HEFN

Background: unhealthy schools vs. children’s health. National studies document the threats posed by unhealthy indoor environments to adult employees: asthma, cancer, lung disease, other chronic illnesses. Peer-reviewed science is now beginning to document similar illnesses among children, who outnumber adults nine to one in most schools and are more vulnerable to hazards. Yet schools receive only scant attention, even though children are compelled to be there. EPA estimates that half of the nation’s 120,000 schools, which enroll 55 million children preK-12, have environmental problems that daily erode children’s health. The GAO estimates that 25 percent of schools are structurally unsound, meaning that health threats, particularly polluted indoor environments, are causing or triggering asthma and many other illnesses. The most vulnerable, highest-risk learners endure schools in the worst condition and suffer the most, underscoring the deep justice and civil rights issues inherent in the “healthy schools” set of education-health-environment-labor-community issues.

Sick schools are a national policy crisis for kids, not merely a local issue. Reversing this crisis requires root reforms, as well as breaking down barriers between the numerous agencies involved with our nation’s schools. It also requires collaboration among the many parties with a stake in children’s health and education; therefore, we lead a multi-stakeholder environmental health coalitions nationally and at home in New York while fostering similar  state-based coalitions and agendas. We also conduct research and advocacy, and provide individual technical assistance.

Activities: Healthy Schools Network framed a new national call to action on its founding in 1995 and built the reform issues from the ground up, networking grassroots parents and school personnel with experts and leaders in the fields of environment, labor, and health at the state and national levels. In 2001 it formally convened the national Coalition for Healthier Schools to provide an issue umbrella—“the platform and the forum”—on school environmental health. Coalition advocacy, led by Healthy Schools Network, shaped and won two new federal laws and funds for schools (2002, 2007) with new authorizations for both the Department of Education and US EPA to address school environments. It also prompted EPA to make new commitments and devote new energy to children’s health, adopting numerous recommendations for restructuring and new activities we had long sought. See www.healthyschools.org  > Coalition for Healthier Schools for agendas and collaborative reports with state-by-state data reports.

The national Coalition’s routine conference calls and in person technical workshops also led to the creation of the National Collaborative Work Group on Green Cleaning and Chemical Policy Reform in Schools in late 2006. The Collaborative has since successfully updated criteria for certifying green cleaning products (2006-08), opened a new industry-free, open-source, customizable training tool promoting green cleaning in schools (www.cleaningforhealthyschools.org (2008)), and promoted model bill text that has informed bills introduced or won in at least ten states (2008-2010).

At home in New York, Healthy Schools Network has a successful advocacy agenda, including a landmark study with school nurses (2000) who revealed they would not protect children from environmental risks at school because they feared job retaliation; a sophisticated state-sponsored school facility database (1997), comprehensive indoor air policies (1999), bans on mercury and CCA (2003), a state mandate that all public and private schools use green cleaning products (2005), green school building design standards (NYC–GSG and NY-CHPS 2007), and a legislative mandate to create an interagency advisory council on children’s environmental health (2006) along with state appropriations to build out pediatric public health services (2006, 07, 08). See www.healthyschools.,org  > New York Program. In 2009, we participated in the advisory council’s first meetings, winning wide recognition of our core argument for a permanent state entity.

On its founding, Healthy Schools Network transformed the field by setting up a first-ever clearinghouse of user-friendly informational guides for parents, personnel, and communities, borrowed at first from adult occupational health literature but deliberately addressing how to identify and eliminate health risks to children. It was the first time that any organization had made state and city regulations to health at school publicly accessible at no cost; until this point, information was doled out by education constituency groups to their members, for a fee, and/or on a ‘need to know’ basis. Popular topics include indoor air, molds, asthma, green cleaning, accommodations, sunshine laws, playgrounds, mercury, pests and pesticides, design, and other issues. The clearinghouse serves upwards of 1,000 users annually. See www.healthyschools.org  >  Healthy Schools/Healthy Kids Clearinghouse.

Recent wins:

• White House and EPA put a top priority on a new federal Healthy Schools Initiative, with EPA leading a new interagency work group to develop a strategy, issue guidelines and offer voluntary state grants.
• Securing huge victories at EPA, including the administrator’s public commitment to children’s health as a top priority, a new school air toxics monitoring program, internal reorganization for greater effectiveness, and the start of writing guidelines on school environmental health—all steps we have long urged.
• Brokering a commitment from the Department of Education to work with EPA on its broad new children’s health agenda. This is a huge milestone, given the limited cooperation between the agencies in the past, and an important model for broader cooperation among agencies.
• Securing high-level meetings at EPA meetings at EPA (with Administrator Lisa Jackson and her top staff), the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and the Department of Education (April-October 2009), as attending an invitation only White House briefing Nov 20, 2010 on the green economy and public health.
• Coordinating the research, writing, and release (in December, 2009) of the national collaborative report Sick Schools 2009, which underscores the urgent need for empowering EPA with state–by-state documentation of school conditions, policy profiles, state capacity issues, and kids at risk.
• Further raising the profile of green cleaning in schools, through our innovative online training curriculum, the Cleaning for Healthy Schools Toolkit, and helping to secure passage of strong green cleaning laws in CT and HI (2008-2009), as well as advising the shaping of fast-moving bills in a dozen more states (VT, MA, RI, NJ, MD, MO, ME, OR, WA, CA, WI, IA, and counting).

  o   This includes watch-dogging industry-inspired or supported bills and misrepresentations, aka greenwashing, in which the chemical industry seeks to keep conventional hazardous products on purchase lists by 1- softly defining ‘green’ and/or by 2- finding creative pathways to stay on the lists without having product ingredients and marketing claims independently verified.    

• Participating in the first meetings of New York State’s children’s environmental health council and winning wide recognition of our core argument for a permanent state entity (2009).
• Hosting another successful National Healthy Schools Day (April 2009), with 50 events in 22 states and the District of Columbia, and a new national call to action in Canada; and, an invitation from EPA to renew for four more years.
• Shaping and winning our second federal law on schools, the High Performance Green Buildings Act of 2007, which gives US EPA new authority to work with states and NGOs.
• Restoring funds for EPA’s schools-focused programs (2008) slashed by President Bush.
• Securing unprecedented appropriations from New York for a statewide system of children’s environmental health centers (2006, 07, 08).
• Leading three White House briefings (one for the Obama White House, two for the Bush White House).
• Receiving national awards from EPA (2007) and CHPS (2007) for advancing Indoor Air Quality in schools, plus an EPA Child  Health Protection Award in 2005.

Our programs and methods: Healthy Schools Network directs efforts at three program areas: 1) healthy school siting, design, and construction standards; 2) green (nontoxic) supply, purchasing, and maintenance; and, 3) new mandates for environmental public health interventions for children in harm’s way.  We -

• advance policy reforms in federal, state, and local policy that recognize the mounting scientific evidence on how unhealthy school environments harm children’s health and learning, then press for our models to be broadly replicated,
• research and publish reports, fact sheets, and problem-solving guides on school environmental threats tailored to empower health-affected individuals,  
• foster and advise state policy coalitions,
• host organizing conference calls and meetings for the national Coalition on policy work, and on technical topics such as green cleaning, design standards, indoor air quality laws, toxic turf, and other hot topics,
• sustain the nationally unique Healthy Schools/Healthy Kids Clearinghouse, which offers online guides, reports, and phone advice for parents of health-affected children and for personnel, and
• coordinate National Healthy Schools Day in cooperation with US EPA.

Our current priorities:

• Strengthening EPA’s capacity to address child environmental health at schools. EPA is the sole federal agency with deep history and expertise in this area. The White House’s fresh support for this work (FFY 11 budget) and EPA’s commitment to protecting children offers a lifetime opportunity to push through root reforms that will make lasting improvements. To enable EPA to lead this process, Congress must back the agency’s commitment with more generous funding.
• Restoring and reinvigorating a lapsed federal executive order on risks to children’s environmental health.
• Jumpstarting EPA’s issuance of guidelines to the states on school environments, along with other requirements under the federal High Performance Green Buildings Act, which Healthy Schools Network shaped and championed. We are focusing on two fronts: healthier buildings (reducing or eliminating environmental health threats at school) and healthier children (securing environmental public health interventions for children in harm’s way at school). To reach these goals, we will bring partners and experts together to reach consensus on model guidelines for the agency and shape and secure a model program for child health interventions in New York State via the health department’s advisory council on children, among other efforts.
• Ramping up NGO capacity in the states. We will empower the NGO community to participate in this process and build its capacity to cultivate and to monitor states’ implementation of new federal guidelines and to urge and monitor states’ applications for EPA grants.