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Santa Clara High School
Only five minutes away from SCU, Santa Clara High School is a middle-sized public high school with an amazing student-led Sierra Club. These high school students learned about the Sustainability Decathlon competition and forged ahead with a completely student-led effort focused on raising awareness. By developing vast community outreach programs of their own and raising awareness through educational events with their peers, including an entire green carnival for an elementary school, they swept the Campus Involvement and Awareness Day Event categories, in addition to winning the Ethics and Website competitions. They monitored their campus energy usage and, among other things, hosted a week of green activities including an alternative transportation competition. These incredibly enthusiastic students even made "love your mother earth" t-shirts for the Solar Decathlon Team to wear in Washington, DC. See their website |
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Leadership Public High School - San Jose
Located in often underserved east San Jose, Leadership Public is a small charter school with no natural campus. Many of the students had never heard about sustainability and attended class on a campus without grass or trees. Student volunteers showed them Who Killed the Electric Car and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and taught them about kilowatt hours and the three pillars of sustainability. By the end of the competition they had submitted the most grant applications for physical campus changes: including waterless urinals, trees, and a bike rack complete with locks. They also designed and carried out an awesome elementary school outreach, including educational recycling games and tree planting, that earned them individual wins in the Community Outreach, Economics, and Transportation categories. See their website |
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St. Lawrence Academy
St. Lawrence is a small parish school led by dedicated teachers who learned about the Sustainability Decathlon and recruited a team of motivated students. They then revitalized an old recycling program, held the first ever Earth Day celebration on their campus, and showed An Inconvenient Truth during lunch for a week. The St. Lawrence students even had the gumption to ask their teachers to turn classroom lights off during bright class periods. Their unprecedented work researching energy efficient technologies like fans and natural lighting led them to wins in the Technology, Conservation, and Energy Understanding categories and helped them take overall first place in the Sustainability Decathlon. See their website |