Inside a Historic Initiative to Green LA County Schoolyards

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LOS ANGELES — As Southern California grows ever-hotter, the movement to create living schoolyards is gaining steam. For Los Angeles’ low-income communities, however, greenery remains a fixture of privilege.

At a Friday, May 3 Ethnic Media Services briefing, Los Angeles school greening experts and advocates discussed the beneficial impact of green spaces on student health and learning.

The impact of greening

Eighteen percent of LA County youth “do not have easy access to a park, a playground or a safe place to play without crime in their neighborhoods,” said Marci Raney, senior program manager in the Office of Well-Being at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. 

Only 10.1% of LA County students — and 8.2% of girls — meet the aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity required for healthy development, while nearly 14% “experience a feeling of worry, nervousness and or anxiety daily,” she continued.

These issues have major consequences for academic performance in the LA County Unified School District, where the chronic absenteeism rate is 31%. 

In the district’s 2023 CAASPP test results, which look at student performance across a range of indicators, only 41.17% of students met or exceeded the state standard for English, while 30.5% of students did so for math.

Raney says “living schoolyards with lots of trees, shade and natural barriers between play zones” can help address some of these challenges. “Our research shows that they lead to an increase in physical activity and healthy motor skill development. They eliminate the activity disparities between girls and boys, and help protect older students from becoming sedentary.”

“Children who attend green schools also have lower asthma rates, higher vitamin D levels, stronger immune systems and greater volumes of gray and white matter in their brain, contributing to higher executive and cognitive function and helping with decision-making, emotional regulation and learning,” she added. “It’s clear that living school yards can be our solution.”

LAUSD and community initiatives

In a historic step toward this solution, LAUSD created a Greening Schools and Climate Resilience Committee in early 2023, said Rocío Rivas, committee chairman and LAUSD School Board Member.

Since then, the committee’s efforts have included upgrading school facilities to improve energy efficiency by replacing old windows, upgrading HVAC and installing water-saving fixtures; successfully passing a districtwide climate literacy resolution to integrate hands-on greening projects and climate change presentations into curricula; greening play areas in early education and elementary schools; seeking greening grants in collaboration with local community-based organizations; conducting needs assessments to identify schools that require the most support; and workshopping living schoolyard designs with parents and students.

In spring 2023, the LAUSD School Board also passed the Greening Schoolyards for All Resolution directing staff to make a plan to green all schoolyards in the district at least 30% by 2035 — “an extremely ambitious goal,” because over half of LA County schools, or 485, “have less than 30% green space,” said LAUSD Chief Facilities Executive Krisztina Tokes.

“Our playgrounds are really seas of asphalt,” she continued. “We have over 200 elementary schools that have less than 10% green space.” In response, “We’ve invested nearly $500 million towards greening projects currently underway.”

“It’s always a question of where you start first, but through working with community partners, we made an index of schools most in need of green equity,” said LAUSD Chief Eco-Sustainability Officer Christos Chrysiliou. 

“Through a CAL FIRE grant, we’re now developing 34 projects,” he added, “and we have over 100 projects right now in planning, design, and construction, thanks to partners like the California Department of Education and community coalitions.”

Among these is the Living Schoolyards Coalition formed in 2019 by the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust to green LAUSD schools in collaboration with students and other nonprofits like the Trust for Public Land.

“Our coalition has two priorities, one being opening campuses to communities,” said Tori Kjer, executive director of the LA Neighborhood Land Trust.

“Many of the children who most need green space live in dense apartments with not even a small patch of space to run around or learn to ride a bicycle safely. It’s difficult to find vacant lots to build new parks, but there are school campuses within walking distance of everyone in LA County,” she continued. “Yet, the majority of these campuses are locked after-hours.”

“This is why, as we think about reversing park inequities, making school campuses open and easily accessible to our communities should be a critical space for that work,” Kjer added.

“Our other priority is consistent greening design standards for campuses. We want to make sure that one school doesn’t end up with a few trees, while another ends up with a whole bioswale,” she said. “We want designs with long-lasting and water-saving materials, natural resilient surfaces and non-artificial canopy shade, for healthy students and climate change resilience.”

A student’s voice

“Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of my generation, because we are the ones that will have to deal with the consequences of a lack of climate action by older generations,” said Rosemary Ruiz, an 11th-grade student who founded a program called Go Green at her school, Brio College Prep in downtown Los Angeles.

“To give students an opportunity to make an impact on this issue, we’ve maintained a community garden for over three years — first on campus, then at the local YMCA, which gave us space to green the community,” she explained. “It’s very hard for students in downtown LA to find somewhere green that’s open to them, and through this vegetable and fruit garden we’ve made a space where students can take home what they grow.”

“As a low-income school, many of our students don’t have the money to buy plants, even though we bear the consequences of climate change the most,” Ruiz continued. “Go Green has also done tree-planting events on campus and we’ve given trees, especially native species, for students to plant in their own backyards. We’re currently expanding this project to schools throughout the district. 

“One of my friends got an olive tree she’s had in her yard for about two years,” she added. “Now, she’s actually started to see the fruit. It’s incredibly rewarding.”

“But we have to look at the bigger picture, because right now, we only have about five years left to do something dramatic about climate change,” Ruiz said. “About two weeks ago for Earth Day, I was at City Hall, talking to our council members about developing climate initiatives and giving them specific demands of what we need not only in our city, but in our country. Students are our future, and we need to start on this scale where they can learn about climate change and take solutions into their own hands.”

“It’s clear here that adults are passionately trying to make a difference for my generation, but we need more being done,” she continued. “Working on state and federal levels alongside community levels is the way to combat this. Our current president and vice president, for example, said they support the Green New Deal. Why are their words not becoming action? That’s what’s supposed to happen in a democracy. Youth need to have a hand in their own future too.”

This story was produced by EMS in collaboration with the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS) at UCLA as part of the Greening American Cities initiative supported by the Bezos Earth Fund.