The Green School Progress Steps Dashboard has Launched!

The many people working on green schools across the state are an inspiration - from students, parents, teachers, administrators, non-profits, businesses, local governments, and state agencies. Minnesotans have been working on green schools for a long time. But sometimes we don't know about each others efforts - missing opportunities to learn from each other and feel encouraged by being part of this widespread effort to help schools continually improve how they support education through healthy classrooms, integrated and extracurricular environmental education and STEM career connections, and through making buildings and grounds more efficient, environmentally responsible, and cost effective (including taking advantage of the abundant new funding programs!) 

That's why MN GreenStep Schools introduced Progress Steps - a new feature and way to participate in sharing your green schools progress, whether you are already working with the GreenStep Schools program or not. By participating, you become a Friend of MN GreenStep Schools and help move Minnesota's green school progress forward. Your school doesn't need to be awarded in the program. Anyone--a parent, community member, teacher, or student--can share accomplishments!

Explore Green School Accomplishments. The Progress Steps Dashboard allows you to explore submitted summaries of green school progress and filter them by year completed, scale of project (single school, district, or community), and by the type of progress made, organized by the 35 MN GreenStep School Best Practice categories across outcome areas of organizational leadership, reducing environmental impact and costs, improving health and well-being of students and staff, and providing effective environmental and sustainability education. MN GreenStep Schools research assistant, Gabriella Briggs did a fabulous job designing and developing the Progress Steps Dashboard. You can read more about her and her work this spring in another section of this newsletter.

Who's in the dashboard? To get the submissions started, MN GreenStep School interns entered the first batch of Progress Steps highlighting Minnesota's award winning schools that have achieved either Green Ribbon or LEED recognition, and more entries are underway. We encourage everyone to contribute at any time - we can't wait to see what you are doing at your school!

Learn More, Explore, and Participate at the Progress Steps Page.

Selected Resources

• The Department of Public Health is holding its Fall 2024 Indoor Air Quality Trainings. From their website: Public schools must have health and safety programs that comply with health, safety, and environmental regulations and best practices, including indoor air quality (IAQ) management. One best practice is that public schools have an IAQ Coordinator. This training will discuss the state’s best practices for school IAQ management plans.

• Inflation Reduction Act Funding and Schools Web Resources by UndauntedK-12. From their website: We’ve worked with partners to synthesize guidance and curate resources to help districts understand and make the most of new funding in the Inflation Reduction Act to deploy clean energy technologies in schools.

• Register for July 15-19 Summer Institute For Climate Change Education hosted by Climate Generation. From their website: The Teach Climate Network's three-day climate change education conference is built by educators and climate change professionals from across the US, Canada, and the Pacific Islands! Date: Three days during the week of July 15-19, 2024. Registration is now live! Registration closes July 5th.

• Explore more resources from MN GreenStep Schools Resource Organizations