Rather than purchasing a new bottle of water each day, students and staff are encouraged to bring a recyclable container to school and “fill up” at the water station in the new Cupertino High School student union building.
Each time that happens, another click is added to a special display that shows the total number of disposable plastic bottles that haven’t been needed.
The current tally is now 7,762 plastic bottles that have been saved because of the new station.
It may seem like a small victory for Mother Earth, but it is just one of the many ways the Fremont Union High School District is working to have a greener district, inside and out.
From the ground up
With the passage of Measure B, a $198 million school bond, in June 2008, the school district had a huge opportunity not only to provide more classrooms for the growing schools and much-needed renovations to aging structures, but also to do what it could to reduce its carbon footprint.
And it has in more ways than one.
Turf fields, solar panels, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), more energy-efficient appliances and drought-tolerant landscaping are just some of the ways the district has saved green by going green.
“It’s a huge energy savings, but it also saves on maintenance costs,” said Erik Walukiewicz, FUHSD director of facilities. “We’re seeing that across the district.”
The turf fields at all five high schools have been replaced with synthetic fields. During the 2009-10 school year before the turf was installed, the district’s water bill was $316,000. After the synthetic fields were set up, the district’s water bill last year was $174,000.
Water usage dropped from 731,000 gallons to 426,000 gallons.
All five schools also have solar panels on each of their campuses, which bring an approximate savings of $1 million per year.
“There are months where our energy bills are actually zero, because we’ve generated so much power we can use what we generate,” Walukiewicz said.
The district has also tried to utilize natural daylight in classrooms to reduce the need for electrical lighting during the day. In the Fremont High School cafeteria classroom in particular, light shelves are architecturally designed to reflect natural light onto the ceilings in the classrooms and skylights in the cafeteria.
The availability of rebates and grants to create a more sustainable district has made much of these green efforts possible.
By just installing the solar panels, the school district was able to receive upward of $7 million in rebate money, which it is reinvesting in greening the district.
The installation of a new “chiller” cooling system at Homestead High School brought the district a $55,000 PG&E rebate that went toward the installation of an electric vehicle charging station at Lynbrook High School.
“Pretty soon, we know it’s going to be a trend everywhere. Everybody’s going to have these electric charging stations, but we want to be one of the first schools in Northern California to have them,” Walukiewicz said. “We want to continue to find ways to be more efficient and try to look for ways to save money for the district, and the technology is always improving.”
As the physical structures in the district become more environmentally friendly, so are the students and faculty that dwell within them. Sustainable thinking has been integrated into the district, from the recycled building materials in the construction of new facilities to day-to-day life at all district campuses.
Recycling and composting
At Cupertino High School, Jason Heskett’s career/workplace project-based class uses various recycling, gardening and community projects to get students ready and aware of the expectations of the workplace after graduation.
Students partnered with Cupertino Rotary and Recology about four years ago to install a garden and worm composting system in the back of the school.
“The Rotary volunteers provided the manpower to build a shed, fence and retaining walls for the garden in the summer of 2010,” Heskett said. “In addition, Recology converted an old trash dumpster into a multi-level worms composting bin where we recycle food waste and scraps from the cafeteria.”
Funds came from Rotary, Recology, grants and money from recycling.
In addition to composting, over the last seven years, students have recycled more than 120,000 bottles and cans and recently expanded to include TerraCycle products like Solo cups and granola bar wrappers.
“We are nearing about $8,000 in revenue, which we use to expand our programs and support other local programs. For example, we just donated six containers to Fremont High School to get their recycling program started,” Heskett said. “We have also used revenues to support the Kenya Dream project, a project one of our classes promoted to build a school in Kenya, along with other various projects.”
Eco-friendly campus
Richard Carmona, who has taught biology and AP environmental science at Homestead High, said it has been his experience that students have improved at tackling issues that they can influence directly over the years.
“The main change I see in terms of topics students have chosen to tackle is they can focus on more specific topics now than what they used to,” Carmona said. “They do a better job of pinpointing relevant issues.”
For example, his two classes right now are investigating water conservation and fracking, the extraction of natural gas by pumping water underground.
The students are still determining whether they want to address fracking at a local or state level, but plan on tackling the water issue at a municipal level.
One of Homestead’s most notable student-led efforts to date was the Anti-Styrofoam Initiative, which drove the banning of expanded polystyrene foam food containers in both Sunnyvale and Cupertino.
“It’s amazing to see their persistence, especially with the foam initiative,” Carmona said. “That was one of my proudest moments in my teaching career to watch how articulate and professional they were. I knew they were capable of that, but to see it happen was amazing for me.
“It showed them that if we organize and base what we’re doing on facts, we can actually make headway.”
