Keeping Schools Cool

If you ask adults to think about their fondest childhood memories, they will often recall formative experiences that took place outdoors, in nature-rich settings. These memories are filled with vibrant sensory details that endure decades later. They talk about the scent of lilac flowers, the sweetness of raspberries eaten in the garden, the feeling of the crisp winter air as they went sledding, the sound of birds in a forest or waves at the beach, and a feeling of adventure and wonder as they explored and discovered vast — or tiny — pockets of the natural world.

For many of us, playing, learning, and exploring in nature intuitively feels good, but until recently, we didn’t have solid science to explain how it benefits our physical and mental health. Over the past decade, a robust body of research has shown that access to nature provides physiological benefits — including enhanced brain development, physical fitness, and vision, along with better sleep — as well as social-emotional, cognitive, and mental health improvements. For students, spending time in nature replenishes their ability to focus; it improves their attention, motivation, concentration, and working memory. These important findings have helped change our collective understanding that access to the natural world is not just something that’s “nice to have” but a human right that is essential for everyone’s health and well-being.

In the US, more than 98,000 public schools serve 49.4 million Pre-K-12 students on an estimated two million acres of public land. Much of that land is paved and lacks trees or shade. As temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, this situation is becoming an alarming crisis. On sunny days at just 90 degrees F, unshaded asphalt — ubiquitous in schoolyards — can reach hazardous temperatures of 140 degrees or more, while rubber surfaces can reach more than 165 degrees. Even on a mild 65-degree day, asphalt may reach 120 degrees and rubber 155 degrees or more. For children, such dangerously high temperatures are particularly perilous because their smaller body size limits their ability to cool off.

The lack of trees and natural areas in schools is an environmental justice problem that disproportionately impacts communities of color and communities with the lowest incomes. When nature is absent where children spend their time daily, they are denied the mental, physical, social-emotional, and learning benefits afforded to children in greener (often wealthier) areas.

On its face, greening schoolyards by planting trees and creating natural outdoor environments is a simple, powerful, and replicable solution that can have a sweeping impact in the lives of children across the US. But the solution is not as straightforward to implement as it seems. This is because it requires changing existing paradigms and systems of schoolyard funding, construction, and maintenance that have been in place for decades. Most existing schoolyards in the US were designed more than 50 years ago with different educational goals in mind and in a completely different social context. Back then, a child’s roaming range was much wider than just school and home.

Built on two decades of work, Green Schoolyards America is shifting this paradigm. We are working with school districts, public agencies, and non-profit partners across the country, seeking to transform school grounds into ecologically rich, park-like green spaces that improve children’s health, learning, and happiness, all while contributing to climate resilience. Our work focuses on serving communities that have the greatest need for improvements in education, environmental health, and open space access.

The national green schoolyards movement in the US has steadily expanded to include green infrastructure design, as well as standards-based climate and environmental literacy curricula. The green schoolyards movement is now at a pivotal moment after years of advocacy, especially given the pressing challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and the climate crisis.

The pandemic, which transformed how people interact with one another and their surroundings, highlighted the need for open space and access to nature like never before, and accelerated the push for outdoor learning. As communities emerged from shelter-in-place mandates, nature-rich outdoor spaces on school grounds and in local parks presented a cost-effective opportunity to improve health, heal collective trauma, and support students, families, and the economy. And that has brought renewed energy to the green schoolyards movement.

In 2020, Green Schoolyards America cofounded the National Outdoor Learning Initiative along with The Lawrence Hall of Science, the San Mateo County Office of Education, and Ten Strands, in order to embrace the opportunity to support communities’ transition to outdoor learning. The initiative grew to include more than 20 other partner organizations and hundreds of participating volunteers and foundation partners. This work resulted in the creation of a community of practice forum and a free online resource library, designed to help school districts across the United States move classes and programs outside. Although the pandemic was the catalyst, this initiative was an investment in expanding access to outdoor learning into the future.

Outside of the pandemic, the climate crisis has also brought attention and support to the green schoolyards movement, especially in California, as a promising solution to address extreme heat. Green Schoolyards America — in partnership with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the California Department of Education, and Ten Strands — has recently launched the California Schoolyard Forest System^SM, a statewide initiative to increase tree canopy on public school grounds across California. The initiative aims to shade and protect pre-K-12 students from extreme heat and rising temperatures due to climate change. The California Schoolyard Forest System seeks to plant enough trees by 2030 to cover at least 30 percent of each school property in areas used by children and youth during the school day, while prioritizing underserved communities with the highest poverty levels, fewest trees, and hottest climates. The initiative proposes using school grounds as a pre-K-12 learning laboratory to build environmental and climate literacy by engaging students in standards-based hands-on research, design, planting, and stewardship of their schoolyard forests.

Learn more about this Earth Island Project at greenschoolyards.org

Significant investment and partnerships will be needed to ensure large-scale adoption and implementation throughout the state. As a start, the newly adopted California state budget sets aside $150 million over two years for creating green schoolyards, and this year the Los Angeles Unified School District has allocated an additional $58 million towards outdoor learning and green schoolyards.

In this time of a rapidly worsening climate crisis, green schoolyards must be embraced as the norm across the United States. Despite the many challenges ahead, we believe that we are at a watershed moment for the green schoolyards movement. We are shifting away from the “old ways” of treeless asphalt schoolyards by building a shared understanding and awareness of the problem and its solution, and we are investing in the creation of a new system for planning, designing, building, managing, and maintaining green schoolyards to ensure their success and sustainability — for generations to come.