Spotlight Lafayette

Outdoor areas – gardens and sustainable landscaping – are intrinsic to sustainable schools.  Green spaces and water catchment systems have also become learning centers. One example out of many hundreds throughout the state, is the “garden classroom” at Burton Valley elementary school, part of the Lafayette School District in Contra Costa County. There, all 700 students receive lessons on organic gardening. They grow their own vegetables and eat them. At the same time, they get lessons in water conservation and watershed protection. Says Garden Instructional Specialist Kim Curiel, “This program helps children understand sustainability on a very basic level.” The children like to eat their lunches at the garden and beg weed and care for the plants. 

Another Lafayette district school, Acalanes High School, received the Contra Costa Solid Waste Authority’s Wastebusters Award for its recycling program. The campus’ 1,300 students and 60 teachers recycle classroom paper, cans, bottles, batteries and printer cartridges, food scraps and garden clippings. Each year the students perform a trash audit with assistance from the Waste Authority. They also conduct a community e-waste event to help deal with electronic equipment discards. Money received is used to help build schools in developing countries.

Students as Energy Auditors

Back in Los Angeles, students of the Los Angeles Infrastructure Academy will soon be taking part in a four-month audit of at least 120 LAUSD middle and high schools. They will check for leaky fixtures and pipes, lawn sprinklers and irrigation systems. A calculation of how much water is used each year by each school will be made by reading water meters.

An audit at Roosevelt High School last year showed that the school was using eight times more water than it needed, and this spawned the idea that perhaps students could audit more of the schools. They are learning the latest water conservation techniques from civil engineers and other experts and have taken field trips to water treatment facilities and reservoirs. The Department of Water and Power is helping fund the audit, but not for purely altruistic reasons. Fifty percent of LADWP workers will be retiring in the next 10 years, and there will soon be a dramatic shortage of workers.

Spotlight Santa Cruz

At Soquel High School in Santa Cruz County, students in a new Regional Occupational Program receive instruction in natural and environmental science and job training. Included are fiend trips, field studies and guest speakers. They work as interns, paid or unpaid, for up to eight hours a week constructing edible landscapes, building solar panels, planting fruit trees. The Green Careers Center at Natural Bridges High prepares students for careers in things like natural resource protection to green retailing. They get individualized counseling to get prepared to enter the job market. There is even a class called Digital Media, which teaches students how to communicate to the public.

Shaping the Future

Green schools help give form and substance to the dreams of many students who have strong desires to live in a healthy, sustainable world. As more and more schools in California and around the world green their buildings, their operations and their curriculum, they engage a new generation of problem solvers and thinkers who will be unraveling the environmental puzzles of the future.

The many aspects of green schools will all be covered at the Green California Schools Summit, October 9 – 11 at the Pasadena Convention Center,  Pasadena, California. To exhibit, register or for information, go to http://www.green-technology.org/gcschools/index.html or call 626-577-5700.

Copyright © 2006, Green Technology. All rights reserved.