After Evanston Township High School adopted a Green New Deal of its own in 2024, which set specific goals for the building to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and become a zero-waste facility by 2045, District 65 has devoted the last six months toward developing a similar policy.
A working group of staff, students, caregivers, community organizations and Evanston and Skokie government employees met every three weeks starting in October to develop a 29-page District 65 Sustainability Plan.
Karen Bireta, the district’s sustainability coordinator, unveiled the plan at Monday’s school board meeting. The board will vote on incorporating it into official district policy later this month.
“This transformation will take a team effort. Small changes like composting, recycling and turning off the lights matter. System-wide endeavors like adopting this Sustainability Plan for our school district matters,” Superintendent Angel Turner wrote in an introduction to the plan. “Together, our students, staff and school community have the power to make a real difference, not just by learning about sustainability and climate justice but by stepping up and engaging in meaningful changemaking right here in our schools and community.”
The document identifies four areas of focus: teaching and learning, healthy environments, sustainable operations and transportation and mobility. Here’s a rough overview of some key goals within each area:
- Teaching and learning
- Create a climate-oriented curriculum and instruction for all students and teachers by 2040, including professional development for educators and “learning that authentically integrates equitable sustainability education including routine outdoor learning opportunities” for students.
- Incorporate sustainability education into at least one subject per grade level by 2035.
- Develop climate change instruction for at least one elementary and one middle school grade level by the start of the coming year (2025-2026).
- All schools host at least one sustainability event/effort per year by 2030.
- Offer climate action electives at middle schools.
- Healthy environments
- Establish an Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Management Plan by 2030, with protocols for continuous monitoring of air quality in all buildings.
- Tracking carbon dioxide, mold, humidity, etc. and maintaining clean HVAC systems and filters.
- Launch a public dashboard that shows ventilation and filtration rates, the latest building inspections and the presence of carbon dioxide/mold/chemicals.
- Reach zero onsite emissions by 2050.
- Install all-electric boilers, heat pumps, water heaters and kitchen equipment by 2050.
- Lower the intensity of energy use through building retrofits.
- Create a 10-year facility plan by 2030 that is refreshed every five years and fully redeveloped every 10 years.
- Establish an Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Management Plan by 2030, with protocols for continuous monitoring of air quality in all buildings.
- Sustainable operations
- Reduce carbon emissions from a 2018 baseline by 45% by 2030, 80% by 2040 and 100% by 2050.
- All renewable electricity by 2035.
- Maximum use of onsite rooftop solar panels by 2050.
- Offer 25% more locally grown, sustainably sourced school meals by 2030 (from a 2024-2025 baseline) and 40% more by 2050.
- Reduce cafeteria waste by 20% by 2030 (from a 2022-2023 baseline) and by 50% by 2050.
- All reusable trays/utensils/cups and no single-use plastics in cafeterias by 2050.
- Increase recycling and compost use by 5% by 2030 and decrease landfill waste production by 25% by 2040.
- Reduce carbon emissions from a 2018 baseline by 45% by 2030, 80% by 2040 and 100% by 2050.
- Transportation and mobility
- For district-owned vehicles: 50% electric by 2040 and 100% electric by 2050.
- For school buses: 30% electric by 2030, 50% by 2040 and 100% by 2050.
- For minivans/taxis used for student transportation: 30% electric by 2030, 50% by 2040 and 100% by 2050.
- From a baseline that will be measured in the 2026-2027 school year, increase the number of students who walk, bike, scooter, carpool or use public transit/electric vehicles to get to school by 5% by 2030, 15% by 2040 and 25% by 2050.
- Increase the number of staff who do by 5% by 2040 and 10% by 2050.
In concluding her presentation on Monday, Bireta said a vital part of making the plan a reality will be annual reports on the district’s progress toward reaching the above goals that are publicly available for the community to see.
It’s unclear at this point what all of these efforts could cost, but Climate Action Evanston Executive Director Jack Jordan said the plan resulted from “one of the best, well-run processes I’ve ever seen” that “was incredibly collaborative.”
“I’m just so proud of District 65, because it would have been so easy to have said no to committing on sustainability and to investing in it,” Jordan said to the board during public comment on Monday night. “As someone who’s worked on the actual plan week after week at the library, it was really evident to me that leadership was committed to this, that the board was committed to this, that Dr. Turner was committed to this.”
You can read the full plan in the document attached below.
District 65 unveils new sustainability plan is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.