Greetings!
My name is Kathleen Seabourne, and I am an Education Administrator in the Schools facilities and Transportation Services Division.
I am pleased to share that the Green Ribbon Schools Website and application are now up and running!
At the end of September, California accepted the US Department of Education's invitation to participate in the pilot year. This award is designed to recognize schools taking a comprehensive approach to greening their schools.
This comprehensive approach asks for a lot more from a school than just conducting a lot of fun green activities with students. But rather the intent is to integrate environmental and health impacts with environmental learning activities.
This pilot year, the Feds have asked for a two step process.
The first step is to complete and submit the application to the California Department of Education.
Then, if a school is selected as a state nominee, the California Department of Education will conduct a site verification visit and collect additional information that will be included in the nomination package to the US Department of Education.
The US Department of Education informed us that each state may submit up to four nominees.
If submitting more than one public school, one must be a school with at least 40 percent of their students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
If submitting four nominees, one must be a private school.
With regards to the nomination of a private school, we are coordinating with the California Association for Private Schools Organization.
The California Association for Private Schools Organization will be providing the private school nominee to the California Department of Education to be forwarded to the US Department of Education with the three other schools.
On December 22, our Green Ribbon Schools Award Program Website was up and running.
You can find the Website by either typing in its official link or you can go to the California Department of Education's main Website, type in Green Ribbon Schools Award Program in the search engine at the top of the page and be transferred over to the site.
Here is a picture of the top of the opening page.
And here is a picture of the bottom of the page, where I will be focusing your attention towards.
First, let's skip down to the fourth link, entitled Framework. When you click on this link you will be directed to a copy of the Federal framework.
This framework is useful because it provides an overview of the application criteria.
The first column identifies the three main goals, or what we call the three Green Ribbon Pillars.
This slide provides a picture of the first of three pages.
The green arrow points to the first pillar entitled Environmental Impact and Energy Efficiency.
The green arrow on this next slide points to the sub-categories or each pillar. We call these sub-categories Elements.
Next, in the third column each element is broken down into specific categories, such as energy, greenhouse gases, water, grounds, and waste.
The fourth column identifies the Green School Objectives.
While the fifth column identifies how a school might demonstrate progress toward these objectives.
Finally, and what I believe is most important, the sixth and final column provides a list of resources that will help you better understand what it means to reach the objectives.
However, as you all have likely been frustrated while attempting to read the fine print of this Framework we have provided a page on our Website that guides you to the various resources in a larger, more reader friendly font size, and we have provided direct links to each resource for your convenience.
Here is a small section of the resource page section that I have taken a picture of.
You can see the various resources are organized under each Pillar and Element.
Now I'd like to guide you to the actual application questions.
We have re-created our online application in a Word document, so that it might be easier to strategize which individuals would be the key staff in knowing the answers.
We in no way expect the site principal or one district staff member to know all the answers just as we took the input of several key California Department of Education individuals, state and federal agencies, and private business professionals to create these questions, we would anticipate that there would be a need for several school and district staff members to come up with specific answers.
Thus, it might be useful to print this Word document out and assign various folks to help you develop the answers.
Here is a sample of the three Cross Cutting Questions.
You might be able to answer all three questions or you might find it necessary to talk with other staff in order to successfully complete each question.
Here is a sample of the first few questions under Pillar i: Environmental IMpact and Energy Efficiency.
Once you feel comfortable about how you are going to answer each question, I suggest opening up the Online Application.
The link for the Online Application is found under the second bullet.
This link will lead you to the application, which was developed on the program "Survey Gizmo".
Now, I have played around with the application and found some helpful hints.
First, you probably won't be able to complete the application in one sitting. You can save your work, and continue to input information at a later date, if you do the following:
Click on the "Save" button.
A drop-down box will appear at the top of the page and ask for your identity and e-mail address. Please remember to verify your e-mail address a second time. An e-mail from Survey Gizmo will then be sent to you. Please save this e-mail as it will have a link for you to click on and resume your work.
Only after you have completed the whole application should you hit the Submit button.
To give you an idea of how the scoring will work we have provided you a breakdown at this link called the Scoring Rubric.
You will find a copy of this rubric in several locations, however, for easy access we have provided the information on its own page.
There are several additional links that might be useful to you.
This arrow points to a link to the Federal Green Ribbon Website.
This arrow points to a link to various Civil Rights, Health, Environment, and Safety Statutory and Regulatory Requirements.
This arrow points to a link called Additional Resources Provided by the U.S. Department of Education.
And this arrow points to a link to Frequently Asked Questions Provided by the U.S. Department of Education.
So here we are! Mid-January and right on target. The application was posted the final week of December. Staff in our division will be available to assist you to complete the application. We are only a phone call away. All school applications are due back to the California Department of Education on February 17, 2012. And California nominees will be sent to the U.S. Department of Education by March 22, 2012.
Once you begin the application you might want further guidance, in that case, this slide provides contact information. Contact information is also provided at the bottom of the page of the Green Ribbon Website.
This concludes our Webinar, I want to thank all of you for joining us and wish you all the best of luck.
