2023-24 Green Schools Recognition Program Results
The Green Schools Recognition Program just wrapped up its eighth year! Through this program, schools choose and complete a variety of earth-friendly activities throughout the school year. These activities earn the school points towards Green, Greener and Greenest levels of achievement, plus corresponding funding rewards for future sustainability projects.
11 schools submitted their activities from 2023-24, with 201 activities reported across the district. LPS staff, students, families and community partners spent time in gardens, read from the Climate Action Bookshelf, celebrated Earth Day and more! All of these activities empower students to understand their role in environmental stewardship as they work together to take action.
Congratulations to this year's funding award winners!
- Donald D. Sherrill Education Center:
Earned 350 points, receives $500 as top earning elementary school - Mickle Middle:
Earned 140 points, receives $500 as top earning secondary school - Norwood Park Elementary:
Earned 320 points, receives $200 - Sheridan Elementary:
Earned 225 points, receives $200 - Kloefkorn Elementary:
Earned 160 points, receives $100 - Robinson Elementary:
Earned 115 points, receives $50 - East High:
Earned 90 points, receives $50 - Adams Elementary:
Earned 75 points, receives $50
Thank you to our other schools that participated in the program: The Career Academy, Lincoln High and Roper Elementary!
23rd Annual Cans4Books Drive
The results are in for the 23rd annual Cans4Books recycling drive. Thank you to all of the students, staff, friends and neighbors that participated!
We added up your school and public donations and they totaled $563. Our amazing recycling partner, Green Quest Recycling, donated an additional $500 in funding and prizes for 1st and 2nd place! SouthPointe Barnes & Noble rounded everyone’s gift cards up to the next $5 increment and covered the 3rd place prize.
All together, the Cans4Books drive generated $1,110 for school libraries. We are so grateful for our community partners that make this program possible every year! We are excited for more books to be on school library bookshelves thanks to our school communities recycling over 32,300 cans!
Congratulations to our top schools (pounds recycled per student) and prize winners:
First Place – Clinton Elementary
486 pounds of cans recycled, $410 Barnes & Noble Gift Card
Includes additional $75 prize
2nd Place – Huntington Elementary
305 pounds of cans recycled, $275 Barnes & Noble Gift Card
Includes additional $50 prize
3rd Place – Hartley Elementary
65.5 pounds of cans recycled, $110 Barnes & Noble Gift Card
Includes additional $25 prize
Other participating schools who will also be receiving gift cards include: Beattie, Everett, Maxey, Saratoga, and Sheridan elementaries, and Park Middle School.
The Cans4Books program has reached over $47,600 donated to school libraries for the purchase of books since 2001. Over 3.34 million aluminum cans have been recycled over the lifetime of the program.
Thank you to the sponsors of this program: Green Quest Recycling and SouthPointe Barnes & Noble Bookstore.
Fourth Graders Plant 40 Trees in Kahoa Park
A Lincoln park is home to 40 new trees thanks to a group of budding arborists at Kahoa Elementary School. The school’s fourth grade classes worked with volunteers from Lincoln Parks and Recreation, the Arbor Day Foundation, Northeast High School and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for the planting day May 8 at nearby Kahoa Park.
Working in two shifts, the planting teams watched a demonstration from Parks and Recreation staff before donning work gloves donated by the Arbor Day Foundation and dispersing throughout the park. Students and volunteers worked to loosen each tree’s root ball, set it at the proper depth and cover the roots with soil.
Some of Kahoa’s most ambitious fourth graders even took charge of moving mulch-filled wheelbarrows to each newly planted tree.
Students reminded each other to leave the root collar at the base of the trunk exposed for airflow, took turns scooping soil and brainstormed names for each of their trees. These ranged from “Cherry” to “Chandler Bing” to “The Lorax,” and will inspire students to continue visiting their trees and admiring this project’s impact as they grow.
The groups cooled off in the shade once planting was done and learned about career paths related to trees from some of the day’s volunteers.
Forestry lecturer Ann Powers shared details about the arboriculture and tree identification classes she teaches at UNL and Pete Smith, urban forestry program manager with the Arbor Day Foundation, described his role in bringing information and trees into communities just like Kahoa’s.
Both groups of fourth graders were especially interested in hearing about Kaylyn Neverve’s work as a park planner for Lincoln Parks and Recreation. Neverve described the process to redesign the playground at Kahoa Park, which included selecting area-appropriate tree species like bur oak, triumph elm and serviceberry in preparation for the planting day.
This idea of planting the right tree in the right place echoed what Kahoa students learned at a schoolwide assembly the week prior.
Professor Elwood Pricklethorn paid the school a visit just after Arbor Day and brought students up to speed on how trees grow and the many functions they can serve, as well as how to protect the young trees that would soon take root in the park.
Kahoa recently submitted an application for Tree Campus K-12 recognition and hopes to celebrate the accomplishment this coming fall. They are the first LPS elementary school to apply, joining Northeast High School as the district’s second application overall.
We at LPS Sustainability are so excited to see students connect learning with action in a way that will have a lasting impact on their school and their community! None of this would have been possible without support from all the day’s volunteers, as well as Kahoa Elementary School’s staff, students and families.
Scrap Metal Drive Raises $790
We have added up the donations, and the 2023-24 LPS Scrap Metal Drive raised $793!
Our partners, Alter Metal Recycling and Sadoff Iron and Metal Recycling Company, accept a variety of items for recycling and track community donations throughout the year. Community members were encouraged to recycle their scrap metal at one of those businesses where they could then donate all or a portion of the proceeds to benefit the LPS Recycling Program. The Lincoln Community donated the proceeds from over 10,140 pounds of metal that was recycled throughout the school year.
These funds are used to replace aging, worn out steel recycling containers. They will be recycled as scrap metal and replaced with containers manufactured from recycled steels – closing the recycling loop. The LPS Recycling Program provides recycling education and opportunities in all LPS school classrooms, offices and support buildings. In 2023, LPS was able to reuse, recycle, and compost 3.8 million pounds of material, diverting 54% of its waste from the landfill.
Thank you to Alter Metal Recycling and Sadoff Iron and Metal Company for their continued partnership with this program. And thank you to all of our wonderful community members for their donations!
Sustainability Spotlight: Earth Month Celebrations
This month’s Sustainability Spotlight is shining on the many ways Lincoln Public Schools celebrated Earth Day this year! Students at every grade level engaged with green topics thanks to support from staff, families, and neighbors in their school communities. We’ve pulled together some Earth Month 2024 highlights from around the district.
April 2: S.O.S. Summit
A dozen LPS high schoolers gathered in the Science Focus Program building on April 2 for the second annual Students of Sustainability (S.O.S.) Summit.
After the LPS Sustainability team shared information about the district’s ongoing green efforts, Lincoln’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kim Morrow walked students through the process that created the city’s Climate Action Plan.
The group brainstormed their shared vision for sustainability in the district, then worked in teams to set specific goals that could help LPS achieve that vision.
The evening concluded with a presentation from 2024 YLAI Fellow Francisco Voulminot detailing how he turned a university project into a thriving, sustainability-focused business.
April 20: Lincoln Earth Day
LPS Sustainability released the 2023 Annual Sustainability Report in time for Lincoln Earth Day on April 20.
The report outlines key statistics in areas like waste generation and energy consumption, as well as celebrates awards and events that made 2023 a great year for sustainability at LPS.
Lincoln Earth Day attendees flipped through the report and chatted with LPS Sustainability team members while the booth’s younger visitors completed an earth-themed sorting activity.
April 22: LPS Earth Day
Earth Day fell on Monday, April 22 this year, and the district came together to start the week off strong! Lincoln Public Schools produced a video highlighting how the district supports sustainability year-round.
LPS Superintendent Dr. Paul Gausman starred in the video and later dropped in to Monday afternoon’s environmental club showcase at the Steve Joel District Leadership Center.
Students from five high schools set up booths to share their clubs’ work with staff in the district office. This was also an opportunity to network between schools, and club members swapped stories, stickers, and plant cuttings with their fellow students.
Various Dates: School Activities
Schools around LPS celebrated the earth with activities all month long! Lakeview, Riley, and Randolph Elementaries all hosted Nature Nights for students and their families, and Don Sherrill students created a sustainabili-tree with pledges to help the environment.
Northeast High School students pitched in to help clear out the Culler Middle School courtyard for future planting projects, and many more outdoor spaces across the city saw planting, mulching, and cleanup events throughout the month, too!
From Robinson Elementary’s “Agents of Change” musical to Kloefkorn’s chalk and mosaic art projects, students were also thinking about the Earth from an artist’s perspective just as much as a scientist’s this Earth Month.
Sustainability Spotlight: Itai Trainin at Southeast High School
This month’s Sustainability Spotlight is shining on Itai Trainin, a senior at Southeast High School. Itai currently serves as co-president of Southeast’s NEATure Club and has championed sustainability in the building and beyond since his freshman year.
Itai says he initially joined the club to connect with other students during COVID and then quickly joined NEATure Club’s leadership team. As club president, he is responsible for organizing the annual Earth Week plant sale to fund improvements to the school’s courtyard.
These plant sales provide an opportunity to spark deeper conversations about sustainability and the environment. “It’s like a little foot in the door,” he said.
“I think that having something to care for... causes you to be more aware of your surroundings and aware of the environment in general.”
Itai and NEATure Club also coordinate a sustainability-themed mural during Earth Week each year. Itai said the club leans on nature puns to get students engaged, and this year they are bringing back the “sustainabili-tree.”
“It’s a big paper tree, and then you write down a little sustainable action on a leaf and you put it up there,” Itai said. This format made its debut during Itai’s first year with the club, and he’s excited to bring it back in his final year at Southeast: “I think it’s a nice tie-in for me.”
Outside of Earth Week, Itai and NEATure Club coordinate the courtyard cleanup, community litter cleanups, waste container labels, and various outreach projects. Itai said he is proud to have been a part of cultivating a space for environmentally minded students to come together during his time at Southeast. “I just think it’s really cool to see how many people are invested,” he said.
After graduation, Itai plans to pursue a degree in environmental policy to help bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and actionable change. “I do think the environmental sciences side is very important,” he said, “but what matters more is what we do with that information.”
For Itai, using that information means examining how policy can work to support the people impacted by environmental issues. “I think that most people do not view environmental issues as people issues enough, despite the fact that they very much are,” he said. Because of his focus on individuals and communities, Itai says his two main areas of interest are urban environmentalism and Indigenous environmentalism.
“Environmental policy really is about the environment but to me, at least, the more important aspects of it involve people.”
For other students hoping to get involved with sustainability, Itai recommends finding and building a network to help you accomplish your goals. To connect with fellow student leaders in the district, Itai attended both the 2023 and 2024 Students of Sustainability Summit.
He also collaborates within NEATure Club to generate new ideas and approaches to their shared mission, and advises other students to make connections with LPS staff members, too.
“I think teachers can be a really integral part in [student action],” he said. “Yes, students can do action on their own, but I think it’s very important that a guiding adult can help.”
A recent project led Itai to pursue a solution to eliminate plastic cutlery from Southeast’s cafeteria in favor of reusable metal silverware. “I talked to our principal about ‘who should I contact about this?’, and he gave me a list.”
That list included LPS Sustainability Coordinator, Brittney Wees, who took Itai’s concern to Nutrition Services. Metal cutlery has since returned to Southeast, all because of Itai’s initiative. “Just getting the word out there, getting a name, is a lot more impactful than people think it is,” he said.
We are so impressed by the passion and drive student leaders like Itai bring to our district! Our team is grateful for Itai’s dedication to sustainability over the years.
Sustainability Spotlight: Lefler Middle School Climate Chronicles Club
This month’s Sustainability Spotlight is shining on Lefler Middle School’s Climate Chronicles Club. The club’s members are working towards an impressive goal: combining activism and the arts into a play about climate change.
A few Lefler students were already in an arts and crafts club led by community volunteer Judy Hart when Hart floated the idea of creating Climate Chronicles. As this new group grew, they began to read and discuss climate-related plays and stories. A shared interest in Hamilton, plus Hart’s decades of theater experience, inspired students to take on writing a play of their own.
The group’s overall enthusiasm for sustainability leads to lively discussions at weekly club meetings. Each student brings a unique perspective and skill set to the planning conversation. Seventh grader Jessie came to a recent meeting prepared with statistics to add to the script, sixth grader Leo asked the group to consider how the storyline could incorporate different types of conflict, and eighth grader Annalee offered to refine the overall storytelling approach.
Hart encouraged students to consider what they hope an audience will take away from the play. Their responses included waste disposal, climate change’s impacts on people and animals, and even the idea that young people need adults’ help to make change happen.
“I want people to know that this will affect them if they don’t do anything. It’s not just an afterthought.”
Sixth-grader Ian also shared that climate change is not the only thing people should consider. “The UN 17 goals are actually pretty nice, too,” he said, “Because they consider various topics like poverty, peace, innovation, and climate change.” Ian joins club meetings from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, via speakerphone and is one of several additional perspectives Hart brings into planning conversations.
Without giving too much away, Hart and Climate Chronicles Club members use their own experiences to inform the interactions between characters in their play. “The whole basis for [these characters] is that they don’t all agree,” Hart said. “They get really loud and they all talk at the same time… but they work through it.”
Climate Chronicles Club is writing the play with a middle school and upper-elementary audience in mind. Lefler sixth grader Jackson said he hopes that other students will “connect the enjoyment of the play to what they learned so they will remember it.” Hart does not yet have plans for a full-scale production, but envisions being able to share the script with the community and other schools once it is complete.
Until then, Climate Chronicles Club will continue to meet and discuss the script and the issues they are all passionate about. These conversations are what seventh-grader Liam called out as his favorite part of his Climate Chronicles experience: “Talking with my friends, talking with Judy, talking about climate change… basically everything that we do in the club.”
We at LPS Sustainability are so impressed by this undertaking, and all the hard work that Judy Hart and Climate Chronicles Club have put into writing this play. We can’t wait to read the final script!
Sustainability Spotlight: Committed Custodians at LPS
This month’s Sustainability Spotlight is shining on some of the district’s standout custodial staff!
LPS custodial teams are an integral part of managing waste programs and supporting sustainability efforts across the district, and these custodians have really gone above and beyond this school year.
Tom Kramer & Edelma Blanco Marroquin, Standing Bear High School
Standing Bear High School opened in August of 2023 with over 20 years of experience in their custodial leadership team. Tom Kramer and Edelma Blanco Marroquin have used their years of knowledge to help school-wide composting across the building succeed.
Kramer said that part of his role as building supervisor is to spend time coaching students and staff through the sorting process when questions arise. “If you’re able to make it a teaching moment, that really helps,” he said.
Assistant custodial supervisor Blanco Marroquin said that she especially enjoys opportunities to learn something new and pass it on to others in the building. One such learning experience came from exploring styrofoam recycling before the building opened.
Teacher workstations, in particular, were packed with a lot of styrofoam padding, so Kramer and Blanco Marroquin worked with LPS Sustainability to coordinate collection and transportation to recycle this unique type of waste.
Kramer said the styrofoam packaging easily filled two to three garbage bags per workstation. With dozens of these desks throughout the school, the Standing Bear custodial team helped keep a huge amount of styrofoam out of our landfills.
Todd Engle, Lincoln High School
Lincoln High School building supervisor Todd Engle has spent 15 years as part of Lincoln Public Schools’ custodial staff. When Engle and his team noticed the number of waste containers per classroom growing at Lincoln High, he decided it was time to take action.
“Some of the rooms had four or five cans in them,” Engle said, so he reached out to LPS Sustainability and LHS principal Mark Larson to plan for a waste container reset.
Ahead of the reset, Engle presented the plan to the school’s department heads so everyone knew what to expect. The Sustainability team visited LHS over winter break to assist with the reset and labeled, relocated, and sometimes removed bins from each room in the building.
“The key to doing this successfully is to make sure everybody knows about it before it happens”
Following the reset, waste containers are in a consistent location in every room, which Engle said streamlines the waste collection process for his team. Fewer bins also means a cost savings on plastic liners and an improvement in waste sorting accuracy. “If [students] have the choice of cans, they’ll make the right decisions,” Engle said.
Nozad Ali Jan, Everett Elementary School
Nozad Ali Jan has spent almost a decade as part of LPS’s custodial staff and currently serves as Everett Elementary School’s custodial supervisor. In addition to the building’s day-to-day waste management needs, Ali Jan manages the extra workload of maintaining a clean and safe learning environment in the midst of building-wide construction.
The current Indoor Air Quality project means ventilation systems, windows, and other areas are being renovated and updated. Ali Jan said he and his team have taken this unique challenge in stride. “It can be a mess, but we are always on top of it,” he said.
Ali Jan said that splitting these additional responsibilities among his team helps them keep the building safe and clean for Everett students and staff while the renovations are happening. Despite the added challenges of supervising a building under construction, he is ready to jump in wherever his help is needed.
Ali Jan also said that his dedicated team and consistent level of pride in his work has garnered positive feedback from other building staff on his efficiency, even in the midst of this construction project.
We are so grateful to have exceptional custodians like these in our district! Every one of them is dedicated to making things a little better for staff and students every day, and we couldn’t imagine LPS without them.
2023 ENERGY STAR Certifications
LPS Sustainability is proud to announce that Lincoln Public Schools earned ENERGY STAR certification for 22 buildings in 2023!
This record-setting number for LPS includes 9 buildings that achieved recertification after also being recognized in 2022.
ENERGY STAR certifications help track and recognize the impressive sustainability efforts going on across LPS properties.
Buildings districtwide are continuing to improve their ENERGY STAR ratings through a combination of facility upgrades and consistent efforts from the staff and students who occupy them every day.
For example, LED light bulbs reduce a building’s energy usage on their own, but someone switching the lights off when they leave a room makes the impact even bigger!
To be eligible for certification, a building must earn an ENERGY STAR score of at least 75 on a scale of 1 to 100. A rating of 75 reflects that a building operates at an energy efficiency greater than 75% of comparable properties in the United States.
The Certification Process
Certified Buildings
New Certifications
- Beattie Elementary- 88
- Brownell Elementary- 83
- Campbell Elementary- 88
- Cavett Elementary- 83
- Eastridge Elementary- 95
- Goodrich Middle- 99
- Lakeview Elementary- 93
- Moore Middle- 90
- Morley Elementary- 97
- Pound Middle- 95
- Roper Elementary- 89
- Steve Joel District Leadership Center- 95
- Zeman Elementary- 93
Recertified from 2022
- Arnold Elementary- 88
- Belmont Elementary- 97
- Fredstrom Elementary- 86
- Hill Elementary- 93
- Humann Elementary- 97
- Irving Middle- 98
- Lefler Middle- 95
- Maxey Elementary- 85
- Pyrtle Elementary- 99
As LPS works to increase building efficiency districtwide, we expect to see even more ENERGY STAR certifications in 2024 and beyond. The next time you visit one of the district’s certified buildings, look for the blue ENERGY STAR decal at the main entrance!
Congratulations to all the Lincoln Public Schools properties that achieved certification for 2023!
Sustainability Spotlight: Green School Activities at Donald D. Sherrill Education Center
This month’s Sustainability Spotlight is shining on the Green Schools Recognition Program activities happening at Donald D. Sherrill Education Center!
Therapist team leader Jamie Austin and psychotherapist Ross Rausch have led their elementary-age students through a number of activities already this school year, with even more planned for 2024.
Austin serves as this school year’s Sustainability Champion, and said that Rausch has been instrumental in identifying and planning activities for Don Sherrill’s Student Government and Pledge students. This group consists of about a dozen students who have demonstrated ongoing improvement in their behavior and academics.
The chance to participate in sustainability-related activities has helped motivate students to consistently grow in both of these areas. “I’ve personally heard more students say, ‘I want to get up on Student Government, I want to get on Pledge to do some of those activities,’” Austin said.
The first activity students participated in was a water waste poster-making campaign. “The kids met it with such enthusiasm,” Rausch said.
After they completed their designs, students worked together and decided to hang the posters in places where their peers and Don Sherrill staff would see the water conservation messages.
With momentum from the poster campaign, Austin and Rausch planned a community litter cleanup. The group donned high-visibility vests and worked in teams to pick up litter on and around the school grounds.
The activity served as a great way to embody Don Sherrill’s core values of working together to succeed and taking pride in both yourself and the building.
“These activities… are an opportunity for them to demonstrate or practice their leadership by giving back to the school and giving back to our community.”
Rausch said that Keep Lincoln & Lancaster County Beautiful’s Mary Carol Bond affirmed these values after the cleanup was complete. “She goes, ‘This is leadership in action, you guys are the leaders of the building,’” Rausch said. “And that’s one of the things that I think we want to connect for the kids.”
Don Sherrill is also one of seven schools in the district taking part in the Hefty ReNew Bag pilot program. Austin says that this addition has opened up even more conversations about sustainability. “We’re starting to see some crossover of teaching our staff,” she said. “It’s not just about the students learning.”
For 2024, Austin and Rausch have plans to continue extending Don Sherrill’s reach into the community.
Student Government and Pledge students will use donated t-shirts to create dog toys for the humane society, families will be invited to attend a Nature Night in February, and staff are exploring possibilities for the school’s raised garden bed.
Rausch’s advice for schools hoping to get started with Green Schools Recognition Program activities is simple: “Pick one,” he said. “Then lean on the people who know what they’re doing.”
For the team at Don Sherrill, this expertise has come from community partners, the LPS Sustainability Department, and even from within their building.
“It’s kind of a collaborative learning between teacher, student, and therapist,” Rausch said. “It’s a shared experience and that, I think, has been why we’ve got the juice or the energy.”
We’re so excited to see the ways the Don Sherrill team is incorporating sustainability in their building! They are well on their way to earning sustainability funding through the Green Schools Recognition Program and are helping their students build connections and confidence in the classroom and beyond.
Contact
Brittney Albin
Sustainability Coordinator
E-mail: balbin@lps.org
Phone: 436-1072 ext. 82007
Latest News
- 2023-24 Green Schools Recognition Program Results
- 23rd Annual Cans4Books Drive
- Fourth Graders Plant 40 Trees in Kahoa Park
- Scrap Metal Drive Raises $790
- Sustainability Spotlight: Earth Month Celebrations
