250 LARGEST SCHOOL DISTRICTS INDICATORS AND ANALYSIS

Scorecard Categories and Points: The score is the number of factors each district possesses out of twenty points. The factors fall into four main categories detailed below (more information about these factors can be found in the Glossary of Indicators) 

• Board Commitments: A local education agency’s board of trustees can demonstrate a commitment to environmental and climate action through board policy actions; such as: resolutions (R) or declarations, board policies (BP), and administrative regulations (AR). These policies are often critical to setting a foundation for action in different subsystems - campus, curriculum, community and culture. 

• Green Ribbon Districts and Schools: The Green Ribbon Schools program (ED-GRS) is an award started in 2011 by the US Department of Education (and facilitated by individual states) to recognize schools that achieve excellence in environmental resource efficiency, health and wellness, and environmental sustainability education.

• District-Wide Environmental Initiatives: A district-wide environmental initiative means that the district is prioritizing environmental and climate action efforts and building structures that institutionalize this prioritization through initiatives.

• Staff Investments: Research shows that environmental and climate literacy and efforts to take action on green schools efforts (sustainable and climate-resilient action) are most effective when they are coordinated or directed by well-compensated, full-time employees. 

Preliminary analysis of the Environmental and Climate Action Scorecard factors along with data for individual districts can be found in the next sections of this page.

KEY QUESTION FOR GREEN RIBBON: Which of the 250 largest school districts in California have achieved Green Ribbon Recognition? And which of the 250 largest school districts in California have schools that have achieved Green Ribbon Recognition? 

DATA OVERVIEW AND COLLECTION METHODOLOGY FOR GREEN RIBBON: The visualizations below are focused on the Green Ribbon Schools program (ED-GRS), which can be a vehicle for action that helps to generate buy-in for environmental literacy and sustainability, serves as a baseline assessment of current efforts, and can be a platform for strategic planning and prioritizing environmental literacy and sustainability efforts.  The data was collected from the California Department of Education's (CDE) program participation data (started in 2014) on the CDE California Green Ribbon Selectee page. 

The stacked bar chart below shows the total number of schools within the largest 250 districts recognized for Green Ribbon by year, broken down by level of achievement. The green ribbon levels of achievement are:

• Bronze Level: Achievement of 55.0 - 64.9%

• Silver Level: Achievement of 65.0 - 74.9%

• Gold Level: Achievement of 75% or better

• Green Achievers: The highest achievement, given to the ED-GRS nominees

Hovering over each segment of the bar will show the exact number of schools who had recognitions in that level of achievement for that year. 

 *Note: Depending on the size of your window/screen, you may need to use the scroll bar to see all of the data in the graph below. There may be formatting issues with this graphic when using smaller screens, such as cell phones.

Green Ribbon Individual District Data

KEY QUESTION FOR BOARD POLICY ACTION INDICATOR: Which  of the 250 largest school districts in California have passed environmental and climate themed board policy actions - resolutions (R), Board Policies (BP), and Administrative Regulations (AR)? What is the relationship between policy and action?

DATA OVERVIEW AND COLLECTION METHODOLOGY: This data set identifies which districts have passed templated environmental board policies from the California School Boards Association (CSBA). The methodology that analysts used for collecting this data was to search for the board of education’s policy page on each of the district websites. These policies are:

• BP: 3510 Green Schools Operations 

• BP: 3511 Energy And Water Management 

• BP: 3511.1 Integrated Waste Management

• BP: 3514 Environmental Safety

• BP: 3514.1 Hazardous Substances

• BP: 6142.5 Environmental Education

• BP:7110 Facilities Master Plan

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: This project has found that nearly all of the 250 largest school districts have passed an environmental-related board policy: 

• Only 3 of the 250 districts (1.2%) have not passed any of the CSBA templated environmental board policies.

• We were not able to obtain data for 8 of the 250 districts regarding their board policies. 

• 60 of the 250 districts (about 24%) passed all seven of the CSBA templated environmental board policies.

• 202 of the 250 districts (about 81%) passed 4 or more of the CSBA templated environmental board policies.

These data indicate that the majority of the largest districts in the state recognize the need for more environmentally sustainable practices within their districts and are prepared to take more climate action. 

Board Commitment District Data

DATA OVERVIEW AND COLLECTION METHODOLOGY: A district-wide initiative that focuses on environmental and/or climate literacy, and/or sustainability and/or climate resilience, means that the district is prioritizing these efforts and building structures that institutionalize this prioritization with staffing, committees, and dedicated time and resources. Sometimes an environmental-related initiative will take a whole systems approach, including efforts across different subsystems, such as campus facilities (buildings and grounds) and operations, curriculum, and community and culture. Other times these initiatives will just focus on one or more of these subsystems. The methodology that analysts used for collecting this data was to search on the district website (and associated school sites) and to do a broader internet search to find evidence of an ongoing initiative.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: This project has found that 196 of the 250 largest districts (~78%) had at least one environmental initiative with 25 districts (~10%) possessing all five of the indicators that were being tracked. 

169 of the 250 school districts had a district-wide sustainability initiative that had some elements of whole system action (campus, curriculum, and community and culture).

116 of the 250 school districts had district-wide efforts related specifically to campus facilities (buildings and grounds) and operations.

107 of the 250 had evidence of efforts in curriculum at either the site or district level.

93 of the 250 had evidence of a community and cultural commitment to sustainability.

41 of the 250 had developed a website for their district. 

District-Wide Environmental Initiatives Data

DATA OVERVIEW AND COLLECTION METHODOLOGY: Research shows that environmental and climate literacy and efforts to build sustainable and climate-resilient schools are most effective when they are coordinated or directed by a well-compensated, full-time employee. When done with a whole systems mindset, this staff will be responsible for supporting the development and implementation of district-wide, whole school integration of environmental sustainability and climate resiliency across the campus facilities (buildings and grounds) and operations, curriculum, and community and culture. However, districts may try different approaches to structuring the role, including part-time responsibilities, shared responsibilities across a team, job sharing between multiple agencies, and also roles that are more specific to one aspect of sustainability or environmental literacy (e.g., energy manager, zero waste specialist, environmental literacy specialist, garden coordinator, etc.). The methodology that analysts used for collecting this data was to search on the district website (and associated school sites) and to do a broader internet search to find evidence of sustainability-related positions. Examples include evidence on initiative pages, staff directory pages, job descriptions, or other articles or publication releases. The research required a thorough search of district job descriptions and district facilities/maintenance and operation pages, as well as curriculum, career and technical education programs, and school community cultural efforts. 

 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: This project has found that there is some level of investment in a district-level sustainability position at many of the school districts. 96 of the 250 largest districts (~38%) have some sort of staffing to support climate action with 8 districts (~3%) possessing all four categories of staff that were tracked for this project. 

• 68 of 250 school districts have a sustainability staff member at the district level.

• 66 of these districts have a district sustainability-related job focused on campus sustainability efforts, with each having an energy management focus but also additional facilities- and grounds-related efforts.

• 39 of the 250 districts have sustainability-related job positions at the site level as well, some of which form part of a green CTE pathway. 

• 27 of the 250 districts have a sustainability position that does work that is more whole systems in nature (in addition to campus-related efforts), such as environmental literacy in the curriculum and/or community and culture efforts. 

While having dedicated staff focused on environmental sustainability efforts is incredibly important to the pace of change as well as the longevity of the projects, many districts struggle to find the funding or support for keeping on full time staff in these roles. As such, these duties are often split between multiple staff members who carry other roles, sometimes without being formally part of their job descriptions. The researchers in this project scraped the district websites for titles and job descriptions, but the data may underrepresent the numbers of staff members actually doing the work as part of "duties as necessary." Further research, in partnership with the districts, is needed to more accurately capture the reality of who is doing this work; however, based on the data that was collected it seems like more support could be needed around finding and funding district-wide and site-level staff to ensure the sustainability of these initiatives. 

Environmental Staff District Data

DATA OVERVIEW AND COLLECTION METHODOLOGY: A facilities master plan is a strategic document that provides a district with information on both existing facilities and the recommended renovations needed to support both the health and safety of their campuses. This data point is useful because CA schools are required to incorporate environmental sustainability and climate mitigation into construction and renovation. Research for facilities master plans was collected by visiting each individual district website. 

The graphic below shows in which year the 250 largest school districts adopted a facilities master plan, with each block representing a different school district. The district names are viewable by hovering over the blocks. Those districts in the * column have adopted a facilities master plan, but the year of adoption was not available at the time of this report. Districts in the N/A column had not yet adopted a facilities master plan at the time of the report. 

*Note: Depending on the size of your window/screen, you may need to use the scroll bar to see all of the data in the graph below.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: 132 of the 250 largest school districts in California (around 53%) have a publicly searchable facilities master plan, with the oldest being in 2004 and the most recent being in 2023. Note that 2016 was a year when there was a State School Bond. The districts with facilities master plans served approximately 2,424,488 students in 2022-23, about 41 percent of total CA K-12 student population of the year. The average Expense of Education per ADA (2021-22) for the districts with and without facilities master plans were very similar with an average of $17,960.81 for districts without a facilities master plan and an average of $17,878.63 for those with a plan. The average percent of unduplicated students was also similar between both groups (60% for districts without a plan and 54% for districts with). However, there are some differences in the average amount of GO Bond Measure Funding (2020-2029) the two groups have obtained, with districts who have plans having about $70,489,971 more funds on average than those districts who do not have a facilities master plan. 

The graph above shows the sum of all the indicators for which we collected data in the 250 largest district (see scorecard above for details). When reviewing this overall data, is clear that the majority of the largest districts are passing board policies and administrative regulations that should lead to more sustainable action. However, fewer districts show evidence of those policies being put into practice through initiatives, staffing, and recognition as Green Schools. This implies that while there is interest in the 250 largest districts to become more environmentally sustainable and are prepared to move towards climate action, they could still use support in the implementation of these efforts, especially those that require more of a lift in terms of both facilities and curriculum (such as becoming a Green Ribbon School/District). While we are seeing district movement, especially in terms of campus sustainability, there are opportunities for districts striving to implement more climate actions to partner with student leaders, families, their community, and organizations such as Ten Strands and Undaunted K12 to collaboratively move some of these initiatives forward.