bali green school

>> the following program is a high-definition production of blue ridge pbs. [ music - pomp and circumstance ] >> hello, and welcome to "what

bali green school, it takes". i'm dr. rose martin, and today we're going green. fishburn park elementary school

in roanoke city is one of 78 schools in the nation recently recognized by the secretary of education with a green ribbon award. now, their green ribbon award winner because they're committed to making their school a healthier place to learn, and

they're showing students how the environment connects to their own lives. joining me in the studio today, tom fitzpatrick from roanoke city schools. welcome, tom. we've got kit richards, a teacher at the award-winning

fishburn park elementary school. welcome. we have robert marek, a community partner from roanoke cement and titan america. and a very special guest today, miss aniya olly, a rising 4th grader. very glad you're all here.

when secretary duncan opened the inaugural green ribbon schools in 2011, he said that winning schools would be making the greatest progress in three areas. first, they were going to reduce environmental impact. next, they were going to improve

healthy environments for their students. then, thirdly, they were going to have an environmental education program that helps students achieve. as a trailblazer, fishburn park is recognized by the u.s. department of education as a

green-ribbon school. congratulations to all of you, and let's go ahead and get started. what an honor. so i guess i'm going to have to just start with whoever wants to jump in, how did fishburn park decide to go green?

>> well, it was kind of a directive from the school board and the superintendent of schools that we do a focused school for environmental science. and we opened to kids from all over the city. we don't look at test scores or

grades; we look at your interest in the environment and a broad group of kids from across the city. we started this endeavor three years ago. >> i guess the natural question is how expensive is it to do something like this?

>> that's a great question, because one of the things that we have to do as a public school system is be very careful of how we use taxpayer dollars. so we have spent very little, very, very little in putting the programs in, and a lot of that has to do with some of the

things that robert has done with our community partners. we have gardens and an amphitheater with the help from roanoke cement and lowe's home improvement and norfolk and southern providing materials and hours. it's been a partnership.

>> what's it like to be a partner on a project like this? >> it's a lot of fun. working with the teachers, the principal, the students, it's a lot of fun for us. my company and all of those working in that field, it's our corporate social responsibility

to participate in our own community, and work with the schools in that area. and the world needs to be greener. >> you had mentioned about having other volunteers working with you. did your company provide

volunteers to also help with the school process? >> yes. we volunteer our engineering, corporate engineering group. they do energy audits at the school. that's one of the awards that we do offer to the schools, the

winning schools, is an energy audit for the school system. >> in the school system, did you use that energy audit to make any changes? >> we used it to help the children see how the school operated and where we would lose energy and ways we could fix it,

and we used the engineers to come in with their electronic devices and use them as learning tools for the children. >> aniya, what's it like to be in a school going through all this? >> it's pretty exciting going to fishburn park, it's a good

school to go to, they try to help the environment, so i like it. >> what special things do you do for the environment? >> we pick up litter anytime we see it, and we -- >> talk a little bit about the composting in the cafeteria.

that's a pretty cool thing. >> when we're done with our lunches, there's like this thing you're supposed to go to, and we have a thing where we save the food instead of wasting it, and we wash the containers and -- yeah. >> do a lot of kids participate?

does every kid do it, or only a few kids? >> everybody. >> it took some doing, to teach the kids what goes in the compost bin, what goes in the recycling bin, what goes in the trash, but once the kids got it, they've become master

composters. >> let's go back to the award. what went into getting an award like this? what did you have to demonstrate for the judging committee? >> the award has three basic parts: what we're doing for energy efficiency, what we're

doing for health and social education, for both the staff and the kids, and then how we're making environmentally literate fishburn is a 60-year-old school building. we didn't score real high on lead-certified school and great energy efficiency, so we put our

energy into what could we do to use that best, like turning off lights when we're not in rooms, turning the heat down on nights and weekends and that kind of thing, and also really working with the kids with particular programs. the composting one is a great

example of something about anybody could do. when we started with this program, we didn't want to be using styrofoam in the cafeteria. well, again, we have to be careful how we spend that money, and cardboard trays and bowls

and things are more expensive. we were passionate about this, and it was important, so we started this at fishburn, where, as aniya said, we're using all cardboard trays, and the kids are composting the cardboard, the left over food. we have a composting company

that picks that stuff up, takes it out to a nearby county, and produces soil out of it. the savings in not dumping the dumpsters, which are mostly full of styrofoam from the cafeteria, equal the increase cost, so we've been able to do this at a zero cost to the city, and one

of the neat things about the program at fishburn, we are now composting in all of our roanoke we've taken that idea that the kids really bought into at fishburn. >> and spread it across. when you look at the community involvement, you were saying you

also took it to the place and they do soil with it. what about a partner coming in? could you show us some of the specifics your company did do to help. >> what we did at our company, we did our own energy audits, and once we found energy savings

through different lighting techniques, alternative fuel sources, burning biodiesel, we wanted to take that to the community. we put in our own beehives, we have trout ponds, we've got trout streams that are running through our property.

and we wanted to introduce that to the community. and so we took the knowledge that we gleaned from our own audits and took those to the school systems, to help the schools with energy savings. >> so you actually go i have it the school, and you're actually

hands on helping them throughout the process. >> what specific things have you found have been helpful for you? >> we were able to turn that around and pass that on to the children. we recently put on an energy assembly where we taught

children where energy comes from and specific ways they could save energy in their homes, and then we had a contest to see which family could save the most energy. those practices came full circle for us. >> did you participate in that

contest about saving energy? >> i think so. >> well, good. one of the things that as community partners, we look to see different ways partners can get involved and help schools. what would you suggest to other businesses that are out there

today watching, thinking "maybe i can get involved and help my school"? >> the one thing i can say is it's fun. they would enjoy it. it doesn't cost a lot of money. we donated a chiller, for instance, and an aquarium, and

the state provided 300 eggs for the school. this is part of the tic program, "trout in the classroom", and it gives the students a learning opportunity, they raise trout during the year, but it didn't cost us a awful lot of money. and the engineers that came out

and did the energy audit, they loved it! they're still talking about it. >> are you finding cost savings districtwide because of the energy audits and some of the things they're doing? >> yes, some of the things we've translated in, they came in with

an infrared camera, and the kids were able to look in the camera and see where the heat was leaking from the building, and we were able to translate some of those things. that's the financial support. and support personnel. we had an event last week where

students launched rockets, and people came out and helped those kids do the rocket launching, seemed like they have a good time. we worked them hard. >> it takes an awful lot of hands to make those things happen in school.

>> do you have that support from the teachers, with so many demands on academic achievement and so many demands on getting the kids ready to take whatever assessments they have to be taking? >> absolutely. i think the staff, teachers,

custodians, everyone embraces the environmental focus and wants to get involved, and it makes the teaching fun. the more hands on you can do, the more interested the kids are, the more the teachers enjoyed it. >> i recently had a chance to

sit down with your principal, judy lackey, fishburn park elementary principal. i asked about changes at the let's take a look at what she had to say, and we'll talk about it on the other side. >> how does your garden grow? that's just one of the questions

students are asking at fishburn. >> we're working in the garden today, are we going to be in the raised bed today? are we having earth hour today? they being here, they love seeing the painted animals and birds and butterflies on the sidewalk.

they love looking at all the beautiful murals we have and having conversations about those. they like having choices that they can make with our earth hour and what they want to learn about. >> they're learning how to take

care of the environment. since environmental science became a focus here at fishburn park three years ago, principal judy lackey has noticed growth, not just in the garden. >> for the past two years, we have achieved adequate yearly progress under no child left

behind, we are fully accredited. our discipline data indicates our children are making better choices for themselves, and we have very good attendance at fishburn park for our students. >> reporter: the u.s. department of education has also taken notice, naming fishburn

park a national green ribbon >> there were 78 schools in the nation recognized for their achievement for the three cornerstones of the green ribbon schools: the building, which hopefully net zero from the environment, health and fitness, and the environmental literacy

programs that you have at your >> reporter: just like in the environment, there has to be a balance. >> we've looked at our environment and said okay, how can we integrate our centers of learning into this environmental activity.

you have to sometimes have to hook outside the box, you have to look at the learning tree. all the teachers have been trained in both environmental curriculums, but the teachers have taken it a step further by looking at ways they can bring in the environment into everyday

activities here at school, such as we have our children recycle paper once a week, our fourth and fifth graders take care of that, and we weigh how much we are recycling, and we graph it. and that relates directly to the standard of learning. we go out, and we measure how

far we're going to plant a row of beans in our garden. so we are trying to think all the time of how we can integrate our environmental practices and lessons into our standards of learning. we do a huge earth week celebration in honor of earth

day, and it is right before s.o.l. testing, and i'm going oh, we're missing in-class time for learning, and yet we turn around, and our numbers for s.o.l., our pass rates, are incredible for all of our subjects for all of our >> so we need to clear up the

weeds around it. >> our environmental focus gets our children outside. we do a lot of hands-on learning, and i think it's all of that plus we just have high expectations for ourselves and our children here at school. >> reporter: a green program

that could easily be the envy of others in the education world, growing right here in our own backyard. . >> i so much enjoyed my visit at fishburn park, from the murals on the wall to talking to the principal, the numbers in the

data -- they speak for themselves. kids want to go to school, with a 95% attendance rate. what kinds of things are happening in your curriculum that engage kids so they want to go to school? >> we have to focus on the

standards, but any standard can be taken and turned into an environmental lesson, but with so much outdoor possibilities, we can work outside and focus on the standards there, too. >> how do you rewrite the curriculum to include the standards and have an

environmental impact? it might be tough on teachers who are already trying to get the job done. >> i think if you're committed to doing it, it's not that hard. instead of measuring blocks in a classroom, why not go outside and measure how much a plant has

grown? >> how much about from the district perspective? it's kind of a risk, isn't it? >> that's our attitude with a lot of things. we use our community partners at the cooperative extension to do environmental learning tree to

give the teachers some of the things they need, at fishburn and across the district, because we found when kids are passionate about what they're doing, they're involved, their attendance improves, their test scores come up, because they're learning, and they want to be

there. >> and i notice that about your disciplinary instances. what's it like at fishburn? >> it's very nice. when you have students who want to come to school and want to learn, it definitely cuts down on problems.

>> is it the engagement? >> i think it's engagement, i think it's the pace, a robust curriculum that moves quickly and keeps students engaged. >> i guess when i think about what makes this school a really great place to go and a great place to learn, do you have

anything you could share with people? >> kids get excited about what they understand, and they get excited about what they're passionate about, so when they learn, whether from community partners or from the classroom teachers about recycling, about

composting, about energy savings, they get excited about doing that, the third-grade class did some water quality testing, they went out and tested the quality of the two ponds on the campus and found out one was not as healthy as the other, shaded, had a lot of

leaves in it. the kids decided as a group what they needed to do was to clean out that pond and fix that ecosystem, and it was really neat to see them get excited about it, get working as a team, come in with their own clothes and make a tremendous mess

cleaning that up and fixing that environment. and so that makes them environmentally literate citizens. so as adults, when they're making decisions about what are we going to fund, how we're going to spend our money, they

can make an informed decision. >> has it changed the way any of you operate in your own lives, recycling, making the world a better place? >> our awareness, absolutely. >> for me personally, our home is much more energy efficient. we've changed all of the light

bulbs, we're conscious of controls with the air conditioning and heat sourcing and insulation in the home, and we've made numerous changes, and it shows up on the electric bill. >> sure! >> it's almost a mind-set.

things you may not have thought about in the past, when you're working in an environmental school, it's always in the forefront of your mind. >> how do you help teachers make that transition from the model of what they were used to in another school to all of a

sudden going out and composting and working in flower beds and collecting rain? >> i think the training, it helps, that the division provides for us, gets your feet wet, and networking, sharing ideas with other teachers. >> you were sharing with me

about a few projects that you have going on, namely the community activities with the environmental fashion show and other things. talk about that. >> the fashion show is probably the most popular activity at we collect not just old clothing

but gently used goods, then keep them in the school, and one evening we put on a fashion show, and the students are our models, and we usually have a little dance number to go with it, and the day after the fashion show, we open the school up and sell the gently used

goods, and that helps help raise money for our financial needs. >> what do you do with your fruits and vegetables that you grow? >> we try to eat some of it, and we do a farmers market at the school during summer school. >> i was reading something about

bees and other things that are happening with honey and some other activities, with world water monitoring day. what kinds of other activities are you doing? >> well, we do the earth hour, and that's an activity where the children participate once a

month in an activity that they choose, and that's a little -- it furthers their environmental awareness on that specific >> so give me an example. what would that be? >> well, last year we put on a play. the kids came in, and we wrote

an environmental play, then we produced it and put it on for the whole school. other teachers may be specifically focusing on wind energy, water energy, topics like that. >> and what about for earth day? i understand you do an earth

week. >> we do a whole earth week, there are activities every single day that children can get engaged in. some are art activities, some are hands on like the launching of the rockets. last year tom brought in a

planetarium so the kids got to see the night sky and talk about stars. >> aniya, tell me about the fun things you've gotten to do, about the earth week or fashion show or some of the things you're doing. what are some of your favorites?

>> the fashion show, and i like the fashion show is because we got to model. >> you got to model, and you got to donate some things along the way, too. when you think about the impact that creating a green school, winning this award, by not only

lessening your footprint but by encouraging students to be responsible citizens, by getting community partners involved, what would you say are the next steps for you? >> we definitely want to sustain what we're doing and look for new, innovative ways to bring in

the community, and get people more involved, and certainly create educated children who are stewards of our earth. >> what do you think? >> and the other piece is we're beginning to replicate some of these things in other schools in the division, and then through

especially the green ribbon schools award, we've been able to share some of the things we're doing with other schools across the country, and get some of their ideas. >> what kind of feedback have you gotten from schools across the country?

>> it's been pretty positive. it's been neat to hear what other schools are doing. it may be as simple as putting in a no idling zone. turning off the buses and parent cars during pickup time, to changing the heating system in >> so you mentioned earlier that

your building is old, so it doesn't necessarily have to be a brand new state-of-the-art facility in order to make a real difference. >> you have to start where you are. you don't have control over the we're working toward

improvements, but we can make improvements with composting, with recycling, with how we're using the energy that we're using, how much -- how we're controlling that, and it's been neat to see, for example, the recycling, how the kids have taken that home.

we work with preschoolers through fifth graders, and we have a special-ed program, and all those handicapped kids are involved as well. one of the dads came back, the dads of the preschool, and he says "i have to drink my dr. pepper up in my bedroom,

because my child follows me around to get that can." that started with what the school's doing. >> as we share final thoughts with folks, what would you say to teachers of how they can get started or make a difference? >> i would say take the first

step, find a lesson you're interested in, create one of your own, and you'll find the ideas will come more easily, and you'll be able to incorporate all kinds of environmental things in your curriculum. >> and what about to the community?

>> awareness of energy issues, and to get involved, because they will enjoy it. it's not a lot of money. it's -- the return on the investment is three-fold, with the fun you have with the teachers and the students and your involvement.

>> have you gotten support from everyone throughout your company, your industry, has that been an advantage to helping? can other communities look to tap their resources and do the same thing? our people have all embraced it. so many of the things, from the

greenways to the schools, a lot of community involvement, cancer, heart association. >> so you help out in lots of different ways. >> and aniya, i'm going to ask you, if you were to think about one thing you could tell kids they could do to make the world

a better place and help their schools, what would it be? >> don't litter, pick up litter when you see it, recycle bottles, don't throw them in the trash can. >> and i guess from a district perspective, others looking to see what they could do to make a

difference? >> getting the kids enthused about a particular thing. the environment is certainly an easy one. it enables kids to get excited, and when they're excited they learn, and they're more engaged. >> i think we'll leave it right

isn't that what we all want? as we close today, our society is facing so many issues, climate change, energy crisis, and environmental pollution f. we all lived the fishburn elementary school pledge: no job is too big, if no action for no action too small, care for

the environment is the task of all. thank you for joining us today. for more information, go to blueridgepbs.org. programs like this are made possible because of you. i'll see you next time on "what captioned by feature subtitling

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