CA Schools Get $117M to Turn Pavement Into Green Space by Selen Ozturk

A new $117 million CalFIRE program aims to shade kids from record heat by replacing school pavement with drought-tolerant green space.

As extreme heat scorches California, schools preparing to reopen across the Bay Area are also preparing to use the first $47 million of a new $117 million CalFIRE program to shade kids by replacing school pavement with drought-tolerant green space.

15 projects for 100 schools statewide were selected on July 12 to receive this first round of Green Schoolyard Grants, including those in the Oakland and San Francisco Unified School Districts, and the Santa Clara County Office of Education. At least 70% of the $117 million will green schools in low-income and disadvantaged communities, which are shown in studies to be as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit hotter in summer than wealthier areas nearby.

The program is part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s historic $800 million Extreme Heat Action Plan. As part of the plan, Newsom also launched Heat Ready CA this month. This is a 2-year, $20 million public outreach campaign, with resources available on HeatReadyCA.com, which will guide the state’s response to heat waves by focusing upon vulnerable populations including older adults, frontline workers, those with chronic illness and those who are pregnant.

Children among most vulnerable to extreme heat

Among the most vulnerable are children, whom researchers warn are significantly more susceptible to heat waves than adults. Extreme heat, the deadliest weather event in the country, is consistently linked to more children’s hospital visits nationwide.

In California, 5.9 million K-12 children attend public schools on about 130,000 acres of land. Alejandra Chiesa, California state director of asphalt conversion at the nonprofit Green Schoolyards America, said in a statement the fact that “much of this land is paved and unshaded leaves vulnerable students across the state exposed to extreme heat.”

In school districts across the Bay Area, maximum summer temperatures are expected to rise as much as 7.4 degrees Fahrenheit by midcentury, according to state climate projections.

In 90-degree weather, schoolyard surfaces like asphalt — which absorbs up to 90 percent of solar radiation — can be hot enough to cause third-degree burns, while plant-shaded surfaces may be 20 to 45 degrees cooler.

More trees, cooler temps

Kira Maritano, senior program manager of the Trust for Public Land (TPL), which won a grant to green 15 schools in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), said “Many campuses in Oakland are effectively large swaths of asphalt with very limited tree canopy, often in neighborhoods which are themselves park-poor. By increasing the environmental health of schools, we increase it throughout Oakland.”

This Green Schoolyard project, for example, “benefits the Bay and eases the impact on our utility system by absorbing stormwater, it creates habitats for native animals and pollinators, and it helps connect children to nature by giving them direct access. Play spaces with native plants allow more diverse activities than just competitive sports. Schoolyards become community areas for families to gather, and give teachers opportunities for outside, hands-on learning,” she explained.

TPL’s schoolyard work over the past six years, particularly the renovation of OUSD’s Cesar E. Chavez campus in 2020, has been praised as a model of climate resiliency by state leaders like First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot. Cesar E. Chavez, in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland, serves 628 students across two elementary schools — International Community School and Think College Now. In 2020, TPL and OUSD transformed the school’s 90% asphalt yard into a green oasis including a vegetable garden, grass field, an outdoor classroom and tree-lined basketball courts.

“We believe that Oakland’s early adoption of schoolyard greening helped inspire the state to invest in it, and we see this investment as just the beginning,” Maritano said. “TPL is currently working to secure an additional $1 billion for greening schools statewide through a proposed school bond. Schools are in almost every community across California, and they’re an underutilized way to bring heat relief to these communities.”

Schools bake under rising heat

Jennifer Mutch, science coordinator for the Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE), said that as record-melting temperatures climb statewide and schools prepare to reopen, it’s often forgotten that children are even more vulnerable to heat-related illness than adults.

Mutch, who won a Green Schoolyard Grant for SCCOE’s Sunol Community School and Opportunity Youth Academy campuses, added “trees and shrubs to be planted at these sites will not only cool temperatures but improve air quality and even mental health,” given that students facing extreme heat are not only “unable to get outside for recess or lunch” but perform significantly worse at exams, which impacts high school graduation rates.

Despite these impacts, she said, schools often have some of the hottest sites in their communities, “especially in the event of power and air conditioning outages.”

The full effect of these factors upon students is unknown, because California does not require schools to have heat interventions like air conditioning, shaded schoolyards or indoor temperature requirements, nor does it track which schools implement them.

Brian Lee, Community Development Director of Covina, California — which won a grant with Charter Oak Unified School District to green a four-acre recreational field at Royal Oak Middle School — said, “When districts face hard choices about how to spend limited budgets, of course they’ll prioritize the education itself. However, this doesn’t leave as much for updating and maintaining the facilities where students are taught, and that can negatively impact the quality of this education.”

New climate focused career paths

These impacts spread well beyond schools, and the mitigation lasts well after planting. The grounds at Royal Oak are heavily used by the entire community, Lee said. “Every day and after dark you see youth soccer or softball, but also adults playing basketball, jogging, walking their dogs, and the heat affects them all. Dirt can retain heat like asphalt, and we have such large expanses of both because what’s often overlooked is what comes after planting, the labor and money to irrigate grass and maintain trees.”

Jonathan Pilch, executive director of Watsonville Wetlands Watch (WWW), which received a grant to green four school campuses in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District, incorporates student help in maintaining trees on campuses.

“Tree maintenance is a long term challenge. We meet it by involving students in urban forestry not only as a way to build extreme heat resilience in schools, but as a lifelong career path. So far we’ve graduated 36 high school students thru our Climate Corps Leadership Institute, which has a yearlong urban forestry program.”

Watsonville, located in Santa Cruz County, has exceptionally low tree cover: 10% currently, and 8% when WWW started its urban forestry work in 2018. Throughout the city, Pilch said, “School campuses both have the lowest canopy cover” — often less than 5% — “and gain the most from tree equity, for both environmental and student health.”

WWW will develop its plans by holding in-class and extracurricular workshops with students, parents, teachers, engineers and landscape architects across all four schools over the next year. Forestation will target the hottest and least-covered parts of each site, such as tree-lined borders and walkways that improve campus air quality.

“The most effective way to help an environment is to help those living in it at the same time,” said Pilch. “This grant is crucial not only because it lets us plant schoolyards; that’s the beginning. Trees are deep-rooted and slow-growing. It also lets us think about these spaces as living schoolyards, and about how maintaining them can transform every aspect of a learning environment in the long run.”

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在加州遭受酷熱之際，灣區即將開學的學校也準備使用加州消防廳（CalFIRE）一項1億1700萬美元新計劃提供的第一輪資金4700萬元，透過把學校路面改為耐旱綠色空間，提供孩子們可遮陽的綠蔭。

7月12日，15個涵蓋全加州共100所學校的計劃，被選中接受「綠色校園補助」（Green Schoolyard Grants）的第一輪資金，受惠者包括屋崙和舊金山聯合學區，以及聖他克拉拉縣教育局（Santa Clara County Office of Education）。在這筆1億1700萬美元的資金中，至少有70%將用於綠化低收入和弱勢社區，因為研究顯示，這些社區的夏季氣溫，要比鄰近富裕地區高出華氏7度。

這項計劃是加州州長紐森（Gavin Newsom）歷史性的8億美元「極端高溫行動計劃」（Extreme Heat Action Plan）的一部分。紐森7月推出的「Heat Ready CA」，也是這項計劃的一部分，這是一項為期兩年、斥資2000萬美元的公共宣導活動，網站HeatReadyCA.com上提供有許多資源。這項活動主要關心弱勢群體，包括老年人、第一線工作人員、患有慢性疾病的人和孕婦。

研究人員警告，兒童是最脆弱的群體，他們比成年人更容易受到熱浪的影響。極端高溫是美國最致命的天氣狀況，一直造成全國許多兒童前往醫院就診。

在加州，590萬名K到12年級的兒童，在總面積約13萬英畝的公立學校土地上上課。非營利組織「美國綠色校園」（Green Schoolyards America）加州瀝青改造計畫主任基耶薩（Alejandra Chiesa）在一份聲明中指出一項事實：「大部分的土地都舖上瀝青，沒有遮蔭的地方，導致脆弱的學生曝露在加州極端高溫下。」

根據加州的氣候預測，到本世紀中葉，灣區各地學區夏季的最高溫，可能比現在高出華氏7.4度。

在華氏90度的天氣下，校園裡像瀝青這樣的路面（可吸收高達90%的太陽輻射），足以導致學生三度燙傷，而有樹蔭的路面，溫度會大大降低20度到45度。
樹木愈多愈涼爽

為屋崙聯合學區（Oakland Unified School District）15所學校爭取到補助金的公共土地信託（Trust for Public Land，簡稱TPL）資深計劃經理馬利塔諾（Kira Maritano）說：「屋崙許多校園都是一大片瀝青，樹冠非常有限，通常都位於公園稀少的社區裡。透過提高學校的環境健康，整個屋崙的環境健康也會改善。」

她說：「『綠色校園』計劃可使整個灣區受益，透過吸收雨水減輕對本地公共事業系統的影響，為原生動物和傳播花粉者創造棲息地，並透過讓兒童直接接觸大自然，幫助他們與大自然建立起關係。種有原生植物的遊樂空間，不僅可以舉辦競賽運動，還可進行更多樣化的活動，校園也可成為家庭聚會的社區空間，也為教師提供外戶教學和學生實際動手學習的機會。」

TPL過去六年來進行的工作，特別是屋崙聯合學區Cesar E. Chavez校園2020年的翻新工程，被加州第一夫人珍妮佛・紐森（Jennifer Siebel Newsom）和自然資源局局長克勞福特（Wade Crowfoot）等加州領導人稱讚是適應氣候的典範。位於屋崙Fruitvale區的Cesar E. Chavez，是International Community School和Think College兩所小學628名學生共用的校園，TPL 2020年和屋崙聯合學區將校園90%的瀝青路面，改建為一個有菜園、草地、戶外教室和綠樹成蔭籃球場的綠洲。

馬利塔諾說：「我們相信，屋崙率先採取校園綠化措施，是激發加州進行這類投資的原因之一，而且我們認為，這只是一個開始。TPL目前正努力推動發行學校債券，籌集另外的10億美元資金，用來綠化全州的學校。加州幾乎每個社區都有學校，但學校並未被充分利用來為社區解暑。」
氣溫不斷上升 學校飽受煎熬

聖他克拉拉縣教育局（Santa Clara County Office of Education，簡稱SCCOE）科學協調員馬奇（Jennifer Mutch）表示，在加州氣溫不斷攀升、學校準備開學之際，人們經常忘記，兒童其實比成年人更容易出現與高溫有關的疾病。

為聖他克拉拉縣教育局的蘇諾社區學校（Sunol Community School）和機會年少年學院（Opportunity Youth Academy）申請到綠色校園補助金的馬奇補充，在這些地點種植樹木和灌木，不僅可以降溫，還可以改善空氣品質，甚至改善學生的心理健康，因為面對極端高溫的學生，不但下課無法到戶外休息或吃午餐，考試成績也明顯較差，從而影響高中畢業率。

她說，除了上述的影響，社區中最熱的場所通常都位於學校之中，「特別是在電力和空調中斷的情況下」。

這些因素對學生造成的全面影響究竟為何，目前還無法得知，因為加州並沒有要求學校採取因應熱浪的措施，好比空調、有蔭的校園，或室內溫度要求，也沒有追蹤哪些學校採取了這些應變措施。

為特許橡樹聯合學區（Charter Oak Unified School District）爭取到補助金，讓皇家橡樹初中（Royal Oak Middle School）翻新4英畝休閒用地的加州柯汶納（Covina）社區發展局局長布萊恩・李（Brian Lee）說：「當學區面對如何使用有限預算的艱難選擇時，他們當然會優先選擇教育。如此一來，能用來更新和維修教學設施的預算就所剩無幾，這可能對教育品質產生負面影響。」
新氣候職業道路

這項計劃影響的範圍遠超過學校，而且種植樹木後產生的緩解衝擊效果可以維持很久。李說：「皇家橡樹初中的場地受到整個社區的大量使用，每天都可以看到青少年在踢足球或打壘球，也可以看到成年人在打籃球、慢跑、遛狗，足見炎熱的天氣影響到所有民眾。泥土和瀝青一樣，都會保留熱度，而我們之所以有如此大面積的泥土和瀝青，是因為人們經常忽略種植後的工作，即灌溉草地和維護樹木需要的勞動力和金錢。」

華森維爾濕地守望隊（Watsonville Wetlands Watch，簡稱WWW）獲得了可為帕哈羅谷聯合學區（Pajaro Valley Unified School District）四所學校綠化校園的補助金，執行董事皮爾屈（Jonathan Pilch）更將學生納入協助維護校園樹木的行列。

他說：「樹木維護是一項長期挑戰，我們透過讓學生參與城市林業，來實現這一目標。這不僅是加強學校適應極端高溫的一種方式，也可為學生開創終身的職業道路。到目前為止，我們已經有36名高中生從我們的氣候團隊領袖學院（Climate Corps Leadership Institute）畢業，這個學院提供一項為期一年的城市林業課程。」

華森維爾位於聖他克魯茲縣，當地樹木覆蓋率極低，目前只有10%，在WWW於2018年開始從事城市林業工作時，覆蓋率只有8%。皮爾屈說：「在整個城市中，以學校的樹冠覆蓋率最低，通常不到5%，但也因此獲益最多，無論是在環境方面或是學生健康方面。」

WWW明年將與四所學校的學生、家長、教師、工程師和庭園設計師舉辦課堂和課外的研討會，來制定造林計劃。造林計劃將針對每個校園最熱和樹冠覆蓋最少的地區進行，例如沿著區域界線和走道兩旁種植樹木，來改善空氣品質。

皮爾屈說：「改善環境最有效的方法，是同時幫助生活在這個環境中的人們。補助金之所以重要，不僅是因為它可以讓我們綠化校園，這只是一個開始。樹木是一種紮根很深、生長緩慢的生物，它讓我們將它所在的空間視為一個充滿生命力的校園，同時了解，維護它可以如何長期改變學習環境。」