Is your school board climate-ready?

UndauntedK12 and GENup release the California Climate-Ready School Board Toolkit and Survey

Our new school year has already been deeply impacted by extreme heat and lost learning time due to unsafe, uncomfortable classrooms and playgrounds. With more extreme weather to come and mega-fires looming, there’s a reality we must face: students, and their ability to learn, are suffering in outdated school buildings and classrooms without air conditioning.

As the elected leaders of school districts, school board members must consider addressing climate change to be one of their responsibilities as they set district policy and pass budgets. And as hundreds of school districts in California elect new board members this fall, communities need information on their candidates’ stances on climate issues. 

We worked with student leaders to develop a Climate-Ready School Board Toolkit with resources for youth and adult advocates in California to engage with school board candidates in their communities on questions of climate change and school infrastructure readiness. The toolkit contains a template Climate-Ready School Board Survey, which asks candidates to commit to specific climate goals for their districts and provides space for candidates to identify climate-related priorities.

If you plan to use this tool in your community, we’d love to hear from you about your experience. Reach out to us at toolkit@undauntedk12.org to let us know what you think.