Starting a Coordinated School Sustainability Program

Jan 2

Tori Fay is the Sustainability Coordinator at Chadwick School, California.

Lessons from Sustainability Pioneer Tori Fay (Chadwick School, California USA)

The emergence of a dedicated role for a ‘School Sustainability Coordinator’ is a testament to the growing importance of environmental stewardship within academic institutions. Tori Fay from Chadwick School in California USA has over a decade of experience in steering school sustainability efforts, and has initiated the official staffing position at her school. Here, she shares her journey and learnings with the Green Schools Alliance.

Background

Tori Fay's early involvement in sustainability, over 15 years ago, primarily centered around supervising the eco club, initiating campus projects and teaching AP Environmental Science. Transitioning to Chadwick School, Tori continued her commitment to sustainability, initially working unofficially due to a well-established yet somewhat fragmented sustainability space. Recognizing the need for more coordinated efforts in order for the school to progress in sustainability, Tori campaigned tirelessly for the creation of an official Sustainability Coordinator position and, after three years, she was finally successful.

A need for coordinated sustainability efforts

Tori realized that various segments of the school community (lower, middle and upper schools, and facilities), operated somewhat independently, and this siloed structure led to missed opportunities and inefficiencies.

"I found myself over and over and over again saying, 'Oh, I wish I'd known that person was doing that because I really would have built off of it, or I really wouldn't have done what I was doing. And so there was clearly a lack of coordination, even though there was a excess of passion”

Recognizing the need for a more cohesive approach, Tori advocated for a streamlined sustainability program. “I had to work pretty assertively for a couple of years with the administration and some allies to show the administration the benefit of actually having a coordinated program.”

Tori’s tenacity eventually paid off and the school administration essentially said, “Go do it. We're not sure what this means, but we'll at least create the title. Why don't you start doing the work and see what happens? And so it was very much building it from scratch. I did as much research as I could by talking to other schools and looking to see what resources other schools had online.” And with the official role of Sustainability Coordinator, and drawing on her research, Tori created a coordinated sustainability program tailored to Chadwick's unique structure.

Defining a collective mission

In the inaugural year of her role, Tori initiated a collaborative process involving staff, faculty, and students to define a mission for their school’s sustainability. Getting together the coalition took communication: “I spoke up at assemblies. I sent out email messages, to staff, faculty and administrators, and basically said, if you're interested in this process, come; show up. In the end, we had 15 to 18 people who were a part of that process, and we met about once a month for eight or nine months. I found it to be a very powerful experience, and I'm so glad I had as diverse of a coalition as I did, because I think it allowed us to get a lot of voices and a lot of perspectives in the final product.”

Through a very collaborative process, they formulated an aspirational mission statement, and then worked on identifying the main target areas it encompassed.

"We developed mini-mission statements and a list of action items based on input from our team and the wider community. There was a huge array of proposed initiatives, from improving recycling programs to ambitious goals like transitioning all our school vans to electric vehicles. That’s kind of the nature of the job – keeping in mind the overall program and its movement forward, and also the individual tasks and constituencies involved.”

Once they had defined the core mission and mini-statements, they brought their efforts to the school administration, who gave the green light to officially launch it to the community in January of 2022. “At that point, it went wide. We ended up with getting parent participation and it became a much bigger effort that is now fully encompassing the campus.”

If you don’t ask, the answer is no

Reflecting on the missioning process, Tori notes the surprising ease with which the community embraced an exceptionally aspirational mission statement. “We wrote an incredibly aspirational mission statement. We didn't write a mission statement that was like, okay, here's what we think we can do. And I was shocked at how quickly people said yes to almost everything we wanted to do. And the nice thing, and I kind of say this quietly - but it's worth saying aloud within the sustainability sphere – is that I have found that almost always people will say yes, if it doesn't have any obvious financial negatives (in which case you just have to convince them more).”

The importance of the school administration’s voice

The real test lay in translating these aspirations into tangible actions. Tori acknowledges the difficulties of navigating a landscape where change requires individuals to alter established habits and behaviors. "Much of doing the work involves other people changing habits and behaviors and resistance is not because people don't want to – our community is very supportive of sustainability – but it's hard for anyone to change what they're doing and or potentially do something a bit more.”

This being the case, Tori emphasizes the pivotal role of the administration (heads of school) in driving sustainability forward. “One of our hugest messages is that we need the administration to prioritize it, even if it just means they're talking about it a lot, because them showing support and the Board of Trustees showing support, even if they don't actually want to make any decisions, it allows me to be able to say, Hey, look, you've been hearing that these people have been talking about this a lot. This is important. So we really need you to do this. We really need your help in this process.”

Making noise

The school administration’s support and mandate for Chadwick’s sustainability program was highlighted through its official launch - which was ‘a big deal… It was broadcast quite widely. It was broadcast to alumni. It was broadcast to all of our parents. We had a huge open-to-anyone zoom call. It was a really big effort to really show, here we are, this is it, this is big, and the school is behind it.”

However, she is keenly aware that this is not a one-time effort but an ongoing process that demands continuous advocacy and engagement. “It's an ongoing thing. I need people to keep talking about it because if it starts to fade from people's minds, it starts to fade from people's priorities. Even if I'm back there chugging along in my little engine, it's not enough. I need other people to be moving forward as well with it. Even if we do the work, I need [other people] to be championing it.” One strategy for ongoing visibility and engagement is to highlight and celebrate sustainability on the school website (see Chadwick’s sustainability webpage here).

Tori Fay's journey at Chadwick School exemplifies the transformative power of a dedicated sustainability coordinator. Her experiences, from building a coordinated school sustainability program to navigating complex solar initiatives and reducing cafeteria waste, provide valuable insights for schools aiming to strengthen their commitment to sustainability. As Tori continues to lead Chadwick on its sustainable path, her experiences provide valuable learnings for educators and coordinators embarking on their own sustainability journeys.

Key Lessons:

Try to promote good behavior with optimism and good options

Tori notes that, as the Sustainability Coordinator, it’s very easy to acquire a reputation as someone who scolds people for doing the ‘wrong thing’.

“Sometimes you do have to like scold people into sustainability and making good choices. But I didn't ever want to be that person… I think what’s working is that I don't try to tell people what they shouldn't do. I try to give people easy options of doing something better.”

For example, when trying to reduce plastic waste during lunches, Tori found a way to buy every faculty member a reusable plate and reusable silverware, and to reduce paper waste, she found a tree-free paper. She notes it isn’t always easy; ‘you need to have support’, and she’ll try to find those pressure points like PR, using peers, and using data to demonstrate benefits.

2. Sustainability as a PR Benefit

Tori emphasizes the power of sustainability in improving a school’s public image, and that this can be used to leverage support. “Private schools, because it affects their bottom line, care hugely about their public perception, and you can 100% capitalize on talking about sustainability as a PR benefit because it leads to student leadership, it usually leads to savings - at least if you're talking about energy and efficiency - and it looks great in terms of reputation.’

3. Keep your eye on the bigger picture

Tori says that a lot of the role of Sustainability Coordinators is “lighting fires and putting out fires.”

“It's very easy for a thousand people to come up to you and say, I don't have a recycling bin in my room. Can you fix that? Or, what are we doing about this, that or the other? It's very easy to get your energy consumed by all of the little things and lose sight of moving the whole campus and the whole program forward. And sometimes you have to say, you know what, that's a great idea, but we're not going to do that right now because that's not what we're tackling this particular year.

So that's one of the main aspects of my role. It’s a balancing act, because I simultaneously want people to chase after the projects they are passionate about, and want to make sure that we are moving the whole campus in the direction we want to move it. I don't always do it well. That's one of the things I'm really excited about, about the START program, is that I think it will help facilitate that campus wide conversation. “

4. Build the broadest coalition you can build

Tori notes that a large part of the role is connecting the various constituencies across the school. “I need to make meaningful touch points with facilities, with every grade level, with the administration, with the staff, with the parents, with alumni… every single constituency is part of this process.”

Two notable groups she is working with to steer Chadwick’s sustainability efforts are students and parents. For the Upper School Sustainability Council, Tori guides a group of nine students in various leadership positions. This core team, passionate and experienced in sustainability, oversees committees and leads an open-to-all upper school group comprising approximately 20 to 25 individuals.

For the Upper School Sustainability Council, Tori guides a group of nine students in various leadership positions. This core team, passionate and experienced in sustainability, oversees committees and leads an open-to-all upper school group comprising approximately 20 to 25 individuals.

“I will say, as every other teacher has always said, students have way more power than adults do in terms of getting change to happen on campuses. And I would argue that parents in a private school setting similarly have a lot of power. And so I think sometimes when I really want to have something get done, and the students care about it too, I will say, hey, you guys take the lead on this one, because it's very hard for leaders at campuses to say no to students, and it's much easier for them to say no to adults.”

The second major focus is collaborating with parents and efforts to establish sustainability as an official part of the Parent Body. “One of the things that we're trying to do is to actually build sustainability in as an official part of the architecture of our parent body. We have what we call the CPA, the Childhood Parent Association, which includes, for example, the Booster Club that does athletics, and Friends of the Library, and other groups. So far, sustainability has not reached the level of having its own group, but we're hoping to move toward that. It would give us some sort of permanent basis with permanent elected positions within the parent bodies, and some consistency over time and allow us to secure our funding in more stable kinds of ways.”

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