Dear John,

A new school year has begun, and LAUSD students have been busy reuniting with friends, meeting new teachers, and getting ready to play and learn in the year ahead. However, many of these students returned to environments that are anything but conducive to learning. Over the last few weeks, they’ve tried to focus in classrooms with broken air conditioning, played on playgrounds covered in sizzling asphalt, and had lunch in stuffy cafeterias or on uncovered patios under the blazing sun.

More than 200 LAUSD campuses have less than 10 percent green space, meaning students, teachers, and workers are surrounded by asphalt and cement blocks for approximately 180 days of the year, including during extreme heat conditions. To help address this, the school district has a “Green Schools for All” plan that states LAUSD will implement 30 percent green space on all elementary school and early education center campuses by 2035.

Currently, about 40 percent of all elementary schools have received some form of funding, but progress has been slow. We’ve been working with a couple of schools in this predicament, such as Sharp Avenue Elementary in Arleta.

Sharp received a $2.7 million state grant to make groundbreaking changes to the campus. But bureaucratic delays mean the project hasn’t started, and they have limited time to use the funds before they risk losing the grant. 

Last month, as another school year started amidst a heat wave, LAANE and its community and labor allies—including UTLA and SMART Local 105—held a press conference. We called on LAUSD to move forward with greening projects and other climate upgrades that would protect our children’s health. Our argument is clear: Making schools cleaner, cooler, and greener is not only an investment in our future, but a chance to improve working conditions and create good union jobs.

We’ve also worked with Sharp staff and parents to engage and speak at LAUSD’s Greening Schools and Climate Resilience Committee (GSCR) meetings to provide strong public comments in favor of school greening and other investments. 

Thanks to the work of our partners like the Living Schoolyards Coalition, school board leaders like Dr. Rocío Rivas, and parent advocates, LAUSD recommitted to progress towards greening goals in terms of partnerships and policy changes, including at Sharp. 

Like me—like all of us—the parents at Sharp Avenue Elementary want what’s best for their kids. We’ve seen progress slowly being made to push greening projects forward, but we want students to benefit from these changes now. It’s up to us, our partners, and our allies to ensure that the promises of a greener LAUSD are realized. We owe it to our students, and to the teachers and workers, to treat this issue as the priority it is.