Issues > July/August 2006 (#115) > The Top 10 Green Schools in the U.S.: 2006

The Top 10 Green Schools in the U.S.: 2006

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The Top 10 Schools
On this year's list, our top 10 actually contains 11 schools, owing to two tied scores in the eighth and tenth places. Six of these 11 are public, indicating that environmental improvements are within reach of all schools, public or private. Nine of our previous year's top 10 are within this year's top 20; a lack of survey data accounts for the only missing school from 2005.

1) 1st Place: Punahou School (private), Honolulu, HI; score: 77.4
"Living on an island," says Dave White, seventh-grade science teacher at Punahou's Case Middle School, "we've got to feel the urgency now." Resources such as water, fuel, forests, landfill space and food, are all limited. And as White notes, in Hawaii, the rules for preservation and land use are a little different from those in practice elsewhere—Hawaii's environment contains a mix of native and exotic species. The same can be said of Case, from its waterless urinals to its photovoltaic arrays, the school mixes the commonplace with the unusual, offering students opportunities to test their limits, while ensuring a rigorous education in the fundamentals. Built according to LEED standards and likely to receive a gold level of certification, Case Middle School is just one part of the 75-acre Punahou campus, an institution now in its 165th year. Healthy eating is promoted across the entire campus, housing classes K through 12, and candy is kept out of vending machines. Green cleaning products and the elimination of pesticides indoors and out help maintain healthy breathing spaces. As for building and renovation, all future construction on Punahou's campus will be done to LEED standards as well. And as part of Punahou's ongoing environmental efforts, last year (2005-2006), the school held a school-wide summit on sustainability. At the four-day summit, students, teachers and staff developed food, energy, water, waste and transportation initiatives for the school to implement; results will be carefully tracked over the next five years.

For practical experience and community service, students can work on the Hawaiian plant nursery—White's "thing," as he calls it. Kids propagate and share with the community native Hawaiian hibiscus (Kokio ke'o ke'o), Ti plants, Kalo ("taro" root), milo seedlings and Ma'o (a Hawaiian cotton that's so pest resistant that mainland cotton growers are trying to crossbreed it with standard cotton). The lessons take root. Says parent Melissa Benjamin, "we drove by the Ala Wai Canal, and my older daughter said, ‘Look, there are the plants that we planted to help clean up the canal!'"

2) 2nd Place: The Willow School (private), Gladstone, NJ; score: 63.4
The Willow School is a no less remarkable place: A LEED-gold certified building on 34 acres of old farmland, it is now in the throes of creating what is to be a LEED-platinum art building. Just five years old, with 80 students, the school holds the philosophy "that all education is environmental education," in the words of founder Mark Biedron. Biedron adds that over the last 75 years "we've done a good job teaching children what they need to know to get a good occupation and to make money, but we've done a poor job of teaching children about caring for the long-term sustainability of the planet." Drawing from wind power off-campus and solar-power on-campus, the Willow School conserves energy by turning off its HVAC system when the temperatures outside are between 60 and 80 degrees. At the same time, a light goes on telling kids to open the windows.

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