The State of California recognizes that schools need to take the lead in teaching students not only about the environment but also about the climate crisis. Senator Joe Simitian's recent bill, SB 908, was unanimously passed by the Senate Education Committee on Jan. 16th, and passed the Senate vote on Jan. 30th, 2008. (See: Palo Alto Online News article of 1/29/08 "Simitian bill would teach climate change") and now goes to the Assembly and then the governor for signature.

While curriculum changes incorporating climate change may still take a while to implement, there is an increasing interest in and responsibility among educators to develop in their students a deeper sense of respect for and responsibility towards the environment. Meanwhile, just when we need to take action, budgetary pressures makes teaching new subjects and implementing new programs increasingly difficult. The Atherton EPC has developed a program that utilizes an innovative approach to involving students in environmental issues, giving them some initiative and rewarding them for creative thinking about solving environmental problems that they are familiar with. We are especially pleased to couple our Student Environmental Challenge with our Resident Home Efficiency Challenge, and to apply funds received through resident carbon off-sets towards student prizes, school prizes and even project funding! The more involvement from the students, the more we think this program will appeal to our residents.

We thank those of you who responded to our letter to all ten Atherton school principals and attended and/or sent representatives to our January 28th meeting to introduce this program. Even if you were unable to attend, it is not too late to participate as a school. The EPC will be delivering a complete set of program information and forms to each of the schools upon the program launch in mid-February. All forms in the package will also be available here at the "tools" link.

To make your school's participation successful, there are four things we would urge you to do:

1. Assign a staff person as GreenSTART liaison so that we can deliver your School Packs (delivered Monday, March 3rd!) and be sure to keep you in the loop on all program issues. We have launched an email list for this purpose, to facilitate our communication. Please click here to give us the name and email address of your school liaison if we do not already have it.

2. Please urge your teaching staff to participate by sponsoring students' projects and even undertaking projects in their classrooms with their younger students. The more projects and the more students involved in these projects, the greater the chance that your school could win our School Grand Prize for the greatest project participation.

3. Please post our fliers where the students will see them in the hallways and wherever notices are generally posted.

4. Please be sure to send our program information to the parents, including adding our program blurb into any online newsletter being sent home to the parents and make copies of the enclosed program flier to be sent home with the students in their backpacks.

If you have any questions or requests, please feel free to email us at events@athertongreen.net or call (650) 799-4494.

Thanks very much for your support and participation!