Architects Collaborating for Green Schools

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
—Margaret Mead


As an architect focused on educational environments, I have found that designing for schools has always been challenging. Schools typically have very tight budgets, (slightly up from the cost of residential), short time periods available for renovations and modernizations (summer is the only time), our clients have a large constituency (parents, school board members, community activists, kids), there are competing interests (more money for buildings sometimes means less money for educational supplies), and there are typically separate capital improvement and operations budgets. The separate and small budgets have been the most challenging because they do not usually inspire the best option and in the past, the dollar has reigned.

In the last five years, there have been more reports on the increased rates of asthma, hearing problems and attention deficit issues with children. Simultaneously there have been more research and reports prepared on the positive effect of good daylighting, proper acoustical design, better materials, and indoor air quality—all aimed at the educational environment. These studies and reports have given us new ammunition in the endeavor to make great learning environments.

With approximately 55 million students in our country, we have the opportunity and responsibility to make differences that will affect many people. The USGBC’s Rachel Gutter borrow’s from Mark Prensky’s references to digital natives when she talks about how kids coming out of green schools can be sustainability natives. “We—that is, most Americans today—are sustainability immigrants,” she says. “But the kids we’re educating today can be sustainability natives again.” This is really a reference to what Wes Jackson and others have encouraged for years: finding ways to become native to place like our ancestors were. Gutter suggests that extending green school design into the curriculum represents the greatest opportunity and challenge, but there are leading examples out there. Sidwell Friends, by Kieran Timberlake Architects, is one of these. This 2007 Top Ten Green Projects award recipient is a living lesson for students and teachers.

Green schools save energy, save money, and promote well-being among students and teachers. A few facts and figures tell the story: If all new school construction and school renovations went green starting today, energy savings alone would total $20 billion over the next 10 years. Green schools on average save $100,000 per year—enough to hire 2 new teachers, buy 500 new computers, or purchase 5000 new textbooks. Green schools cost on average less than $3 per square foot more to build, an investment that is paid back in the first year of operations based on energy savings alone. Factoring in lower energy and water costs, improved teacher retention, and lowered health costs, building green schools save about $12 per square foot, around 4 times the average additional cost of going green. Green schools have better lighting and temperature controls, which promotes higher student achievement; more comfortable indoor environments, improved ventilation and indoor air-quality—all of which contribute to positive health benefits, including reduced instances of asthma, colds, flu and absenteeism. Green schools have been shown to have higher teacher retention.

Last summer, the USGBC established the National Green Schools Advocacy Program, gathering advocates from all over the states to come together, get educated and organized and ready to drive coalitions around the country. The idea is to gather all the stakeholders in a community—in this case as represented by each chapter’s geographic reach—and create a coalition that would go out and spread the word about the possibilities for green schools. Stakeholders include parents, school board members, teachers, facility people, maintenance people, and practitioners of many disciplines. The idea is to represent the concerns of a school and to ensure that those concerns be addressed authentically.

This effort has been a true test of collaboration. Embedded in every private and public school organization and member is the belief that making greener, healthier, high performance schools is critical. The work to execute on this belief is more challenging, but the coalitions make it easier—the conversations are real conversations. Each advocate works with stakeholders who are outside of their own profession, thereby making the conversation rich and productive. There are more solutions found when there are more of the interests represented.

In California we have seven advocates under the USGBC Green Schools Advocacy program (I am one of them). We have the extraordinary situation of having two valid school benchmark systems and schools that are familiar with them. The Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) manuals have long guided the schools sector and have greatly informed the USGBC’s LEED for Schools documents. We are jointly focused on progress towards creating green, high performance schools. As a group of committed schools architects, we are changing the world, one classroom at time. The green schools movement is a collective platform for action on this front.

Pauline Souza, AIA, LEED AP, works at WRNS in San Francisco and serves as a LEED Schools Advocate for the USGBC through the Northern California Chapter. She is also chair of the Resource Subcommittee for NCC-USGBC and is a member of the COTE Communications Committee.