Plan calls for using green space at schools to help students learn

Source: Signal

Meeting summary:

• Coordinators of a plan to turn green spaces on school campuses into outdoor classrooms are looking for someone to be the liaison between plan partners that include Cincinnati Public Schools, city departments and several community organizations.
• Cincinnati is continuing efforts to remove broken parking meters as part of a project one city council member said is a key step to removing blight.

Documenter’s follow-up question:

• How does Cincinnati Public Schools market the ideals of the Greener Schools partnership to parents fearful of a future controlled by AI?
• The parking meter seems to be going the way of the Dodo bird. Why doesn’t the city just get rid of all meters in favor of smartphone technology?

Notes

Scene

Cincinnati City Council’s Climate, City Services & Infrastructure Committee met in Room 300, City Hall, 801 Plum St., downtown. Committee Chairwoman Meeka Owens called the meeting to order at 10:04 a.m. The committee adjourned at 11:24 a.m.

Committee Members

Meeka Owens, chair

Ryan James, vice chair

Mark Jeffreys, council member

Seth Walsh, council member

TIME SPENT

00 minutes: Public comment

02 minutes: Removing broken parking meters

78 minutes: Keep Cincinnati Beautiful/Green School Yards update

Item 1. Motion asking for the estimated cost of removing broken parking meters

Council Member Mark Jeffreys introduced the action. The motion asked city administration to share data on current parking meter revenue from blighted, broken parking meter locations compared to the average revenue per spot.

Blighted and broken meters throughout Cincinnati create confusion for drivers, reduce parking turnover and can lead to unnecessary disputes or fines, the council member said in a March 9 memo that explained his motion. When meters are visibly damaged or neglected, they also contribute to the perception of urban neglect, Jeffreys said in his statement, which can discourage visitors, hurt nearby businesses and undermine community pride. Removing them is a key step in reducing blight in the city, he said.

Jeffreys said city administration estimates that there were 700 to 800 broken parking meters, where the top has been broken off.  He said 350 have been removed so far.

The committee forwarded the motion to the full council without objection.

Item 2. Keep Cincinnati Beautiful/Green School Yards update

The lead coordinators of Strategic Partnerships for Greener Schools are looking to hire someone whose role would be to coordinate the collaboration between Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS), several community organizations and city departments involved in the Green School Yards Plan. The liaison’s responsibilities would include coordinating maintenance strategies for CPS green spaces, aligning fundraising and grant strategies and supporting work-based learning internships for students.

“We are at the beginning stages of what this might look like,” Kirsten Brademeyer, of Keep Cincinnati Beautiful, said of the liaison position. There are so many players in the partnership, she said, “we need someone to partner with CPS and the funding sources to ensure that projects are being done right.” There are at least 22 listed partners in the Green School Yards Plan, some of which include the Cincinnati Reds Community Fund, Hamilton County Conservation District, Cincinnati Recreation Commission, University of Cincinnati Field Office and Ohio State University Extension office.

Cynthia Walters, of Green Umbrella, said, “We are talking about a person who would also incorporate all those things [such as building maintenance, energy efficiency and transportation] besides external outdoor spaces.”

CPS COO Chris Burkhardt, in his part of the presentation, said the education goals of the 2023 Green Cincinnati Plan are that every public school have safe and accessible outdoor learning spaces by 2028 and that the district has 4,000 individuals trained for green economy jobs by 2028 (an average of 800 individuals per year).

Right now, students at 60 CPS locations have “some sort of access to outdoor learning,” including one-minute walks to parks, but the number does not mean those 60 schools have an outdoor learning feature, according to the presentation.

The Green School Yards Plan calls for CPS and its partners to embed work-based learning, internships and youth employment opportunities related to green space maintenance, environmental stewardship and urban ecology. According to information presented at the meeting, the city has invested $224,703 in green space and environmental projects across 10 funded projects at 13 CPS campuses.

Burkhardt said CPS has been working to meet several priorities, including using electric mowing and trimming equipment and harvesting rainwater. Probably the biggest change among the priorities people will see is the creation of outdoor learning spaces that include classrooms, gardens and walking trails to city recreation centers, parks and neighborhoods “to make this city as walkable as possible.”

This summer will be the first in a long time that CPS will offer paid internships, where students will work alongside maintenance crews in tending to school grounds. The district is hoping the opportunity creates pathways to careers, he said, noting, “Classroom learning is even better when students can touch, feel and be outside” and that also means adding curricula to create and maintain sustainable grounds.

“We’ve made significant strides in the last two to three years,” he said.

Campus green spaces are community-learning-center models, he said, noting that the school is part of the community.

“Our goal is to start connecting all of our campuses together – trails, sidewalks, some paths that aren’t there yet. It’s about connecting our communities together, as well as making the schools a community-learning center,” not just for students, but for families to come nights and weekends when school is not in session.”

He cited as an example the Western Hills – Dater campus that is near a Kroger, retail stores and a trail to a nearby city recreation center.

Walters said, “We really need the champion at the district level” because principals and teachers come and go. She said she hopes Burkhardt stays around for a long time.

She warned that the Greener Schools Partnership, in its efforts to turn campus green spaces into classrooms that students and communities can use, needs to think about safety for these sites. “We have to recognize that all schools are not ready for an outdoor learning space,” she said.

For context, she said the Green School Yards timeline began in 2017 with CPS Outside, whose mandate was that all students have access to nature. Student voices moved to the forefront of the initiative in 2024 at the first green schoolyards summit, which was convened at Aiken High School. City Council in that same year passed a resolution supporting the Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights.

True change is happening now, Walters said, noting that the district covers 900 acres. But the impact is more than green schoolyards, she said, it’s about the mental and physical wellbeing of students. The impact needs to be coordinated and collective, Walters said.

Walters expressed excitement about another Greener Schools proposal: Mapping CPS into three outdoor learning hubs – west, central and east. The idea is to establish model schools in each corridor to serve as labs to outdoor learning so students at schools not able to do outdoor learning, for whatever reason, can participate.

She called attention to a planned June 13 Green and Healthy Schools symposium. There will be further discussions about the future of sustainable school communities.

Council Member Owens, who at the start of the meeting said, “Every young person in the city of Cincinnati deserves the right to access space,” asked Walters and Brademeyer several questions.

One was: How can the Greener Schools project be institutionalized? 

Walters said Columbus City Schools just passed a framework plan for green campuses that the CPS partnership can study. She also said the Green and Healthy Schools Guide is due out May 1. It is the playbook for workforce development, school community wellness, expanding and maintaining green space for CPS, all districts in the region and beyond.

Districts can adopt policy statements that mandate requirements, she continued, much like statements drafted on healthy foods.

“If we embed those types of policy statements into what is required for all school districts that participate in the national school lunch program, and align the goals of the Green Cincinnati plan to policy, those efforts are in writing and [serve as] an action plan for future work,” she said.

Brademeyer, responding to a question from Owens about how to expand future job opportunities, said, “Our biggest concern is that we have employment partners that are hiring the students that participate in our workforce programs. We know what the barriers to entry are.”

She mentioned academic help to equip students, such as the agriculture-education programs at Aiken New Tech, Clark Montessori, Gamble Montessori and the Zoo Academy. Walters mentioned a green pathway through agriculture-education starting in middle school (there is a pilot at College Hill Academy via a garden-based program that connects to a high school credential program) .

Exposing students to experiential learning would improve matching young people looking for careers with employers, she said. Right now, there are more than 50 applicants for 15 positions in the Keep Cincinnati Beautiful Roots-for-Boots work development program (now two years old), Brademeyer said. Funding work-based learning and workforce development is a pathway and more appealing than allotting a certain percentage of budget just for maintenance, she said, because it provides opportunities to expose students to careers, they might not have thought about.

Walters said another barrier to be overcome would be to train school counselors more about environment, conservation, outdoor learning, and the importance of and the need to fill green jobs. “If we figure that out, we will open up the pipeline,” she said.

The committee, without objection, filed the report.

The meeting adjourned at 11:24 a.m.