As the bitter chill of winter retreats, the vibrancy of spring beckons us outdoors reminding us of the inextricable link between the natural world and our daily lives. In striving to meet the President’s challenge to win the future by out-educating the rest of the world, we must cultivate the environmental health of our learning spaces and our students’ understanding of their environment to enable them to meet the challenges of the future. Today, the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality came together to launch the Green Ribbon Schools Program. This program plants the seeds to move toward educational excellence for the future by recognizing schools that are creating healthy and sustainable learning environments - both inside and outside the classroom, teaching environmental literacy, and increasing environmental health by reducing their environmental footprint.
Led by the Department of Education, in close partnership with the EPA and CEQ, the Green Ribbon Schools program will incentivize and reward schools that help to ensure that our students receive an education second to none by improving the health and environmental footprint of nation’s schools. To prepare our children for the clean energy economy of the future, Green Ribbon schools will be those that incorporate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and environmental stewardship into their curricula.
This initiative will also help to reconnect our nation’s youth to the environment around them, as part of President Obama’s Americas Great Outdoors initiative, by encouraging outdoor learning. In a day when children spend half as much time outside as their parents did, there’s no time like the present to leverage the Federal government’s leadership to fuel our children’s spirit of adventure and reconnect them with the outdoors. After all, outdoor access and environmental education will better prepare our students to find innovative solutions to tomorrow’s challenges and compete for the jobs of the future.
We want the best for our students, and we all share the responsibility to equip them with tools to accomplish their greatest potential. The Green Ribbon Schools Program is one example of how the Federal Government will work to instill educational and environmental excellence in communities across America. Later this year, the application for the program will be released, and the first group of “Green Ribbon Schools” will be announced next year. By helping to cultivate the seeds of environmental and educational excellence in our nation’s schools, we can grow an even brighter future for our nation. Read the original post
Arne Duncan is Secretary of the Department of Education
Lisa P. Jackson is Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
Nancy Sutley is Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality
Administrator Jackson was in Atlanta, Georgia today to announce the launch of EPA’s work in the Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Initiative and to join a Children’s Health Round Table.
To launch the Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnership Initiative, Administrator Jackson was joined by a range of stakeholders, including Representative John Lewis (GA-5) and members of the St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, winner of the Energy Star Congregation of the Year Award.
“In the history of this nation, faith communities and neighborhood groups have been instrumental in efforts to open new opportunities and improve the world we live in. We are initiating today an effort to connect the talent, energy and enthusiasm we see in faith groups and communities across the nation with the work we are doing at EPA,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “This is part of a broader effort, involving the White House and 12 other federal agencies, to form working relationships between government at all levels and faith-based and secular non-profit organizations to serve Americans in need and keep children and families healthy.”
EPA’s initiative supports President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships by working to access and strengthen partnerships between our government and community-serving organizations that work on the local level. To learn more about these partnerships, visit EPA’s FBNP page or the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
After kicking off the Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Initiative, Administrator Jackson joined a children’s health town hall with participants from local universities and educational organizations. The safeguards EPA enforces help reduce dangerous pollutants like radon, mercury and asthma triggers. These efforts help our nation’s young people breathe easier, and ensure they have every opportunity to succeed.
While at the children’s health town hall, Administrator Jackson acknowledged EPA’s support for the Southeastern Center for Air Pollution Epidemiology at Emory University. The center, in collaboration with Georgia Tech, will study the health effects of multiple air pollutant mixtures in addition to single pollutants.
On April 14, 2011 Administrator Jackson spoke at the unveiling of the US Postal Service’s new Go Green stamps. The stamps depict different ways that we can all make a difference in our environment. From conserving resources like energy and water to composting and reducing what we throw away, each stamp is a great reminder of the impact we all have on our own environment.
Watch the video of Administrator Jackson unveiling the Go Green stamps.
The Postal Service’s Go Green stamps will be used this weekend, April 16 and 17, at EPA’s Earth Day celebration on the National Mall. At the Eco Art booth, one of 60 interactive activities that attendees can enjoy, kids can make their own environmentally friendly post cards and send them to family and friends using the new Go Green stamps.
This week, Administrator Lisa P. Jackson testified before both the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the U.S. House Appropriations Committee on EPA’s fiscal year 2012 budget.
In her testimony, the Administrator emphasized the important role EPA and the environmental safeguards the Agency enforces play in protecting America’s health and revitalizing our economy. If Congress cuts funding for those safeguards, she said, there will be “more asthma attacks, more missed school and work days, more heart attacks, more cancer cases, more premature deaths, and more polluted waters.”
President Obama’s proposed budget takes a responsible approach to our fiscal challenges by making some painful, but necessary, cuts. Reductions to EPA’s budget were carefully considered to sustain the agency’s core mission and maintain the programs needed to, as Administrator Jackson said in her testimony, keep “American children and adults safe from uncontrolled amounts of harmful pollution being dumped into the water they drink and the air they breathe.”
The Administrator highlighted several programs in the budget that are vital to preserving the American people’s health. These included improved monitoring of dangerous air pollution and actions to reduce chemical risks in our products, along with providing the public with greater access to information about toxic chemicals in their homes and communities.
As the bitter chill of winter retreats, the vibrancy of spring beckons us outdoors reminding us of the inextricable link between the natural world and our daily lives. In striving to meet the President’s challenge to win the future by out-educating the rest of the world, we must cultivate the environmental health of our learning spaces and our students’ understanding of their environment to enable them to meet the challenges of the future. Today, the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality came together to launch the Green Ribbon Schools Program. This program plants the seeds to move toward educational excellence for the future by recognizing schools that are creating healthy and sustainable learning environments - both inside and outside the classroom, teaching environmental literacy, and increasing environmental health by reducing their environmental footprint.
President Obama’s Americas Great Outdoors initiative, by encouraging outdoor learning. In a day when children spend half as much time outside as their parents did, there’s no time like the present to leverage the Federal government’s leadership to fuel our children’s spirit of adventure and reconnect them with the outdoors. After all, outdoor access and environmental education will better prepare our students to find innovative solutions to tomorrow’s challenges and compete for the jobs of the future.
