Since the beginning of 2013, the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council has followed more than 90 bills across 30 states that seek to advance healthy, high-performing schools.  This number is up even from last year, and continues to validate what our movement has long understood – that there’s a lot of common ground around the potential that healthy, high-performing schools provide (see our related advocacy campaign). USGBC’s state activity report for...

The Center for Green Schools team was up bright and early this morning for the Earth Day segment on the TODAY Show, where we worked with the Green Bronx Machine to build living walls on the plaza and teach the crowd about the importance of sustainability in schools. The segment was a huge success – the students built six living walls on the plaza, and were joined by TODAY Show hosts Matt Lauer, Savannah Guthrie, Al Roker and Natalie Morales, along with celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis, who...

NYC students to build green living walls on Rockefeller Plaza as part of Center’s Green Apple Initiative NEW YORK – (April 17, 2013) – NBC’s TODAY Show is scheduled to celebrate Earth Day, Monday, April 22, by building six green living walls on Rockefeller Plaza with local students from Bronx public schools. The segment will highlight the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council and the Center's flagship event, the Green Apple Day of Service. Rachel Gutter, the director of...

In 2012, Jason Gasperich of Connor Sports, a USGBC Member Company, received an email from the Green Apple team asking him to become involved with the Day of Service. Jason was one of the 1300 project captains across the globe who heeded that call and worked to make schools a better place for the generations of students to come. Around the same time Mick Founts, Superintendent of the San Joaquin County Office of Education, was planning a better learning environment for the students at the Excel...

Today, the Center for Green Schools and Architecture for Humanity released a new tool for catalyzing school building improvements in communities across the country. The Green School Investment Guide for Healthy, Efficient and Inspiring Learning Spaces was designed to help school stakeholders advocate for renovations, retrofits and upgrades that improve student and staff well-being, enhance learning environments, conserve resources and foster sustainable communities. In an...

It was a big day in Ohio this week when professionals from across the region were convened by USGBC's Central Ohio Chapter for Design Columbus. Set in the Center of Science and Industry (COSI) Center, the conference featured examples of ambitious green practices and efforts to improve project design and delivery. I was honored to be on hand to give the day's keynote address titled 'Green Building in an Emerging Era of Big Data.' I shared with the audience some thoughts about the on-going...

At The Princeton Review, we are genuinely pleased to partner for the fourth consecutive year with our friends at the U.S. Green Building Council's Center For Green Schools on this unique, one-of-a-kind resource. We thank them and their chief sponsor, United Technologies Corp., for their long-standing and generous support for this project. We hope it helps many outstanding college applicants interested in attending "green colleges" find the best school for them. Interest in the environment and...

The 2013 National Conference on Education took place in Los Angeles last month and saw thousands of superintendents gather from across the country to learn, network and share, but most importantly prepare for the changing landscape of public education. The conference host AASA kicked things off by unveiling their refreshed logo and moniker – The School Superintendents Association – shaking things up in this 148-year-old organization, which has been an active participant in the Coalition for...

On Monday, April 22, 2013, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Acting EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley celebrated the 43rd Earth Day at Mundo Verde Charter School in Washington, D.C., to announce the second year of honorees of the U.S. Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Schools (ED-GRS) award program. A total of 78 honorees, including 64 schools and 14 districts across 29 states and the District of Columbia, received a...

The Campus Conservation Nationals (CCN) competition closes in less than two weeks, and we are just 20,000 kWhs away from our national goal! Thousands of students across the nation have dedicated their time and creativity to “compete to reduce” energy and water consumption on campus and are now waiting to see if we reach the goal of reducing energy consumption by 2 million kWhs. Almost 200 colleges, including 20 community colleges, have been participating in the largest nationwide electricity...

For former President Bill Clinton, the “right kind of future” for today’s K-12 students includes careers in energy efficiency and green schools. Citing the Center’s recent State of Our Schools Report while closing out the annual Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) this Sunday, Clinton described our nation’s existing school buildings as “an enormous employment opportunity for the American workforce,” pointing out that through programs like Gateway STEM High School in St. Louis, “...

The National School Supply and Equipment Association’s (NSSEA) EdSpaces Planning Committee met recently to plan the 2013 event taking place December 4-6 at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas. We were pleased to have Patrick Lane from USGBC’s Center for Green Schools with us help make EdSpaces the meeting place for the many relevant participants in the green schools movement whose jobs are to design, furnish, operate or maintain educational institutions. Among the...