How a Franklin High Spanish Teacher Wants to Make LAUSD Greener

In August 2007, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education adopted a “Green LAUSD Resolution,” with these words: “LAUSD must strive to be the most sustainable and environmentally-friendly urban large school district in the country.”

Aimed partly at making nearly 1,200 schools in the nation’s second-largest school district more environmentally aware and helping them reduce the amount of waste they generate, the resolution outlined a string of target areas ranging from energy conservation and water stewardship to healthy classrooms and campus greening.

Few people know better than Jan Ducker, senior sustainability specialist of Sustainability Initiatives in the LAUSD’s Facilities Services Division, how far the district has come in the nearly six years since its green resolution.

As Ducker tells it, besides an array of solar, landscaping and energy-saving initiatives, LAUSD’s landfill diversion rate—the amount of waste the district recycles instead of allowing it to end up in a landfill—is more than 65 percent. The district also arranges for some 7.5 tons of cardboard to be cramped annually into material for packaging, and has an e-waste program to dispose of electronic waste such as computers.  

“The District is committed to being the most sustainable and environmentally friendly large urban school district in the country,” Ducker told Highland Park-Mount Washington Patch. “We are continually looking at ways to improve how we operate as a district toward meeting that goal.”
But Franklin High School Spanish teacher Karla Johnson, who co-founded the school’s Environmental Club in 2008, believes LAUSD should do a lot more to create greener and healthier schools.

“It is true that LAUSD is on the cutting edge of sustainability initiatives within schools,” says Johnson, adding that the district’s environmental projects set a terrific example for school districts across the nation. “Still, there is more work to be done—many schools within the district are struggling with basic sustainability efforts.”

For example, says Johnson, although bins and hauling services for recyclables are provided free of charge, many schools have not utilized the program. “Even at Franklin, all the recycling is done by 10 or 15 students and I’m the only faculty person,” says Johnson. “We clearly need more people.”

Johnson was recently nominated for the 2013 Regional Teacher of the Year Award given by the Alliance for Climate Education, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing awareness about climate change in the nation’s high schools and encouraging students to create greener schools.

Johnson believes that ACE has the potential to connect LAUSD students with the resources they need to make their campuses more sustainable, while at the same time working with LAUSD officials to strengthen the district’s own sustainability initiatives.

On April 21, while hundreds of bicyclists pedaled from downtown L.A. to Venice Beach during the biannual CicLAvia event, Johnson lead a peaceful rally of her Environmental Club students to City to Hall to urge LAUSD to implement its Green LAUSD Resolution.

“On behalf of Los Angeles youth, we demand a comprehensive and binding Climate Action Plan for LAUSD by 2015,” Johnson wrote in a letter addressed to Ducker and the LAUSD’s Sustainability Initiative.

Many LAUSD students want to work alongside district officials as well as teachers and principals to develop and implement a Climate Action Plan, says Johnson, adding that the plan should include a system of accountability aimed at ensuring that every school within the district upholds strict standards of environmental sustainability.

As the sixth anniversary of the Green LAUSD Resolution approaches, a string of student representatives, teachers, principals and members of ACE as well as other environmental organizations wish to meet with the district’s Sustainability Office to discuss the goals of the Climate Action Plan, says Johnson.

“The idea is for all of us to work together for the betterment of our schools and our communities,” she adds.

Correction: The initial version of this article identified Jan Ducker as director of Sustainability Initiatives in the LAUSD’s Facilities Services Division. Her correct title is senior sustainability specialist.