Clean, Green and Healthy Schools Regional Highlights showcases exceptional school environmental health projects within each of EPA’s ten regions.

EPA Region 3 includes Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.

On this page:

• 2014
• 2013

2014 Highlights

Gaining Momentum Through Partnerships in the Chesapeake Region

The Chesapeake Bay Watershed Program plays an important role in restoring, enhancing, and protecting the environment in the Chesapeake Bay area. On June 17, 2014, the program expanded the Chesapeake Bay Agreement to include “Green and Healthy Schools” as an outcome related to the Agreement’s goals. The purpose is to continually increase the number of schools in the region that reduce the impact of their buildings and grounds on their local watershed, environment, and human health through best practices, including student-led protection and restoration projects. The Agreement was signed by the Governors of all five states within the region, as well as the Mayor of the District of Columbia. To support this outcome, the Chesapeake Bay Program Environmental Literacy Workgroup will develop a management strategy to explain how the outcome will be accomplished and how progress will be monitored, assessed, and reported.

Lorna Rosenberg, EPA Region 3 Green and Healthy Schools coordinator, is a new member of the Workgroup who brings EPA's Voluntary Guidelines for States: Development and Implementation of an Environmental Health Program, as a framework for Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions to use as they focus on environmental health in schools. The U.S Department of Education’s three pillars of Green Ribbon Schools—reduced environmental impact, improved health and wellness, and effective sustainability education—are also fueling the strategy’s content.

In early October 2014, most of the Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions gathered for a workshop in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, to contribute to the development of the Bay-wide Green and Healthy Schools Management strategy. At the workshop, participants shared their visions of what a Green and Healthy Schools program looks like in their states, and discussed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats they are facing. This information will be used to determine what to do at the Bay level to promote green and healthy environments in schools. Such actions could include providing schools with an expansive inventory of best practices or supplying teams of technical experts to do a formal assessment of a state’s program.

Region 3, with grantee University of Maryland Environmental Finance Center, is also supporting the Pennsylvania Green and Healthy Schools Partnership. This project, which began in 2013, was to determine how best to assist schools across Pennsylvania in promoting healthy learning environments within their schools and to provide them with a clearer understanding of the environmental health related programs, tools, and resources available to them. More than 60 people are now involved in the partnership, with representation from federal, state, and local stakeholders; academia; environmental educators; and non-profits, bringing a diversity of perspectives to the project.

To focus on relevant areas within the broader mission, the group has organized itself into six distinct task forces—energy efficiency, health and wellness, research, leadership, sustainable education, and green schools programs. With the engagement and commitment their efforts have rendered in just one year, members are excited to continue their progress as they lead Pennsylvania schools towards a more comprehensive effort on embracing green and healthy schools.

2013 Highlights

Building Partnerships for Green and Healthy Schools in the Mid-Atlantic

The Voluntary Guidelines for States for Development and Implementation of a School Environmental Health Program, which came out in 2012, encouraged state governments to put forth a more coordinated effort towards promoting school environmental health programs. No states in EPA Region 3 currently have a comprehensive school environmental health law; they have individual pieces of policy, but no complete program, leaving gaps. Lorna Rosenberg, the Region 3 Green and Healthy Schools Coordinator, noticed an opportunity to create a network of school environmental programs within each state. Many different state agencies and community groups have targeted programs for an array of school environmental health topics, but there was no way to navigate the vast amount of resources. An inventory of the many different environmental programs and activities organized around the three pillars of the Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Schools program (environmental impact, health and environmental education) would provide a clear picture of the resources available to schools within each state.

Region 3 is collaborating with the Environmental Finance Center at the University of Maryland, a grantee which helps communities find ways to finance environmental projects, to create inventories of green and healthy school programs for each state and District of Columbia. The inventories list relevant policies and legislation impacting schools, as well as many resources available for a specific subject with categories such as ‘Climate Change Mitigation and Energy Conservation,’ ‘Healthy School Environments,’ and ‘Environmental and Sustainability Education.’

The Environmental Finance Center has also worked with EPA Region 3 to facilitate a multi-stakeholder strategic planning workshop in Pennsylvania building on current state-wide interest in green schools. More than sixty people met in Harrisburg, PA in late October to discuss the future of environmental health in Pennsylvania schools taking EPA’s State School Guidelines into consideration. Representatives from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, three local Green Building Council chapters, the Association of Nurses, school business officials, environmental educators and EPA discussed what such a network would look like for Pennsylvania and how it could help more schools become green and healthy. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chesapeake Bay office will be providing additional funding to help sponsor the development of this group.