At last week’s CCUSD School Board meeting on FEb. 14, 2023, five CCHS students: Ava Franza, Tatiana Wheeler-Murphy, Alyssa Khan, Claudia Egan and Nava Weissman, presented the student-initiated and highly comprehensive Green New Deal (GND), with the mission to operate more sustainability and reduce the enormous environmental impact of all CCUSD campuses.
This Green New Deal is in support of environmental policies 3510 A, 3510 B, and 3511, which the Board of Education adopted during the 2016-2017 school year. As the students declared, “It is important that every school reduces their environmental footprint as much as possible, in order to avoid the predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
The Green New Deal focuses on nine areas:
Education
Energy
Water
Waste
Green Purchasing
Construction
Green Spaces
Community
Transportation
Since students, some of whom have graduated, first presented this plan in spring 2022, Superintendent Tran added it to his 5-7-year Strategic Plan for CCUSD. In addition, the Board voted to hire a full-time sustainability coordinator for the District, a position that is critical to implementation of the plan. As the superintendent pointed out the potential cost-savings associated with these sustainability measures, the Board expressed unbridled support for the GND. The students requested the GND to be agendized at an upcoming meeting so the Board can vote to adopt it.
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