Administration, Mission, and Planning

Model Environmentally Sustainable Schools

August 30, 2010

Each description below is a brief summary of some extraordinary efforts schools have undertaken to accomplish their goals for environmental sustainability. Please click on the name of the school to link to the full profile of its efforts.

Berkshire School
Sheffield, MA
Contact: Frank Barros, fbarros@berkshireschool.org
Berkshire School’s commitment to environmental stewardship is rooted deep in its history. Since its establishment by Seaver Buck in 1907, faculty have continued to use “the mountain” to teach students respect for our natural resources. Berkshire School has stepped up with the intention of being a leader among independent schools towards addressing the issue of global climate change. Berkshire School is the first secondary school in the country to become partners with Clean Air-Cool Planet (the region’s leading organization dedicated to finding and promoting solutions to global warming). The science department’s Conservation Studies and Environmental Science electives, the school’s Third Form Experience, the Ritt Kellogg Mountain Program (RKMP), and the Conservation Committee are central to this mission in taking the initiative to organize students, faculty, and the administration in setting a foundation for our actions. Berkshire school was the first secondary school in the country to be recognized by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) for its conservation efforts.

Conserve School
Land O'Lakes, WI
Contact: Kim Schumacher, kim.schumacher@conserveschool.org
Conserve School seeks to continually improve its sustainability practices on campus and in its larger community, and is dedicated to the following principles:

• Decrease actions that harm the earth’s natural cycles, wildlife, and resources, and increase actions that sustain these cycles, wildlife, and resources.
• Promote environmental stewardship within the Conserve School community and the community at large.
• Promote sustainable and ecological land management systems that protect wildlife habitat and biodiversity.
• Continue and increase energy conservation, promote green energy alternatives, and select green products and green building options on the Conserve School campus.

Darrow School
New Lebanon, NY
Contact: Craig Westcott, westcottc@darrowschool.org
The historic mountainside campus provides an ideal setting for young people and adults to study and apply lessons in sustainable living in ways that have practical impacts on the community and beyond. The mission of the school is ultimately manifested in graduates who have a sustainability ethic applicable to any post-high school path. Success in this endeavor is achieved by a program that orients students to develop the inclination to consider their relationship to resources and to make civically responsible decisions. This desired student outcome is measured by the degree to which students are able to view complexity in environmental problems as an opportunity for designing elegant solutions that do not place the environment in opposition to the economy and human health.

Hawaii Preparatory Academy
Kamuela, HI
Contact: Bill Wiecking, bill@hpa.edu
On May 8, 2007, more than 20 students, faculty, administrators, and parents met for an intensive daylong charette at Hawaii Preparatory School to create a vision for creating a sustainable campus. The charette, conducted by a sustainability consulting group based in Seattle, provided a framework for a comprehensive campus effort and offered more detailed guidance. The desire for a more comprehensive approach was a natural outcome of the work of the school's Go Green committee, a small group of campus enthusiasts meeting since 2006. The result of the charette and subsequent meetings was a Five-Year Sustainability Action Plan, which includes this mission statement: "The purpose of the Go Green initiative is to help Hawaii Preparatory Academy and its neighboring community to create a healthy and sustainable future for generations to come, through education, community outreach, and implementation of sustainable practices."

The Island School
Cape Eleuthera, The Bahamas
Contact: info@islandschool.org
Twice during the academic year, the Island School hosts a new group of 48 high school sophomores and juniors for a three-month semester abroad at Cape Eleuthera, Bahamas. The academic program challenges students to generate original knowledge, apply what they learn to a real world setting, and build skills to attack unfamiliar problems. The combination of challenge, support, and isolation, along with a beautiful environment and young energetic faculty results in student growth and commitment to learning not possible in other settings. The Island School was conceived with the involvement and support of the Lawrenceville School (NJ), which still serves as the academic advisor and mentor. From the beginning of the school, co-founder and director Chris Maxey sought to instill principles of simple living, renewable energy, and leave-no-trace into the way the school functioned.

Kimball Union Academy
Meriden, NH
Contact: Dean Goodwin, dgoodwin@kua.org
The Kimball Union Academy board of trustees committed to building and funding an environmental science center in 1995. At that time, it could not have foreseen the far-reaching consequences of its decision. Ten years later, supported by mandates of our strategic plan, and with the passion of teachers and students alike, concern for the environment and a sustainable world has become a firmly rooted core value of the school. Our location, history, natural resources, and ethos position us to be a leader in the area of sustainability education. Kimball Union is now committed to providing teachers and students with the tools to incorporate sustainability throughout the fabric of the school.

In addition, in 2005, the academy organized an environmental task force, made up of teachers from all disciplines. The work of that committee led to the establishment of the Sustainability Advocacy Committee. Made up of interested faculty, staff, students, alumni, parents, and residents of the wider community, the committee is charged to identify broad programmatic sustainability initiatives and integrate them throughout our curricular, co-curricular, and residential programs. The committee charter will inform decision making in all facets of our operations. Inspired by the larger effort, students and teachers have organized smaller grass-root efforts - a community service program and a social action committee to further advance sustainable practices and education as central to our mission.

Lawrenceville School
Lawrenceville, NJ
Contact: Sam Kosoff, skosoff@lawrenceville.org
Over the past two years, the Lawrenceville School has undertaken a “Green Campus Initiative” seeking to take a holistic approach to campus sustainability. The initiative focuses on campus energy, materials, land, and water use applying methods that promote ecological literacy, sustainability education, and involve the broader community outside of the school. At the Lawrenceville School, our built environment makes an aesthetic impression on those who come to campus while simultaneously presenting a pedagogical mission. Lawrenceville’s campus, in particular, with the legacy of alumnus Aldo Leopold and foundational landscape design by Fredrick Law Olmstead, provides unique educational opportunities for our students and the local community. As a result of a built environment that is intrinsically educational, students, faculty, staff, and citizens who work, learn, and live on and around our campus will gain a new dimension to their education, and an increased appreciation of the natural world. The school employs a full-time sustainability coordinator responsible for developing and implementing sustainability projects and a coherent vision for the school as well as overseeing fund raising and budget for the projects.

Marin Academy
San Rafael, CA
Contact: Mark Stefanski, mstefanski@ma.org
In order to ensure that sustainability, ecological mindfulness, and interdisciplinary thinking remain a key component to life at Marin Academy, the school established its first endowed faculty chair, the Henry David Thoreau Faculty Chair. This position was created to promote sustainability and interdisciplinary work and to expand and integrate the concepts of sustainability into all aspects of school life, including the curriculum. Eco-Council members include faculty, staff, students, parents, trustees, and experts in the fields of ecology, energy, and gardening. The council acts as a vehicle for a deeply felt commitment on the part of the broader MA community to make our school’s day-to-day practices consistent with the values of ecological mindfulness. The council functions as a leadership council, striving to educate the school community in order to increase knowledge and raise consciousness regarding the school’s interdependent relationships with nature.

Marin Country Day School
Corte Madera, CA
Contact: Alice Moore, amoore@mcds.org
Marin Country Day School’s Environmental Oversight Committee (EOC) was established in 2006 to further the goals of the new strategic plan. Members of the 2006-07 EOC include the directors of transportation, food service, facilities, and finance; teachers; administrators; head of school; members of the board of trustees; and a parent representative. The EOC oversees the work of various committees on food, energy, transportation, waste, and curriculum. Each of these subcommittees is chaired by a member of either the faculty/staff or the board of trustees. A full-time director of environmental sustainability was appointed at the end of the 2006 school year.

Millbrook School
Millbrook, NY
Contact: Jane H. Meigs, jameigs@millbrook.org
Based on its longstanding tradition of community service and stewardship of the natural world, Millbrook School is committed to environmental stewardship in its planning, practices, and educational direction. In the context of its overall mission, Millbrook seeks to encourage environmental awareness and responsibility in the daily life of the school and in the actions of individual community members. To fulfill its mission of environmental stewardship, Millbrook enlists the aid of an Environmental Council (EC) comprised of students, faculty, and staff. The EC meets bi-monthly to address environmental programs and policies. The EC is a recommending body to the headmaster and operates by consensus. Members of the EC are dedicated to making Millbrook a greener school with an active and vital environmental program.

New Canaan Country School
New Canaan, CT
Contact: David Stoller, dstoller@countryschool.net
Commitment to the natural environment and social responsibility have long been mission themes at New Canaan Country School (NCCS). In an effort to broaden and deepen that commitment, in 2002 the NCCS board of trustees established an ad hoc board/faculty/parent committee to examine the school as an environmentally aware institution. The committee conducted a comprehensive audit of environmental practices in all areas of the school’s operations with the objective of cataloging our practices and identifying areas for possible improvement. The categories included utilities, buildings, waste/garbage, landscape, food, and transportation. Following the recommendations of this study, the school appointed an environmental coordinator to oversee our sustainability efforts, and the board adopted an official policy statement to guide the NCCS community to be stewards of the campus and this planet.

Northfield Mount Hermon School
Northfield, MA
Contact: Becca Leslie, bleslie@nmhschool.org
In 2004, Northfield Mount Hermon School (NMH) identified environmental responsibility as one of the school's five strategic goals. To achieve this goal the NMH Task Force for Sustainability meets for one hour every week during the school year to identify routes for sustainable living on campus. Members include faculty, staff, students, the assistant head of school, director of dining services, director of facilities, CFO, and director of the farm program. The purpose of this task force is to promote institutional and personal environmental responsibility within the school community. The group advises the head and trustees on issues like consesrvation of resources, recycling, waste reduction, pollution prevention, and increasing reliance on renewable resources, recommending priorities for projects to help the school reduce its environmental impact. The task force also seeks to weave sustainability into the curriculum, educating students, faculty, and administrators alike. 

Phillips Exeter Academy
Exeter, NH
Contact: Jennifer Wilhelm, sustainability@exeter.edu
The school is especially fortunate to have a board of trustees who takes environmental issues very seriously. Perhaps the most important advancement in the school's green efforts has been the academy's environmental mission statement. Crafted by the trustees with input from students, faculty, and staff, and adopted by the full board of trustees in May 2004. This statement and the commitment from the entire community that it reflects, provide a firm foundation on which future generations of Exeter students, faculty, and staff will continue to build a community that continues working toward sustainability. Leading the way at the academy, the Environmental Task Force (ETF) is a committed group comprised of faculty, students, staff, and a trustee, who work with the sustainability coordinator to oversee our school's green efforts. They meet several times each term to stay current on all of the sustainability initiatives on campus and coordinate efforts.

The Putney School
Putney, VT
Contact: Judy Sheridan, jsheridan@putneyschool.org
Stewardship of the land has been a central tenet of Putney's ethos since the school's founding. In modern times, much of our academic program is intertwined with the Farm and the Land Use component of our overall educational program and includes environmental science, agroecology, routine embryo flushing and embryo transfers as part of our biology courses, genetic improvement of the dairy herd in the molecular genetics course, the tapping of 1,300 maples every winter to produce 300 gallons of maple syrup, organic gardening that produces much of our food supply, and greenhouse growing of lettuce and other vegetables in the winter. Needless to say, we also have extensive recycling and composting programs, as well as on-grid wind generator and solar panel energy sources. Most recently we have established a "Putney Green Construction Code" that surpasses our state code. Our recently rehabbed classroom wing incorporates renewable materials in its construction -- bamboo and cork flooring for example. The school has been upgrading its facilities in recent years and will continue to do so, applying our "green" code. The Michael S. Currier Center, our recently completed performing arts center, is a "signature" building by design, but one that is LEED rated and which includes the largest sod roof in Vermont. The project also provided the subject matter for a course in which students traced the origins of all the materials used in the construction. We are about to build the school's first fitness facility, a.k.a. gym, and this building will be simple, functional, and green, thoroughly emblematic of Putney.

St. Michael's Country Day School
Newport, RI
Contact: Betsy Walker, bwalker@smcds.org
St. Michael’s has a long history of teaching environmental awareness across a 10-year range of grade levels. The school’s mission refers to preparing students “for success in a complex and changing world.” Its philosophy statement refers, more specifically, to “endorsing global awareness through good citizenship, social responsibility, and community service.” Yet while environmental topics have long been a staple of the St. Michael’s curriculum, it would be fair to say that the heightened sense of urgency that seems to be associated with global warming has definitely had a galvanizing effect on the school. The plight of a threatened polar bear speaks a universal tongue, and communicates to kindergarteners and eighth-graders alike the need to take action. In our classrooms the message from faculty to students is that no person, no action taken, no promise to make a change is too small or insignificant. Our first grade teachers have, in fact, made the tremendous power of just one person to make a change a significant “line item” in their day-to-day classroom discussions. The assimilation of sustainability as an issue into the school culture can indeed be seen at a variety of levels.

Seabury Hall
Makawao, HI
Contact: Natalie Walters, nwalters@seaburyhall.org
When living on an island, the need for everyone to “malama” or “care for” the environment becomes all the more apparent as it is fragile and limited by its challenging geography. Located on the slopes of Haleakala, Maui, Seabury Hall has embarked upon a mission to creatively address the issue of sustainability in such a way that we not only serve the school in which we live and work, but the community at large as well as the future of our world. Seabury formally created a Sustainability Committee in fall 2007 with the purpose of creatively developing programs that address environmental, cultural, and economic sustainability. We believe that the formal institution of this body will build on and provide structure to help facilitate the coordination of existing initiatives and promote a system-wide approach to sustainability involving the academic and co-curricular programs as well as the general operation of the school.

United Nations International School
New York, NY
Contact: Kenneth Wrye, kwrye@unis.org
During the 2006-07 school year, United Nations International School (UNIS) performed an assessment of ecological habits school-wide and of the systems we rely upon daily – such as heating and cooling, water, and electrical. The results of this analysis were truly astounding, with findings such as: our energy costs top $100,000 per month during peak usage; 3,530,000 pieces of paper are used in copy machines annually, at a cost of $155,000, and none of the copiers accept recycled paper; and out of 350 employees, an average of 75 cars a day are driven to school, where there are only 60 parking spots. As a result of the assessment, the UNIS Green Committee was formed in August 2007 to work on a series of initiatives aimed at “greening” the campus. This committee has more than 40 members, including students, alumni, faculty, parents, and administrators working together through monthly meetings, building consensus and a unified plan for enacting enduring changes. As we link with local and regional resources, it will be through the investment of Green Committee members and others that UNIS reaches its sustainability goals. If the actions taken during the 2007-08 school year are any indication, UNIS is making good progress on building sustainability, in all its facets, into the fabric of the school.

The Willow School
Gladstone, NJ
Contact: Mark Biedron, mbswc@earthlink.net
Although not originally intending to go green, the Willow School soon recognized the inextricable link between human virtue and ecology. From the virtues program, which was designed to mentor the ethical relationships between humans, grew the commitment to mentoring that same ethical relationship between humans and our natural world and for developing a sense of personal stewardship and love for the earth. We put this ethic to work in our campus planning as well and in 2003, our first classroom building earned the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED Gold Certification, making it the first independent school building and the second school building of any type, public or private, in the country to earn this award. Recent USGBC LEED Platinum Certification on the school’s second completed building makes this structure the first building in New Jersey and only the third school building in the country to achieve the USGBC’s highest level of certification.