Campus Environmental Action

Overview:  This page provides an overview of indicators related to sustainable and climate-resilient school campuses across California's TK–12 school districts. Creating sustainable and climate-resilient campuses can reduce schools' environmental impacts, improve student and staff health and well-being, lower operating costs, and better prepare districts for climate-related hazards such as extreme heat, wildfires, flooding, and drought.

Explore detailed information about each campus indicator, including its definition, why it matters, and how it is measured. The page also includes links to in-depth analyses of specific campus indicators, allowing you to examine statewide adoption patterns, district examples, and related data in greater detail.

The dashboard below provides a statewide overview of environmental campus initiative adoption across California's TK–12 school districts. Use the selector at the top to choose a campus initiative category of interest.

The map on the left displays the geographic distribution of adoption. Districts highlighted in color have adopted at least one initiative within the selected category. The summary cards in the upper right show the total number and percentage of California school districts that have adopted at least one initiative in that category.

The bar chart in the lower right breaks down adoption by individual initiatives within the selected category. Initiatives with no documented adoption are not displayed. As a result, some indicators included in our tracking system may not appear in the chart because data for those indicators have not yet been collected or because no California school district has publicly available evidence of adopting that initiative. Hover over each bar to view the definition of the corresponding initiative.

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 which is subject to compliance on CALGreen sustainability construction and renovation codes. 

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 about 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. 

Ten Strands would like to thank the following contributors to this project:

• Data Analysts Interns: UC Berkeley Data Discovery Intern Teams

  • Spring 2024: Charis Tang, Chiru Udatha, Chris Wang, Cole Hesterberg, Ethan Wei, Isaac Santillian, Michelle Lin, Pranav Angadi, Zoey Yang

  • Spring 2025: 

    • Graduate student team: Chelsea Jimenez, Clyde Lee, Jerra McLaughlin, Jinney Hong, Sooyeon Kim

    • Undergraduate student team: Audrey Wong, Michael Yip, Michelle Li, Shruti Sahoo

    • Undergraduate student team: Juhi Jadav, Tanushri Pinjala, Will Xu

  • Fall 2025: Aniruthan Ravisankar, Jesus Ochoa, Ojas Sathaye, Perseus Zhao