- reduce environmental impact and costs;
- improve the health and wellness of schools, students, and staff;
- and provide effective environmental and sustainability education.
Aspen Academy (CO) moved to a 10-acre campus in 2008. Its 80,000-square-foot building and campus were renovated to maximize sustainability and offer students innovative learning spaces.
As a result, the school’s annual energy consumption decreased by 45% from the 2014–2015 to the 2017–2018 school year due to the installation of LED lights, occupancy sensors, lighting timers, and energy-saving appliances throughout the school campus and parking lots. White roofs, painted between 2011 and 2017, covering 3,260 square meters of the school buildings have reflected 85 percent of the sunlight, thereby reducing energy use. The school reduced its water consumption by 50% since 2011. It installed artificial turf made from recycled tires in 2012 to cover 1,525 square meters of a field, replacing grass that required irrigation on the playground.
The National Wildlife Federation recognized Aspen as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. This habitat provides natural sources of food and water for native plants and animals, all without the use of pesticides, and includes more than 50 teaching gardens, a wetlands garden, and a beehive.
Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School’s (MO) efficiency achievements include several upgrades: synthetic turf to reduce mowing, painting, and water runoff from the athletic fields and playgrounds; state-of-the-art irrigation that waters native plantings only during drought conditions using collected rainwater; and more efficient lighting, HVAC, and windows.
Both the facilities and the surrounding landscape have multiple features that create learning opportunities for students, including a greenhouse and an orchard. All landscapes consist of either water-efficient or regionally appropriate plants—the most common is local prairie grass. The school supports independent studies on several topics, including mapping wolf populations in suburban St. Louis, studying the history of U.S. energy policy, using automated farming to study soil with a student built FarmBot, and exploring greenways in the St. Louis region.
Wasatch Academy (UT) expressed its commitment to work toward a sustainable future in 1994. At the core of this commitment was a net-zero energy action plan and related project-based learning opportunities for students and teachers. This initiative is now a multiyear plan for reducing Wasatch’s carbon footprint though energy and water conservation; shifting to renewable energy sources; and implementing community-based projects in waste management, permaculture-based landscaping, and sustainability education. In 2012, Wasatch designed and installed a state-of-the-art geothermal system that heats and cools seven campus buildings.
The school promotes sustainability education through a Sustainability Council made up of four faculty members and eight students that meets weekly. It works with the school kitchen staff to offer healthy food and adopt sustainable practices in the kitchen. Food scraps are collected and donated to local goat and pig farmers, and compostable food scraps from faculty households and student dorms are used in the community garden.
Woodside Priory School’s solar panels power up to 40% of its electricity, and the school composts roughly 450 pounds of food waste per year. Priory also encourages water conservation. It has plumbing fixture retrofits and satellite-controlled drip irrigation in the drought-tolerant campus landscape.
Following the California wildfires of 2018, the school purchased and installed online air quality monitoring sensors that help the administration make decisions about the health implications of keeping school in session during wildfire season when smoke can become intense and problematic.
Since 2014, Priory has offered a project-based elective class focused on the principles of sustainability. As part of the class, students have designed and built an 800-gallon aquaponics system—an integrated ecosystem that uses a fish tank and vegetable bed. In 2015–16, the school introduced another new elective during which students spend one-third of class time in the school’s 9,000 square foot garden.
Ursuline Academy, beginning in 2018, had most of the school buildings retrofitted and upgraded with motion sensor lighting. In 2020, the school embarked on a new sustainability effort, which includes overhauling aging HVAC systems, installing solar panels, and retrofitting water fixtures from high flow to low flow.
An outdoor classroom allows students in the lower school to learn about sustainability practices. They use raised beds to grow vegetables and herbs, design and build birdhouses, compost with worms, graph rainfall, and maintain a Christmas tree that wildlife can eat, among other activities. Students in the lower school are also encouraged to participate in a project-based activity in which they wander outside, learn about a certain topic, and then explore future questions. For example, students in fourth grade created and tested weathervanes at the nearby reservoir area to see the difference between local, global, and prevailing winds. Then they learned about wind turbines and their negative effect on birds and worked together for ideas that could help solve this problem.