Healthy, High Performance School Facilities:
Developments in State Policy
July 2006
Over the past several years, an increasing number of school districts have taken steps to change the way they design and build school facilities. Districts have begun to incorporate a wide variety of environmental and health strategies into the construction and renovation process, with the goal of creating school buildings that advance the learning process while saving money, protecting the environment, and promoting the well being of staff and students.
As this new approach to building healthy, high performance schools has spread in communities throughout the U.S., a number of state governments also have taken steps to help maximize their investment in school facilities. For example, the state of California helped launch the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) initiative – a public/private undertaking that created the first schools-specific guide to high performance design and construction and has helped launch numerous other state and local programs. Massachusetts created a pilot program that funded a variety of green building pilot projects and established the groundwork for institutionalizing green schools in the Commonwealth. These and other efforts are described in detail in ELI’s report Building Healthy, High Performance Schools.
The year 2005 brought a new development in state efforts to advance a healthy, high performance approach to school design and construction – the enactment of legislation. These new laws are not the first state policies to address the issue. For example, in 2002, the governor of New Jersey signed an Executive Order calling for all new school buildings to incorporate the guidelines of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating system.
But since 2005, at least five states have enacted laws specifically aimed at advancing a broad, high performance approach to school construction by providing incentives or establishing requirements. A sixth state, New York, developed significant new written guidance that will be promoted by the state as a voluntary measure. The following are brief descriptions of these new state policies. Watch for updates to this page as more state legislation and formal policies are crafted in the coming months and years.
NEW - 2007
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