What Schools Are Doing

What are schools doing?

Find out what schools across DCSD are doing to incorporate and contribute to sustainability practices.

School Energy Conservation Competition

ReNew Our Schools is a youth engagement program, incorporating sustainability practices into the school curriculum. DCSD has 8 schools competing in ReNew Our Schools energy competition during the 2021-2022 school year. While working with conservation mentors, schools will compete for the month-long competition empowering students to design and inspire behavioral and energy usage changes in their schools and communities.

Fall Competition 2021

Legend High School
Rock Canyon High School
Wildcat Mountain Elementary

Spring Competition 2022 (Jan 31 - March 11)

Lone Tree Elementary
Heritage Elementary
Thunder Ridge High School
Plum Creek Academy
Pine Lane Elementary

Fall Competition (Oct-Nov 2022)

Ranch View Middle School

Environmental Awareness - Green Ribbon Celebration

Sedalia Elementary students and staff celebrated their 5th annual Green Ribbon Celebration this year. All students and staff worked together to pick up trash in their community neighborhood to honor their Green Ribbon.

Sedalia was awarded the Green Ribbon from the US Department Of Education Green Ribbon Schools in 2017 for continuously working to reduce its impact on the environment, improve health and wellness, and provide all students with effective environmental and sustainability education. Five years later, they are still making a difference in students' lives, the community, and environmental education.

The Green Ribbon day was honored with a kick-off assembly accompanied by some special guests:

Andrew Abner
Erin McDonald
Kevin Leung
Eileen Santolaya

hen out to the neighborhood, they went. Students found that the community was cleaner than some other times in the past but their efforts were still successful with gathering several bags of trash. Later, teachers read and discussed the book "What If Everybody Did That" by Ellen Javernick.

Whether students are out studying in the garden or learning arithmetic or other instruction it shows that spending time outdoors is critical to student academic, physical, and mental wellbeing.

The initiatives that Sedalia students have the opportunity to learn from are:

recycling (even difficult items)
composting
indoor and outdoor gardens
chicken program
health and wellness
energy conservation and awareness

The impact of the community clean-up along with the culture at the Sedalia is one that these students will remember for a lifetime.

Composting

Cimarron Middle School teachers and the environmental team have teamed up with Lone Tree Compositing and the Sustainability Department to implement a pilot commercial compost program within the school.

The program consists of the following actions:

Engage Green Teams during the spring semester of the school year prior to beginning composting
Ensure multi-stakeholder buy-in at each location; Principal, Teachers, Students, Custodial…
Conduct waste audits
Work with the waste hauler to verify what can be composted, and the composting process
Create a sustainable plan for students to compost in the cafeteria 4 days a week.
Ongoing compost education for students and staff

The students started composting in the cafeteria on 9/20. Each day is documented on how the day went and the improvement process. Cimarron just started weighing the compost this week and the students are excited to see the number of resources they have saved from the landfill. Learn more about Cimarron's recycling and composting programs!

Recycling Programs

US-Again's first-ever "Battle of the Schools" CollectionChallenge had 89 participants throughout the United States competing to reduce school waste. This national clothing and shoe collection drive brought a fun, meaningful event to our school communities and built a sense of doing something positive for the environment. DCSD Office of Sustainability is proud to say that we had 7 schools participating in the textile recycle challenge. The schools gathered unwanted items out of their closets, knowing they were going to be recycled for a good cause. Our schools rescued 6,522 lbs of textiles from the landfill in just one month!

US-Again plants 1 tree for every full collection bin. During this competition, our schools contributed enough clothes to plant 16 trees and clothe 130 people.

Participating schools in the US-Again Collection Challenge.

Roxborough Intermediate - 1824 lbs
Renaissance Elementary - 1249 lbs
Northridge Elementary - 1149 lbs
Pine Grove Elementary - 1034 lbs
Coyote Creek Elementary - 845 lbs
Rockridge Elementary - 245 lbs
Iron Horse Elementary - 173 lbs

Certificate of sustainability issued to the douglas county school district by Us again