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The Framework for Effective School IAQ Management: Six Key Drivers of Success
EPA’s IAQ TfS Program has been implemented successfully in tens of thousands of schools nationwide. Over time, EPA has learned what it takes to create IAQ programs that deliver the remarkable results schools seek. EPA designed the Framework for Effective School IAQ Management by studying and synthesizing the accumulated learning of what works and why these strategies are successful from more than 1,000 school IAQ management programs. The Framework provides a common language to understand what drives IAQ program success; detailed guidance on the proven strategies, organizational approaches, and leadership styles that are fundamental to success; and a clear vision of the pathway to school IAQ excellence. Its highly flexible and adaptable structure allows any school, regardless of location, size, budget, or condition, to use the Framework to launch, reinvigorate, and sustain an effective IAQ management program.
Six Key Drivers underlie the Framework for Effective School IAQ Management:
- Organize for Success: Create a mission-driven program; recruit program champions; secure senior-level buy-in; convene a leadership team; apply a systematic
approach to integrate facility management practices, and more.
- Assess Your Environments Continuously: Monitor facilities using standard maintenance and custodial practices in order to prevent IAQ problems; empower leaders in
each facility; utilize innovative ideas to leverage current technologies, and more.
- Plan Your Short and Long-Term Activities: Name and codify your IAQ program’s goals; prioritize short- and long-term goals.
- Act to Address Structural, Institutional, and Behavioral Issues: Communicate the actions you will take to improve IAQ, follow through with these actions, then
tell your community what you have done and why it is important.
- Evaluate Your Results for Continuous Improvement: Measure your program’s impact by monitoring success metrics, such as the number of IAQ complaints, the cost of
IAQ-related repairs, the difference in school nurse visits, attendance, and student test scores over time; and how to use your evaluation results to drive long-term
program strategy.
- Communicate with Everyone, All the Time: Share your IAQ program’s intent, activities, results, and next steps with your entire school community and engage your community as participants and program supporters.
“IAQ TfS gave us a framework for organizing; it provided the comprehensive approach we needed… to pull it all together, strengthen our existing practices… and get more out of our work.”
– Dave Hill, Executive Director, Facilities and Operations, Blue Valley School District
Envisioning Excellence Suite of Materials
The Framework is the core of this suite of materials -- detailed programmatic guidance documents combining in-depth analysis of highly successful programs in practice with years of accumulated knowledge and expertise.
The IAQ TfS Program Change Package
The IAQ TfS Program Change Package captures strategies and actions that successful school districts can follow to build effective and enduring IAQ management programs. The Change Package provides an overview of the Framework for Effective School IAQ Programs, the Six Key Drivers that comprise the Framework, and illustrative examples of successful strategies in action that school districts can immediately apply to incorporate the Key Drivers into their programs.
- Learn more - view Envisioning Excellence: The IAQ TfS Program Change Package (PDF, 12 pp, 435KB)
A Snapshot of Seven Profiles in Excellence
A Snapshot of Seven Profiles in Excellence provides highlights of seven very different school districts that each applied the Framework to create effective and enduring IAQ programs. In their diversity, these stories demonstrate the flexibility and adaptability the Framework provides, making clear that any school, regardless of location, size, budget, or facility conditions, can use the Framework to launch and sustain a successful IAQ program.
- Learn more - view Envisioning Excellence: Lessons from Effective School IAQ Programs - A Snapshot (PDF, 12 pp, 606KB)
Lessons from Effective School Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Programs
Lessons from Effective School Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Programs provides in-depth profiles of five highly effective school IAQ programs. Each program is presented through the lens of the Framework for Effective School IAQ Programs: Six Key Drivers and demonstrates how these school districts created successful IAQ programs by adapting this Framework to their unique needs and situation. Each story contributes important “lessons learned” fundamental to a comprehensive understanding of how the Framework helps schools achieve IAQ excellence.
Learn more - view Envisioning Excellence: Lessons from Effective School IAQ Programs (PDF, 44 pp, 765KB)