Bluejacket-Flint Elementary School, Shawnee, KS

Cane Run Elementary School, Louisville, KY

Cane Run’s vision is that students will achieve success and become productive, cooperative adults who are motivated to protect and respect the environment to improve the school, community, and world. In order to fulfill this vision, environmental literacy is a required part of the curriculum.

All students participate in embedded environmental lessons – frequently set in the outdoor classroom. The school implements Math in the Garden, where gardening serves as a framework for measurement, insects, plant structures and life cycles. Students use math skills and tools to design, build and plant a pizza garden where each “slice” represents the amount of that ingredient necessary for a pizza. Problem solving and measurement skills allow students to design and make individual bricks to outline the garden. Students put their engineering strategies to work building a greenhouse over a raised bed garden to prolong the growing season. They experiment with technology to design a large butterfly shaped, native plant garden to attract butterflies, bees, and birds. The garden club and environmental club use food from the 30 raised beds and large Three Sisters Native American garden to learn healthy cooking and eating practices and to share their tasty labors with local senior citizens.

Family math and science nights include a free healthy meal, environmental teaching and learning stations, NEED activities and math and science activities for each grade level. Parents are also offered resume writing assistance. In a recent survey, students across grades 3-5 indicated high levels of interest in the STEM fields, replacing their earlier focus on sports figures and movie stars.

Cane Run uses resources from the Kentucky Association of Environmental Education, the North American Association for Environmental Education, National Science Teachers Association, KY Green and Healthy Schools, USDA Agriculture in the Classroom, the Center for Green Schools at the USGBC in its environmental education curriculum.

Other programs help to provide Breakfast in the Classroom to all Cane Run students and teachers. It is also a USDA HealthierUS Schools Challenge Gold awardee and Farm to School participant. The healthy Fruit and Vegetable Program teaches nutritional values and provide snacks to students three times per week which helps level the food playing field. Cane Run students spend 150 minutes of supervised physical education per week. The school holds brain breaks of organized movement in the classroom and gets kids commuting actively through Safe Routes to School. Cane Run’s After Hours is a program available to students and others living in the nearby community and offers Zumba classes, Yoga, gardening, walking, and the American Heart’s Jump Rope/Hoops program.

Cane Run Environmental Magnet School has been retrofitted, to include geothermal heating and cooling, with geothermal well fields supplying 45 heat pumps and kitchen walk-in refrigeration units. The school has also added occupancy sensors and natural light enhancing Solatubes. With the aid of these facilities upgrades and behavioral and operational changes, the school was ENERGY STAR certified in 2010. According to the EPA, the school demonstrates IAQ best practices, in a district that has been honored for its stringent policies to ensure healthy indoor environments.

Northern Elementary School, Georgetown, KY

Northern Elementary has been the star of the Scott County district energy management program, which awards an energy banner each month to the school that reduces its consumption the most from the same period a year earlier. Northern is the leader in this category, winning the energy banner seven times. Northern encourages other schools in the district to become involved with energy management efforts, and serves as an example to schools outside the district as well.

Northern entered the 2011 EPA ENERGY STAR National Building Competition. Through behavioral and operational changes, and low-cost retrofits like light bulb changes and insulation additions, the school achieved a 29 percent reduction in energy usage from the previous year, the largest reduction of any building in Kentucky in the contest and, as a bonus, received a $3,500 energy rebate! Northern received the ENERGY STAR certification in 2012 and continues to work to improve its rating in Portfolio Manager and with School Dude software. Northern also has partnered with the local town of Sadieville, Ky, the city council of which has a member on the school energy team.

Northern teaches the energy cycle and how electricity is produced, with the district sustainability manager among the guest speakers who visit students. Students learn the rationale behind efforts to reduce the use of electricity and effect of human activity, using NEED Project and Kids Environmental Education Program curricula. When students go home, they pass these lessons onto their parents, grandparents, and their neighbors. Students are getting their families to reduce their energy consumption at home as well. In terms of state assessments, Northern, with 44 percent of students who are eligible for free and reduced price lunch, ranked a Highest Performing School with a 93 percent overall and 100 percent in science.

Teachers use Northern’s wooded trails and stream to teach nature units, identifying plants and trees, conducting investigations in the on-campus creek, and teaching respect for the world’s natural resources. The music teacher wrote a unique song about the environmental concepts and students perform this song at multiple award events. Northern also makes use of neighbor Toyota’s environmental nature trail. Teachers use sustainability themes to teach core content areas, such as measuring steps, feet, and yards outdoors in math; teaching physical features of geography in social studies; and using nature as subject matter for journals in language arts. The core content of science and social studies addresses natural resources, and the NEED curriculum is used during the study of enetgy and the environment.

Northern sponsors a Girls on the Run fitness program, and is a USDA HealthierUS Schools Challenge Gold awardee.