About Us

Greening Dallas ISD is an all-volunteer grassroots effort of students, parents, teachers and supporters working to get Dallas ISD to take strong, swift climate actions so they might have a livable, equitable future with clean, green jobs. The website is intended to be a resource to help provide information about the urgency of the climate crisis and the availability of solutions in order to inspire and inform school decision-makers sufficiently to push quickly past the inertia of the status quo. 

History

For years, Dallas ISD students and other local volunteer environmental and climate advocates made their own independent efforts, sometimes crossing paths, but not working together much, regarding sustainability shortcomings at schools, and other environmental issues, with minimal tangible results at the schools, but we’re changing that. 

In the fall of 2018, an environmental and climate advocate noticed a Dallas ISD bond on the ballot for $75 million to pay for new school buses and a bus barn. As this bond passed, an email with a link to a report was sent to all of the Dallas ISD Trustees recommending the purchase of electric school buses to replace the dirty diesel buses. 

Other community members also wrote emails, called and spoke before the Trustees often with similar requests, and told them about the millions of dollars which would be available to them from Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Funds to help purchases by paying 80% of the bus and charging station costs. 

In 2019, after meeting at a DFW area Global Climate Strike, a Dallas ISD student at Townview TAG Magnet asked local climate and environmental advocates to speak to their environmental club about how they could improve recycling on their campus and take strong actions on climate. 

The students were told about opportunities to make their voices heard at an upcoming EPA hearing, at the Dallas City Council to ask for a stronger Comprehensive Environmental and Climate Action Plan and at Dallas ISD Board of Trustees meetings, where they spoke passionately about various sustainability and climate actions needed, including for the purchase of zero-emission electric school buses.

Despite a meeting we arranged with high level Dallas ISD decision-makers and transportation staff, with participation of an expert on the funding opportunity, and ongoing repeated requests to take advantage of these funds, Dallas ISD ordered more gasoline, diesel and propane fueled school buses without applying for funds to buy any zero-emission school buses. 

Later, Dallas ISD waited too late to submit an application for an electric bus with clean school bus funds–five days after all the Volkswagen money had been distributed to other school districts. One manager told the staff person who prepared the application that she really did not want to deal with free money from the state because she would have to report how the bus was being used. Instead, the district used 2018 bond money to purchase more fossil-fueled buses, including diesels.

Starting in 2018, climate action advocates had also been working to get Dallas ISD to purchase 100% renewable energy for their upcoming electricity contract with a low-cost, fully transparent contract for new-build solar in Texas, but that somehow fell off track and was replaced with a grid power plan offset with 100% renewable Texas wind power Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). It’s likely that our advocating for a 100% Texas renewables plan influenced the contract they ended up negotiating and signing.

After many persistent efforts which seemed to be bringing limited or no results, it was decided that getting a climate action resolution passed by the Trustees and getting petition support for this from large numbers of others could be an important step towards actions. 

So, a website, TurnDISDgreen.com, was set up as well as a successful petition effort to get the climate resolution passed…and it did, unanimously!  The change.org web pages used to execute the petition is at Sign the Petition

Jessica House started this petition to Dallas Indepedent School District Dallas ISD Trustees

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, Climate change poses threats to human health, safety, and security. Children are uniquely vulnerable to these threats. The effects of climate change on child health include physical and psychological harms of weather disasters, increased heat stress, decreased air quality, altered disease patterns of some climate-sensitive infections, and food, water, and nutrient insecurity in vulnerable regions.

Poor air quality caused by pollution is directly linked to asthma in children. According to the Center for Disease Control, Asthma is one of the most common illness-related reasons that children miss school. When children miss school, their academic performance can slip, making students more vulnerable to falling behind in class. In an article from the Dallas Morning News, according to the Nature Conservancy, 9.5 percent of DISD’s enrolled students have asthma (the national average is 8.3 percent) and Dallas County leads the region for hospitalizations for childhood asthma.Sign our petition calling on Dallas ISD Trustees to pass a resolution enabling our district to appoint an Environmental and Climate Action Committee designed to review current practices and offer solutions to reduce emissions and other factors contributing to climate change. Read the most current version of the resolution here.Read more about our history in these articles; Climate Action Resolution DISD Policy

From September 2019 forward, the common goals and efforts of students, parents, teachers, community members and environmental advocates became more coordinated, and the TurnDISDgreen.com petition-focused project eventually developed into the larger effort and website we are now calling Greening Dallas ISD.

The passage of the resolution put in place an Environmental and Climate Action Committee to review Dallas ISD practices and offer sustainability solutions to reduce emissions contributing to climate change. Unfortunately, due to complications of COVID-19 hitting the school district hard very shortly after passage of the resolution, the committee started months later and work on it proceeded at a slow pace hampered by challenges with the pandemic. 

In April 2021, two Environmental and Sustainability Committee members and Energy and Sustainability staff presented the proposals to the Board of Trustees and answered their questions. See Dallas ISD breaking ground with plans to go green | The Hub and the Goals, Policy and Supporting Ideas which made it onto the list under consideration here.

On November 18, 2021, some of the committee’s recommendations were passed as policy outlining the District’s conservation efforts and the method to be used in designing, building, renovating and operating schools in the District.

Now, we need to move forward quickly from our good start as soon as a standing Dallas ISD Environment and Sustainability Advisory Committee is put in place, with the assistance of experts, to help Dallas ISD develop and implement an accelerated and expanded climate and environmental action plan which will have a chance of achieving the critical goals before it’s too late.

Read more about our history in these articles:

  1. Dallas teens push for local actions on climate change. View More
  2. Dallas and Fort Worth ISDs take steps to address climate. View More
  3. View Jonathan Cartwright’s video about getting the Board of Trustees to adopt the Climate Resolution. View video
  4. Earth Day: Taking green steps. View More

Goals

(Aligned with City of Dallas Comprehensive Environmental and Climate Action Plan (CECAP))

  • Dallas ISD buildings are low-carbon in construction and operation, climate resilient, resource efficient, healthy and provide excellent learning environments. 
  • Dallas ISD efficiently uses, manages, and generates renewable and affordable energy. 
  • Dallas ISD nourishes students by providing healthy and eco/climate friendly food options.
  • Dallas ISD grounds prioritize native plants, tree cover, and natural management techniques to create a healthy outdoor environment for students. 
  • Dallas ISD purchases and provides safe, reliable, cleanest available vehicles and transportation. 
  • Dallas ISD implements green purchasing policies which consider the costs and benefits of purchases over their whole lifetime, including environmental costs.
  • Dallas ISD creates the ongoing support mechanisms needed to meet its environment and sustainability objectives.
  • Dallas ISD provides curricular and educational opportunities for climate literacy and green careers.
  • Dallas ISD reduces greenhouse gas emissions 50% reductions by 2030 and net zero by 2050, waste diverted to landfill by 50% by 2025 and 75% by 2030, and water usage by 20% by 2025 and 30% by 2030.