by Brianna Crandall — March 2, 2011—The Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the City of Sacramento announced recently that the Sacramento City Unified School District will be one of the first to obtain a Center for Green Schools Fellow. The USGBC program will place these fully funded, full-time sustainability officers in school districts across the country for three-year terms.
Through support from CGS Founding Sponsor United Technologies Corp. (UTC), Sacramento’s Center for Green Schools UTC Fellow will have the opportunity to positively and permanently transform the policies, practices and culture across the school district. The Fellows are charged to work with school district leadership to provide clear direction, comprehensive training and valuable resources toward greening the district’s school buildings.
The Center for Green Schools Fellowship program followed from a 2008 pilot program in which USGBC placed a sustainability coordinator in the Katrina-stricken Recovery School District in New Orleans to provide the expertise needed to rebuild the devastated school infrastructure. The Recovery School District has fully embraced environmentally sound practices, and more than 15 LEED-certified or registered schools are now open or under construction. Tremendous improvements have been made to facility operations and maintenance practices.
USGBC is dedicated to replicating this example of district-wide transformation by partnering with school districts, elected and appointed officials and funders to expand the Center for Green Schools Fellowship program. The program offers the community-wide benefit of having a single individual organize system-wide sustainability efforts, and ensures school districts have the tools and resources to not only implement improvements to facilities and operations, but to sustain these improvements over the years.
The Fellows will work with their school district to initiate and/or accelerate various initiatives that the district may have been unable to move forward, such as: monitoring energy usage and decreasing consumption by educating staff and students, disseminating environmental curriculum resources, establishing indoor air quality policies and practices, revising maintenance and transportation contracts, and improving recycling, school garden and composting programs.
