The purpose of this data is to determine whether school districts have publicly reported investments in environmental and climate action staff, and to assess how these investments influence progress within school communities.
Key Questions
Overview: California’s public K-12 school districts are increasingly engaging in environmental sustainability and climate-related efforts, often supported by dedicated staff roles at the district or school site level. This page provides an overview and summary of results describing environmental staff investments in California’s public K-12 school districts. The information presented is intended to establish a clearer picture of how districts are staffing environmental and climate work across campus operations, curriculum, and community culture.
Core Question: How does an investment in environmental staff at the district or site level impact a district’s likelihood to implement environmental and climate action across campus, curriculum, and/or community/culture?
Additional Questions:
Does the type of staff (job title) correlate with other initiatives/action?
Does the number of staff correlate with other initiatives/action?
Does the job description, roles, and responsibilities of the staff affect the types of initiatives/action seen in the district?
Do the impacts above change with district context (such as enrollment size, locale classification etc.)?
Download a 2026 PDF report version of this page here:
CA TK-12 Schools Investments in Environmental Staff Positions
This section provides definitions of the 5 types of environmental staff analyzed in this project.
District Wide Environmental Whole System Responsibilities Staff
This role typically provides strategic oversight, supports implementation, and serves as a liaison between site-level efforts and district leadership and decision-making teams for environmental initiatives across multiple domains - Campus, Curriculum, Community, and Culture.
District Wide Environmental Campus Staff
This role works directly with district and school sites on planning, implementation, and coordination of sustainable and climate-ready facilities (buildings and grounds) and operations initiatives.
District Wide Environmental Curriculum, Community and Culture Staff (CCC)
This role supports the integration of environmental and climate topics into curriculum through guidance and professional learning for educators. This role may also support student and family engagement and learning opportunities outside the core curriculum, such as events or community-based activities.
Garden Coordinator
This role manages school garden infrastructure and operations while supporting instructional use. Responsibilities may also include coaching teachers, supporting curriculum integration, and promoting equitable access to and use of garden spaces across sites.
Site Level Environmental Staff
This role supports the development and implementation of environmental sustainability and climate resiliency efforts at a single school site. The scope of responsibilities may vary and can focus on one or more implementation areas.
This section presents descriptive characteristics (summary of findings and basic analysis) of environmental staff investments across California’s public K-12 school districts. The analysis focuses on the overall staffing landscape, geographic variation, and salary ranges by staff position type.
The majority of California public school districts do not employ dedicated environmental or climate-related staff, indicating that these roles remain relatively uncommon statewide. The dot plot below highlights which districts have invested in different types of environmental positions.
Only a small share of California public school districts have formal environmental staffing. Out of more than 900 districts statewide, about ~10% (~110) districts report having at least one environmental staff position of any kind.
The visual below shows the approximate share of those districts with at least one staff role in each category. For example, about ~50% of the ~110 districts have at least one district-wide environmental campus staff member.
Most districts with any environmental or climate-related staff employ only a single staff type. ~10 districts have two staff types, 3 districts have three types, and only 1 district employs four types of environmental staff. This distribution indicates that environmental staffing across California’s public school districts is uneven and concentrated in a small number of districts. Staffing investments tend to favor facilities- or operations-focused roles, while system-level coordination, curriculum integration, and site-level positions are less prevalent.
California’s public school districts vary widely in enrollment size. The table (right) summarizes the number of districts within each enrollment size category for the 2024-25 school year.
When staff investments are examined across these enrollment size categories, some patterns emerge. Larger districts are more likely to employ campus coordinators while garden coordinators are substantially more common among extremely small districts. All staff types appear in Very Large, Large, Medium, and Small districts. In contrast, extremely large districts do not have districts with whole-system coordinators, garden coordinators, or site-level staff, while extremely small districts lack whole-system coordinators and campus staff.
The left stacked bar chart shows the distribution of environmental staff types by district enrollment size.
California's public school system includes three types of school districts: Unified, High School, and Elementary. The table (left) shows the number of districts within each category statewide in the 2024-25 school year.
Although elementary school districts account for more than half of all school districts in California, they represent less than half of the districts with any type of environmental staff. Unified School Districts account for the largest share of total staff investments. Both unified and elementary school districts include districts with all five types of environmental staff. In contrast, high school districts do not include districts with garden coordinators or CCC staff, indicating a narrower range of staff investments among this district type.
The right stacked bar chart shows the distribution of environmental staff types by district type.
Locale classification refers to whether a school district is in an urban, suburban, town, or rural setting. All four locale classifications are represented across staff types except for Campus staff, which does not appear in rural districts. Urban and Suburban districts dominate most staff types, with Suburban districts making up a slightly larger share overall. Garden Coordinators show a notable presence in rural districts, representing a significantly larger proportion compared to other staff types.
These patterns may reflect differences in district resources and staffing priorities, with larger or more densely populated districts more likely to hire district-wide or curriculum-focused positions, while rural districts may focus on site-level or garden-based roles that are easier to implement locally.
The chart to the left displays the distribution of environmental staff across California school districts, broken down by district locale classification. The bars are stacked to show the contribution of each staff type within each locale classification.
The California County Superintendents use a regional clustering (see map to the left) to organize California’s 58 county offices of education (COEs) and their school districts. While every region in California has at least one district that has made an investment in at least one type of environmental staff, distribution is uneven across the state, and heavily concentrated in four regions where population density (urban and suburban) is the highest in California.
Overall, Regions 4, 7, 9, and 11 tend to have the highest number of districts with environmental staff positions. Campus staff are concentrated primarily in Regions 4, 7, 9, and 11, with no Campus staff present in Regions 1 or 2. In contrast, Garden Coordinators are primarily found in Regions 1 and 2, where there tends to be a number of smaller rural school districts.
The chart (right) provides the distribution of environmental staff types across California school districts by County Superintendent (CCESSA) Region.
When looking at distribution across California’s 58 Counties, it is important to note that 33 of the 58 counties have at least one district with environmental staff; however, 25 of the counties do not have evidence of districts that have made this type of investment.
The dashboard below displays the distribution of environmental staff types across counties in California. The map uses a color gradient to represent the magnitude of staff investment in each county, shown as a percentage. Counties with lower percentages appear lighter (white), while higher percentages appear darker blue.
Hover over a county on the map to view additional details.
The bar chart (right) shows the percentage of districts in each county that have each type of staff. When no county is selected, all counties are displayed. To explore a specific county, select it in the filter to view its staff distribution.
Yolo County has the highest share of districts with environmental staff overall at roughly 40%, with investment spread across just 1 staff. Alameda, Orange, and Contra Costa also show relatively high coverage, though the staff types are more concentrated in fewer roles, most notable Campus staff. Across the state, Campus staff are the most common for environmental investment and appear in the majority of counties that have any staffing presence (~60%). Many counties, including Sonoma, Humboldt, San Luis Obispo, and Shasta, show very low overall coverage and typically have a single staff type. This may suggest that counties differ in capacity and prioritization when making environmental staff investments, with many focusing on specific positions and others implementing more comprehensive staffing models.
For those districts where salary information for staff positions was found, we analyzed compensation for environmental staff in California school districts relative to county-specific living wages for a single adult, no-child household, based on the MIT Living Wage Calculator. Hourly living wages were extracted from the website, and annual wages were calculated.
To assess affordability, we defined a Wage Ratio (S) for each staff salary (above). The table below summarizes its interpretation.
The violin plot above shows the distribution of wage ratios for each staff type, with reference lines marking the living wage threshold (red), moderately comfortable threshold (yellow), and well-above-living-wage threshold (blue).
Median wage ratios for Whole-System Coordinators, Campus Staff, and CCC Staff are all well above the living wage, whereas the median wage ratios for Site-Level Staff and Garden Coordinators fall below it. Garden Coordinators in particular cluster around the roughly sustainable threshold, with a substantial portion below the living wage. A more detailed look at salaries below the living wage indicates that Garden Coordinators (10 districts) and Site-Level Staff (5 districts) are most affected, while only two Campus Staff salaries fall below the living wage and no Whole-System or CCC Staff salaries do.
Overall, a clear compensation hierarchy exists, with District-Wide positions earning substantially more than Site-Level or Garden roles. Administrative and managerial responsibilities explain much of this difference, as Whole-System Coordinators, Campus Staff, and CCC Staff typically oversee programs and staff, whereas Garden Coordinators and Site-Level Staff focus on direct implementation or education. Garden Coordinators emerge as the least supported category, highlighting an equity gap within environmental staffing.
Environmental staff are uncommon: Only ~10% of all CA public school districts employ any environmental staff.
For the districts that do have environmental staff, most have only one staff type.
Facilities roles dominate: District-wide campus/operations staff are the most common; curriculum and culture roles are rare.
District size matters: Larger districts more often hire district-wide staff; smaller districts more often have garden coordinators.
Geographic disparities exist: Staff positions are concentrated in urban/suburban districts, and those are within a small number of counties.
Unified districts lead: Unified School Districts account for the largest share of environmental staffing investments.
Pay gap by role: District-wide coordinators earn well above living wage, while garden and site-level staff often fall near or below it.
The current analysis relies primarily on web-scraped data, so confidence in the accuracy and completeness of salary and staffing information is limited. Although some validation has been conducted, gaps remain, and not all staff positions may be captured. Continued data collection and validation are needed to build a more comprehensive dataset.
These data points will support future analyses to evaluate whether investments in environmental staff, including their roles and responsibilities, influence a district’s ability to advance environmental and climate action. Subsequent work will employ a more robust analytical framework, incorporating modeling approaches to better understand the relationships between staff investments and district-level environmental outcomes.
Ten Strands would like to thank the following researchers and student interns for their expertise and contributions to this project:
Advisors: Curtis Atkisson PhD, Washington University
Data Interns:
Fall 2025 UCB Data Discovery Interns: Huy Nguyen, Pratham Rangwala, Uichan Lee
Summer 2025 Ten Strands Individual Intern: Lian Wang
Spring 2024 UCB Data Discovery Interns: Michelle Lin, Cole Hesterberg, Chiru Udatha, Chris Wang, Charis Tang, Ethan Wei, Zoey Yang, Isaac Santillian, Pranav Angadi
Spring 2023 UCB Data Discovery Interns: Daniel Escajeda, Elaine Zhang, Jerry Wu, Kayla Zhu, Madeleine Larson
