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2012 Conference ReportCheck out photos from the event and see who was honored as this year’s Green Star Award winners! 
Over 300 people from 34 Bay Area cities including San José, Palo Alto, Los Gatos, Fremont, Oakland, Hayward, Santa Cruz, Mountain View, Union City, Saratoga, Redwood City, San Mateo, and Hollister gathered at the Corinthian Center in downtown San José on Saturday, February 4th for the sixth annual Bay Area Schools Environmental Conference. Attendees discovered and shared methods for integrating environmental education in classrooms and making our schools more sustainable. Our morning keynote speaker Eric Corey Freed, Principal of organicARCHITECT and author of “Sustainable School Architecture” and the best seller “Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies,” kicked off the conference with his presentation entitled “Dodo-Sapiens: How Nature Can Inspire a New Wave of School Buildings.” In his presentation, Eric discussed how seemingly harmless decisions about our buildings made decades ago are now throwing all of our natural systems into decline. While every other technology has made vast improvements (cell phones, computers, automobiles), our buildings continue to be boring, energy-wasting and toxic. He taught us that by learning from nature, we can uncover lessons to apply to our built environment that will save energy, water, and resources and be healthier in the process. Erik Assadourian provided our lunch keynote. Erik is a Senior Fellow with the Worldwatch Institute in Washington D.C. where he has studied cultural change, consumerism, ecological ethics, corporate responsibility, and sustainable communities. Erik directed development of the report, “State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability.” Erik presented “Educators' New Assignment: Teaching Sustainability” and discussed ways educators are introducing sustainability into lesson plans, classroom activities, and the broader school culture with the goals of expanding students’ environmental knowledge, making their behavior more sustainable, and most importantly, helping to shift cultural norms more broadly in society. Along with our two keynote speaker we had over 20 breakout presentations, which provided attendees with new learning opportunities on a variety of topics such as Safe Routes to School activities, hands-on vermin-composting programs, the State Board of Education’s Environmental Education Initiative (EEI) curriculum, alternative and non-toxic pest management tools, and techniques for implementing energy audits on campus. View our list of speakers and sessions that were featured at the conference here. We ended our lunch session by honoring individuals and organizations in seven different Green Star Award categories for their outstanding commitment to sustainability in schools. The Michael Lee Environmental foundation presented the Frank Schiavo Memorial Award to our Outstanding Green Star School – Los Altos High School, and our Green Star Outstanding Teacher– Tim Bremner of the Oakland Unified School District. Below is a list of all of our Green Star Award winners. 2012 Green Star Award RecipientsOutstanding Community MemberLeslie O'Malley, Loma Prieta Union School District, Santa Cruz County
Outstanding StudentPallavi Sherikar, Irvington High School, Fremont
Outstanding ParentSally Schroeder, Horace Mann International Baccalaureate World School, San José
Outstanding CustodianSergio Navarro, Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School, Palo Alto
Outstanding School AdministratorGail Harrell, Holy Family School, San José
Outstanding SchoolLos Altos High School, Los Altos
Outstanding TeacherTim Bremner, Castlemont High School, Oakland
Thanks to Our SponsorsGold Level
Friends of BASEC Chinook Book
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Ask any child, parent, teacher, or staff member at the Loma Prieta Joint Union School District in the Santa Cruz Mountains who is the Go Green person and they will say Leslie O’Malley. Leslie issued kindergartners with their own Go Green reusable water bottles. She has also collaborated with the elementary Home & School Club to purchase sets of dishware for class parties and food scraps are sent home to owners of very happy chickens. At Leslie’s instigation, the weekly bundle of papers sent home and found days later in the bottom of a backpack have been replaced by an electronic packet. For the past four years Leslie has been a regular on campus, flattening cardboard and moving recycling off campus. The school district has benefited from her efforts and seen a financial benefit of $5,000 per year. She is a co-founder of the Yahoo group 95033free, whereby residents in that zip code can offer items they no longer want or request items they are looking for.
Now a high school junior, Pallavi has been involved in environmental work since the end of her freshmen year. She started by joining the Fremont Unified School District’s environmental group F.I.E.R.C.E. (Fremontian’s Enabling Real Change in the Environment) and she is currently the District Policy Committee Head for FIERCE. Pallavi worked as an intern at EarthTeam and the Berkeley Ecology Center. At EarthTeam she worked on starting a Youth Advisory Board. While at the Ecology Center, she researched Eco-Architecture and is also part of EarthTeam's Green News program as the blogger Dr. Green. As Dr. Green, she answers any questions people may have about the environment. She has been an inspiration to the staff at EarthTeam and is described as a wonderful example of a youth taking leadership within the environmental movement in her own community. 
Sally’s commitment and passion for science and the environment is evident in her creation of a student Recycling Club and addition of a science room. Five years ago, she saw a need for recycling at Horace Mann School. The school was wasting and throwing away paper and recycled goods. As a result, she decided to launch a Recycling Club. The club allows for upper grade students to become active participants and learners in caring for the planet through recycling. This year Sally created and currently runs the science room. She provides classroom teachers the opportunity to have their class learn science in an interactive and engaging manner. Teachers sign up their classes and she teaches the lessons. This new science room is dedicated to all students. This Outstanding Parent also successfully runs the yearly Science Fair. Sally is a driven and passionate parent who volunteers in order to encourage the love of science and environment through action and education.
Sergio has been a custodian at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School in Palo Alto for 11 years and is highly thought of by his colleagues, everyone at the school he serves, and the larger Sustainable Schools Committee community in Palo Alto. He has been an active and loyal member of the school’s Green Team since its inception five years ago. He helps the Team brainstorm fun and creative ideas for school-wide green events and he has also come up with innovative ideas on his own. This year Sergio developed an online system to record custodians’ time cards electronically using Google Docs to cut down on the use of paper. He presented the idea to the assistant principal, who was very impressed, and they started a pilot. Sergio hopes to expand the system to the whole district. The school administrators commend his forward-thinking. In the past couple years, the school rolled out a new 3-sort waste system (recycling-compost-garbage) and Sergio has been instrumental in the program’s success.
Our outstanding Green Star Administrator is Principal Gail Harrell at Holy Family School in San José. In 2009, several staff members from Holy Family School attended the Bay Area Schools Environmental Conference and returned to school extremely excited about the possibilities to save the school money and benefit the environment at the same time. In 2011, under Gail Harrell’s direction and through a comprehensive school waste reduction program which included skits, a student-produced video presentation, classroom education, an eco-friendly change to the school’s hot lunch program, and a student led committee of “Green” volunteers, Holy Family School was able to significantly reduce the size of its dumpster and thus its garbage bill. With Principal Gail Harrell’s guidance, Holy Family School is now looking forward to planning Phase II of the Holy Family School “Go Green” program.
Los Altos High School was the third high school in Santa Clara County to earn a Green School Certification. The students, administrators, teachers, staff and parent organizations have contributed to making this school a greener, more sustainable and healthier place to study and work through green community service, green fundraising and raising green awareness. Since certification, other green actions have taken place on campus including installing solar panels and adding recycling bins and composting materials. The school’s Construction and Technology Training Program instructs students about sustainable building techniques. There are also plans moving forward to start rain harvesting and replace styrofoam in the cafeteria with compostable materials. Other green initiatives include ordering recycled content paper products, procuring five electric vehicles for custodians and security personnel, installing bottle refill fountains, a single stream recycling and compostable collection, E-Waste collection drives, and many zero waste events for student groups. This school also participated and won last year’s Blue Whale Award as part of the California statewide K-12 Recycling Challenge.
On a recent November day, Tim Bremner and his Urban Ecology and Green Urban Design classes organized a sustainable food systems tour of Castlemont High. The tour included an audit of cafeteria waste, lessons on food scrap composting in the garden, the harvesting of student-grown vegetables, cooking lessons from community partners using locally grown produce, and shopping at the student-organized on-campus Farmer’s Market. This comprehensive approach, including engagement with external partners, is emblematic of this Outstanding Teacher’s enthusiasm for educating East Oakland’s students: environmental justice does not happen by accident, it’s the result of deliberate effort and intention. To ensure that students develop environmental leadership skills, he has dedicated his career to creating new structures that engage students in tangible, meaningful change. This year, Tim Bremner established SUDA which is the Sustainable Urban Design Academy at Castlemont High. SUDA engages youth in participatory action research to collect data about community needs leading to action plans and policies for urban design benefiting youth and the environment. SUDA builds on Tim’s prior work at the Youth Empowerment School where as Academy Director, he worked with staff from the UC Regents to design A-G approved environmental education classes, established a community garden, and partnered with UC Berkeley’s Center for Cities and Schools to help students develop and promote youth priorities for a sustainable Oakland.
