Sustainable Education: It isn’t Just the District Anymore
This is not an attack on the Buffalo Public School District. I know, first hand, that there are many wonderful and dedicated individuals in the District. Buffalo is certainly no worse than any other major inner city school district and it does have higher graduation rates than the Rochester City School District according to Public School Review. Like all other unions, those in the school district are going to have to make the changes to being community-focused to have relevance in the 21st Century. But the District is only one part of sustainable education and compare to reading, writing and math, its contribution is a small one.
Sustainable education is much more fundamental than the district involved because sustainable education goes beyond K-12 in both directions; it needs to be a community wide effort. In part 3 of this series, Working Green, the role of the unions in advocating for the community was put forward. It is only through continuing education that the union members could be able advocate for newer greener processes and materials which have less impact on the community. Management is not going to advocate any more frequent capital investment than absolutely necessary; that reduces profits, and while green business owners are not just in it for the profit, the profit motive is still there. But an informed union membership could be an effective force in upgrading to the new process.
Likewise, Green Business owners have and education role too. Theirs is to educate the consumers. Studies show that people are willing to pay more for green products. The more confident they are in the product, the more likely they are willing to spend extra money to buy it. This means there is a need for effective consumer education programs either by the business itself or by a coalition of Green Businesses.
The District, like any large institutions, could have a major role in the development of Green Jobs without changing anything happening in the classroom. In Kentucky, the Louisville school district, the University of Louisville and the City of Louisville formed The Partnership for a Green City. Together, the three institutions employ over 25,000 persons, manage over 25,000 acres of land, maintain 550 buildings, and spend over $33 million on energy. As a partnership they are a major economic force in the city. What they buy, how they buy it and who they buy it from can shape Green Job creation in that city. When 25,000 people have to be greener at work, they tend to be greener at home too. Multiply that by their families and that is a major change in city culture.
In part 2 of this series, I talked about developing Green Entrepreneurs. The JA Company Program does just that with high school students, giving them the opportunity to start and run new companies, at least for the school year. But it relies on volunteers and donors to make it happen. Now, Buffalo has an award winning Junior Achievement Program. Last year, it was awarded its third consecutive Platinum Summit Award by the worldwide organization for, among other things, program quality and impact over the last 15 years. Worldwide, the program had over 320,000 high school students creating new companies in 2006-2007 and this reached only 2.3% of the potential market. Statistically, that means are a lot of potential young business creators in Buffalo aren’t being reached by the program. So there is plenty of opportunity for more Green Job advocates to get involved locally. That is what happened in Europe. In 2006-2007 they had over 20,000 16-18 year olds competing to get their own green companies off the ground. If even just 100 Buffalo young people were trying the same thing each year, the potential for growing Green Businesses would be substantially increased without the District doing anything.
At the other end of the spectrum is early education. Studies show that high-quality care in this developmental stage (with school readiness as a goal) is the single biggest factor in high school graduation rates. Several states and several counties in other states have developed comprehensive early care and education programs from birth to school age for this reason. Since social equity is one third of Green/Sustainable Jobs, child care is often a benefit connected with this kind of job creation. But high quality child care is a sustainable, green industry sector by itself and should be a fundamental part of any job initiative. This would give reading, writing and math scores at every level of testing a boost too.
Sure the Buffalo Public School District could do more within the curriculum. Every school district in the country could, but green education is not the function of any school district. Every person advocating green anything has a responsibility to educate the public on why going green is in the public’s best interest. When the public gets that message over and over from many different sources, it will begin to accept it. And yes, even if that public lives in Buffalo.