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2011 Conference ReportCheck out photos from the event and see who was honored as this year’s Green Star Award winners! 
Check out all of the photos from the 2011 Conference on our Facebook page! The 2011 Bay Area Schools Environmental Conference was a huge success! Over 300 people from cities all over the Bay Area including San Jose, Palo Alto, Los Gatos, Fremont, Oakland, Hayward, Santa Cruz, Mountain View, Union City, Saratoga, Redwood City, San Mateo, and Hollister (just to name a few!) gathered at the Mexican Heritage Plaza on Saturday, April 30th to discover and share methods for making our schools more sustainable, both in operations as well as through classroom learning. Our keynote speaker Jamie Smith – food service director for Santa Cruz City Schools – focused in on this year’s conference theme, “fill your plate with green,” by sharing his challenges and triumphs in transforming the district’s school lunch program from frozen and pre-packaged meals to a successful locally-grown and scratched cooked service. Plus, our twelve breakout sessions provided attendees with much food for thought on how to create more sustainable school systems and enhance environmental learning in the classroom. View our list of speakers and sessions that were featured at the conference here. We rounded out the day, by honoring individuals and organizations in eight different Green Star Award categories for their outstanding commitment to sustainability in schools. In a surprise special presentation by the Michael Lee Environmental foundation, our Green Star Outstanding School – Woodside High School, and our Green Star Outstanding Teacher – Jeanette Frechou of Wood Middle School in Alameda, were each presented with a check for $500 in appreciation of their environmental stewardship. Congratulations to Woodside High, Ms. Frechou and all of our Green Star Award winners whom you can read more about in their bios listed below. 2011 Green Star Award RecipientsOutstanding Community Member:
Outstanding Students:
Outstanding Parent:
Outstanding Custodian:
Outstanding School Lunch Program:
Outstanding School District:
Outstanding School:
Outstanding Teacher:
Thanks to Our SponsorsPresenting Sponsor
Gold Level
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Friends of BASEC Chinook Book
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Mr. Hays’ environmental work is far reaching and includes many aspects of his community and beyond. He leads the Sustainable Schools Committee in Palo Alto, where he’s worked on projects such as installing solar panels, safe biking, school gardens, recycling and composting programs, energy conservation education, earth day events, and green team development. In addition, he has great rapport with people, bringing different groups together to work on issues, and is tenacious, always wanting to see progress however slow. Mr. Hays also chairs the Community Environmental Action Partnership—a city-wide collaborative and is part of the city’s zero waste task force, green ribbon task force, and most recently has been working on an initiative to build an anaerobic digester in Palo Alto. He has been involved in Open Space/ Parks, serving as a chairman of the board for Rancho del Oso and the Waddell Creek Association, and as a docent at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. This retired lawyer is also a member of the Rotary, where he has been involved with local, district, and international community environmental projects.
Salvador and Julio have been working together to help overcome the obstacles of environmental injustice in their community. They have helped to establish a school community garden from reuse, and they sell the vegetables to help students and community members enjoy healthy organic food at a convenient price. Both students are making a change in their community to help families who need it most. They recently won a Youth Venture program grant to start a social enterprise that helps build raised garden beds, and provides training on gardening and composting for low income families that cannot afford to eat healthily. On top of all of this, they both maintain 3.5+ grade point averages and belong to the Youth and Government program sponsored by the YMCA where they are working to pass a Green Bill in the California Youth and Government Senate to help California reduce its fossil fuel emissions.
Ms. Osmond-Ong is the driving force behind Chaboya Middle School’s Green Club and the general Green movement within the Evergreen School District. In 2010, Mrs. Osmond-Ong was awarded a $5,000 grant through the City of San José to construct 11 garden boxes and 4 compost bins with the help of district employees and other parents. In addition, she organized the school’s Earth Day celebration, coordinated a school assembly featuring the Alliance for Climate Education team, and invited various city dignitaries to visit and speak to the students about environmental issues. She has led the school’s Green Club to leverage their programs and apply for the Target Field Trip grant and the Disney Planet Challenge Grant. Mrs. Osmond-Ong continues her efforts to make Chaboya Middle School Green by encouraging environmental activities at feeder elementary schools, leading the Green Star School program on campus, and recruiting parents to join the Green Club as well.
Every day, Mr. Vasquez sets up the lunch area with recycle bins for lunch trays and garbage bins and buckets for food waste and does so with enthusiasm! He has a positive attitude toward recycling and actively looks for ways to reduce Booksin's carbon footprint. He encourages students to feel a sense of ownership and responsibility for their school and encourages students to help with cleaning up the campus with the litter grabbers. In addition, he makes a positive impact on the students by thanking each student by name when they recycle. He is often heard saying, "I want to see a smile on your face. Otherwise it's not fun." Thanks to his help, Booksin’s waste free lunch program has reduced the volume of garbage down to two barrels. Parents say Johnny is the key to “greening” Booksin’s campus, and they have created the “Johnny $ Reward” system in his honor.
With her efforts and the support of the school community, Mrs. Raugust spent the last 27 years developing and teaching hundreds of Pacific School students life skills in the kitchen by cooking lunch and snacks everyday for the school. FoodLab was created because Ms, Raugust, the program’s coordinator saw a need to serve fresh, locally grown, homemade foods to students, rather than processed, prepackaged meals transported everyday by truck. Her vision included having students cook the meals. The relationships between the local Davenport community, Santa Cruz families, and local farmers and businesses are strengthened and sustained by her love of cooking nutritious meals and her insistence in having youth be involved in the cooking process. In addition, the program provides self esteem, life skills, and academic reinforcement to the students who participate.
Fremont Unified School District offers various opportunities for their schools to engage in high quality environmental programming that makes a positive difference in the community. In the past, the district has organized green trainings for all administrators to help engage students in environmental service-learning projects. The district, in partnership with their city uses trails and environmental science stations previously built by high school students to provide outdoor environmental education to elementary school students. The district also features an electric/ diesel bus that is frequently used for environmental field trips. Students in the district have shown exemplary leadership by implementing projects around safe routes to school, school gardens, waste diversion, and community environmental education events. With the leadership of students, Fremont schools have saved energy by over 30% and community-wide e-waste diversion events have been established.
Woodside High has implemented many activities and programs to “green” their campus and teach students how to protect natural resources. For over eight years the school has successfully run a student-led recycling program where recyclables are collected from over 80 rooms on campus, as well as from high traffic areas. Two school gardens have been built that are used as outdoor classrooms, and the Environmental Science students have planted native trees throughout the school. A unique program of this school is their Green and Clean Academy. Students in this academy take classes in Science, History, English, and Career Technical Education focusing on water and energy conservation in order to prepare for careers in the “green” job market. In addition, a mechanics-in-training program has been created by the Academy to repair used bikes or build new bikes to be sold or donated to fellow students to thereby encourage the use of alternative transportation to and from school.
Over the last 4 years, Jeanette Frechou has led a renaissance in science education by engaging students in environmental science through service-learning. Under Mrs. Frechou’s leadership, students conducted an audit of the school’s waste stream and established a food scrap diversion program resulting in 80% less cafeteria waste headed to the landfill. She and her students also developed a model, year-end locker clean-out program that is being rolled out to schools across Alameda County this spring. In addition, she had led her school to become a NOAA Ocean Guardian School, and taught students how to study the sources of litter at the beach. As a result of this study, the students led a healthy eating campaign to reduce environmental impacts on marine life. This teacher and her students also participate in the international Pellet Watch project to help monitor the spread of persistent organic pollutants as they attach to plastics in the water. As a result of her leadership in these environmental areas, CST scores in science at this Middle School have increased over 55% in the last three years.
