STATEWIDE ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATE ACTION 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 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 school districts in California have achieved California Green Ribbon Recognition? And which of the school districts in California have schools that have achieved California Green Ribbon Recognition? 

DATA SET OVERVIEW AND COLLECTION METHODOLOGY: 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. 

Green Ribbon Individual District Data

KEY QUESTION FOR BOARD POLICY ACTION INDICATOR: Which school districts 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 (BP) from the California School Boards Association (CSBA), any related Administrative Regulations (AR), and Board Resolutions that address environmental/climate action or literacy. 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 and administrative regulations collected as part of this initiative are:

• BP: 3510 Green Schools Operations 

• BP: 3511 Energy And Water Management 

• BP and AR: 3511.1 Integrated Waste Management

• BP and AR: 3514 Environmental Safety

• BP and AR: 3514.1 Hazardous Substances

• AR: 3514.2 Integrated Pest Management Regulation

• BP: 6142.5 Environmental Education

• BP and AR: 7110 Facilities Master Plan

• BP and AR: 7111 Evaluating Existing Buildings

Additional board resolutions collected as part of this initiative are:

•  Climate Action Resolution OR Climate Emergency Declaration/Resolution

• Environmental or Climate Literacy Resolution

• Earth Day Resolution 

• Other Environmental or Climate Resolution

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: This project has found that the state has passed a tipping point for districts passing board commitments with over half of the districts passing most of the board policies and administrative regulations that were tracked as part of this initiative (about 63% on average for board policies and about 62% on average for administrative regulations). This indicates a growing movement amongst school boards to incentivize environmental sustainability and/or climate action. However, far fewer districts are passing resolutions that are not based on the CSBA templates. More research is needed to explore the extent to which the passing of board policies is related to implementation of environmental and climate initiatives and if those districts who have passed resolutions are also investing more broadly in sustainability across their district. 

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: Overall, we are finding a growing number of districts with some evidence of a district-wide environmental or climate initiative, reflecting the board commitments in the prior section. There is a large majority of districts showing at least one indicator of campus sustainability across the state. This may be in part to funding available through GO Bonds and Parcel Taxes ($145,073,958,930.00 awarded statewide between 2010-2023) which is subject to compliance on CALGreen sustainability construction and renovation codes. There are also a growing number of districts showing evidence of Climate/Environmental Literacy and Environmental Community and Culture, with the most prevalent indicators being Residential Outdoor Education programs (303 districts participating) and Safe Routes to School (417 districts participating). 

However, evidence for these initiatives were very difficult to find due to the fact that most districts do not have a clear way of communicating publicly about their environmental and climate initiatives. Only 76 (~ 8%) of districts have a district environmental or climate action webpage, blog, or newsletter that we could locate. For the majority of districts, evidence of indicators were found buried in other documents, in school social media  posts, or through local news articles. There is an opportunity for districts to more clearly communicate these initiatives in order to show the district's commitment to these efforts and help to gain community buy-in or support. 

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: 

While more districts are showing evidence of environmental and climate initiatives, as seen in the previous section, there are fewer districts with evidence of dedicated staff to lead the implementation of these initiatives. Across the state, 227 districts (~24%) have any kind of staff with environmental or climate related titles and only about 2% of districts have more than one of the categories of staff that were tracked by this initiative. This indicates that there may be a need for advocacy at the state level to identify a funding source for staff salaries focused on environmental and climate action.

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 CA's 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. For districts in the * category, we were able to find evidence of a plan, but were unable to identify the year that it was adopted. For districts in the N/A category, we were unable to find evidence for a published master plan at the time of data collection. More districts fall into the N/A category than can fit on the visualization.

*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: 258 of the public school districts in California (around 27.5%) 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 2,713,540 students in 2022-23, about 50% 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 $18,110.15 for those with a plan. The average percent of unduplicated students was also similar between both groups (62% for districts without a plan and 54.3% for districts with). However, there are some differences in the average amount of GO Bond Measure Funding (2010-2029) the two groups have obtained, with districts who have plans having about $209,059,999 more funds on average than those districts who do not have a facilities master plan. Also, the average overall Environmental and Climate Action Score for districts with a FMP is ~3 points higher than those without (a published facilities master plan only accounts for 0.5 points of that score).