On the evening of Jan. 17, the D.C. State Board of Education (DCSBOE) voted to pass the “Green New Deal for Schools,” a resolution written and championed by D.C. Public School students. More than 50 people, most of them high schoolers, attended the hourslong public meeting in support of the resolution.
“I want me and my friends to live in an environment where we’re comfortable, and where we can have fun without having to worry about natural disasters or things in the environment that could ruin our futures,” said School Without Walls junior Makena Toldson in an interview after the vote. “We’ve been working on passing the Green New Deal for Schools, and that just passed, which is great — it’s amazing for us.”
DCPS is now the second school district nationwide to take up the policy, after schools in Boulder, Colorado, passed their own Green New Deal for Schools last month. The resolution is based on a five-point policy platform developed by the Sunrise Movement, a national climate justice initiative.
The resolution’s demands include free, sustainably sourced school lunches; curricula focused on climate justice; opportunities for students to pursue good-paying green jobs; school infrastructure running on 100% renewable energy; and improved plans for what to do when climate disasters hit.
The resolution’s passage is only a first step for the high school advocates, one that board representative Ben Yarkin, a School Without Walls student himself, described as “an easy part” of the process. That’s because the state board of education’s resolutions serve largely as policy recommendations for other governing bodies or executive agencies.
“That’s the complicated part … the state board doesn’t really have any power at all,” said junior Zoe Fisher, one the co-founders of the School Without Walls Sunrise Movement hub. “Them passing this resolution is an endorsement that they, as the D.C. school experts, believe that this is the best way to proceed.”
Still, the movement to get the resolution passed has garnered momentum for the cause among DCPS students, particularly within School Without Walls. Anna Mayer, another student and co-founder of the Sunrise Movement hub there told the education board during her testimony Wednesday that the group had more than doubled the number of supporters turning out for the meeting since beginning the campaign two months ago. In December, more than two dozen students testified before the board in support of the resolution.
“I’m inspired — you have accomplished something that many professional advocacy groups have not been able to do as effectively,” DCSBOE member Allister Chang said to the student activists during Wednesday’s meeting.
The student activists worked closely with Chang, who represents Ward 2, where their school is located, as well as Ward 3 board member Eric Goulet. Fisher said that she and her peers plan to take their advocacy to the D.C. Council and agencies that would be key for implementation, such as the Office of the State Superintendent of Education and Department of Government Services.
“[The students] came with an organized approach; they wrote a draft resolution for us that was better than I see from a lot of attorneys,” Goulet said in an interview following the meeting. “What they’re going to be able to do is bring that energy, to make sure that the powers to be on the Council and in the mayor’s office, listen to them and make sure that those voices are heard. I think the biggest challenge is funding and I think they’re prepared to meet it right now.”
Goulet also noted that in the 20 years he’s spent in the District, he’s already seen how climate change has caused noticeable differences in the weather.
Fisher pointed to last summer’s wildfire smoke days, and their impact on her classmates with asthma, for an example of why schools need to prepare for a warmer world.
“As the climate changes, adults have been like, ‘Oh, your generation is going to be the ones to fix this, we have to pass the torch to you,’” Mayer said in an interview. “And the headlines have just gotten worse and worse and worse throughout my childhood. … I’m inheriting a world, and I have to make sure that it’s the best it can possibly be. [But] I also have found that I really enjoy this work — I love talking to different people and working with people and finding similar passions. So even though it started from a place of fear, it has turned into a really good thing.”