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ADMINISTRATION
Create a Green Earth School Program
Each school can become a Green Earth School by accomplishing the tasks listed below. When these tasks are accomplished the likelyhood of reducing waste in the use of utility resources (energy, water, etc.) increases. This kind of program helps to create awareness of the need to prevent the wasting of environmental resources such as energy, water, and recyclable materials. Schools and School Districts can expect to see a reduction of utility costs for energy, water, and waste as a result of these efforts.
School Districts
Although the program primarily takes place at
each school, there are several things that can be done by the
administration and school board that will help support the school-based
initiative.
- Publically support the program by recognizing school-based administrators and teachers who take time to initiate and maintain the program at their school. This can be done at school board meetings, principals' meetings with the superintendent, school district newsletter, or web site.
- Establish a small grant program that rewards schools for becoming a Green Earth School. Reasonable levels of monetary awards could be $500 for elementary schools, $800 for middle schools, and $1,000 for high schools. The school would be required to submit a grant application for these funds. The amount of grants available would determine the level of competition for the grants. For example, a school district with 28 schools (18 elementary, 6 middle, and 4 high schools) could set aside $8,900 in the district budget for the Green Earth School monetary incentive program. This would be enough to make awards to 50% of each school category (14 schools in total). A comparable utility budget for a district the size of 28 schools could easily be $3.2 million. This size of a monetary award represents barely a third of one percent. Yet, the potential benefit to the school districts is in the range of 2% to 4.5% in reduced utility consumption. For this size district that would equate to $64,000 in savings using the most conservative percentage (2%). The purpose of the monetary incentive program is to reward the behavior outlined below. It is normally a very complex process to determine exactly how much utility costs were reduced by the awareness program. A study conducted by the Florida Solar Energy Center found that such programs could save from 2% to 5%. In order to keep the program relatively simple to manage, it is recommended that some degree of savings are assumed, certainly more than the cost of the incentive program. In the above example, the savings are estimated to be over 7 times the amount invested in this monetary incentive program.
The Green Earth Schools program requires the participation of the school administration, staff, teachers and students. Here are the simple tasks that a school must accomplish in order to qualify for the Green Earth Schools designation and (if supported by the school district) qualify for the monetary incentive program.
- Step #1: Establish as an additional duty a Green Earth School Coordinator. It is recommended that this person be a senior school administrator such as an assistant principal or a dean. This is important as it will allow the principal to be in touch with the program activities on a regular basis. In some cases, the principal may want to designated himself or herself as the coordinator.
- Step #2: Establish a Green Earth Schools committee. As a minimum the committee should consist of the Coordinator, one staff member, and one teacher. It is recommended that, whenever possible, members of the committee include custodial workers, food service workers, and maintenance technicians. The teacher or teachers participating will most likely be the ones that are involved in the third element of qualification outlined below.
- Step #3: Establish a student service-learning project or activity sponsored by at least one of the assigned teachers of the school relating to energy, water, recycling, or plant conservation. The activity can be conducted during school hours if it is directly related to accomplishing curriculum objectives, or after school as an extracurricular activity. A Green Earth Project Club can be established for middle and high schools for after-school activities. Or, existing clubs could take on a Green Earth Project mission as one of their activities for the year. Elementary schools will typically conduct in-class activities that relate to the science units they are studying (energy, water, recycling, etc.). Examples, of service-learning projects include energy patrols, meter reading, resource saving tips broadcast by students on morning announcements, poster-art displays, etc.
- Support and promote the Green Earth Schools program by recognizing participating teachers and other contributors to the environmental resource conservation effort. This can be done at staff and faculty meetings, school newsletters, Parent-Teacher Organizations or School Advisory Council meetings, and with morning announcements.
- If your school district decides to establish a monetary incentive program, you can submit your school for consideration of an award.
If you have gone through the effort to become a Green Earth School, you may want to submit yourself for a national level award. Click on the links below for more details.
Alliance to Save Energy - Earth Apple Award
Igniting Creative Energy