These schools are living laboratories that mold young people into sustainability natives, and they will in turn become knowledgeable adults who inherently understand what it means to live green. Plus, these students are learning in environments with abundant daylighting, healthier air, and better acoustics—all of which contribute to an enhanced educational experience.

Indeed, what may have started as a trend in educational facility design and construction toward “going green” has matured into a comprehensive sustainable outlook that will continue to benefit today’s students well into the future. However, there is still much work to be done.

The approximately 1,200 schools involved with LEED represent only a small part of the nearly 126,000 public and private schools throughout the country. In a renewed effort to get even more school districts on board, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is leading several initiatives, including a new toolkit aimed at existing school buildings.

Here’s a look at those initatives and how they translate into sustainable strategies that will positively impact future generations of students.

Introducing Green Ex²
LEED provides the tools for improving a building’s performance during any phase of its life cycle, whether construction, operations and maintenance, or renovation. A new toolkit is underway that will enable schools to more effectively harness LEED for their ongoing operations and maintenance.

Most LEED-certified schools are new construction or major renovation projects. Only 3 percent of all LEED-registered and LEED-certified school projects are existing building retrofits. The greening of existing schools presents a distinct challenge for school districts: Amending operations and maintenance plans, policies, and procedures across a district requires that multiple departments work together—facilities, energy management, grounds-keeping, waste management, transportation, and others—which can be particularly difficult in larger districts. Additionally, up-front expenses may be unavoidable, especially for improvements that relate to energy performance. Operations budgets are often stretched so thin that it is difficult to find funds to address immediate health and safety issues, much less green operations and maintenance. School districts need help streamlining processes and minimizing expenses to allow for sustainable operations, and that is the goal of the Green Excellence in Existing School Toolkit (Green Ex²).

Green Ex² and its accompanying training
resources will enable schools and school districts to green their existing portfolio of facilities and achieve certification via the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance Rating System. LEED for Existing Buildings helps building owners and operators measure operations, improvements, and maintenance on a consistent scale with the goal of maximizing operational efficiency and minimizing environmental impacts. LEED for Existing Buildings addresses whole-building cleaning and maintenance issues (including chemical use), recycling programs, exterior maintenance programs, and systems upgrades. It can be applied both to existing buildings seeking LEED certification for the first time and to projects previously certified under three LEED certifications—New Construction, Schools, and Core and Shell.

Green Ex², scheduled for release in fall 2009, will include a Greening Existing Schools: Project Management Guide and an Implementation Workbook, which together will provide guidance, strategies, and policy and planning templates to assist school districts and personnel with the application process for Existing Buildings certification. The manual and guide will be free to all schools through USGBC Web sites—www.usgbc.org and www.buildgreenschools.org. USGBC also is developing a series of Web-based training modules as part of Green Ex².

Getting government on board
While much of the drive toward green schools comes from the grassroots advocacy of parents, students, teachers, and community members, widespread change also must involve coordinated advocacy efforts that spread the word about green schools to all levels of government. Decision makers in schools and districts also need the support and backing of city and county leaders, state officials, and federal policymakers. Getting government officials on board can result in innovative and useful policies that focus on incentives, grants, loans, and sustainable schools requirements at the district, city, or state level.

LEED-certified schools are living laboratories that mold young people into sustainability natives, and they will in turn become knowledgeable adults who inherently understand what it means to live green.

Here are two examples of successful advocacy efforts:

• USGBC, Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels recently launched the Mayors’ Alliance for Green Schools. The alliance aims to accelerate the implementation of programs that support the 2007 U.S. Conference of Mayors resolution that calls for green schools for all children within a generation. By the end of 2008, 12 mayors had joined the alliance.

• At the state level, nine states and the District of Columbia have developed policies requiring green schools construction. One state leading the charge on green schools is Ohio, where hundreds of new and renovated schools will soon meet higher energy efficiency and environmental standards through the Ohio School Facilities Commission’s adoption of LEED for Schools. The commission determined it could save taxpayers $1.4 billion over the next 40 years by reducing energy consumption in educational facilities.

To encourage state-level advocacy, USGBC in September 2008 launched the “50 for 50” initiative, aimed at creating green school caucuses in every state legislature. As of December 2008, 14 such caucuses had been introduced. The “50 for 50” initiative provides state legislators with up-to-date information on green building trends and research, networking opportunities with like-minded legislators around the country, opportunities for partnerships with experts in their communities, and involvement in regional and national forums.

• At the federal level, a Green Schools Caucus, now 64 members strong, formed in October 2007 in the U.S. House of Representatives. Federal leadership led to the House passage in summer 2008 of the 21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act, which would provide more than $20 billion over five years to help states build and renovate schools to make them healthier, more energy-efficient, and better for the environment.
The bipartisan caucus aims to raise awareness of the benefits of green schools, lead the policy discussion on the topic in various forums, create legislative opportunities for the collective efforts of the caucus members, and provide members of Congress with constituent outreach resources. Caucus members and their staff participate in educational programs to learn what is going on nationally and in their districts, including site visits to green schools and educational panels with teachers, architects, and school officials from throughout the country.

Spreading the green news
Several education-related organizations are playing active roles in supporting green initiatives for educational facilities as well as educating the parents, legislators, community leaders, and others about green schools and their positive impact on the learning environment. These include the Association of School Business Officials, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the Parent-Teacher Association, and the National School Boards Association.

In July 2008, the executive council of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) approved a resolution calling for the promotion of state policies that fund the building of LEED-certified and other green schools. AFT is one of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions, with more than 1.4 million members. The resolution declared that AFT would advocate for federal policy that promotes green schools and would work on the local level to provide green schools resources, promote green curriculum, and spread the word about LEED schools.

The National Education Association (NEA), through its Health Information Network (HIN), has long worked to improve the indoor environmental quality of America’s schools. In recent years, that advocacy has grown to an active support for holistic green schools that emphasize not only indoor air quality but overall comprehensive sustainability and efficiency. NEA and NEA HIN are creating an online professional development course as part of NEA’s Academy on indoor environmental quality; a segment of the course will be devoted to green schools, with USGBC’s assistance. And nearly 10,000 delegates at the 2008 NEA Representative Assembly adopted a business item calling for increased support for sustainability in schools and a greener curriculum.

Maintaining momentum
As more schools, colleges, universities, state officials, and national leaders get actively involved in meaningful green initiatives for the nation’s learners, sustainable best practices and strategies will continue to reap results—including reduced energy consumption and costs, cleaner air, more welcoming environments with abundant natural light and quality acoustics, and buildings that inspire learning and student interaction.

What’s more, students who learn in these environments come away with much more than academic skills. They experience what may one day soon become the educational facility norm—green buildings that house students who are well-equipped for implementing sustainable living strategies well into the future.

Doug Smeath is communications manager for the USGBC in Washington, DC. Reach him at dsmeath@usgbc.org.