Statewide Environmental and Climate Action Indicator Tracking System for CA TK-12 Schools

The purpose of this system is to identify to what extent each school district in California has taken environmental and climate action based on common indicators that demonstrate some level of investment and action. The data is displayed on this page from a statewide lens, and can be filtered to one county or district. This is a living data set, and most data was collected prior to the 2024-25 academic year. Visit the district data validation page to view the specific date ranges of each indicator.

To what extent has each school district in California advanced forward environmental and climate action within their schools and overall district? And what are the common indicators that demonstrate environmental and climate action within a school/district’s campus, curriculum, and community and culture?

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Page Table of Contents

Our Indicator Tracking System

Overall Summary of Statewide Analysis

District-level Analysis by Indicator Category

Statewide Analysis of Facilities Master Plans at California's School Districts

Our Indicator Tracking System

In order to more easily identify and communicate trends in the environmental literacy, sustainability, and/or climate action investments made by the nearly 1,000 public (non-charter) school districts across the state of California, this data initiative developed a District Environmental and Climate Action Indicator Tracking System.

The overall Environmental and Climate Action Indicator Status is based on a number of indicators that seek to demonstrate to what extent a school district has committed to environmental and climate action and begun to make progress on implementation across the campus facilities (buildings and grounds) and operations, curriculum, and community and culture. In order to make it easy to understand all the indicators collectively, and to compare progress for districts, this initiative has attached a point system (totaling to 20 points), across four main categories (detailed below). Note that these indicators and categories are not organized here as a roadmap for action, but are brought together collectively here to show a snapshot in time of the environmental commitments, priorities, and actions.

The Four Indicator Categories

The District Environmental and Climate Action Indicator Tracking System is organized into four main categories that are explained below.

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.

Staff Capacity

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

Plans, Communication, and Awards

This category, similar to board commitments, are not indicators of direct action, but instead demonstrate investment in planning for and communicating out district goals and action across campus, curriculum, community and culture. 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 Literacy and Action Initiatives

A district-wide environmental initiative means that the district is prioritizing environmental and climate literacy and actions through initiatives with an emphasis on campus facilities (buildings and grounds), curriculum, or community and culture.

Note: this data initiative also accounts for site level initiatives; however, these are not given as much weight in the overall total as a district-wide initiative.

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Statewide Indicator Tracking System Interactive Map

The video to the right provides instructions on how the Tableau Interactive Map below to view the Environmental and Climate Literacy and Action Overall Indicator Status for each of the nearly 1,000 public school districts. It includes how to use the filters and tools within the visualization to look for specific factors or trends across the state.

The color scale represents the points awarded for the Indicator Status for each of the public (non-charter) school districts in the state. Districts in purple have fewer indicators of investment towards sustainability at the time of this report, while districts in teal have more evidence of indicators showing investment in sustainability. The filters to the right of the map can be used to narrow down the data based on different Scale, Equity, and Sustainability Action variables. Districts who do not match the criteria of the filter will turn grey.

*Note: The visualization and filters may have formatting issues when using smaller screens, such as cell phones.

Statewide Tableau Walkthrough.webm

Check out this video for an overview of how to use the interactive map!

These totals can be viewed in relation to district enrollment (right). While the majority of the state is still purple geographically, there is a growing number of students in the state being served by districts that are showing more public evidence of environmental and climate action. Districts with an overall indicator status of over 10 points serve 2,203,792 students, approximately 39% of the TK-12 public (non-charter) students across the state. While there is still work to be done to ensure that all students across the state have equitable access to environmental literacy and climate resilient schools, it cannot be denied that there is a growing movement. Some would argue that this percentage passes the tipping point required for social change to take hold (How Social Change Happens)

Overall Summary of Statewide Analysis

This video provides a brief overview of the initial statewide analysis of Environmental and Climate Action indicators. Visualizations of these results can be found below. These results are preliminary and do not imply any correlation or causation claims at this time; however, there are some trends across the state that are important to point out. Deeper analysis is ongoing.

Summary of Statewide Analysis.webm

Overview of Indicator Categories

Findings:

There is an especially high percentage of school districts investing in some type of campus sustainability, with HVAC leading the way in terms of evidence of campus sustainability (potentially due to the COVID pandemic).
Board commitments follows closely behind with 84.54% of districts passing at least one board policy, administrative regulation, or resolution. Of the commitments, BP 7110: Facilities Master Plan is seen most frequently (722 districts), followed by BP 3514.1: Hazardous Substances (695 districts). Customized resolutions are seen much less frequently with only 69 districts showing evidence of environmental or climate resolutions of any kind.
While trailing behind campus and board commitments, the curriculum and community & culture indicators still show that the state has passed the tipping point, with over 50% of districts showing evidence of indicators in these categories.
There are fewer districts with a clear way to communicate about their sustainability efforts. Only 51 (~5%) of districts show evidence of a district sustainability website or other public communication tool and less than 10% of districts have been recognized for green ribbon achievement. Where we see the most indication of communicating about sustainability plans/efforts is within the published facilities master plans.
Staffing is lagging significantly behind some of the other indicators with less than 20% of districts employing each type of dedicated staff member.

Average Environmental and Climate Action Indicator Status by Region

Findings:

While many districts are showing movement towards environmental sustainability and climate action, most districts only have evidence of initial investments, with few districts showing evidence of broad, system-wide investments. This initiative has plans to continue research into the correlation between broader context factors and the trends identified across the public school districts.
There is growing interest across the public school districts in California to become more environmentally sustainable and are prepared to move towards climate action. More support is needed to scale up 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)

Next Steps: Districts striving to implement more climate actions have the opportunity 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.

District-level Analysis by Indicator Category

The video to the right provides an overview of how to utilize the interactive visualizations in the sections below. This section covers analysis of each of the four indicator categories: board commitment, plans/awards, staff, and district initiatives.

Individual Indicator Walkthrough.mp4

Statewide Environment-Related Board Commitments at CA's School Districts

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?

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.

Expand for the list of policies and administrative regulations collected for this initiative

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

More information about these policies and regulations can be found here.

Findings:

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 64% on average for board policies and about 63% on average for administrative regulations) This indicates a growing movement amongst school boards to incentivize environmental sustainability and/or climate action.
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.

View District-Level Board Commitment Data Here

District Initiatives Across Campus, Curriculum, Community, and Culture

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.

In addition to the data within this initiative, there is a new study in collaboration between high school student, Ella Min, and Stanford University that used AI to determine which school sites had solar panels. Click here to see the results of this study.

Findings:

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.
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).

Considerations and Next Steps:

Evidence for these initiatives was very difficult to find because 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 was 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.

More research is needed to determine how environmental and climate action are part of Campus, Curriculum, Community & Culture at the site level. Some of this site level information can be found in the Lawrence Hall of Sciences recent report, Peaks and Valleys: A landscape study of environmental literacy implementation in and out of California’s TK-12 classrooms.

View District-Level Investments in Campus, Curriculum, Community and Culture Here

Statewide Analysis of Bond Funding at California's School Districts

Local General Obligation (GO) Bonds and Parcel Taxes: According to the UC Berkeley Center for Cities + Schools, California’s K–12 facility inventory is large (totaling 730 million square feet) and is aging. (Estimates show that 40% of the inventory is more than 50 years old.) School construction and maintenance are funded mainly by state and local General Obligation (GO) bonds. Additionally, parcel taxes are fixed charges imposed on each real estate parcel (regardless of its assessed value), with resulting funds directed to the local school district's general fund to support ongoing operational costs. These indicators focus on local school construction bond measures and parcel taxes that are used by schools and communities to finance major construction and renovation of school buildings and grounds. Bond measures that have been passed in recent years are subject to compliance with CALGreen sustainability construction and renovation codes. Source: Ed-Data

The map below shows which districts have pass bonds since 2010, with darker shades of green indicating more bonds being passed. The filters to the right of the map can be used to narrow down the data based on different variables. Districts who do not match the criteria of the filter will turn grey. Hovering over the district will provide detailed information for that district.

*Note: The visualization and filters may have formatting issues when using smaller screens, such as cell phones.

Findings:

588 districts have passed at least one bond or parcel tax since 2010 totaling over $132,000,000,000
LAUSD alone passed $16,000,000,000 in bonds (this factors out to about $15,000,000 per school site if distributed evenly)
More research is needed to determine how the bond funding was distributed and utilized.

Statewide Analysis of Facilities Master Plans at California's School Districts

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.

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.

The * indicates we were able to find evidence of a plan, but were unable to identify the year that it was adopted.

The N/A indicates 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.

Findings:

261 of the public school districts in California (around 27.8%) 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).
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.
The average overall Status for Environmental and Climate Literacy and Action Indicators for districts with a FMP is over 3 points higher than those without (a published facilities master plan only accounts for 0.5 points of that total).

Statewide Analysis of Investment in Staff for Environmental & Climate Literacy and Action

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.).

Findings:

While more districts are showing evidence of environmental and climate initiatives, 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.

Considerations and Next Steps:

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.

View District-Level Investments in Environmental Staff Here

Statewide Analysis of Green Ribbon Achievement for California's Public School Districts

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?

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 pie chart (left) shows the District-Level Green Ribbon Achievement for all of the public school districts in the state. Districts who have not received any Green Ribbon award at the district level are shown in purple. Districts who have received a district-level award are shown in blue. Districts who contain at least one school with an individual school award are shown in yellow. Districts who have achieved both district and site level awards are show in green. When combined, the districts who have reached some level of Green Ribbon achievement make up approximately 9.3% of districts in the state.

Findings:

Across the state, 41 districts have only individual school achievement without district level achievement
29 districts have only district level achievement without site level achievement,
17 districts have both district and site level Green Ribbon achievement, showing that only about 9.3% of districts across the state have some level of Green Ribbon Achievement.

Considerations:

Green Ribbon and Enrollment: While only about 9.3% percent of California's school districts have participated in the CA Green Ribbon Schools (CA-GRS) program, it should be noted that their combined enrollment is 1,643,172 (2022-23 enrollment data), which is 30.3 percent of the total CA student enrollment. This indicates that while there is more work to be done in terms of scaling Green Ribbon participation to all districts, we have passed a tipping point in terms of student impact due to some of the larger districts in the state participating in the program.
Green Ribbon Levels: It should also be noted that 17 districts were able to reach Green Achiever level between 2014 and 2024, the highest achievement given to the ED-GRS nominees and 10 districts were able to reach the Gold level, an achievement of 75% or better. This shows that over 61% of the districts who participated in the CA Green Ribbon Schools (CA-GRS) program were reaching the higher levels of achievement.