Learn about the five Orange County public schools that are 2024 California Green Ribbon Schools award winners, and one school district awarded for its district-wide environmental efforts.
The trees and golden hills of O’Neill Regional Park create quite an inspiration.
Trabuco Elementary School, which sits right next door, has used it to offer a variety of learning experiences for students around Orange County. For seizing the opportunity and creating an innovative environmental education and stewardship, the school is one of the 2024 California Green Ribbon Schools award winners.
Within its unique school yard is a vegetable and fruit garden, a pollinator garden and a mindfulness garden. That would be more than enough for most schools, but the campus also has a farm with miniature donkeys, horses, pigs, goats, sheep and other animals, as well as hosts on-campus field trips that allow schools across the county to enjoy the school’s outdoor learning environments.
The school even operates recycling and composting programs where leftover food is sorted by students to use in landscaping or as supplemental food for the farm animals. Ideas put forth by the students’ Trabuco Coyote Green Team led to a 19 percent reduction in energy usage and 7 percent decrease in water usage from the previous school year.
And Trabuco was just one of 20 schools and 14 districts to earn the award. It was also one of five “Green Achievers” nominated by State Superintendent Tony Thurmond to receive special U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools recognition, or ED-GRS. Orange County public schools accounted for five of the 19 that achieved the Green Ribbon status. Community Roots Academy, Magnolia High School and Raymond Temple Elementary each received silver status, and Santiago Charter Middle School earned bronze. The Laguna Beach Unified School District was awarded gold for its district-wide environmental efforts.
Thurmond says the Green Ribbon Schools are “beacons of innovation” where students are “not merely recipients of knowledge, they are active participants in addressing pressing global issues, such as climate change, alongside tackling local challenges like water quality, food security, energy conservation, waste management and emotional well-being.”
Trabuco Principal Lindsey Gatfield laid out how much went into the achievement.
“Trabuco had been working on incorporating environmental literacy for years,” she says, “through their field study field trip program, farm lessons and garden experiences. In the last two years, Trabuco has taken the initiative a step further by beginning composting and recycling programs, establishing a student-led Green Team and building outdoor spaces to maximize learning opportunities within nature.”
Gatfield was quick to praise her students, saying they “used innovative solutions to address the improvements they felt were necessary to positively impact our school environment,” and says the Coyote Green Team was a nearly school-wide effort.
“Most of our students have participated in the Coyote Green Team at some point,” she says. “The Green Team is broken up into four teams — Clean Up Crew, Waste Management, Energy Conservers and Environmental Police. Everything they learn is from collaborating with one another. They bring their ideas together and decide what initiatives to take around campus. In essence, the Green Team is leading the work and teaching the rest of the students environmental literacy and sustainability practices.”
But reaching the Green Ribbon distinction is more complicated for an entire school district to achieve than a single school. Laguna Beach Unified School District Superintendent Jason Viloria, Ed.D., was happy to spread the credit around.
“Winning this award is a testament to several years of dedicated hard work and strategic planning,” Viloria says. “We began with a profound and honest evaluation of our practices and policies to identify where significant changes were needed. It was crucial to have everyone —governing board members, district leaders, school site leadership, staff and students — fully involved and committed to our shared vision for improvement. Leadership teams focused on sustainable practices in facilities management and incorporated environmental literacy to help increase an understanding of the interconnectedness of our ecosystems and the importance of individual stewardship.”
Viloria says the sustained effort for green education also includes looking within.
“We provide nutritious meals made from organic and locally sourced ingredients, often prepared from scratch, and ensure students have ample opportunities to participate in high-quality athletic and fitness programs,” he says. “Finally, LBUSD is a leader in school-based mental health services and support systems. These resources have been critical to the well-being of our community.”
Not surprisingly, much of the district’s movement toward a heightened environmental education grew out of lessons from Laguna Beach’s recent history with wildfires and landslides.
“Many of our community members have personal experiences with these natural disasters, particularly the 1993 fire,” Viloria says. “We regularly connect our students with residents who lived through that fire to provide them with opportunities to gain valuable perspectives on the significance of prevention and recovery. They’ve heard first-hand about the long-term impacts of not proactively protecting the environment to prepare for emergencies.
“Our proximity to the ocean is also influential, our students and families live with real-time awareness of our environmental impact. This constant reminder makes environmental literacy not just a subject in school but a way of life, empowering our students to take active roles in protecting our community.”
Gatfield says what students ultimately get is “learning how to take care of the environment around them. They are learning how to establish and participate in programs at school that they can then utilize at home or in the local community. Our hope is that we are developing environmentally conscious citizens that use their passion for collaborative problem-solving to both understand their impact on the world and how to make that impact a more positive one.”
In his district, Viloria says “it means learning about the environment in a hands-on, integrated way daily. Our youngest students participate in garden-based lessons that teach them about growing food, sustainability and the importance of taking care of our planet. Middle school students engage in more complex environmental topics through hands-on activities to explore scientific concepts and phenomenon-based lessons, which involve investigating real-world events. For instance, sixth-graders express their understanding of climate change through artwork, while seventh-graders investigate ocean acidification and explore its local impacts and mitigation strategies. In high school, students dive deeper into subjects like marine biology, studying tide pools and gaining practical insights into marine ecosystems. FLOW —Fire, Land, Ocean, and Water — at Laguna Beach High School bridges various environmental studies across curriculums, giving students a comprehensive understanding of these interconnected systems. We also work closely with our community through strategic partnerships with local entities that can enhance the curriculum. The district’s 10-year master plan also includes outdoor learning spaces that further enrich the student experience.”
But now that Trabuco Elementary has earned the green distinction, students might enjoy the challenge of trying to maintain it again next year.
“Truly, our students at Trabuco Elementary are highly motivated with or without the award,” Gatfield says. “They love taking on leadership roles and sharing what they know with others. Our Green Team certainly felt validated by the recognition.” However, she says, “They would be the first to tell you that the work is not done.”
By Shawn Price
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