Episode 121: Ensuring Education Continuity in the Face of Climate Change

What if schools could operate seamlessly during climate disasters and also serve as community havens? Join me as we unravel the vital links between climate change and K-12 education. With climate change increasingly closing schools due to wildfires, floods, and hurricanes, we'll uncover why many educators see its threat yet find action lacking. Discover the proactive measures schools can take to reduce their carbon footprints, invest in sustainable energy, and uphold the safety and learning of their students. I’ll also discuss the harsher realities faced by students of color and those from low-income families, highlighting the need for collaboration between schools, communities, and governments to forge effective climate action plans. 

You'll hear about the trailblazing Lake Oswego School District in Oregon, where a sustainable elementary school stands as a model of resilience, capable of operating during emergencies and even serving as a community shelter. This episode emphasizes the critical need for schools to become climate-resilient community hubs, focusing on renewable energy, robust infrastructure, and enriched curricula. I’ll also provide actionable steps for parents eager to engage with schools on crafting climate resilience strategies and integrating climate change education for their children. Join me in advocating for comprehensive responses from school districts, as we shine a light on how they can address educational inequities intensified by climate change and prepare effectively for the environmental challenges ahead.

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Chapters

• 0:55 Climate Change Impact on K-12 Education
• 20:33 Climate Resilient School Infrastructure

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:56

Welcome to another episode of K-12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr Kim J Fields, former corporate manager turned education researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the microaggressions that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids, who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their education and progress. This battle-tested experience is what I provide as action steps for you to take. It's like enjoying a bowl of educational research with a sprinkling of mother wisdom on top. If you're looking to find out more about current information and issues in public education that could affect you and your children, and the action steps that you can take to give your children the advantages they need, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K-12 public education trends and topics is important to you, so keep listening. In this episode, I'll be discussing how climate change affects schools. Do you think climate change is a real thing? Many people do, but just as many don't. Whatever side you fall on, school districts are addressing climate change as a real phenomenon. It's not just about how the impact of climate change affects your children's academic progress a topic that I cover in detail in episode 39, but it's about also providing and building an environment that allows schools to remain open as a proactive way to plan around natural disasters. You might be thinking does climate change really affect schools? You might be surprised. I discussed what school districts can do to develop their own K-12 climate action plans, the questions that should be asked to initiate conversations between school leaders, educators and parents on the topic of climate change, as well as other key points in this episode. Let's untangle this One in four teachers, principals and district leaders say that climate change is impacting their schools or districts to some extent.

Speaker 1: 4:04

They think that climate change poses an imminent threat. School buildings across the country have been destroyed or forced to close in response to wildfires, extreme heat and flooding due to hurricanes. These types of natural disasters, often linked to climate change, affect students' learning and physical and mental health. A recent nationally representative online survey of 960 respondents said they don't believe climate change is real. To put this in context, 14% of Americans don't believe global warming is happening. In any case, most school districts haven't taken any action in the past five years to prepare for more severe weather related to climate change. That's because 36% of school principals and district administrators don't believe that the schools that are located in their areas will be severely impacted by climate change anytime in the near future, by climate change anytime in the near future.

Speaker 1: 5:10

Many district leaders and other stakeholders believe that climate change is not an area that their districts should be spending their limited time and resources on, especially when there are other immediate priorities, such as catching students up academically, student mental health and debates about how race should be taught in school. Thinking about how climate change is going to impact school districts is broader than just the impact of extreme weather on the school. There are impacts to the economy, especially if you think about jobs that will be needed in case of extreme weather, like emergency management jobs, for example. School districts seem to be putting more than energy toward reacting to the effects of climate change rather than on the efforts to reduce their carbon footprints. Some of the things that principals and school district leaders have undertaken to prepare for weather emergencies includes using energy-efficient appliances, investing in sustainable energy sources such as solar power, reducing their carbon footprint through efforts like composting, eliminating single-use plastics in their schools and converting from gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles to electric vehicles. Just so you know, schools are one of the largest public sector energy consumers in this country. They operate what, basically, is the nation's largest mass transit fleet, and they generate over 530,000 tons of food waste a year thousand tons of food waste a year.

Speaker 1: 6:51

School districts and schools need to be part of the solution for climate change. They need to work with communities, state and federal leaders to develop action plans for dealing with climate change. There are countless ways to take action, and the school districts can replicate what other districts have been doing as far as preparing how climate change affects their schools. An example of a school district that was affected by climate change was the Santa Barbara, california school district that experienced severe wildfires and mudslides in 2018. After that experience, the community recognized the critical role of schools in facing climate change, and the school board passed a proposal to equip schools in that district with solar panels and battery storage, creating a solar microgrid that provided the community with power in the event of outages. A third party owns and maintains the solar grid, and the school district was able to avoid additional upfront costs.

Speaker 1: 7:57

Students of color and students from low-income families suffer the consequences of climate change the most, and this needs to be taken into consideration by educators, school principals and district leaders. It takes a lot of mental and emotional energy to even admit that climate change exists, that humans are causing it and that it will take a significant societal realignment to reverse its devastating effects. Inaction, however, will take a severe toll on humanity and the planet. Consequences of a warming planet are already affecting school districts and school communities, because severe weather disrupts learning time and some teenagers even report growing levels of climate anxiety. So what can school districts and schools do about this? For one, schools can reduce their emissions of harmful greenhouse gases that cause an overload of carbon dioxide. Two, schools can take actions to keep students, staff and school buildings safe when severe weather powered by climate change happens. 3. Schools can consult with experts on school building facilities, climate change impacts and student advocacy for ideas on overcoming climate change impacts. 4. Schools can go heavy on the greenery by replacing the amount of blacktop playgrounds with shade trees and native plants, which can improve soil, water retention and limit flooding. These tasks don't have to be undertaken all at once or in a massive effort. Schools can start small and these efforts can build on one another.

Speaker 1: 9:58

The average age of a US school building is 44 years old, according to federal data, and many more of them are decades older. Renovating them can take years and cost millions of dollars. The federal government and about a dozen states, including Idaho, michigan, montana and Tennessee, contribute virtually no funds to school building improvements, thus leaving it up to the districts to either raise property taxes, secure grants or cut programs and staff to free up funds for infrastructure renovations. There are funding resources out there through organizations like Sierra Club, the National Environmental Education Foundation, climate Ride, the Collaborative for High Performance Schools, the Trust for Public Land and the Whole Kids Foundation. States such as Maryland, new Jersey and Pennsylvania offer grants for school construction, and California's Division of the State Architect, which is the state government office, can help school districts upgrade their buildings with the goals of sustainability and reducing energy emissions. Also, the US Environmental Protection Agency has started taking applications for $5 billion in rebates for replacing diesel school buses with electric ones. Big changes like climate change, renovations to school buildings don't happen overnight, but having a plan to improve energy efficiency when key systems break down or need to be replaced is a step in the right direction.

Speaker 1: 11:47

Not all states are on board with making climate change awareness and improvements a priority In the state-by-state review of K-12 state standards. In 2020, six states, including Alabama, georgia, pennsylvania, south Carolina, texas and Virginia, earned an F from the National Center for Science, education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund for their lack of inclusion of climate change. Eleven more states earned a C or worse change. Eleven more states earned a C or worse. Many school districts, especially small ones, don't have a designated person in charge of schools and grant opportunities or tracking the latest research on worthwhile climate change sustainability initiatives. Putting a person in charge of these initiatives will help to bring attention to climate change and its impact on school districts.

Speaker 1: 12:47

Without immediate and effective interventions, it's likely that schools that are poorly equipped to keep children safe from the effects of climate change will close intermittently, leading to academic consequences, especially for children of color. Heat waves can cause power outages, which can result in school closures. If older buildings that don't have adequate air conditioning or backup power sources like solar panels, many electric utility companies sometimes opt to shut off power in areas where there's an elevated fire risk. A comprehensive response from school districts regarding climate change investment includes improvement to facilities, community and curriculum. This includes adopting sustainable construction practices, using solar technology to power schools, creating regenerative schoolyard gardens and upgrading HVAC systems to electric heat pumps.

Speaker 1: 13:50

Schools need to prepare students to live and lead in a world that is being fundamentally reshaped by climate change, yet schools are doing this inconsistently. Schools are doing this inconsistently. School districts that have relied on emergency aid to recover from floods, fires and storms typically serve larger shares of students of color, economically disadvantaged children and other vulnerable groups, like English language learners. While this disaster aid has proven beneficial to many communities, it often falls short of meeting schools' long-term needs, leading to delays and other problems for recovery efforts. Climate change problems posed by disasters could intensify in the coming years. Natural disasters occur three times more likely now than they did five decades ago. School districts have used grant funding for climate change situations to replace instructional materials like textbooks and laptops, provide transportation to students displaced from their homes, remove mold from buildings and keep school staff who would otherwise have been let go.

Speaker 1: 15:12

California has been pelted by torrential rain, mudslides, even tornadoes and dramatic snowfall totaling more than seven feet in some places, and all of this occurred in the first two months of this year. The severe weather has taken a toll on schools, forcing school districts to close campuses and interrupting routines and academic progress. It's a phenomenon that many experts say is likely to increase in frequency across the United States as climate change accelerates and triggers even more severe weather events, especially in areas that might not be accustomed to them. The question is should school calendars be adjusted to account for climate change? Snow days are built into many school calendars for much of the country, but many school districts have found themselves in recent years calling off classes for other weather conditions, including poor air quality. Some schools are considering adding inclement weather days to the calendar so that they have a little wiggle room to call off classes when wildfire, smoke affects air quality or rain floods major roadways.

Speaker 1: 16:31

These situations place a tricky balance on district leaders, who have to make decisions between ensuring the safety of students, having community facilities and providing a safe space for children with nowhere to go by offering meals to those who rely on school for breakfast and lunch. The ultimate goal for districts is to prevent as many school closures as possible. School district leaders should plan for extreme weather events as part of emergency management planning. They should consider questions such as how safe it will be for people to get to school, if there will be backup power banks at school to keep students safe and whether there will be emergency personnel that will be able to respond if there's an emergency or children and staff are on campus. School districts should develop their K-12 climate action plans that address mitigation, adaptation, resilience, education and equity. They should also describe the impacts of climate change across communities.

Speaker 1: 17:49

In developing this plan, school district leaders should consider questions such as what are the likely climate risks in this community? How will climate risks potentially affect students, families learning and schools? Students, families learning and schools? What are the things this community cares about and agrees with that are important to protect? How, if at all, does the district include students, parents, caregivers and community members, in particular, black, latino, asian American and Pacific Islander, as well as Indigenous perspectives, people with disabilities, and low-income urban and rural perspectives? How are all of these stakeholders included in decision making? How does the district ensure equitable resources, supports and opportunities for Black, latino, asian American and Pacific Islander and Indigenous students, as well as students with disabilities and low-income urban and rural students. How does the district ensure equitable access to healthy, sustainable learning environments with sustainable infrastructure, transportation and healthy food? Does the district ensure new buildings, retrofits and renovations are designed to optimize health and sustainability and utilize energy-efficient, efficient, clean technology? Are there state, federal and other resources or community partners that can help the district support sustainable infrastructure? Does the district have a plan to transition schoolyards to green, sustainable schoolyards? And one last question to consider would be are schools in the district equipped to be hubs of community resilience? What would a school look like that was built for climate resilience?

Speaker 1: 20:34

One school in a district near Portland, oregon, built such a school that can withstand earthquakes and prolonged power outages from extreme weather. Picture it Lake Oswego School District in Oregon. The school district is no stranger to climate crises and their impact on students, families and the broader community. It has had to deal with extreme weather and wildfires, as well as earthquakes, and it rebuilt one of its elementary schools so that it may never again be caught flat-footed from the effects of climate change. From the effects of climate change. The elementary school is a 79,000 square foot facility that can accommodate 600 students and is designed to withstand the often difficult to predict fallout of climate change, which the community has experienced multiple times in recent years. The school building is able to withstand earthquakes. It's believed to be one of the first K-12 schools in America to get its energy from a microgrid, which is a self-sufficient energy system that can operate independently from the area's electric grid, supplied in part by an on-site solar panel array. This setup allows the school's power to stay on even when the rest of the surrounding area goes dark. The school's buildings are able to maintain power and heating and cooling systems. It makes the school an advantageous place for emergency shelter during natural catastrophes. The school also features electric power pumps for climate control and hot water, as well as energy-efficient windows and insulation to reduce energy demand. The architect who designed the school and the school staff have worked closely with the Red Cross, local emergency departments and county government leaders in designing this school. Building River Grove Elementary School wasn't cheap. The school district spent about 44 million dollars building and outfitting the school, which opened in May of this year. This school is a shining example of what works and it's a paradigm shift in how the community thinks about sustainability.

Speaker 1: 23:01

What's my take on the research that's been discussed? I think that the real issue with school closures is the impact it has on academic achievement, especially for children of color and in communities with larger populations of minority and low-income families. This is a threat multiplier for educational inequity and it's a serious issue that directly impacts children's learning opportunities. It's apparent to me that climate change is a very real phenomenon and the impacts of climate change on schools can be devastating. Any missed school days due to a lack of planning for climate change impacts students directly, and for students of color, this is not good for their educational progress. School districts need to be proactive in planning a K-12 climate change action plan that considers all stakeholders, including school district leaders, school principals and staff, parents and community leaders. Having access to resources from the state, federal and community businesses is vital for supporting and implementing these types of sustainability projects. Now let's move from listening to this discussion to applying it. What can you do about it? Well, here are some action steps you can take regarding this topic.

Speaker 1: 24:31

Staying abreast of how climate change impacts your children's school is critical. It's important that you understand that the effects of climate change can have an effect on your children's health. Smoky air and exposure to extreme heat can cause serious asthma-related complications. Breathing in wildfire smoke can lead to a higher risk of cancer among children. This is because children are particularly vulnerable to these types of climate change threats, since their bodies are more sensitive to environmental hazards and have developed less ability to adapt. You can be the activist in your child's school by collaborating with other parents about how the school is addressing climate change effects on the school campus. Talk with the school principal about how the school district is working on an action plan for mitigating the impacts of climate change on school buildings, classrooms and playgrounds. If you have older children in middle school or in high school, check in with them to find out if climate change topics are a part of the curriculum, because this group of children tend to be quite interested in the things that they can do now to mitigate climate change in their environments. As always, you can support these discussions at home with your children, especially if they initiate the conversation.

Speaker 1: 26:10

Here are this episode's takeaways. Fossil fuel companies are the main drivers of climate change. Schools are often considered the nucleus of community, so they need to make concerted investments in their sustainability. In an emergency, schools often serve as cooling centers or emergency shelters. To serve that purpose, they need their infrastructure to stay powered and running. Leading school districts across the country have formalized a multi-year journey to transform infrastructure in ways that recognize the threat of climate change, as well as the opportunity to develop a clean economy through renewable energy. A comprehensive response from school districts regarding climate change investments includes improvements to facilities, community and curriculum.

Speaker 1: 27:30

Did you enjoy this episode? Do me a favor and text your friends or family right now about my show. Let them know that you have a podcast recommendation that you want them to listen, to, encourage them to listen to my show and get back to you to let you know what they thought about it. Remember to share my podcast with anyone that you think you find valuable. That includes your friends, family and your community. Remember to share my podcast with anyone that you think you find valuable. That includes your friends, family and your community. Thanks for tuning in and listening to this episode. I hope you'll come back for more K-12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day.