Tool for green schools

Any discussion of public school construction resources in California has to begin with CSBA’s own Construction Management Task Force. Meeting in 2006 and headed by Kerry Clegg (president of CSBA in 2004–05), the group developed resources to assist school districts in addressing the local board’s “overarching role with respect to school facilities, which is to ensure that facilities adequately and safely house the students, enhance the instructional program, and help achieve its vision for educating the community’s students.” Those resources, addressing issues from master planning and finance to site acquisition and beyond, are posted on CSBA’s Web site at http://www.csba.org/constructionmanagement.aspx.

Other Web sites are focused particularly on environmentally sound school construction and operation. They include:

• Collaborative for High Performance Schools
www.chps.net
“The Collaborative for High Performance Schools can help school districts and their design teams bring better performance into the classroom,” according to the Web site. “CHPS’ mission is to facilitate the design of high-performance schools: environments that are not only energy and resource efficient but also healthy, comfortable, well lit and containing the amenities needed for a quality education.” More than two dozen school districts in California have adopted CHPS criteria as official policy.

• U.S. Green Building Council
www.usgbc.org
The U.S. Green Building Council has developed criteria similar to CHPS. USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is meant to guide the design and construction of new green buildings, and the group’s goal is “to make green buildings accessible to everyone within a generation.”

• Green Schools Initiative
www.greenschools.net
“The Green Schools Initiative was founded in 2004 by parent-environmentalists who were shocked by how un-environmental their kids’ schools were and mobilized to improve the environmental health and ecological sustainability of schools in the U.S,” according to the Web site, which has an abundance of links to related organizations and useful resources.

• Center for Architecture and Building Science Research
http://www.cabsr.org
“CABSR engages in a comprehensive program of applied research focused on the built environment and on the institutions, policies, technologies and trends that shape it. A key goal is to generate practical research results that provide tangible benefits to individuals and society as a whole,” its Web site says.

• New Jersey High Performance Schools Information Center
http://www.hpsnj.org
A partner with CABSR, this information center is dedicated to developing and disseminating “credible, up-to-date information on the planning, design, construction, financing and operation of K–12 school facilities” and to providing school personnel across the country “with unbiased, research-based information needed to create state-of-the-art learning centers.”

—Brian Taylor