About Us

Who is the Green Schools Alliance?

GSA is an inclusive, global peer-to-peer network of “schools guiding schools,” working together to address environmental and climate challenges through sharing and implementing best practices and connecting students to nature.

GSA Vision

GSA envisions a healthy, abundant, equitable, ecologically diverse world that sustains all living things and wild places without depleting the resources on which they depend.

In this vision, K-12 schools play a vital stewardship role and:

• CREATE healthy learning environments that connect students and nature;
• UNITE people across socio-economic, geo-political and generational boundaries;
• EDUCATE the greatest number to embrace a shared understanding about social, environmental, and economic interdependencies; and
• PROVIDE the values, long-term vision, and skills to live sustainably.

GSA Mission

To empower K-12 schools to lead the transformation to global sustainability. We do this by providing programs, resources and a peer-to-peer support platform to model behavior and best practices, quantify progress, and advance sustainability in governance, operations and education.

GSA 5-YEAR GOALS

1. Membership

GSA will grow membership to 12,000 schools worldwide. Growing our membership increases our ability to accelerate sustainability transformation in K-12 schools. From our base of effectively serving our 3,000 existing member K-12 schools we will seek to broaden this engagement to all 50 States and 5 continents, while increasing collaboration with NGO, government and business partners. More Members mean more benchmarking and comparative data, more case studies and lessons learned, more chances to connect schools that are similar in their goals to learn from each other, and more opportunities to demonstrate that sustainable, energy-smart solutions create healthy communities and a healthy planet for all its inhabitants.

2. Track Member Progress

GSA
will require members to benchmark and track their progress in reducing their
carbon emissions and environmental footprint. GSA
will enroll 10% of all K-12 schools in the U.S. as
signatories to the GSA Leadership Commitment, and ensure that 90% of
all signatories report progress to the GSA. GSA
will lead sustainability metrics reporting
and assessment to accelerate sustainability implementation. In
coordination with EPA’s Portfolio Manager, GSA will track and highlight the
success of our Members' initiatives through our online sustainability data collection
initiative that will become a leading K-12 campus
sustainability-tracking tool.

3. Online Support Network

GSA will convene experts, and collect, assess, and distribute sustainability tools and information resources to support K-12 stakeholders. GSA will maintain and grow its e-Resource Center enabling all schools to update or add content and quickly find answers to their questions. Through an open, crowd-sourced online platform, schools will have access to best practices, sample documents, and a comprehensive resource database across diverse sustainability topics. Original member curriculum and interactive tools such as our Ask The Experts forum will increase the understanding and relevance of school sustainability.

4. Green Cup Challenge®

GSA will reduce school carbon emissions by 10 million pounds and water consumption by 10 million gallons per year. GSA will expand its Green Cup Challenge energy and recycling initiatives to include water conservation. We will grow annual school participation in the Challenge 5x current rates to 1,000 schools each year.

5. Youth and Nature

GSA will provide hands-on natural experience to over 1,000 students and increase eco-literacy in 10,000 more. GSA’s unique Student Climate & Conservation Congress (Sc3), in partnership with the National Conservation Training Center, empowers ~150 high school students annually with the hands-on skills, knowledge and tools necessary to address natural resource challenges and better serve their schools and communities.

We will expand the current national congress held in partnership with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife service to include regional conferences. We will develop a ‘virtual conference’ that takes materials from these events and deepens students’ understanding of the interconnections between environmental, economic, and social forces. Students will apply their knowledge to real world problems by developing yearlong Personal Action Plans. Students will demonstrate their eco-literacy by completing on-line tests and activities.

Growing The Movement

GSA schools are global leaders in their own
communities. GSA maximizes schools’ expertise and experience to
accelerate change. GSA schools in each region will host
Green Cup Challenge kick-off conferences. Conferences, Workshops and Resource
Fairs will be hosted in each state to bring together schools with the local and
national resources they need to set and meet their energy and sustainability
goals. GSA schools will have the opportunity to share their progress at the
local scale with other schools, build community and create a ripple effect from
school to home to the workplace.

What is The Impact of Green Schools

There are more than 120,000 public and private K-12 schools in
the U.S. that directly touch the lives of more than 80 million people
every day. According to the U.S. Department Of Energy, taxpayers spend
$8 billion dollars on energy for schools each year. Green schools can
reduce these costs by an average of 35%. Nationally, this could equal
nearly $3 billion dollars, EACH YEAR, while providing students with
hands-on learning opportunities, and empowering them for the future.

GSA Membership

GSA Members comprise 3,000 public, private and independent K-12 schools with over 2 million students in 41 U.S. states and 12 countries…and growing.

GSA began with a handful of schools.
Today, it’s become a global grassroots movement --
by word of mouth alone! Membership to the GSA is FREE and open to ALL schools worldwide.

An Environmental Leadership Commitment, the only requirement of membership, addresses climate and sustainability action:

• Climate Champion – Measure, and reduce the school’s carbon footprint by at least 30% within 5 years, and achieve Carbon Neutrality by 2020.

• Climate Steward - Calculate the school’s carbon footprint by establishing a baseline and achieve reductions over time.

An entire school district may participate as Stewards, while allowing individual schools to join as Champions if they choose.

The GSA “Leadership Commitment” asks schools to set and meet their sustainability goals. Members become more aware of the connection between their choices and are empowered to take action now and into the future. As a result of being created and driven by the schools themselves, the GSA has the respect and credibility of the school community, needed to accelerate Commitment and meaningful change. Through GSA Student and Faculty Coordinators, and an increasing number of local chapters, GSA’s growing volunteer network enables schools to share best practices, celebrate progress and become global leaders in their own communities.

The GSA brings together ALL members of the school community with corporate, NGO and government partners, to develop programs that produce meaningful, quantifiable results -- participants measure, reduce and report progress. The GSA community is comprised of public, private and independent schools that together are building a green community across socio-economic, cultural, political and generational divides.

GSA member schools' public commitment to reducing carbon emissions and sustainability means that they spend more time and resources focusing on green issues at every level. The issues that GSA addresses are urgent. As such, GSA seeks to remove obstacles to participation. Resources and membership are free and GSA programs are open to all schools, not just GSA members.

GSA provides a menu of opportunities that engage all members of the school community including: students, administrators, faculty, plant managers, business officers and parents. Integrating education and action, GSA's institutional and grassroots initiatives build confidence, inspire environmental stewardship and create quantifiable change. GSA programs work with schools to set goals and reach them. Students work alongside faculty and staff, to do everything including benchmarking energy, changing lights and restoring wetlands. Through GSA, schools and students become global leaders in their own communities.

GSA Programs Inspire Action

Created by Schools for Schools,
GSA programs are open to ALL member and non-member schools alike and
involve the whole school community -- students, faculty, business and
facility managers, heads of school, administrators, staff and parents --
in a broad range of sustainability and energy actions. Using the
building, campus and community as a teaching tool, students work
alongside faculty and staff doing everything from recycling,
weatherizing, conducting energy audits, changing lights and replacing
old boilers, to improving science and technology education, restoring
wetlands and planting green roofs. GSA programs integrate education and
action, quantify progress, and aggregate success.

Best practices
ripple outward from schools, to families, to the workplace. GSA goals
are supported by programs such as: the Green Cup Challenge®; Student
Climate & Conservation Congress (Sc3) and Sc3 Community Corps;
regional and local conferences, workshops and resource events; and GSA
On-line Network.

What Makes The GSA Unique?

Schools
trust schools best! The GSA taps into our members' considerable
experience, expertise and passion, and to enable them to share their
progress and best practices with ALL schools in order to create momentum
and drive a movement. Schools with advanced greening knowledge mentor
other schools to set goals and share progress. As a result, the GSA has
the attention and trust of schools which is translating into real
action, and quantifiable change.

GSA is driven by the concept that
schools can change the world. A
non-profit organization uniquely created by schools for schools --
students, faculty, business and facility managers, administration, staff
and parents. GSA works across geo-political, socio-economic and
generational biundaries to support education, leadership and the
exchange of
best practices.

GSA members and chapters are working with and
through
schools and NGO, government and corporate resource partners worldwide on
the local, state, and national level to enable schools to set and
meet environmental goals, raise environmental awareness and empower
students, as well as faculty and staff to implement sustainable
solutions.

The Green Schools Alliance is a global alliance of public, private and independent schools uniting to solve 21c environmental problems through sustainable and energy-smart solutions.