Highlights from the 2014 Honorees

New Mexico

Amy Biehl Community School, Santa Fe, N.M.

Amy Biehl Community School (ABCS), opened in August 2010, leads the Santa Fe Public Schools in sustainable design, energy savings, and environmental principles, having received LEED Gold certification in 2013. ABCS also carries the district's highest ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager score of 98, as well as the lowest energy use intensity of 31.4 kbtu/sq. ft. ABCS also places in the district’s highest academic performance ranking. ABCS' conservation mission is twofold: To save energy, celebrate the natural environment, and promote a healthy lifestyle; and create an effective and inspirational learning environment via the integration of the building architecture with the school's curriculum and day-to-day life. Outdoor nature-based learning classrooms celebrate elements of the natural environment, engaging the students with the sun, landscape, flora and fauna, soils, and panoramic mountain views.

Natural daylighting is abundant throughout the school. A ground-source geothermal heat pump system is supplemented by a 74kW solar array, providing a whopping 29 percent of the school’s energy generation on site. This photovoltaic system was funded through a community General Obligation Bond, with an Energy Conservation Package specifically targeted towards energy and water use reduction. The school received ENERGY STAR certification in 2012 with a score of 98.

Rainfall is captured by a series of sloped metal roofs and collected into a group of cisterns; the students use the harvested rain in the community garden, sustaining the vegetables that are later consumed and enjoyed in the Cooking with Kids Classroom in which students participate. Possibly the most notable aspect of the school is the abundance of natural daylighting integrated into the classroom environment and the building's architectural form. The design promotes and encourages the use of natural light in every classroom, motivated by studies that find increased test scores and decreased behavioral problems related to higher levels of natural light.

Artificial lights are automatically dimmed as natural light increases, reducing the heat generated from the electrical lamps. This in turn reduces the demand for cooling and thereby saves operational costs each month while also reducing the building’s carbon footprint. The building’s construction makes use of a combination of pitched metal and low-sloped roofs as part of the lighting plan. The pitched, standing metal seam roofs allow the introduction of daylight into the interior spaces through clerestory windows in the upper walls. A gray water system was installed to ensure wastewater was reused and/or reclaimed through the community-based wastewater treatment plant. The intention was to bring that gray water back to ABCS’ irrigation, though, at present, all gray water is reused throughout the neighborhood before reaching ABCS.

Student-led tours of campus make use of the schools Green Guide, and help introduce visitors to the concepts of environmental design and sustainability. Students are exposed daily to informal and embedded environmental education. An interactive energy and water dashboard in the lobby, linked to a website accessible by all, offers real-time building energy and water data, along with information on a variety of green features, such as the solar panels and a weather station.

An edible garden offers students, 68 percent of whom are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, the opportunity to explore the process of growing healthy food, demonstrates some of the responsibilities of tending a garden, and enables them to connect with harvesting and cooking the food they grow. It is a challenge to sustain a garden, and the school depends on outside partnerships like Cooking with Kids and EarthCare to offer curriculum and support. The local Audubon chapter partners with Amy Biehl staff to offer every student experiences around some aspect of ecology and the natural environment. The local Wild Birds Unlimited helps support a bird sanctuary in one of the outdoor classroom spaces, attracting wildlife and many bird species from the area. Teaching a respect for nature and oneself is a common thread throughout these programs.

New York

Anne Hutchinson Elementary School, Eastchester, N.Y.

Anne Hutchinson School (AHS)’s mantra is “Kindness Follows Caring.” Goals of reducing costs and impact on the environment, as well as improving student and staff health while providing effective environmental education, have served as an impetus for a paradigm shift in the way AHS operates as a school community. Going green is not a trend, but a lifestyle change that has resulted in the creation of the Anne Hutchinson composting, gardening, and recycling program, initiated in January of 2012. As a result, fewer garbage bags are used overall at the school, and an estimated 500 —1,000 pounds per week of food scraps and non-recyclable items are diverted from the trash.

The school sends its hard to recycle items to TerraCycle, which compensates the school two cents per chip bag, juice pouch, sauce pouch, glue stick, and tape dispenser collected and upcycled from classrooms, the cafeteria, and students’ homes. To date, AHS has diverted over 50,000 drink pouches, 50,000 chip bags, and thousands of pounds of soft plastic, and has reduced each day’s lunchroom garbage to less than 5 pounds. TerraCycle now sends a truck to AHS to pick up nearly 600 pounds of recyclable material per trip, as part of their Palette Pick-Up program.

The composting, gardening, and recycling program has improved the health of students and staff members. Side by side, teachers and students break a sweat tending to the 400-square-foot vegetable garden, 500 square feet of mixed gardens, and 2000-square-foot wild perennial butterfly garden. Parents are invited to participate in classroom cooking activities, which feature the latest bounty from the organic harvest. Some organic harvest items are provided to the food service program, and local senior citizens have been invited to partake.

In an effort to reduce costs and impact on the environment, AHS engaged in an energy performance contract with Johnson Controls, which resulted in a 64 percent reduction in electricity consumption in one year, and will save 215,000 gallons of water per year.

AHS supports the health and wellness of students through the physical education program, which features the use of fitness journals used to help manage obesity and develop students’ understanding of fitness. All students are asked to take an exercise pledge, in which they commit to exercising on a daily basis. Gym routines involve a cardiovascular workout through the use various exercises and the Dance Dance Revolution video game. Every June, students and staff members participate in Field Day. AHS also participates in an initiative that serves produce from local farms in the cafeteria.

Effective sustainability education is evident in myriad ways. Students collect monarch butterfly eggs from milkweed, hatch them in classrooms, raise the caterpillars, observe the molting process as the caterpillars turn into butterflies, and then finally release them back into the butterfly garden. Outdoor learning primarily takes place in the vegetable garden and composting piles. Students who are members of the student council community service club volunteer their time as green monitors to maintain garden tools and organize materials needed for green projects. They make daily rounds collecting recyclable materials and ensuring that the materials are separated and organized appropriately. The green monitors serve as a tremendous help in the lunchroom as well, because they form an assembly line to facilitate recycling and composting efforts. AHS students learn civic skills and values by participating in community service and environmental projects throughout the school year.