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Schools K - 12 Resources

Websites | Online Publications | Additional Publications

Many of the links on this page exit EPA's domain. Exit EPA

Websites

The Eco-Student: An Environmental Blog For Students
This blog is written by EPA employees, educators, and students and concerns all the great things students are doing and can do to help the environment. It was launched to provide students with an outlet to expand the environmental conversation with their peers.

EPA's Healthy School Environments
This is EPA's web portal to a vast array of information on environmental issues affecting schools. The site includes links to topics such as school design and construction, energy efficiency, environmental education, and waste reduction.

Environmental Law Institute's Topics in School Environmental Health: Overview of State Laws Exit EPA A resource for public officials, advocates and others interested in strengthening state policies to create healthy school environments that support learning and academic achievement.

Green Schools Alliance Exit EPA
Green Schools Alliance is a global network of schools working together to address environmental and climate challenges through sharing and implementing sustainable best practices and promoting connections between schools, communities, and the environments that sustain them.

Healthy Schools Network, Inc Exit EPA
This website provides many links to online resources related to school environmental issues ranging from health concerns to conservation.

The National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities Exit EPA
Sponsored by the US Department of Education, this clearinghouse contains a wide variety of information on health-related topics, legal issues and risk assessments for children and schools.

Your Environment, Your Choice
This website encourages teens in high school to make environmentally sound choices about the products and natural resources they use, the waste they generate, and the environment in which they live.

Energy Efficiency

California Sustainable Schools Exit EPA
This website provides a collection of sustainable building resources, including guidelines, programs, case studies and publications related to sustainable schools. The site is geared toward those interested and involved in designing, developing, and constructing high performance schools, such as school administrators and board officials, developers, architects, planners, researchers, teachers, parents, and others.

ENERGYSTAR® for K-12 School DistrictsExit EPA
This website provides resources and interactive tools for school officials to determine their schools' current energy and financial performance and estimate their potential for improvement.

EnergySmart Schools Exit EPA
The US Department of Energy's web-based training for operating and maintaining EnergySmart Schools.

The Bright Schools Program Exit EPA
The Bright Schools Program is a service of the Energy Commission in California. They offer technical assistance, including new construction design, energy audits and suggestions for selecting contractors. The program requires an application, which can be found on their website. A brochure (PDF) (6 pp, 3.5 MB) for the program is also available.

Indoor Air Quality

Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Design Tools for Schools
EPA's website provides an array of tools for school districts and facility planners as they work to build, maintain and renovate school facilities. The site also includes a list of frequently asked questions relating to IAQ.

Healthier Schools: A Review of State Policies for Improving Air Quality Exit EPA
This report published by The Environmental Law Institute focuses on indoor air quality IAQ), a key component of a healthy school environment. Indoor air quality has been ranked near the top of environmental risks in a number of government studies.

Managing Asthma in the School Environment
This site contains links for websites aimed at managing facilities that serve asthmatic people.

Pesticides

Beyond Pesticides: The National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides Exit EPA
This website offers resources on a wide range of pesticide subjects, including issues facing children and schools and sample school integrated pest management (IPM) strategies and policies.

EPA's Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in Schools
The IPM webpage offers informative resources to reduce pesticide risk and exposure to children. A school IPM program uses common-sense strategies to reduce sources of food and water for pests in your school buildings and grounds. An IPM program takes advantage of all pest management strategies, including judicious use of pesticides when necessary.

Environmental Education

America Recycles Day (ARD) Exit EPA
Conduct an education campaign in conjunction with ARD on November 15th each year! This website sponsors an annual campaign to educate and encourage Americans to recycle and buy recycled products throughout the US.

Earth Day Network Exit EPA
Consider hosting an Earth Day or Earth Week celebration. The Earth Day Network connects and promotes Earth Day events around the world, providing an online listing of groups and activities in your area. The site provides materials, resources and guides with free membership.

Keep America Beautiful Exit EPA
This community improvement, non-profit organization works to live up to its name. Focusing on waste reduction through behavior change, Keep America Beautiful develops lesson plans for teachers and emphasizes individual responsibility while recognizing the importance of successful partnerships.

The Green Squad Exit EPA
This is the National Resource Defense Council's website for environmental education in schools. Designed with school children in mind, the site is a useful teaching resource and includes fact sheets and suggestions for improving the local environment.

Waste Reduction

CalRecycle's School Waste Reduction Exit EPA
This site houses waste reduction resources, California schools' profiles, case studies, and contact information for assistance implementing your own school waste reduction program.

Earth 911 Exit EPA
Find recycling centers in your community for aluminum, electronics, hazardous waste, motor oil and more. Also, learn the benefits of recycling, air pollution prevention, energy conservation and more.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
The EPA website offers an overview of the recycling process at municipal sites, provides statistics, and suggests publications and additional sites for selecting the most appropriate waste steam to target.

Tools to Reduce Waste in Schools
This publication helps your school and school district reduce the amount of waste you generate. You'll learn how to start a waste reduction program or expand an existing one. The guide will show you how your program can benefit your school, your community, and the environment by reducing, reusing, and recycling your waste.

Procurement

Comprehensive Procurement Guidelines
EPA's guidelines are a substantial portion of the "buy recycled" program. This site provides suggestions for the percentage of recycled content in many products and includes links to the 2007 Buy Recycled Series.

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Online Publications

CalRecycle's Closing the Loop Curriculum Exit EPA
This site houses free resources and curriculum planners to incorporate waste prevention and recycling in the classroom.

Collaborative for High Performance Schools Exit EPA
Best Practices Manual from The Collaborative for High Performance Schools

Healthy School Environments Assessment Tool (HealthySEATv2) Exit EPA
This tool is a fully customizable and easy to use software program designed to help school districts evaluate and manage all of their environmental, safety and health issues.

IAQ Tools for Schools Fact sheet (2 pp, 2 MB, about PDF)
This one-page fact sheet provides an overview of the Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools program, including information on how to implement an IAQ management plan and receive public recognition for your efforts.

NIOSH Fact sheet: Reducing Pesticide Exposure at Schools (4 pp, 180 KB, about PDF)
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health created a fact sheet that recommends integrated pest control methods and strategies that are more cost-efficient than traditional pest control options.

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Additional Publications

A School Waste Reduction Reuse Recycling Composting & Buy Recycled Resource Book (34 pp, 780 KB, about PDF)
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation developed a resource manual directed toward younger students to provide basic information and ideas on a waste reduction, reuse, recycling, composting, and buying recycled products and packaging programs for schools

Healthy School, Healthy You Exit EPA
This site offers audio archives from the conference held at the University of Illinois, Chicago. These audio archives include best practices for schools, educators and parents and workshops on health and safety laws and EHS integration issues in schools.

Love a Tree Exit EPA
This educational kit focuses on trees and their role in energy. The kit includes activities correlated to the 3rd, 4th and 6th grades Standards of Learning (SOLs) for Virginia such as Mapping Your Schoolyard and Web of Life. The kit also includes a video about how to start an Outdoor Classroom, produced by the Department of Education.

Wisconsin Green & Healthy Schools Program Exit EPA
This web based, voluntary program is available to all public and private K-12 schools across Wisconsin. The program encourages teachers, staff and students to work together to use the school, its grounds, and the whole community as learning tools to help teach sound environmental practices and promote environmental sustainability.

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