Dixie Making Concerted Effort to Go Green

A green initiative committee in the Dixie School District is exploring everything from recycling bins to pencil-purchasing policies in its efforts to make each facility meet the highest safety and sustainability standards.

The Dixie board of trustees last fall formed the committee, recognizing that, while each school was doing its part to encourage ecologically beneficial practices, there was more that could be done through an organized districtwide effort.

The green initiative committee meets monthly and includes multiple subcommittees made up of staff, faculty and parents from each school.

"They have developed a number of new policies that the board will review," said Bruce Abbott, board president. "They are sharing best practices among the schools and that influences the way the district office operates."

Each of the district's four schools have implemented green team activities over the last two years and, in some cases, longer. By working together, Dixie, Vallecito and Mary E. Silveira elementary schools and Miller Creek Middle School can accomplish more by consolidating efforts, Abbott said.

Retired Silveira principal Jeanne Casella pioneered many of the district's efforts, establishing an organic on-campus garden and beginning a lunch recycling program that was the model for other county schools in 2007.

After they've eaten, students place food waste in bins to be composted. The compost is used to enrich the garden soil some of the lunch leftovers are fed to the school's chickens. 

More recently, the school worked with Children's Choice, a certified green business that provides compostable hot- and cold-meal trays to schools.

"We've done lots of simple things at Mary Silveira that involve the kids, like waste audits to look at what gets thrown away and charting it," Casella said. "It's changing people's habits."

Casella said more things are in progress, including a training video on recycling for students, assigning energy monitors in every classroom and drafting a purchasing policy.

"We're looking at everything we purchase," Casella said. 

And, the district is waiting for the green light from the state to install solar panels at each facility that will provide about 80 percent of energy needs.

Many of the targets the committee has set will be achieved in the next year or two, but the process will be ongoing, Abbott said.

"I don't know when we're ever done because there's always more to be done," Abbott said. 

For more information go to http://www.dixieschooldistrict.org/board